KENT. Nor no man else; all 's cheerless, dark, and

deadly.

Your eldest daughters have fore-done themselves,

And desperately are dead.

LEAR.

Ay, so I think.

ALB. He knows not what he says; and vain it is That we present us to him.

EDG.

Very bootless.

Enter an Officer.

That 's but a trifle here.

OFF. Edmund is dead, my lord.
ALB.

You lords, and noble friends, know our intent.
What comfort to this great decay may come
Shall be applied: For us, we will resign,
During the life of this old majesty,

To him our absolute power :-You, to your rights;

[To EDGAR and KENT.

With boot, and such addition as your honours
Have more than merited. All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings.-O, see, see!
LEAR. And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life:
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou 'lt come no more.
Never, never, never, never, never !—

Pray you undo this button: Thank you, sir.—

Do you see this? Look on her,-look,-her lips,-
Look there, look there!—

[He dies.

He faints -My lord, my lord,

EDG.
KENT. Break, heart; I prithee, break!

ALB. Bear them from hence.-Our present business Is general woe. Friends of my soul, you twain

[To KENT and EDGAR.

Rule in this realm, and the gor'd state sustain.
KENT. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls me,-I must not say, no.

ALB. The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

[Exeunt with a dead march

"It is no vicious blot, nor other foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonour'd stoop,
That hath depriv'd me of your grace and favour."

The original copies read :

"It is no vicious blot, murther, or foulness,

No unchaste action or dishonour'd step."

The corrections are in Mr. Collier's folio. Mr. Collier says that "Cordelia could never contemplate that anybody would suspect her of murder." Step, Mr. Collier considers an insignificant word.

ACT I., Sc. 1. There is great plausibility in the change of "murther" to nor other;" but we hesitate to adopt it. Without Cordelia supposing she might be charged with murder, it would be natural for her to enumerate such heinous offences as would have justified her father's great severity. The word "murther" has not presented a difficulty to any commentator before Mr. Collier's publication.

"The knave turns fool that runs away,
The fool no knave perdy."-FOLIO OF 1623.
"The fool turns knave that runs away,

The knave no fool perdy."

JOHNSON, AND COLLIER'S FOLIO.

"The fool turns knave that runs away,

The fool no knave perdy."-CAPELL. ACT II., Sc. 4.

There is no doubt that the ori

ginal does not express the meaning

intended.

Do

Capell's correction of one line is quite sufficient to retain the true meaning.

"Ask her forgiveness?

you but mark how this becomes the mouth:

Dear daughter, I confess that I am old." ACT II., Sc. 4.

The original has "becomes the

house."

Mr. Collier's corrected

Capell long ago answered the

question which Mr. Collier puts in

GLOSSARY.

ADDITION. Act II., Sc. 2.

"If thou deny'st the least syllable of thy addition." Addition, in a legal document, is the particular description of an individual. The attempts of the commentators to explain the addition bestowed by Kent on the Steward are very unsatisfactory, and several, no doubt, are of the kind we now call slang.

"And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!"

Aroint is used here, and in 'Macbeth' (Act I., Sc. 3), by Shakspere, and by no other old writer, nor is it found in any dictionary. Much dispute has arisen as to its exact meaning and derivation. The late Mr. Thomas Rodd enabled us to give the following happy explanation of it in the Pictorial Shakspere,' which he there supported by many collateral reasons. He says "it is conjectured that it is a compound of ar or aer, and hynt: the first a very ancient word, common to the Greek and Gothic languages in the sense of to go; the second derived from the Gothic, and still in common use under the same form, and with the same meaning, hint, behind, &c., in English, and hint or hynt in German." Hence the meaning is clearly, "Go or get behind me," as in the New Testament, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

BALLOW. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"Whether your costard or my ballow be the harder." Grose in his 'Provincial Glossary' gives ballow as the northcountry word for pole. Edgar is speaking in the Somerset

conjectures that Lear takes his hat in his hand when he says, "I will preach to thee;" and, disliking the fashion, exclaims, "This a good block!" and then starts off, from the association, to shoeing the horses with felt.

BOURN. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"From the dread summit of this chalky bourn."

Bourne, from the French borne, is properly a boundary. In a previous passage,—

66

Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me,"

it is used for a rivulet, which is also a common meaning,
and is the same as the Scottish burn, still in use. The
"bosky bourn" in Milton's 'Comus' is well explained by
Warton as a deep, winding, and narrow valley, with a rivulet
at the bottom. Such a bourn is a boundary, because it is a
natural division. But in the Winter's Tale' (Act I., Sc. 2),
Shakspere uses bourn even more strictly as a boundary :—
"One that fixes

No bourn 'twixt his and mine."

BRACH. Act I., Sc. 4.

"The lady brach may stand by the fire."

And Act III., Sc. 6,—

"Brach or lym."

See Glossary to 'Henry IV., Part II.'

BROWN BILLS. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"Bring up the brown bills."

Brown bills-bills for bill-men-were a class of infantry.
Marlowe, in his 'Edward II.,' has―

"Lo, with a band of bowmen and of pikes,

Brown bills and targetiers."

CHARACTER. Act II., Sc. 1.

"My very character."

Character is handwriting, used thus more than once by Shak.