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To see dead bodies strew'd about like cattle,
Were better suited to the field of battle.
Charon, in safety, o'er the Styx will ferry 'em;
And all that we can do now, is-to bury 'em.

[A dead march. [The curtain falls.

THE END OF HAMLET TRAVESTIE.

BURLESQUE

ANNOTATIONS

UPON

Hamlet Travestie ;

AFTER THE MANNER OF

DR. JOHNSON,

AND

GEORGE STEEVENS, ESQ.

AND THE VARIOUS

COMMENTATORS.

Commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.

YOUNG.

ANNOTATIONS.

ACT THE FIRST.

(a)-My eye and Tommy.

THIS is rather an obscure phrase. I suspect the author wrote My own to me, and that the passage originally stood thus:

But I have that without you can't take from me,
As my black clothes are all my own to me.

The whole passage, which before was unintelligible, is, by this slight alteration, rendered perfectly clear; and may be thus explained :- You may disapprove of my outward appearance, but you cannot compel me to alter it, having no controul over that which I wear without; as my black clothes are all my own to me,— i. e. my own personal property-not borrowed from the

royal ward-robe, but made expressly for me, and at my own expense.'

WARBURTON.

Here is an elaborate display of ingenuity without accuracy. He that will wantonly sacrifice the sense of his author to a supererogatory refinement, may gain the admiration of the unlearned, and excite the wonder of the ignorant; but of obtaining the praise of the illuminated, and the approbation of the erudite, let him despair.

My eye and Tommy (i. e. fudge) is the true reading; and the passage, as it stands, is correct.

JOHNSON.'

In the Ryghte Tragycall Hystorie of Master Thomas Thumbe, bl. let. no date, I find," "Tis all my eye and Betty Martin" used in the same sense. If the substitution of "Tommy" for "Betty Martin" be allowed, Dr. Johnson's explanation is just.

STEEVENS.

(b)-Cheer up

From what follows (No more foul weather), it occurs

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