P. 196. Then, then,

it is:

*

music sound, and teach our feet, How to move in time and measure meet.] In the folio

"Then, then, angrie Musique sound, and teach our feet," but Mr. Whalley says, "This epithet is not very commonly applied to music," and Gifford strikes it out altogether, and replaces it by asterisks! But surely it is not difficult to imagine a style of music for which this "angry" would be the very best epithet conceivable. For instance, take that passage in Dryden's Alexander's Feast, where Timotheus strikes the lyre and "rouses him like a rattling peal of thunder.”

"See the Furies arise !

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!"

This music must have had a good deal of anger in it.

NOTES TO LOVE RESTORED.

Page 200.

ICENSE of surquedry.] Surquedry is presumption. The word has occurred before in the Case is Altered, vol. vi. p. 362, where there ought to have been a note upon it. It comes from the old French surquiderie, and examples of its use might be quoted from Chaucer, Spenser, and Drayton.

P. 201. Climb over the wall, and in by the wood-yard.] I have noted before that much local colouring is lost by not printing Wood-yard, Verge, &c., as in the folio. All these were localities with which every Londoner was perfectly familiar. Along one side of the noble park of Badminton there is a long narrow strip of forest, with a road artfully carried through every inch of it, which is still called the Verge.

P. 202. I had been mazarded.] Here Gifford has quietly thrown aside the folio of 1616, and followed that of 1640. In the former the reading is, "I had been amazed," which is certainly feeble and almost unmeaning compared to the other. I suppose the correction must have been derived from Jonson himself. Strangely enough, this appears to be the only authority for mazard being used as a verb. It would, of course, mean "had my head broken." But see Nares on the word Mazzard.

P. 202. So catholic a coxcomb as Coryat.] In the note Gifford says, "after Coryat there follows and make a case, uses." This he

says is unintelligible, and so he omits it, but it will be seen by referring to the note at the bottom of page 189, vol. viii., that he afterwards hit upon the meaning, and that the mysterious "case : uses" resolved itself into case of asses-" case" being a "pair." P. 203. Some of the whimlens had too much.] The exact meaning of this word is not very clear. Barnes gives as a West of England word " whindlens, small and weakly," and Gifford, being a native of those parts, perhaps took for granted that the word was as familiar to everybody else as to himself. See vol. iii. p. 440.

P. 203. As he stood under the grices.] Grices were steps, or flights of steps. Nares says the word is also spelt greece, griese, grieze, grize, grise, &c.

P. 206. Depending on so earthly an idol.] Jonson wrote and printed earthy, the right word. But I have noticed that when he attempts to use it it is invariably changed to earthly, as here.

P. 207. By Jove's direct commandment.] Here again is ignorant and mischievous interference. Jonson wrote and printed:

"By Jove's direct commandément ;

as was so frequently done by Spenser:

"The wretched woman whom unhappy hour
Hath now made thrall to your commandément."
Fairy Queen, I. ii. 22.

"From her fayne eyes he took commandément."

Fairy Queen, I. iii. 9.

P. 209. You brighter planets of the sphere.] Jonson wrote and printed, "brighter planets of this sphere."

NOTES TO A CHALLENGE AT TILT
AT A MARRIAGE.

Page 212.

CHALLENGE at Tilt.] Mr. Nichols in his Progresses of King James (London, 1828) was the first to point out the extraordinary hallucination under which Gifford laboured with regard to this and the next piece. "It is easily explained why the title of this production, A Challenge of Tilt at a Marriage, is so vague. It was published in 1616, in the first folio collection of Jonson's Works, at the very period that the public indignation against the guilty pair, now so disgracefully allied, was at its height. At that time the author was naturally and very properly unwilling to affix names either to the Hymenai, exhibited

at the Countess's first marriage in 1605-6, to the present production, or to the Irish Masque which soon followed. That acute critic Mr. Gifford, after having discovered the names of Robert, Earle of Essex, and the Lady Frances, second daughter of the most noble Earle of Suffolk,' explicitly detailed on the title-page of the first edition, was enabled to determine the date and circumstances under which the Hymenai were performed, and having made this wonderful discovery he could triumphantly glory in his superior penetration over Chetwode; see his note, which note, however, I regret having reprinted." There is a little circumstance which had something to do with the greater freedom given to Mr. Nichols' remarks. The redoubted William Gifford had intermediately died on the last day of 1826.

The following description by Chamberlain, under date 5th January, 1613-14, will, of course, apply to nothing but this Challenge of Jonson's. "On the New Year's day was the Tiltings of ten against ten. The bases, trappings, and all other furniture of the one party was murrey and white, which were the Bride's colours; the other green and yellow for the bridegroom. There were two handsome chariots or pageants that brought in two Cupids, whose contention was, whether were the truer, his or hers, each maintained by their champions. But the current and prize you must think run on her side. The whole shew, they say, was very fair and well set out. I do not readily remember all their names, nor how they were sided; but, beside the Duke of Lennox, there were the Earls of Rutland, Pembroke, Montgomery, Dorset, the Lords Chandos, Scrope, Compton, North, Hay, Dingwell, the Lord Walden, and his brethren. Sir Harry Cary, and I know not who else save the Lord Norris, who when the Nullity was on foot, and in forwardness, not knowing she was so well provided, made tender of himself to the Lord Chamberlain for his daughter, if he might be rid of his Lady, which he thought an easy matter to do; but was rejected non sine risu of all that heard of it!"

P. 213. I will stand for mine inches with you, as peremptory as an ambassador.] On this occasion the ambassadors renewed the contests for precedency, which had been carried to such a height at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth.

P. 214. Was not the girdle about her my mother's.] Jonson had already alluded to the cestus at vol. ii. p. 218, and vol. iii. p. 290. Those who call Cowper's translation of Homer bald, must surely have forgotten his exquisite rendering of the description:

"It was an ambush of sweet snares, replete
With love, desire, soft intercourse of hearts,
And music of resistless whispered sounds
That from the wisest win their best resolves."

P. 216. In my true figure, as I used to reign and revel in your faces.] It is difficult to say where Gifford got this word faces from. Jonson wrote and printed fancies.

P. 217. Bending those stiff pickardils of yours.] See the Devil is an Ass, vol. v. p. 52, where "truth of Picardil in clothes" is spoken of as requisite to enable a man to "boast a sovereignty o'er ladies;" and vol. viii. p. 356, a neat picardill."

P. 219. There is another kind of tilting.] This is the kind of which Hotspur speaks:

"I care not for thee, Kate; this is no world

To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips;
We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns."

NOTES TO THE IRISH MASQUE AT COURT.

Page 222.

HE Irish Masque.] In his description of the festivities on Carr's marriage, Chamberlain makes mention of the Irish Masque also in unmistakeable terms: "Jany 5, 161314. The lofty Maskers were so well liked at Court the last week, that they are appointed to perform it again on Monday; yet this device, which was a mimical imitation of the Irish, was not so pleasing to many, which think it no time, as the case stands, to exasperate that nation by making it ridiculous." The intention, however, was the very reverse of making them ridiculous, and the performance was equally kindly.

We may suppose that Jonson had something to guide him in his spelling, and that he made his words to represent the Irish pronunciation to the best of his ability. If so, he would hardly have been pleased with the liberties taken by Gifford and his friends, who have altered at least one half of them, although I have only noted two out of the many instances.

66

P. 223. Ant make ter meshage run out a ter mouthsh.] Jonson wrote, at ter moutsh," and in the line above knoke instead of knocke.

P. 224. At shiede, and seven.] The meaning of this is not very clear, but something may be got from it when we find that Jonson wrote and printed "shixe and seven."

P. 225. Ty man Robyne.] This note of Gifford's, especially the last sentence, is carrying wilful blindness to a height never witnessed before.

P. 226. Tey drink no bonny clabbe, i'fayt, now.] This liquor was fully discussed in a note to the New Inn, vol. v. p. 310.

P. 229. And in her all the fruits of blessings plant.] Jonson wrote and printed blessing, not blessings. James was now busy with the scheme for the plantation of Ulster, in which, however, pace Gifford, he had a closer eye to the immediate relief of his own exchequer than to the future benefit of Ireland.

P. 230. So naked trees get crisped heads.] The application of the word crisped to vegetation has been praised as peculiarly happy. Jonson had it before in the Devil is an Ass, vol. v. p. 63 : "And sporting squirrel in these crisped groves."

NOTES TO MERCURY VINDICATED.

Page 232.

ERCURY, &c.] It is gratifying to find that this masque was perfectly successful. On January 8th Chamberlain writes to Carleton, "The only matter I can advertise, since I wrote the last week, is the success of the Masque on Twelfth Night, which was so well liked and applauded, that the King had it represented again the Sunday night after in the very same manner, though neither in device or shew was there anything extraordinary, but only excellent dancing, the choice being made of the best, both English and Scots."

P. 235. Never herring, oyster, or cucumber.] In the folio the word cucumber stands coucumer, which is interesting as a help towards Jonson's pronunciation. For the same reason, I may mention that in the penultimate line of this page bouge is printed budge.

P. 236. And so the black guard.] In a letter from Louth to Foxe, printed by the Camden Society in their Narratives of the Reformation (p. 50), I find this word occurring twice: "There Cooke in that hyghe court was dressed like a schoolyone, or one of the blacke garde;" and a little after: "To close up the matter in fewe, this schoolyone of the Pope's blacke garde was adjudged by the awarde of those noble counsellors to stande at Pole's crosse," &c.