and this (I take it)
Is the maine Motiue of our Preparations,
The Sourse of this our Watch, and the cheefe head
Of this post-hast, and Romage[5] in the Land.

[A]_Enter Ghost againe_.

But soft, behold: Loe, where it comes againe:

[Footnote A: _Here in the Quarto_:--

_Bar._ I thinke it be no other, but enso;
Well may it sort[6] that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch so like the King
That was and is the question of these warres.

_Hora._ A moth it is to trouble the mindes eye:
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest _Iulius_ fell
The graues stood tennatlesse, and the sheeted dead
Did squeake and gibber in the Roman streets[7]
As starres with traines of fier, and dewes of blood
Disasters in the sunne; and the moist starre,
Vpon whose influence _Neptunes_ Empier stands
Was sicke almost to doomesday with eclipse.
And euen the like precurse of feare euents
As harbindgers preceading still the fates
And prologue to the _Omen_ comming on
Haue heauen and earth together demonstrated
Vnto our Climatures and countrymen.[8]

_Enter Ghost_.]

[Footnote 1: French designe.]

[Footnote 2: _not proved_ or _tried. Improvement_, as we use the word,
is the result of proof or trial: _upon-proof-ment_.]

[Footnote 3: Is _shark'd_ related to the German _scharren_? _Zusammen
scharren--to scrape together._ The Anglo-Saxon _searwian_ is _to
prepare, entrap, take_.]

[Footnote 4: Some enterprise of acquisition; one for the sake of getting
something.]

[Footnote 5: In Scotch, _remish_--the noise of confused and varied
movements; a _row_; a _rampage_.--Associated with French _remuage_?]

[Footnote 6: _suit_: so used in Scotland still, I think.]

[Footnote 7: _Julius Caesar_, act i. sc. 3, and act ii. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 8: The only suggestion I dare make for the rectifying of the
confusion of this speech is, that, if the eleventh line were inserted
between the fifth and sixth, there would be sense, and very nearly
grammar.

and the sheeted dead
Did squeake and gibber in the Roman streets,
As harbindgers preceading still the fates;
As starres with traines of fier, and dewes of blood
(Here understand _precede_)
Disasters in the sunne;

The tenth will close with the twelfth line well enough.

But no one, any more than myself, will be _satisfied_ with the
suggestion. The probability is, of course, that a line