And there lies Caratach. Judas. We do beseech you 2 Sold. Humbly beseech your valour- Become your sport, Petillius ? In way of general good, in preservation 3 Sold. Your warlike remedy against the maw worms. Judas. Or notable receipt to live by nothing. Pet. Out with your table-books !" Jun. Is this true friendship? And must my killing griefs make others' May games? [Draws. Stand from my sword's point, slaves! your poor starved spirits Can make me no oblations; else, oh, Love, Judas. Alas, he lives by love, sir. And cannot you do so too? All do so too? All my company Are now in love; ne'er think of meat, nor talk • Out with your table-books.] These were very fashionable articles amongst our ancestors, and served the same use as our memorandum-books. As Mr Douce observes, they were sometimes made of slate, in the form of a small portable book, with leaves and clasps. That commentator laments that our museums furnish no specimens of these table-books, but gives a specimen of one fortunately engraved in Gesner's Treatise De rerum fossilium figuris, &c. Tigur. 1565, 12mo." But slate-books, exactly like the one there engraved, are very common in Germany, and are sold at most of the fairs, 26 BONDUCA. [ACT I. Are By Of what provant is :7 Ay-mes, and hearty hey-hoes sallads fit for soldiers. Live by meat?" 1arding up your bodies? 'tis lewd, and lazy, And shews ye merely mortal, dull, and drives ye fight, like camels, with baskets at your noses, Get ye in love! Ye can whore well enough, That all the world knows; fast ye into famine, Yet ye can crawl like crabs to wenches; handsomely To Fall but in love now, as ye see example, tum, There's so much charge saved, and your hunger's [Drum afar off. ended. Away! I hear the general. Get ye in love all, No more of these rude murmurings; and dis cretely Carry your stomachs, or I prophesy A pickled rope will choke ye. Jog, and talk not! VOTAR boold of Enter SUETONIUS, DEMETRIUS, DECIUS, Drum Suet. Demetrius, is the messenger dispatch'd.. The Volans regiment? Dem. He's there by this time. Suet. And are the horse well view'd we brought Dec. The troops are full and lusty. Suet. Good Petillius, • What provant is.] Provant was a usual term for provisions, and is still usual abroad for the provisions of armies. Mona.] i. e. The Isle of Anglesea.-Ed. 1778. Look to those eating rogues, that bawl for victuals, And stop their throats a day or two: Provision Waits but the wind to reach us. Pet. Sir, already I have been tampering with their stomachs, which I find As deaf as adders to delays: Your clemency Hath made their murmurs, mutinies; nay, rebellions ; Now, an they want but mustard, they are in up roars! No oil but Candy, Lusitanian figs, And wine from Lesbos, now can satisfy 'em ; 9 Orontes.] Our poets are sadly out here in their choice of pleasant waters for drinking. Mr Maundrell says, the waters of this river are thick and turbid, as unfit to be drunk, as its fish to be eaten. Choaspes was undoubtedly what they would have said; but, trusting to memory, they made this mistake. The waters of this river were famous for their fineness, &c.; and, as Ælian tells us, were drunk by the Persian monarchs, let them be in what part of their dominions they would. Sympson. Curious,] Precise, particular. Jointed again, and made a mast, defies And bear like thunder through their loudest tempests. They keep the field still? Dem. Confident and full. Pet. In such a number, one would swear they grew: The hills are wooded with their partizans, As moors are with rank rushes; no ground left us They are so infinite, so ever-springing, We shall be kill'd with killing; of desperate wo men, That neither fear or shame e'er found, the devil Has rank'd amongst 'em multitudes; say the men fail, They'll poison us with their petticoats; say they fail, They have priests enough to pray us into nothing. Suet. These are imaginations, dreams of no things; The man that doubts or fears Dec. I am free of both. Dem. The self-same I. Pet. And I as free as any; As careless of my flesh, of that we call life, As if it were my diet. Yet, noble general, Partizan.] Pikes or halberts.Ed. 1778. And worthy of a soldier's care, most worthy, ing, To find advantage out; how, found, to follow it With counsel and discretion, lest mere fortune Should claim the victory. Suet. 'Tis true, Petillius, And worthily remember'd: The rule is certain, • Go on and get.] To go on and get is a little savouring of tautology; for, if a man goes on, in the sense of this passage, he cannot chuse but get. But to go on, and yet not lose a Roman, is an expression which the words immediately following would induce us to believe the poets wrote here. I have not, however, disturbed the text, and only humbly offer this innovation to the judgment of the reader. Sympson To go on and get is, we think, right, and means simply to proceed with advantage.-Ed. 1778. Sympson, in the present case, is clearly right; the propriety of his alteration being plainly proved by the following lines, as well as by the general purport of the speech of Petillius. The rule is certain, Their uses no less excellent.] Whose uses? The word their has no correlative. We should read-The uses no less excellent; instead of their, Suetonius means to say that the rule was just, and the application of it excellent. Mason. Though I have adopted this amendment, I much suspect that the inaccuracy was produced by the inadvertenty of the poet. Perhaps it would be better to read 5 The rules are certain, Their uses [i. e. the inferences drawn from those rules] no less excellent. danger, time and all Tend to a present peril.] Seward, not understanding this pass |