[Footnote 1: He hurries him to go, yet immediately begins to prose.]
[Footnote 2: Engrave.]
[Footnote 3: Not settled into its true shape (?) or, out of proportion with its occasions (?)—I cannot say which.]
[Footnote 4: 'Cultivate close relations, but do not lie open to common access.' 'Have choice intimacies, but do not be hail, fellow! well met with everybody.' What follows is an expansion of the lesson.]
[Footnote 5: 'The friends thou hast—and the choice of them justified by trial—'equal to: 'provided their choice be justified &c.']
[Footnote 6: 'Do not make the palm hard, and dull its touch of discrimination, by shaking hands in welcome with every one that turns up.']
[Footnote 7: judgment, opinion.]
[Footnote 8: Generosus, of good breed, a gentleman.]
[Footnote 9: 1st Q. 'generall chiefe.']
[Footnote 10: No doubt the omission of of a gives the right number of syllables to the verse, and makes room for the interpretation which a dash between generous and chief renders clearer: 'Are most select and generous—chief in that,'—'are most choice and well-bred—chief, indeed—at the head or top, in the matter of dress.' But without necessity or authority—one of the two, I would not throw away a word; and suggest therefore that Shakspere had here the French idiom de son chef in his mind, and qualifies the noun in it with adjectives of his own. The Academy Dictionary gives de son propre mouvement as one interpretation of the phrase. The meaning would be, 'they are of a most choice and developed instinct in dress.' Cheff or chief suggests the upper third of the heraldic shield, but I cannot persuade the suggestion to further development. The hypercatalectic syllables of a, swiftly spoken, matter little to the verse, especially as it is dramatic.]