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P. 299. The oven, the baven, the mawkin, the peel.] One of these words has been explained in a note on Bartholomew Fair, vol. iv. P. 413. A baven was a faggot. Evelyn, speaking of the oak, says: "The smaller trunchions and spray will make billets, bavins, and coals." Sylva, p. 27. A mawkin was a hare-skin, wetted and attached to a pole, to wipe out the oven. And a peel, as before stated, was the wooden shovel for withdrawing the loaves.

P. 300. Under the eves of his own hat.] About 1816 our spelling was in some respects very arbitrary. This word eves, for instance, is eaves in the folio.

P. 304. As many as the name yields (and note 3).] Here Southey notes: "Gifford thinks Swift took a hint hence, and not from Philostratus. But Swift is likely to have read Philostratus."

NOTES TO THE HONOUR OF WALES.

Page 315.

OR the Honour of Wales.] Gifford is assuredly wrong in asserting that Inigo Jones did not prepare the scenery for this and the preceding masque. See Sherburn's letter to Carleton, quoted in my note to Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue. His note also on the "festive year" is written under the mistaken idea that these pieces were produced in 1619 instead of 1618.

P. 319. Vellhy! Libia.] Here Southey notes in the margin: "Valha me Dios is the Portuguese exclamation."

P. 323. And Erwin, his name is Wyn.] This refers to sir William Irwin, gentleman usher of the prince's privy chamber.

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P. 325. And Got is plenty of goats milk.] What Gifford supposed this line to mean I cannot pretend to say. That wretched volume (the folio of 1641) in which there is not a page without some ridiculous blunder" (see note, p. 309), reads:

"And Got his plenty of goats milk,"

that is, God's plenty, which is excellent sense, and clearly the true wording.

P. 326. With Welse hook, or long dagger.] The Welsh sword, from its form, was called a hook. So Shakspeare: "And swore the devil his true liegeman on the cross of a Welsh hook." First Henry IV. A. ii. S. 4.

P. 327. Both harps and pipes too, and the crowd.] A crowd was an old name for a fiddle, from the Welsh crwth.

P. 330. Claimes Arthur's Seate.] This anagram had previously figured in Prince Henry's Barriers, ante, p. 150.

NOTES TO NEWS FROM THE NEW WORLD.

N

Page 334.

EWS from the New World.] Here again Gifford was misled by Drummond's date, which would have been January 17th, 1618 (i.e. 1618-19) if he had been writing in England. Chamberlain merely mentions the masque as having been "performed by the Prince, Buckingham, and others, on Twelfth Night."

P. 335. I'll give anything for a good copy now.] Here the word copy appears used in one of its present meanings of printer's copy.

P. 336. A factor of news for all the shires of England.] Is it not a pity to lose the folio reading of shieres, as it is spelt here, and in the second line of the next page, and as it was no doubt pronounced? Two lines lower down sometimes should be sometime, a different word.

P. 337. When they are printed they leave to be news.] So in the Staple of News, vol. v. p. 177:

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P. 339. These are stale ensigns.] The folio has properly those instead of these; and in the next page, equally properly, polities for policies, and weapontakes for wapentakes. Who will assert that it was necessary to meddle with either of these words?

P. 341. One of our greatest poets.] See my note in the Magnetic Lady, vol. vi. p. 15. Whalley in note (6) as usual makes Ben Jonson walk to Scotland in 1619 instead of 1618. "He has been restive ever since," means that he has been at a standstill ever since.

P. 343. Zealous women, that will outgroan the groaning wives of Edinburgh.] In the next reign one "groaning wife of Edinburgh" has left her mark in history. Jonson during his visit to the north may possibly have heard Jenny Geddes herself "groaning"

over her "green stall" in the High Street. There are some amusing stories about this habit of groaning in the Flowers of Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed.

P. 343. Above all the Hyde-parks in Christendom, far more hidden and private.] The folio has "hiding and private," and I am sure it is right. There was a sort of small joke about Hydepark, and hiding.

P. 344. Skir over him with his bats wings.] To skirre, as it is spelt in the folio, is to scour; so, in Macbeth:

"Send out more horses, skirr the country round.”

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P. 348. Thus it ended.] The Scottish allusions in this masque were, no doubt, pleasant in the ears of James, as must also have been the rhythm of the concluding songs to the author of the Reulis and Cautelis of Scottis Poesie. This onely kynde of broken verse above written maun of necessitie, in thir last short fete, have bot twa fete and a tayle to ilk ane of them." Jonson omitted the tayle.

NOTES TO A MASQUE OF THE META-
MORPHOSED GIPSIES.

Page 350.

MASQUE, &c.] From an account of Endymion
Porter's of the expenditure of £1,000, received from

Buckingham, which I find in a note to Sainsbury's Life of Rubens (Appendix, p. 322), it would appear that Nicholas Lanier was associated with Jonson, and that each was rewarded with £200 for his labour. The account is dated the 21st July, 1621, which was some days before the first public performance of the masque, which was acted at Burley-on-the-Hill, August 3rd; at Belvoir, August 5th, and lastly at Windsor, in September, 1621. The King must have been greatly delighted, for on August 18th Chamberlain writes to Carleton: "The King was so pleased with his entertainment at the Lord Marquis's that he could not forbear to express his contentment in certain verses he made to this effect that the air, the weather (though it were not so here), and everything else, even the stags, and the bucks in their fall did seem to smile, so that there was hopes of a smiling boy within a while; to which end he concluded with a wish, or votum, for the felicity and fruitfulness of that virtuous and blessed couple, and in a way of

Amen, caused the Bishop of London in his presence to give them a blessing;" and the poetic fervour must have continued on him, for on October 27 Chamberlain again writes, "Ben Jonson's pension is increased from 100 marks to £200. A ballad in his Masque performed at Burghley was much applauded." This ballad, I suppose, was the popular Cock Lorell.

When Gifford says that the Heber MS. of this Masque " is perhaps the only MS. piece of Jonson's in existence," he was, of course, in ignorance of the beautiful MS. in the British Museum, of the Masque of Queenes, which Mr. Collier printed for the old Shakspeare Society. See note on p. 9 of this volume.

P. 351. In other syllables, were as to be dumb.] There seems here to be an extra foot in the verse, which there would not be if syllabe was substituted for syllable, as it was in pieces printed under Jonson's eye.

P. 356. His quinquennium.] Whalley was puzzled by the folio printing Guinquennium, which may possibly have been intentional.

P. 357. Where the acorns, plump as chibals.] Chibals were onions, from the French ciboule. Cotgrave has "Chiboule, a chiboll or hollow leek."

P. 363. To set Kit Callot forth in prose or rhyme.] Nares thinks the word callet may be derived from this person, see the Fox, vol. iii. p. 270. He also suggests the probability of Kit Callot meaning Kit the Callot, which appears the more likely suggestion.

P. 363. Till the fire-drake hath o'ergone you,] i.e. the fiery dragon, the brenning drak of some of our old romances. See the Alchemist,

vol. iv. p. 45.

Here's a gentleman's hand.

P. 364. I'll kiss it for luck sake.] The captain was not much to be envied, for James never washed, but had himself occasionally wiped over with a dampish cloth. His skin in consequence was of the texture of satin. It is not mentioned what its colour was. no part of a swine.] The dislike to swine's To the north of the

P. 364. Love a horse and a hound, but Jonson refers to this peculiarity elsewhere. flesh is or was very general in Scotland. Tweed, for instance, the word ham mentioned by itself would mean a beef ham, or a mutton ham, as likely as what they call a bacon ham.

P. 364. You are no great wencher, I see by your table,

*

*

*

*

#

And mean not to marry by the line of your life.] The table is the very marked line which crosses the upper part of the palm, the line of life is that which crosses from below the forefinger

to the wrist. In the Merchant of Venice, A. ii. S. 2, we have, “Go to, here's a simple line of life! Here's a small trifle of wives! Alas, fifteen wives is nothing."

P. 369. I swear by these ten.] Had the sentence been in prose it would have been "by these ten bones.” So in Second Henry IV., A. i. S. 4: "By these ten bones, my lord [holding up his hand], he did speak to me in the garret one night."

P. 374. Mistress of a fairer table

Hath no history or fable.] The folio reads, "Hath not history or fable," which I have no doubt is right.

P. 378. You were lately employ'd.] The service on which the Marquis Hamilton had been lately employed, was his being sent in this very year 1621 as the King's Commissioner to the Scots Parliament, "by which," says Burnet, "he much lessened his interest in Scotland," i. e. with the powerful presbyterian party. He died at London in March, 1625, according to Burnet.

P. 379. The earl of Bucklough.] This earl of Buccleuch was a soldier, and commanded a regiment in the service of Holland. He died in 1633. Anne Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth was his grand-daughter.

P. 381. Male gipsies all, not a Mort among them.] Mort was and still is the cant word for a female. So Beaumont and Fletcher in

the Beggars' Bush, A. ii. S. 1:

"And enjoy

His own dear dell, doxy, or mort at night."

The two other words will be found at p. 383:

"Sweet doxies and dells,

My Roses and Nells."

P. 387. A mill sixpence of my mother's.] Pistol picked Slender's pocket "of seven groats in mill sixpences." They are also mentioned by D'Avenant as coins reserved for a special purpose: "A few mild sixpences with which

My purser casts accompt, is all I've left."

News from Plymouth, Works, vol. iv. p. 111.

P. 387. He can ill pipe that wants his upper lip.] In the folio this stands, "that wants his upper lip, money." Gifford had the advantage of a MS., but the word money, if not absolutely necessary to the context, seems to me to make it much more intelligible.

P. 387. A dainty race of ginger.] A race was a root. In the Affectionate Shepherd, reprinted by the Percy Society, we have: "A guilded nut-meg and a race of ginger,

A silken girdle, and a drawn worke band," &c.

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