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Meg of Westminster kept alwaies twenty courtezans in her house, whom by their pictures she sold to all commers." And in Holland's Leaguer, 1632, "It was out of the citie, yet in the view of the citie, only divided by a delicate river it was renowned for nothing so much as for the memory of that famous Amazon Longa Margarita, who had there for manie yeares kept a famous infamous house of open hospitality."

P. 75. Doctor Rat.] It is strange that Nares should be in doubt whether this was the name of anybody. Doctor Rat is one of the leading characters in that genuine old English piece of fun, Gammer Gurton's Needle.

P. 8o. Where Proteus' herds, and Neptune's orcs do keep.] See ante, p. 36, and my note thereon.

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N Expostulation, &c.] It is idle to assert that there was no ill feeling between Jonson and Inigo before 1633. As early as 1619 he told Drummond that "Jones having accused him for naming him behind his back, A foole; he denied it, but, says he, I said He was ane arrant knave, and I avouch it." Vol. ix. p. 403. And again, "He said to Prince Charles of Inigo Jones, that when he wanted words to express the greatest villaine in the world he would call him ane Inigo." Vol. ix. p. 403.

The question of authenticity has long ago been settled by Mr. Collier, who discovered among the Bridgewater MSS. a copy of the Expostulation in Jonson's autograph.

P. 109. Both him and Archimede; damn Archytas.] It is rather bold of Gifford to say that the fifth verse could not have been written by Jonson. How does he know that Archimede was in

tended to be only a trisyllable? Remember too what Macaulay says, "Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks [for sails] rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand with a blunt hatchet," and then goes on to describe them as "jagged mis-shapen distiches." Archytas was a philosopher, mathematician and practical mechanic, whose wooden flying dove was the wonder of antiquity. He was a Greek of Tarentum, and lived about 400 B.C.

P. 109. Control Ctesibius.] Ctesibius, a native of Alexandria, lived about 250 B.C. He is said to have invented a water-clock, a hydraulic organ, &c.

P. 110. You'd be an Assinigo by your ears.] Some versions print years for ears. Assinigo is a Portuguese word meaning a young donkey. Jonson uses it in The Staple of News, vol. v. p. 287, without any reference to the Architect; and R. Brome too has it in his Mad Couple, vol. i. p. 13.

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Of lantern-lerry, with fuliginous heat.] This phrase, as Nares observes, seems to give some colour to the notion of Lanthorn Leatherhead being intended for Inigo. See note, vol. iv. P. 383.

P. 114. A cave for wine or ale.] See post p. 419, The Dedication of the King's new cellar to Bacchus.

NOTES TO LOVE'S WELCOME AT WELBECK.

Page 120.

HEN was old Sherwood's head more quaintly curl'd?]
Thomas Warton, p. 100, notes Milton's imitation :

"To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove

With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove."

But Jonson himself remembered Drayton's line:

"Where Sherwood her curl'd front into the cold doth shove."Polyolb. st. xxxiii.

P. 120. When did the air so smile, the wind so chime.] The editors have changed winds into wind to the injury of the sense. P. 121. Out-cept, sir, you can read with the left-hand.] This is the other instance in which Jonson brings in the quaint word which so tickled Horne Tooke. See vol. vi. pp. 131, 155.

P. 121. Derbyshire.] Jonson wrote and his friends printed Darbyshire-the pronunciation which the head of the Stanleys has still the good sense to retain.

P. 121. By his thewes he may.] Spenser uses this word as Jonson does:

"And straight delivered to a fairy knight,

To be upbrought in gentle thews and martial might.”

P. 121. A poor neighbour of your honour's in the country.] The editors have injuriously altered this from the county of the folio.

P. 122. The surety of his girdle.] Why is Jonson robbed of his little joke, "the sure-tie of his girdle," as the folio has it?

P. 125. All reckon'd o' the country skirts.] Here again something like nonsense is made by the change from the "county skirts" of the folio.

P. 127. [Safe from the ground.] This line is quite unnecessarily interpolated. The word "found," which he considers to be without a corresponding rhyme, had already two, as anybody can satisfy himself who reads the two lines preceding it.

NOTES TO LOVE'S WELCOME AT BOLSOVER.

Page 139.

HE Fates spinning them round and even threads, and of their whitest wool, without brack or purl.] This must remind every one of the couplet in the lines on Lord Bacon's birthday, post, p. 425 :

"Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full,

Out of their choicest and their whitest wool." Brack is a crack or break. For purl see vol. ii. p. 146.

P. 140. Both your pious and just progenitors.] In this same year was published a noble engraving by Van Voerst, after Vandyck, in which the queen (in a most interesting condition) is presenting an olive wreath to the king. The couplet beneath it may have been supplied by Jonson :

"Filius hic Magni est Jacobi, hæc filia Magni
Henrici: soboles dic mihi qualis erit?”

NOTES TO EPIGRAMS.

Page 146.

10 my Bookseller.] Up to 1616 Jonson's publishers appear to have been Nicholas Linge, William Holme, Walter Burre, M. L., Thomas Thorpe, Nicholas Oky.

P. 146. How, best of poets, dost thou laurel wear!] King James

was a very tolerable versifier, and did no discredit to George Buchanan's tuition. Besides The Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie, which was published in Edinburgh eighteen years before he came to England, he was also the author of Some Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scotts Poesie. Bishop Hurd before he reprehended Jonson for adulation of the new king, should have remembered the dedication of the Bible to the "Sun in his Strength."

P. 148. On the new Hot-house.] See Every Man out of his Humour, vol. ii. pp. 47 and 132. It seems to have been a kind of Turkish bath.

P. 150. Shift, here in town, not meanest amongst squires.] Jonson wrote and printed among, and, with a hissing word before and after it (meanest among squires), who will say he was not right?

P. 151. And for his letchery, scores, god pays.] I think there can be no doubt that scores is here a verb, and that the commas before and after it should be expunged.

P. 154. Sir Cod the perfumed.] Cod was a name commonly given to perfumers. So in Shirley's Wedding: "As thou goest call upon Cod the Perfumer, tell him he uses us sweetly, has not brought home the gloves yet." Works, vol. i. p. 382. In Gifford's note (3) on this Epigram, he quotes The Woman's Prize, and gives a mysterious line about

"Counterfeit cods, or musty English crocus."

P. 155. On my first daughter.] Peter Cunningham found in the Register of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields: "1593, Nov. 17. Seplta. fuit Maria Johnson, peste." If this was Jonson's daughter he must have been married at least as early as August, 1592, when he was about 20, and this I suspect to be the true state of the case.

P. 156. Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each Muse.] Jonson told Drummond that he esteemed Donne "the first poet in the world in some things." He had "written his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old." See vol. ix. p. 373, 374.

P. 157. And now her hourly her own cucquean makes.] Nares says this is "a familiar word, fabricated by taking the first syllable of cuckold, and adding quean to it." Cotquean is quite a different word. See The Poetaster, vol. ii. p. 456.

P. 158. On sir John Roe.] Jonson said emphatically to Drummond that "Sir John Roe loved him." "He died in his arms of the pest."

P. 159. He has tympanies of business in his face.] Samuel Johnson defines tympany to be "a kind of obstructed flatulence that swells the body like a drum.”

P. 159. For thy late sharp device.] It is plain from several passages that Jonson was in the habit of attending at the tiltings, and of supplying devices to his friends among the tilters. See post, pp. 183 and 343.

P. 160. On Banks the Usurer.] In the folio this man's name is Banck, not Banks, and I think it worth preserving, as in all probability it was a nick-name given to him from his profession.

P.160. Note (1). Why Whalley chose to give us vile English instead of copying the elegant Latin of the original, I cannot tell.] After this Gifford ought not to have left it to me to give the elegant Latin: D. JOANNI ROWE,

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Nec prior est incipi parens amico.

Having thus given one of Jonson's Latin inscriptions, I may as well insert another which I believe to be hitherto unpublished. It was transcribed by Mr. Dyce from the fly-leaf of a copy of Camdeni Annales, 1615, fol.:

In ædibus D. Margaretæ in Lothbury.

Quid divinare magnos invides, Parca?

Heu
Robertus

Jerminorum a Rushbrooke nobili germine
Hic situs est.

Flos juvenum sub ævi flore raptus,

Qui virtutum utriusque ætatis apicibus potitus,
Ingenio et indole juventutis

Nec non senili pietate ac prudentia

Infra se turbam coetaneam reliquit,

Impubes senex:

Et quod negavit seculo, cælo dedit.

Sic

sapere ante annos nocuit, nam maxima virtus Persuasit morti ut crederet esse senem.

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P. 161. The cold of Mosco, and fat Irish air,

His often change of clime, though not of mind,

All could not work.] That "All could not work" is

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