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.

IV.vi.19 (447,4) her cock] Her cock-boat.

IV.vi.43 (448,6) when life itself/Yields to the theft] When life is willing to be destroyed.

IV.vi.47 (449,7) Thus might he pass, indeed] Thus he might die in reality.  We still use the word passing bell.

IV.vi.53 (449,9) Ten masts at each make not the altitude] [Pope:  attacht] Mr. Pope’s conjecture may stand if the word which he uses were known in our author’s time, but I think it is of later introduction.  He may say,

  Ten masts on end—­

IV.vi.57 (449,1) chalky bourn] Bourn seems here to signify a hill.  Its common signification is a brook.  Milton in Comus uses bosky bourn in the same sense perhaps with Shakespeare.  But in both authors it may mean only a boundary.

IV.vi.73 (450,2) the clearest gods] The purest; the most free from evil.

IV.vi.80 (450,3) Bear free and patient thoughts] To be melancholy is to have the mind chained down to one painful idea; there is therefore great propriety in exhorting Glo’ster to free thoughts, to an emancipation of his soul from grief and despair.

IV.vi.81 (450,4) The safer sense will ne’er accommodate/His master thus] [W:  sober sense] I read rather,

  The saner sense will ne’er accoomodate
  His master thus.

“Here is Lear, but he must be mad:  his sound or sane senses would never suffer him to be thus disguised.”

IV.vi.87 (451,5) That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper] This crow-keeper was so common in the author’s time, that it is one of the few peculiarities mentioned by Ortelius in his account of our island.

IV.vi.93 (451,8) Give the word] Lear supposes himself in a garrison, and before he lets Edgar pass, requires the watch-word.

IV.vi.97 (452,7) Ha!  Gonerill!—­with a white beard!] So reads the folio, properly; the quarto, whom the later editors have followed, has, Ha!  Gonerill, ha!  Regan! they flattered me, &c. which is not so forcible.