Per. Faith, I had Some common ones, from out that vulgar gram mar, Which he that cried Italian to me, taught me.' sons, Persons of blood and honour. 66 "Some 9 Which he that cried Italian to me, taught me.] learned gentlemen," proposed, (as Mr. Whalley informs us,) to correct" the text here, and alter cried to read. "If chiamare (says one of these "learned gentlemen," "who appears to be poor Sympson) "had been used in the sense of indottri nare, I should have liked it much!" This is not a bad specimen of the manner in which notes on our old poets are sometimes composed. Utterly unacquainted with the style and idiom of foreign languages, the commentators run to their dictionaries, and with great labour pick out just enough to expose their own ignorance, and mislead the unlearned reader. Sympson knew that clamare was to cry :-but he wanted the Italian synonym, he therefore turns to chiamare, and boldly produces it at once, as an equivalent to the English word cry, though it merely means to call! We have too many Sympsons now-a-days. To return to Jonson. He had certainly heard enough of Italian to be sensible that it was read with a kind of musical intonation; and this is just what he means. Peregrine's language is purposely affected, to set off the simplicity of Sir Politick. Fellows of outside, and mere bark] This, as Upton observes, is a Greek phrase; how♪ns & avnę, Long. sect. 3. Daniel has the same expression, in his Hymen's Triumph : "And never let her think on me, who am Enter MoscA and NANO disguised, followed by persons with materials for erecting a Stage. Per. Who be these, sir? Mos. Under that window, there 't must be. The same. Sir. P. Fellows, to mount a bank. Did your instructor In the dear tongues, never discourse to you Per. Yes, sir. Sir P. Why, Here you shall see one. Per. They are quacksalvers, Fellows that live by venting oils and drugs. Sir P. Was that the character he gave you of them? Per. As I remember. Sir P. Pity his ignorance. They are the only knowing men of Europe! Per. And, I have heard, they are most lewd impostors ;2 Made all of terms and shreds; no less beliers Of great men's favours, than their own vile med'cines; Which they will utter upon monstrous oaths: 2 They are most lewd impostors ;] i. e. ignorant, unlearned. The old and approved sense of the word. Thus Chaucer : "And as leude pepill demith commonlie "Of thingis, that ben made more subtilie "Then thei can in ther leudness comprehend." Squier's Tale, 241. Selling that drug for two-pence, ere they part, Which they have valued at twelve crowns before. Sir P. Sir, calumnies are answer'd best with silence. Yourself shall judge.-Who is it mounts, my friends? Mos. Scoto of Mantua, sir.3 I'll proudly promise, sir, you shall behold Enter VOLPONE disguised as a mountebank Doctor, and followed by a crowd of people. Volp. Mount, zany. [to Nano.] Mob. Follow, follow, follow, follow! 3 Scoto of Mantua, sir.] I know not whether Jonson had any contemporary quack in view here. The name he has taken from an Italian juggler who was in England about this time, and exhibited petty feats of legerdemain. See the Epigrams. Our poet was a great reader and admirer of the facetious fopperies of a former age; and I am strongly inclined to think that he intended to imitate Andrew Borde, a physician of reputation in Henry VIII's time, who used to frequent fairs and markets, and there address himself to the people. Here is an evident imitation of his language. "He would make,” Hearne says, humorous speeches, couched in such language as caused mirth, and wonderfully propagated his fame." But Borde was a man of learning, and knew how to deal with the vulgar. He travelled much, to perfect himself in physic. 66 Antony Wood says that Borde was esteemed "a noted poet, a witty and ingeniose person, and an excellent physician of his time." Ath. Ox. V. I. 74. Having a rambling head and an inconstant mind, he travelled over a great part of Christendom, and finally concluded his vagaries and his life, as many other " ingeniose persons" have done, in the Fleet, in 1549. Sir P. See how the people follow him! he's a man Note, May write ten thousand crowns in bank here. Per. 'Tis worth it, sir. Volp. Most noble gentlemen, and my worthy patrons! It may seem strange, that I, your Scoto Mantuano, who was ever wont to fix my bank in face of the public Piazza, near the shelter of the Portico to the Procuratia, should now, after eight months absence from this illustrious city of Venice, humbly retire myself into an obscure nook of the Piazza. Sir. P. Did not I now object the same? Per. Peace, sir. Volp. Let me tell you: I am not, as your Lombard proverb saith, cold on my feet; or content to part with my commodities at a cheaper rate, than I accustomed look not for it. Nor that the calumnious reports of that impudent detractor, and shame to our profession, (Alessandro Buttone, I mean,) who gave out, in public, I was condemned a sforzato to the galleys, for poisoning the cardinal Bembo's cook, hath at all attached, much less dejected me. No, no, worthy gentlemen; to tell you true, I cannot endure to see the rabble of these ground ciarlitani,^ that spread their cloaks on the pavement, as 4 These ground ciarlitani, &c.] These ground ciarlitani (petty charlatans, impostors, babblers) are to be found in Italy at this hour, occupied precisely as they were in the days of Scoto Mantuano. Coryat gives a similar account of them: "I have seen," he says, some of them stand upon the ground when they tell their tales, which are such as they commonly call ciaratanoes, or ciarlatans. The principal place where they act, is if they meant to do feats of activity, and then come in lamely, with their mouldy tales out of Boccacio, like stale Tabarine, the fabulist: some of them discoursing their travels, and of their tedious captivity in the Turks gallies, when, indeed, were the truth known, they were the Christians gallies, where very temperately they eat bread, and drunk water, as a wholesome penance, enjoined them by their confessors, for base pilferies. Sir P. Note but his bearing, and contempt of these. 6 Volp. These turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogues, with one poor groat's worth of unprepared antimony, finely wrapt up in several scartoccios, are able, very well, to kill their twenty a week, and play; yet, these meagre, starved spirits, who have half stopt the organs of their minds with earthy oppilations, want not their favourers among your shrivell'd sallad-eating artizans, who are overjoyed that they may have their half-pe'rth of physic; though it purge them into another world, it makes no matter. the first part of St. Mark's-street." These tales, or recitations, it should be observed, are merely to draw the people together; and always terminate with the production of some trumpery articles for sale. 5 Like stale Tabarine, the fabulist :] This Tabarin, who is mentioned by Boileau, in his " Art of Poetry," "Apollon travesti devint un Tabarin," and, again, in his "Critical Reflections," was, as his annotators inform us, a celebrated jack-pudding in the service of one Mondor: "Ce Mondor étoit un charlatan, ou vendeur du beaume, qui établissoit son théatre dans la Place Dauphine, vers le commencement du xvii siècle. Il rouloit aussi dans les autres villes du roiaume avec Tabarin, le bouffon de sa troupe. Les plaisanteries de Tabarin ont été imprimées plusieurs fois à Paris et à Lyons.—Elles ne peuvent plaire qu'à la canaille." • Scartoccios,] i. e. covers, folds of paper; whence our cartouch. |