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Cor. The queen, sir, very oft importuned me
To temper poisons for her; still pretending
The satisfaction of her knowledge only
In killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs
Of no esteem: I, dreading that her purpose
Was of more danger, did compound for her
A certain stuff, which, being ta'en, would cease
The present power of life; but, in short time,
All offices of nature should again

Do their due functions.-Have you ta'en of it?
Imo. Most like I did, for I was dead.
Bel. My boys,

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Bel. I am too blunt and saucy: here's my knee:

Ere I arise, I will prefer my sons;
Then spare not the old father. Mighty sir,
These two young gentlemen, that call me father,
And think they are my sons, are none of mine;
They are the issue of your loins, my liege,
And blood of your begetting.

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Bel. So sure as you your father's. I, old Morgan, Am that Belarius whom you sometime banished: Your pleasure was my mere offence, my punish

ment

Itself, and all my treason; that I suffered,
Was all the harm I did. These gentle princes
(For such and so they are), these twenty years
Have I trained up: those arts they have as I
Could put into them; my breeding was, sir, as
Your highness knows. Their nurse, Euriphile,
Whom for the theft I wedded, stole these children
Upon my banishment: I moved her to't;
Having received the punishment before
For that which I did then: beaten for loyalty
Excited me to treason: their dear loss,
The more of you 't was felt, the more it shaped
Unto my end of stealing them. But, gracious sir,
Here are your sons again: and I must lose
Two of the sweet'st companions in the world.
The benediction of these covering heavens

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As you did mean indeed to be our brother;
Joyed are we that you are.

Post. Your servant, princes.-Good my lord of
Rome,

Call forth your soothsayer. As I slept, methought
Great Jupiter, upon his eagle back,
Appeared to me, with other spritely shows
Of mine own kindred: when I waked, I found
This label on my bosom; whose containing
Is so from sense in hardness, that I can
Make no collection of it: let him shew
His skill in the construction.
Philarmonus,-

Luc.

Sooth. Here, my good lord.
Luc.

Read, and declare the meaning.

Soothsayer reads.

"When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking, find, and be embraced by a

piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty."

Thou, Leonatus, art the lion's whelp;
The fit and apt construction of thy name,
Being Leo-natus, doth import so much:
The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter,
[To CYMBELINE.
Which we call mollis aer; and mollis aer
We term it mulier: which mulier, I divine,
Is this most constant wife; who, even now,
Answering the letter of the oracle,

Unknown to you, unsought, were clipped about
With this most tender air.

Cym. This hath some seeming. Sooth. The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline, Personates thee: and thy lopped branches point Thy two sons forth; who, by Belarius stolen, For many years thought dead, are now revived, To the majestic cedar joined; whose issue Promises Britain peace and plenty.

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And to the Roman empire; promising
To pay our wonted tribute, from the which
We were dissuaded by our wicked queen;
Whom heavens, in justice (both on her and hers),
Have laid most heavy hand.

Sooth. The fingers of the powers above do tune
The harmony of this peace. The vision
Which I made known to Lucius ere the stroke
Of this yet scarce-cold battle, at this instant
Is full accomplished: for the Roman eagle,
From south to west on wing soaring aloft,
Lessened herself, and in the beams o'the sun
So vanished: which foreshewed our princely eagle,
The imperial Cæsar, should again unite
His favour with the radiant Cymbeline,
Which shines here in the west.

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NOTES.

"His father

Was called Sicilius, who did join his honour
Against the Romans, with Cassíbelan;

But had his titles by Tenantius."-Act I., Scene 1. Tenantius was the father of Cymbeline, and nephew of Cassibelan, being the younger son of Cassibelan's elder brother Lud, on whose death Cassibelan was admitted king. He repulsed the Romans on their first attack; but, being vanquished on Cæsar's second invasion, he agreed to pay an annual tribute to Rome. After his death, Tenantius, Lud's younger son (the elder brother, Androgeus, having fled to Rome), was established on the throne, of which they had been deprived by their uncle. According to some authorities, Tenantius quietly paid the tribute stipulated by Cassibelan: according to others, he refused to pay it, and warred with the Romans. Shakspere supposes the last account to be the true one.

"Enter the QUEEN, POSTHUMUS, and IMOGEN."

Act. I., Scene 2. Holinshed's "CHRONICLE" probably supplied Shakspere with the beautiful name "Imogen." In the old black letter, it is scarcely distinguishable from "Innogen," the wife of Brute, King of Britain. From the same source, the Poet may have derived the name of Cloten, who, when the line of Brute became extinct, was one of the five kings that governed Britain. Cloten, or Cloton, was King of Cornwall. -Leonatus (the prefix of Posthumus) is a name found in Sydney's "ARCADIA." It is that of the legitimate son of the blind King of Paphlagonia, on whose story is formed the episode of Glo'ster, Edgar, and Edmund, in "KING LEAR."

"A man worth any woman; overbuys me
Almost the sum he pays."-Act I., Scene 2.

That is the most minute portion of his worth would be too high a price for the wife he has acquired.

"If he should write,

And I not have it, 't twere a paper lost,
As offered mercy is."-Act I., Scene 4.

The meaning probably is, that the loss of that paper would prove as fatal to her (Imogen) as the loss of a pardon to a condemned criminal. A thought resembling this occurs in "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL:"

** Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried."

"Enter PHILARIO, IACHIMO, a Frenchman, a Dutchman, and a Spaniard."-Act I., Scene 5.

The name of Giacomo occurs in the "Two GENTLEMEN OF VENICE," a novel which immediately follows that of "ROMEO AND JULIETTA," in the second tome of Painter's "PALACE OF PLEASURE."-The behaviour of the Spaniard and the Dutchman, who are stated to be present during this animated scene, is in humorous accordance with the apathy and taciturnity usually attributed to their countrymen. Neither the Don nor Mynheer utters a syllable. "What was Imogen to them, or they to Imogen, that they should speak of her?"

"Your highness

Shall from this practice but make hard your heart."
Act I., Scene 6.

Johnson's indignant comment on these lines is highly honourable to his feelings. It tends to justify Goldsmith's remark, that he had nothing of the bear but the skin:"There is in this passage nothing that much requires a note, yet I cannot forbear to push it forward into obserThe thought would probably have been more amplified, had our author lived to be shocked with such experiments as have been published in later times, by a race of men that have practised tortures without pity, and are yet suffered to erect their heads among human beings."

vation.

To what particular "experiments" the moralist alluded, we are not at present aware: but the great duty which both he and the Poet seek to inculcate, that of mercy towards the inferior creatures, is of imperishable application.

"Was there ever man had such luck! when I kissed the jack upon an up-cast, to be hit away!"-Act II., Scene 1.

Cloten is here describing his fate at bowls. The subject is mentioned in the notes to "TROILUS AND CRESSIDA." It is objected by Steevens to the character of Cloten, that "he is represented at once as brave and dastardly, civil and brutish, sagacious and cruel, without that subtilty of distinction, and those shades of gradation between sense and folly, virtue and vice, which constitute the excellence of such mixed characters as Polonius in HAMLET,' and the Nurse in ROMEO AND JULIET.'"-Such inconsistency is, however, far more puzzling than unnatural. Miss Seward (as quoted by Mr. Singer) assures us, in one of her letters, that singular as the character of Cloten may appear, it is the exact prototype of a being she once knew: The unmeaning frown of the countenance; the shuffling gait; the burst of voice; the bustling insignificance; the fever and ague fits of valour; the froward techiness; the unprincipled malice; and, what is most curious, those occasional gleams of good sense amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity of character; but in the sometime Captain C-n I saw the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature."

"Swift, swift, you dragons of the night!"—Act II., Scene 2.

The task of drawing the chariot of night was assigned to dragons, on account of their supposed watchfulness. Milton mentions "the dragon yoke of night" in "IL PENSEROSO;" and in his "MASQUE AT LUDLOW CASTLE" we find "the dragon womb of Stygian darkness."

"Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings."

Act II., Scene 3. The same highly poetic hyperbole occurs in Milton's "PARADISE LOST," (book v.):

"Ye birds,

That, singing, up to heaven's gate ascend."

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