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So, in an address to the reader, at the conclusion of

Ben Jonson's Poetaster:

"Rhime them to death as they do Irish rats

"In drumming tunes."

STEEVENS.

MALONE.

Again in his Staple of News, 1625: "Or the fine madrigal in rhyme, to have run him out of the country like an Irish rat." 203.friends to meet;] Alluding ironically to the proverb:

" Friends may meet, but mountains never greet." See Ray's Collection. STEEVENS.

204. but mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter.] "Montes duo inter se concurrent, &c." says Pliny, Hist. Nat. lib. ii. c. 83. or in Holland's translation: "Two hills [removed by an earthquake] encountered together, charging as it were, and with violence assaulting one another, and retyring again with a most mighty noise." TOLLET. 212. Out of all whooping!] So, in the Old Ballad of Yorke, Yorke for my money, &c. 1584:

" And then was shooting out of cry
"The skantling at a handful nie."

Again, in the old bl. 1. comedy called Commons Con ditions:

" I have be-raced myself out of crie." STEEVENS. 213. Good my complexion!] This is a mode of expres sion, Mr. Theobald says, which he cannot reconcile to common sense. Like enough: and so too the Oxford editor. But the meaning is, Hold good my complexion,

i. e. let me not blush.

WARBURTON.

Dr.

Dr. Warburton's explanation may be just, but as he gives no example of such a meaning affixed to the words in question, we are still at liberty to suspend our faith, till some luckier critick shall decide. All = I can add is, that I learn from the glossary to Phil. -Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. that paint for the face was in Shakspere's time called complexions. Shakspere likewise uses complexion for disposition. So, in the Merchant of Venice :

"It is the complexion of them all to leave their dam." STEEVENS.

The meaning, I believe, is-My native character, my female inquisitive disposition, canst thou endure this! For thus characterising the most beautiful part of

the creation, let our author answer.

MALONE.

215. One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery. This is stark nonsense; we must read-off discovery, i. e. from discovery. "If you delay me one inch of time longer, I shall think this secret as far from discovery as the South-sea is." WARBURTON.

This sentence is rightly noted by the commentator as nonsense, but not so happily restored to sense. I read thus:

One inch of delay more is a South-sea. Discover, I pr'ythee; tell me who is it quickly! When the transcriber had once made discovery from discover, 1, he easily put an article after South-sea. But it may be read with still less change, and with equal probability. Every inch of delay more is a South-sea discovery : Every delay, however short, is to me tedious and irk

Diij

some

some as the longest voyage, as a voyage of discovery on the South-sea. How much voyages to the Southsea, on which the English had then first ventured, engaged the conversation of that time, may be easily imagined. JOHNSON.

Of for off is frequent in the elder writers. A South

sea of discovery is a discovery a South-sea off-as far as the South-sea.

FARMER.

Warburton's sophistication ought to have been reprobated, and the old, which is the only reading that can preserve the sense of Rosalind, restored. A South-sea of discovery, is not a discovery, as FAR OFF, but as COMPREHENSIVE as the South-sea; which, being the largest in the world, affords the widest scope for exercising curiosity.

243.

HENLEY.

Garagantua's mouth] Rosalind requires

nine questions to be answered in one word. Celia tells her that a word of such magnitude is too big for any mouth but that of Garagantua the giant of Rabelais.

JOHNSON.

Garagantua swallowed five pilgrims, their staves and all, in a sallad. It appears from the books of the Stationers-Company, that in 1592 was published, "Garagantua his Prophecie." And in 1594, " Α booke entitled, The History of Garagantua." The book of Garagantua is likewise mentioned in Laneham's Narrative of Q. Elizabeth's Entertainment at KenelworthCastle, in 1575. STEEVENS.

250. It is as easy to count atomies] Atomies are those

minute particles discernible in a stream of sunshinë that breaks into a darkened room.

HENLEY.

262. Cry holla to thy tongue.] Holla was a term of the manege, by which the rider restrained and stopp'd his horse. So, in our author's Venus and Adonis, 1593:

"What recketh he his rider's angry stir,
"His flattering holla, or his stand I say?

The word is again used in Othello, in the same sense as here :

"Holla! stand there."

MALONE.

264.my heart.] A quibble between heart and hart.

STEEVENS.

291. but I answer you right painted cloth,] This alludes to the fashion in old tapestry hangings, of mottos and moral sentences from the mouths of the figures worked or printed in them. The poet again hints at this custom in his poem, called, Tarquin and Lucrece:

" Who fears a sentence, or an old man's saw, " Shall, by a painted cloth, be kept in awe."

THEOBALD.

The same allusion is common to many of our old plays. So, in a Match at Midnight, 1633: "There's a witty posy for you.

"-No, no; I'll have one shall favour of a saw. "Why then 'twill smell of the painted cloth." Again, in the Muse's Looking-Glass, by Randolph, 1638; "Then for the painting, I bethink myself "That I have seen in Mother Redcap's hall " In painted cloth the story of the prodigal."

From

From this last quotation we may suppose that the rooms in publick-houses were usually hung with what Falstaff calls water-work. On these hangings, perhaps, moral sentences were depicted as issuing from the mouths of the different characters represented.

Again, in Sir Thomas More's English Works, printed by Rastell, 1557: "Mayster Thomas More in hys youth devysed in hys father's house in London, a goodly hangyng of fyne paynted clothe, with nine pageauntes, and verses over every of those pageauntes; which verses expressed and declared what the ymages in those pageauntes represented: and also in those pageauntes were paynted the thynges that the verses over them dyd (in effecte) declare."

Of the present phraseology there is an instance in King John:

"He speaks plain cannon fire, and bounce, and smoke." STEEVENS.

This singular phrase may likewise be justified by another of the same kind in K. Henry V:

" I speak to thee plain soldier."

Again, in Twelfth-Night:

"He speaks nothing but madman."

There is no need of Sir T. Hanmer's alteration: "I answer you right in the style of painted cloth." We had before in this play: "It is the right butterwoman's rate at market." MALONE.

Sir T. Hanmer reads, I answer you right, in the style of the painted cloth. Something seems wanting, and I know not what can be proposed better. I answer

you

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