[Greek:  “Pante moi phrenes eisin amechanoi, oude tis alke Pematos.”]

And the same lady in Ovid: 

  “——­ Luctata diu, postquam ratione furorem,
  Vincere non poterat.  Frustra, Medea, repugnas.
          ——­
  Excute virgineo conceptas pectore flammas,
  Si potes, infelix.  Si possem sanior essem: 
  Sed trahit invitam nova vis.”

Or Dido, in Virgil or Ovid: 

“Ille quidem male gratus, et ad munera surdus;
Et quo si non sim stulta carere velim: 
Non tamen AEneam, quamvis male cogitat, odi;
Sed queror infidum, questaque pejus amo.”

Or Phaedra, in Seneca: 

              ——­“Furor cogit sequi
  Pejora:  vadit animus in praeceps sciens,
  Remeatque, frustra sana consilia appetens. 
  Sic cum gravatam navita adversa ratem
  Propellit unda, cedit in vanum labor,
  Et victa prono puppis aufertur vado.”

The complaints of all are alike; they lament that they make attempts to resist their passion, but find it not to be resisted; that they are obliged at last to yield themselves entirely to it, and to feel their whole thoughts, as it were, swallowed up by it.

Such being the way in which Shakspeare represents Helena, and such the sentiments which he puts into her mouth, it seems evident that the interpretation of captious in the sense of absorbent is better adapted to the passage than the explanation of it in the sense of fallacious.

    “I know I love in vain, and strive against hope; yet into this
    insatiable and unretaining sieve I still pour in the waters of my
    love, and fail not to lose still.”

I said that the sense of fallacious seemed to be too refined and recondite.  To believe that Shakspeare borrowed his captious in this sense, from the Latin captiosus, we must suppose that he was well acquainted with the exact sense of the Latin word; a supposition which, in regard to a man who had small Latin, we can scarcely be justified in entertaining.  This interpretation is, therefore, too recondite:  and to imagine Helena as applying the word to Bertram as being “incapable of receiving her love,” and “truly captious” (or deceitful and ensnaring) “in that respect,” is surely to indulge in too much refinement of exposition.

That Shakspeare had in his mind, as MR. SINGER {66} suggests, the punishment of the Danaides, is extremely probable; but this only makes the explanation of captious in the sense of absorbent more applicable to the passage, with which that of Seneca, quoted above, may be aptly compared.

I am sorry that Johnson was so unfortunate as to propose carious as an emendation; but even in doing this, he had, according to my notion of the lines, the right sense in view, viz., that of letting through or swallowing up, like a rotten tub or a quicksand.