Chapter 12

“_King._ ... let _higher_ Italy (Those _’bated_, that inherit but the fall Of the last monarchy) see, that you come Not to woo honour, but to wed it.”

It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text; but yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest “bastards,” for “’bated.” As it stands, in spite of Warburton’s note, I can make little or nothing of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—“let higher, or the more northern part of Italy—(unless ‘higher’ be a corruption for ‘hir’d,’—the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see,” &c. The following “woo” and “wed” are so far confirmative as they indicate Shakespeare’s manner of connection by unmarked influences of association from some preceding metaphor. This it is which makes his style so peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise “those girls of Italy” strengthen the guess. The absurdity of Warburton’s gloss, which represents the king calling Italy superior, and then excepting the only part the lords were going to visit, must strike every one.

_Ib._ sc. 3.—

“_Laf._ They say, miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and _causeless_.”

Shakespeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses the word “causeless” in its strict philosophical sense;—cause being truly predicable only of _phenomena_, that is, things natural, and not of _noumena_, or things supernatural.