unexperienced. So, in Hamlet: "-and yet but raw neither, in respect of his quick sail." See Raw, catch-word Alphabet. MALONE. 98. Bawd to a bell-wether; Wether and ram had anciently the same meaning. JOHNSON. 113. But the fair of Rosalind.] Thus the old copy. Fair is beauty, complexion. See the notes on a passage in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, act i. scene 1. and the Comedy of Errors, act ii. scene 1. The modern editors read-the face of Rosalind. Lodge's Novel will likewise support the ancient reading : "Then muse not, nymphes, though I bemone "Since for her faire there is fairer none, &c." and other places. STEEVENS. 116. rate to market.] So Sir T. Hanmer. In the = former editions, rank to market. JOHNSON. Dr. Grey, as plausibly, proposes to read-rant. Gyll brawled like a butter-whore, is a line in an ancient medley. The sense designed, however, might have been-" it is such wretched rhyme as the butterwoman sings as she is riding to market." STEEVENS. There can be no reason sufficient for changing rate to rant. The Clown is here speaking in reference to the ambling pace of the metre, which, after giving a specimen of, to prove his assertion, he affirms to be "the very 'false gallop of verses." HENLEY. A passage in All's Well that Ends Well-" tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman's mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet's mule, if you prattle me into these perils,"once induced me to think that the the volubility of the butter-woman selling her wares, was here alone in our author's contemplation, and that he wrote rate at market. But I am now persuaded that Sir T. Hanmer's emendation is right. The hobling metre of these verses (says Touchstone) is like the ambling, shuffling, pace of a butter-woman's horse, going to market. The same kind of imagery is found in the first part of King Henry IV. " And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, MALONE. 143. Why should this desert be?] This is commonly printed: Why should this a desert be? but although the metre may be assisted by this correction, the sense is still defective; for how will the hanging of tongues on every tree, make it less a desert? I am persuaded we ought to read, Why should this desert silent be? TYRWHITT. The notice which this emendation deserves, I have paid to it, by inserting it in the text. STEEVENS. 146. That shall civil sayings show.] Civil is here used in the same sense as when we say civil wisdom or civil life, in opposition to a solitary state, or to the state of nature. This desert shall not appear unpcopled, for every tree shall teach the maxims or incidents of social life. See catch-word Alphabet. JOHNSON. 159. Therefore heaven nature charg'd] From the picture picture of Apelles, or the accomplishments of Pan. dora. Πανδώρην, ὅτι πάνλει Ὀλύμπια δώματ ̓ ἔχοντες "So perfect, and so peerless, art created "Of ev'ry creature's best." Tempest. Perhaps from this passage Swift had his hint of Biddy Floyd. JOHNSON. 165. Atalanta's better part;) I know not well what could be the better part of Atalanta here ascribed to Rosalind. Of the Atalanta most celebrated, and who therefore must be intended here where she has no epithet of discrimination, the better part seems to have been her heels, and the worse part was so bad, that Rosalind would not thank her lover for the comparison. There is a more obscure Atalanta, a huntress and a heroine, but of her nothing bad is recorded, and therefore I know not which is her better part. Shakspere was no despicable mythologist, yet he seems here to have mistaken some other character for that of Atalanta. JOHNSON. 166. Perhaps the poet means her beauty and graceful elegance of shape, which he would prefer to "Laude pedum, formæne bono præstantior esset. But cannot Atalanta's better part mean her virtue or virgin chastity, with which nature had graced Rosalind, together with Helen's beauty without her heart or lewdness, with Cleopatra's dignity of behaviour, and with Lucretia's modesty, that scorned to survive the loss of honour? Pliny's Nat. Hist. b. xxxv. c. 3. mentions the portraits of Atalanta and Helen, utraque excellentissima forma, sed altera ut virgo. That is, " both of them for beauty incomparable, and yet a man may discerne the one [Atalanta] of them to be a maiden, for her modest and chaste countenance," as Dr. P. Holland translated the passage, of which, probably, our poet had taken notice, for surely he had judgment in painting. TOLLET. : I suppose Atalanta's better part is her wit, i. e. the swiftness of her mind. FARMER. Shakspere might have taken part of this enumeration of distinguished females from John Grange's Golden Aphroditis, 1577. "who seemest in my sight faire Helen of Troy, Polixene, Calliope, yea Atlanta hir selfe in beauty to surpasse, Pandora in qualities, Penelope and Lucretia in chastenesse to deface." Again, ibid: "Polixene, fayre, Caliop, and Again, ibid: "Atlanta who sometyme bore the bell of beauties price in that hyr native soyle." It may be observed that Statius also, in his sixth Thebaid, has confounded Atalanta the wife of Hippomenes, and daughter of Siconeus, with Atalanta the daughter of Oenomaus, and wife of Pelops. See Atalanta, catch-word Alphabet. STEEVENS. I think this stanza was formed on an old tetrastick epitaph, which, as I have done, Mr. Steevens may possibly have read in a country church-yard: "She who is dead and sleepeth in this tomb, "Had Rachel's comely face, and Leah's fruitful womb, " Sarah's obedience, Lydia's open heart, Sad] is grave, sober, not light. WHALLEY. JOHNSON. JOHNSON. 170. The touches] The features; les traits. 195. I was never so be-rhimed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat,] Rosalind is a very learned lady. She alludes to the Pythagorean doctrine, which teaches that souls transmigrate from one animal to another, and relates that in his time she was an Irish rat, and by some metrical charm was rhymed to death. The power of killing rats with rhymes Donne mentions in his Satires, and Temple in his Treatises. Dr. Grey has produced a similar passage from Randolph : "My poets “ Shall with a satire, steeped in gall and vinegar, |