His conquering banner fhook, from Syria.
To Lydia, and to Ionia ;

Whilft

ANT. Antony, thou would'ft fay,-
MESS.

my lord!

ANT. Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue;

Name Cleopatra as fhe's call'd in Rome :
Rail thou in Fulvia's phrafe; and taunt my faults
With fuch full licence, as both truth and malice
Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds,
When our quick winds lie ftill; and our ills told us,
Is as our earing. Fare thee well a while.

planation is juft; "for (fays he) Plutarch informs us that Labienus was by the Parthian king made general of his troops, and had over-run Afia from Euphrates and Syria to Lydia and Ionia.” To extend is a law term used for to feize lands and tenements. In fupport of his affertion he adds the following inftance: "Those wasteful companions had neither lands to extend nor goods to be feized." Savile's tranflation of Tacitus, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. And then obferves, that “ Shakspeare knew the legal fignification of the term, as appears from a palfage in As you like it:

"And let my officers of fuch a nature

"Make an extent upon his house and lands."

See Vol. VIII. p. 82, n. 6.

Our ancient English writers almost always give us Euphrates instead of Euphrates.

Thus, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 21:

"That gliding go in ftate, like fwelling Euphrates."

See note on Cymbeline, A&t III. fc. iii. STEEVENS."

3 When our quick winds lie ftill;] The fenfe is, that man, not agitated by cenfure, like foil not ventilated by quick winds, produces more evil than good. JOHNSON.

An idea, fomewhat fimilar, occurs alfo in The First Part of King Henry IV: “ -the cankers of a calm world and a long pedce." Again, in The Puritan: "-hatched and nourished in the idle calms of peace."

MESS. At

your noble pleasure.

[Exit.

III:

Again, and yet more appofitely, in King Henry VI. P. "For what doth cherish weeds, but gentle air ?" Dr. Warburton has proposed to read-minds. It is at least a conjecture that deferves to be mentioned.

Dr. Johnson, however, might, in fome degree, have countenanced his explanation by a fingular epithet, that occurs twice in the Iliad-aveμorpepès; literally, wind-nourished. In the first instance, L. XI. 256, it is applied to the tree of which a fpear had been made; in the fecond, L. XV. 625, to a wave, impelled upon a fhip. STEEVENS.

I fufpect that quick winds is, or is a corruption of, fome provincial word, fignifying either arable lands, or the inftruments of husbandry ufed in tilling them. Earing fignifies plowing both here and in page 48. So, in Genefis, c. xlv : "Yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harveft." BLACKSTONE.

This conjecture is well founded. The ridges left in lands turned up by the plough, that they may fweeten during their fallow ftate, are still called wind-rows. Quick winds, I suppose to be the fame as teeming fallows; for fuch fallows are always fruitful in weeds.

Wind-rows likewife fignify heaps of manure, confifting of dung or lime mixed up with virgin earth, and diftributed in long rows under hedges. If these wind-rows are suffered to lie ftill, in two fenfes, the farmer muft fare the worse for his want of activity. First, if this compoft be not frequently turned over, it will bring forth weeds fpontaneously; fecondly, if it be suffered to continue where it is made, the fields receive no benefit from it, being fit only in their turn to produce a crop of useless and obnoxious herbage. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens's defcription of wind-rows will gain him, I fear, but little reputation with the husbandman; nor, were it more accurate, does it appear to be in point, unless it can be shown that quick winds and wind-rows are fynonymous; and, further, that his interpretation will fuit with the context. Dr. Johnfon hath confidered the position as a general one, which indeed it is; but being made by Antony, and applied to himself, he, figuratively, is the idle foil; the MALICE that speaks home, the quick, or cutting winds, whofe frofty blafts deftroy the profufion of weeds; whilft our ILLS (that is the TRUTH faithfully) told us; a representation of our vices in their naked odiousness-is as our

ANT. From Sicyon how the news? Speak there.

EARING; ferves to plough up the neglected foil, and enable it to produce a profitable crop.

When the quick winds lie ftill, that is, in a mild winter, those weeds which "the tyrannous breathings of the north" would have cut off, will continue to grow and feed, to the no small detriment of the crop to follow. HENLEY.

Whether my definition of winds or wind-rows be exact or erroneous, in juftice to myfelf I must inform Mr. Henley, that I received it from an Effex farmer; obferving, at the fame time, that in different counties the fame terms are differently applied.

STEEVENS.

The words lie ftill are oppofed to earing; quick means pregnant; and the fenfe of the paffage is: "When our pregnant minds lie idle and untilled, they bring forth weeds; but the telling us of our faults is a kind of culture to them." The pronoun our before quick, fhows that the substantive to which it refers must be something belonging to us, not merely an external object, as the wind is. To talk of quick winds lying ftill, is little better than nonfenfe. M. MASON.

The words-lie ftill, appear to have been technically ufed by those who borrow their metaphors from husbandry. Thus Afcham, in his Toxophilus, edit. 1589, p. 32: "-as a grounde which is apt for corne, &c. if a man let it lye ftill, &c. if it be wheate it will turne into rye." STEEVENS.

Dr. Johnson thus explains the old reading:

"The fenfe is, that man, not agitated by cenfure, like foil not ventilated by quick winds, produces more evil than good." This certainly is true of foil, but where did Dr. Johnson find the word foil in this paffage? He found only winds, and was forced to fubftitute foil ventilated by winds in the room of the word in the old copy; as Mr. Steevens, in order to extract a meaning from it, fuppofes winds to mean fallows, because "the ridges left in lands turned up by the plough, are termed wind-rows;" though furely the obvious explication of the latter word, rows expofed to the wind, is the true one. Hence the rows of new-mown grafs laid in heaps to dry, are also called wind-rows.

The emendation which I have adopted, [minds,] and which was made by Dr. Warburton, makes all perfectly clear; for if in Dr. Johnson's note we substitute, not cultivated, instead of— "not ventilated by quick winds," we have a true interpretation of Antony's words as now exhibited. Our quick minds, means,

1 Arr. The man from Sicyon.-Is there such an

Or lofe myself in dotage.-What are you? 2 MESS. Fulvia thy wife is dead.

ANT.

Where died fhe?

our lively, apprehenfive minds. So, in King Henry IV. P. II: "It afcends me into the brain ;-makes it apprehenfive, quick, forgetive."

Again, in this play: "The quick comedians," &c.

It is, however, proper to add Dr. Warburton's own interpretation: "While the active principle within us lies immerged in floth and luxury, we bring forth vices, inftead of virtues, weeds inftead of flowers and fruits; but the laying before us our ill condition plainly and honeftly, is, as it were, the first culture of the mind, which gives hope of a future harvest."

Being at all times very unwilling to depart from the old copy, I fhould not have done it in this inftance, but that the word winds, in the only fenfe in which it has yet been proved to be ufed, affords no meaning; and I had the lefs fcruple on the prefent occafion, because the fame error is found in King John, Act V. fc. vii. where we have, in the only authentick copy: Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, "Leaves them invifible; and his fiege is now "Against the wind." MALONE.

66

The obfervations of fix commentators are here exhibited. To offer an additional line on this fubject, (as the Meffenger fays to Lady Macduff,) were fell cruelty" to the reader.

STEEVENS.

He stays upon your will.] We meet with a fimilar phrase in Macbeth:

Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure."

STEEVENS.

2 MESS. In Sicyon :

Her length of fickness, with what else more serious Importeth thee to know, this bears.

ANT.

[Gives a Letter.

Forbear me. [Exit Meffenger.

There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I defire it:
What our contempts do often hurl from us,
We wish it ours again;5 the prefent pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become

The oppofite of itfelf: fhe's good, being gone;
The hand could pluck her back, that shov'd her on.

5 We wish it ours again.] Thus, in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. II: "We mone that loft which had we did bemone.”

the prefent pleasure told toovaná

By revolution lowering, does become

STEEVENS.

The oppofite of itfelf:] The allufion is to the fun's diurnal courfe; which rifing in the east, and by revolution lowering, or fetting in the west, becomes the oppofite of itself.

WARBURTON.

This is an obfcure paffage. The explanation which Dr. Warburton has offered is fuch, that I can add nothing to it; yet, perhaps, Shakspeare, who was less learned than his commentator, meant only, that our pleasures, as they are revolved in the mind, turn to pain. JOHNSON.

I rather understand the paffage thus: What we often caft from us in contempt we wish again for, and what is at prefent our greatest pleasure, lowers in our estimation by the revolution of time; or by a frequent return of possession becomes undefirable and difagreeable. TOLLET.

I believe revolution means change of circumstances. This fense appears to remove every difficulty from the paffage.-The pleasure of to-day, by revolution of events and change of circumftances, often lofes all its value to us, and becomes tomorrow a pain. STEEVENS.

7 The hand could pluck her back, &c.] The verb could has a peculiar fignification in this place; it does not denote power but inclination. The fenfe is, the hand that drove her off would now willingly pluck her back again. HEATH.