Chapter CXXV: Act I: SCENE 1. Page 11

COR. ... I am sure, my love's
More richer than _my_ tongue.

Dr. Warburton would have it _their_ tongue, meaning her sisters', which would be very good sense. Dr. Johnson is content with the present reading, but gives no explanation. Cordelia means to say, "My love is greater than my powers of language can express." In like manner she soon afterwards says, "I cannot heave my heart into my mouth."

SCENE 1. Page 12.

LEAR. Nothing can come of nothing.

In the fourth Scene of this Act, Lear uses the same expression in answer to the fool, who had asked him if he could "make no use of nothing." For this ancient saying of one of the philosophers, Shakspeare might have been indebted to the following passage in _The prayse of nothing_, by E. D. 1585, 4to. "The prophane antiquitie therefore, unlesse by casuall meanes, entreated little hereof, as of that which by their rule, that _nihil ex nihilo fit_, conteined not matter of profit or commendation: for which those philosophers hunted, as ambicious men for dominion and empire."

SCENE 4. Page 60.

FOOL. That such a king should play _bo-peep_.

Mr. Steevens remarks that little more of this _game_ than its mere denomination remains. He had forgotten the amusements of his nursery. In Sherwood's _Dictionary_ it is defined, "Jeu d'enfant; ou (plustost) des nourrices aux petits enfans; se cachans le visage et puis se monstrant." The Italians say _far bau bau_, or _baco baco_, and _bauccare_; which shows that there must at some time or other have been a connexion between the nurse's _terriculamentum_, the _boggle or buggy bo_, and the present expression. See the note in p. 202. Minsheu's derivation of _bo-peep_ from the noise which chickens make when they come out of the shell, is more whimsical than just.

SCENE 4. Page 65.

LEAR. Lear's shadow?

We are told that "the folio has given these words to the fool." And so they certainly should be, without the mark of interrogation. They are of no use whatever in Lear's speech; and without this arrangement, the fool's next words, "which they will make an obedient father," are unintelligible. It will likewise dispose of Mr. Steevens's subsequent charge against Shakspeare, of inattention to the rules of grammar.