I have the greatest difficulty in believing that Shakspeare wrote the first 'mermaids.' He never, I think, would have so weakened by useless anticipation the fine image immediately following. The epithet 'seeming' becomes so extremely improper after the whole number had been positively called 'so many mermaids.' TIMON OF ATHENS, Act I. sc. 1. 'Tim'. _The man is honest. 'Old Ath.' Therefore he will be_, Timon. His honesty rewards him in itself.-- Warburton's comment--'If the man be honest, for that reason he will be so in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter without my consent'--is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in blunder: he can never see any other writer's thoughts for the mist-working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line the poet himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second. 'The man is honest!'--'True;--and for that very cause, and with no additional or extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man can be justly called honest, who is not so for honesty's sake, itself including its own reward.' Note, that 'honesty' in Shakspeare's age retained much of its old dignity, and that contradistinction of the 'honestum' from the 'utile', in which its very essence and definition consist. If it be 'honestum', it cannot depend on the 'utile'. 'Ib.' Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald's edition:-- So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints! I may remark here the fineness of Shakspeare's sense of musical period, which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive proofs had not been extant,) that the word 'aches' was then 'ad libitum', a dissyllable--'aitches'. For read it, 'aches,' in this sentence, and I would challenge you to find any period in Shakspeare's writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant, notation. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading the sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and then as a monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean. [1] Ib. sc. 2. Cupid's speech: Warburton's correction of-- There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise-- into Th' ear, taste, touch, smell, etc. This is indeed an excellent emendation. Act ii. sc. 1. Senator's speech:-- --nor then silenc'd with 'Commend me to your master'--and the cap Plays in the right hand, thus:-- Either, methinks, 'plays' should be 'play'd,' or 'and' should be changed to 'while.' I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in Shakspeare's manner. Ib. sc. 2. Timon's speech: (Theobald.) And that unaptness made _you_ minister, Thus to excuse yourself.