very bald about this period. Waste too, I think, ought to be waist. Both words were spelt alike waste. In the English version he makes the years forty-seven, which deducted from 1619 leaves 1572 clearly as the year of his birth, and shows that he perfectly understood the difference between the English and Scotch calendars.

P. 316. Note. These verses are printed with Jonson's name under the portrait of Shakspeare, prefixed as a frontispiece to the first edition of his works in folio, 1623.] The writer of this could never have seen a copy of the Shakspeare folio. The portrait is impressed upon the title page, and the verses are printed with Jonson's name, on a separate leaf opposite to it.

Gifford here missed an excellent opportunity for a hit at George Stevens. That "nefarious man,” as Johnson called him, patronized a spurious portrait of Shakspeare, which had not a leg to stand upon if the Droeshout engraving was a good likeness, and the difficulty was to get over Jonson's testimony. Stevens was equal to the occasion: "It is probable that Ben Jonson had no intimate acquaintance with the graphick art, and might not have been over solicitous about the style in which Shakspeare's lineaments were transmitted to posterity." In other words, Jonson lied about the likeness in order that posterity might think Shakspeare an ugly fellow ! Gifford has no case so ludicrous as this.

P. 319. From thence to honour thee, I will not seek.] The folio has, "From thence to honour thee, I would not seek."

P. 319. To live again, to hear thy buskin tread.] The folio has, "To life again, to hear thy buskin tread."

P. 320. In his well torned, and true filed lines.] Here, as Upton observes (Crit. Obs. Shak. p. 82, note), Jonson had the expression of the ancients in view, "bene tornatos et limatos versus." See also the Discoveries, vol. ix. p. 202.

Charles

P. 323. Upon my dear brother Francis Beaumont.] Lamb transcribed this Epitaph in that copy of the Beaumont and Fletcher folio, which he made so interesting by a notice in one of his Elia's Essays.

P. 324. Lady or pucelle, that wears mask or fan.] The folio has pusill, which had better have been left. Richard Brome, whose vocabulary everywhere carries traces of his up-bringing, has depusilated.

"Cur. The virgin says she is depusilated by your son. Touch. Depusilated! Ha, ha, ha!"

The Sparagus Garden, vol. iii. p. 182.

P. 324. The Countess of Pembroke.] Spenser addressed a very beautiful sonnet to this lady, which is not so well known as it

ought to be. It will be found in vol. i. p. 169, of Collier's edition. She is celebrated by Drayton as Pandora :

"Pandora thou, our Phoebus was thy brother."

P. 331. My truly beloved friend, master Browne.] The following lines by Browne should find a place in every edition of Jonson :

"Johnson, whose full of merit to reherse

Too copious is to be confinde to verse;
Yet therein only fittest to be knowne,
Could any write a line which he might owne:
One so judicious: so well knowinge: and
A man whose least worth is to understand :
One so exact in all he doth preferre

To able censure; for the Theater,

Not Seneca transcends his worth of praise;

Who writes him well shall well deserve the Bayes."

Britannia's Pastorals, Book ii. Song 2, Hazlitt's ed. vol. ii. p. 10.

It is interesting to know that Milton, in the margin of his copy of the Pastorals, wrote the name of Johnson against this passage.

P. 332. Who hadst before wrought in rich Homer's mine.] In the British Museum is a copy of Chapman's Seaven Bookes of the Liiades, and Achilles Shield, with the autograph inscription, SUM BEN. JONSONII.

P. 337. Note (7). In Authorem.] Gifford may well call Nicholas Breton an indefatigable writer. In the Scornful Lady, Beaumont says:

"And undertook with labour and expense,

The re-collection of those thousand pieces,
Consumed in cellars and tobacco shops,

Of that our honoured Englishman, Nich. Breton."
Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. iii. p. 28.

Lowndes gives the titles of fifty-four publications by him, extending from 1575 to 1618. Hazlitt gives fifty-one titles.

In 1601, Breton was, jointly with Jonson and Marston, made the object of attempted ridicule in a publication called Whipping of the Satire. See Collier's Bib. Cat. ii. 516. Collier (ib. i. 88) says, "He began his career of authorship in 1575, and he did not conclude it until 1636, at least that is the date of the Figure of Foure, his latest known work."

P. 338. Light posture, heightening, shadow, colouring.] What exquisite nonsense is made of this passage by leaving out the comma after the first word:

"Light, posture, heightening, shadow, colouring."

P. 342. To Richard Brome.] Jonson was proud, as he well might be, of the attainments of Richard Brome. He had taken uncommon pains with him, and he was rewarded in every way. In Epigram ci. ante, p. 204, he says:

66

My man

Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus,
Livy or some better book to us,

On which we'll speak our minds, amidst our meats."

See also the opening of the Induction to Bartholomew Fair, vol. iv. P. 341. It is not known when Brome died, but he must have survived his master at least ten years. He was certainly dead in 1653.

In the original edition of The Northern Lass, Jonson's two last lines stand as follows:

"The Cobbler kept him to his nall, but now

He'll be a Pilot, scarce can guide a plough." Where the question is one of guidance, Pilot versus Poet speaks for itself. The word nall, too, was very commonly used for awl. I find it in a preface of Bacon's, 1561: "The Smith giveth over his hammer and stithy; the tailor his shears and mateward; the shoemaker his nalle and thread," &c. In the same way ale was often written nale: e.g.—

"Their hearts then at rest with perfect security

With a pot of good nale, they stuck up their plaudity."

Prologue to Gammer Gurton's Needle.

P. 343. A Speech at a Tilting.] Nicholls says that this must have been written for the tilting at the anniversary of the king's accession in 1612-13, that being the only occasion of the kind at which the names of "these two noble brothers" appear together.

P. 345. An Epistle to sir Edward Sackvile.] There were two passages specially dear to Horne Tooke. The first is at the top of p. 349, and it will be noticed that he altered two of the lines and omitted two others:

"I thought that fortitude had been a mean
'Twixt fear and rashness; not a lust obscene,
Or appetite of offending, but a skill
And nice discernment between good and ill.
Her ends are honesty and public good
And without these she is not understood."

The other passage commences in the middle of the sixth line of P. 350: 'Tis the last key-stone," &c. He quotes the lines in his Reply to Junius of July 13, 1771, and calls them "the words of his ancient monitor."

P. 351. An Epistle to Master John Selden.] The version given by Selden himself, in his quarto of 1614, presents a few variations. Line 4, for instance, which now stands :

"Truth and the Graces best when naked are,"

was originally,

"Since naked, best, Truth and the Graces are."

Line 17 is now,

"But I to yours far otherwise shall do,"

but it stood originally,

"But I to yours, far from this fault, shall doo."

And in line 8 of p. 353, “manly elocution" was in the first instance "masculine elocution." The image in p. 352, of "like a compass, keeping one foot still," was often present to Jonson's mind. See more particularly the use made of it in The Sad Shepherd, vol. vi. p. 282.

P. 356. Who can behold their manners, and not cloud

Like, on them lighten.] Let any reader turn to this passage, and, after being told that the folio has, "upon them lighten," ask himself which is the true reading. Some one of Gifford's predecessors had counted upon his fingers, and found that upon made eleven syllables, so out it went.

P. 356. Planting their purls, and curls, set forth like net.] This word is frequently used by Jonson, but I have not been able to arrive at any precise understanding of its meaning. See vol. ii. p. 146 and note.

P. 356. And then leap mad on a neat picardill,

As if a brize were gotten in their tail;

And firk, and jerk, and for the coachman rail.] For picardill, see vol. v. p. 52, and vol. vii. p. 217. It is always a word of great interest. A brize is a gadfly. Cotgrave has "Tahon, a Brizze, Brimsee, Gadbee, Dunflie, Oxeflie." For firk, see vol. iv. P. 75, p. 99. I would rather not say what I believe to be the meaning of rail.

P. 357. For man so spend his money on.] The folio reads, "to spend his money on."

P. 357. For less security. O heavens! for these.] The word

heavens is an insertion of Gifford's. The folio leaves the space a dead blank there,

Mr. Dyce mentions in a note to Middleton's Works, vol. ii. p. 122, that he possesses several pieces by Marston, in which objectionable words are thus left out, the printer being afraid to insert them. There will soon be another instance, post, p. 433.

P. 358. Well, let it go. Yet this is better, then

To lose the forms and dignities of men.] In the first line the last word merely represents the old way of spelling than, to which no doubt Gifford ought to have changed it, and have converted men into man, in the next line, if he so pleased it.

P. 365. An Elegy.] Mr. Tennyson would, I am sure, be proud to acknowledge that he was well acquainted with this noble Elegy before he commenced his In Memoriam.

P. 376. To the lady Mary Wroth.] The word exscribe in the third line is drawn direct from the Latin exscribo. Let us be thankful that it did not take root in our language.

P. 379. Still may syllabes jar with time.] Gifford's note here is very amusing. See, for instance, the bottom line of vol. v. p. 278, and the examples might be multiplied to any extent.

P. 400. Had I wrote treason here, or heresy.] The folio reads there for here, and I think rightly.

P. 400. Had I compiled from Amadis de Gaul.] Southey calls attention to this renewed expression of Jonson's contempt for

romances.

P. 401. Condemn'd me to the ovens with the pies.] This seems prophetic of the doings of Mr. Warburton and his cookmaid in the next century.

P. 402. All the mad Rolands, and sweet Olivers.] Why was this epithet of sweet always applied to Olivers? Young Knowell even uses it to Oliver Cob, the tankard bearer.

P. 409. Old Esop Gundomar.] My friend Don Pascual de Gayangos informs me that some few years ago he had an opportunity of examining the library of Count Gondomar. There were several English books, and among them a well-preserved copy of the First Folio of Shakspeare, full of MS. corrections in a contemporary English hand. In some instances, passages of many lines were scored out, and others substituted. This library has since been scattered to the winds, and this unique First Folio in all probability sold for waste paper.