Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1767 edition. Excerpt: ...Start srp andJiand on end. I took notice, in my ShakesriAn Reftor'd, that this expression as much wanted an explanation, as any the most antiquated word in our Poet wants a gloss. Mr. Hughs, in his impression of this play, has left it out: either because he could mitie nothing of it, or thought it alluded to an image too nauseous. The Poet's meaning is sounded on a physical determination, that the hair and rails are excremcntitious parts of the body (a« indeed, they are) without life or sensation. Macjobics, in hi» Saturnalia, (lib. vii. cap. 9.) not only speaks os those parts ot the human body which hate no sensation; but likewise assigns the reason, why they can have none. OJj'a, denies, cum unguibus & capillis, nimia sicatart ita dejisatasunt, utptnetrabilia non Jint cjseflui animæ qui senlum minijlrat. Therefore the. Poet means to fay, fear and surprise had such an effect upon Hamlet, that his hairs, as if there were life in those excrementitious parts, started up and flood on end. fie hat express'd the fame thought more plainly in Macbeth. and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rwxr, zn&stirt Æ life were int. That our Poet v as acquainted with this notion in physics, of the hair being without life, we need no stronger warrant, than that he frequently mentions it as an excrement. Why is time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement? Coiredj,f Errors. Vol. VIII. I Kw Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? Horn. Oh him! on him!--look you, how pale he glares! His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, Would make them capable. Do not look on me, 1 est with this piteous action you convert tyiy stern effects; then what i ha.ve to do, Will want true-colour; tears, perchance,...