IV.iv.27 (443,4) No blown embition] No inflated, no swelling pride. Beza on the Spanish Armada:
"Quem bene te ambitio mersit vanissima, ventus,
Et tumidos tumidae voa superastis aquae."
IV.v.4 (444,1) Reg. Lord Edmund spake not with your lady at home?] The folio reads, your lord; but lady is the first and better reading.
IV.v.22 (444,3) Let me unseal the letter./Stew. Madam, I had rather] I know not well why Shakespeare gives the steward, who is a mere factor of wickedness, so much fidelity. He now refuses the letter; and afterwards, when he is dying, thinks only how it may be safely delivered.
IV.v.29 (445,5) I do advise you, take this note] Note means in this place not a letter but a remark. Therefore observe what I am saying.
IV.v.32 (446,6) You may gather more] You may infer more than I have directly told you.
IV.vi (446,1) The country near Dover. Enter Glo'ster, and Edgar as a peasant] This scene, and the stratagem by which Glo'ster is cured of his desperation, are wholly borrowed from Sidney's Arcadia.
IV.vi.7 (447,2) thy voice is alter'd] Edgar alters his voice in order to pass afterwards for a malignant spirit.
IV.vi.11 (447,5) How fearful/And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!] This description has been much admired since the time of Addison, who has remarked, with a poor attempt at pleasantry, that "he who can read it without being giddy, has a very good head, or a very bad one." The description is certainly not mean, but I am far from thinking it wrought to the utmost excellence of poetry. He that looks from a precipice finds himself assailed by one great and dreadful image of irresistible destruction. But this overwhelming idea is dissipated and enfeebled from the instant that the mind can restore itself to the observation of particulars, and diffuse its attention to distinct objects. The enumeration of the choughs and crows, the samphire-man, and the fishers, counteracts the great effect of the prospect, as it peoples the desert of intermediate vacuity, and stops the mind in the rapidity of its descent through emptiness and horror.