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Ott. And we will have a rouse in each of them,* anon, for bold Britons, i'faith. [They sound again. Mor. O, O, O!

Omnes. Follow, follow, follow!

[Exit hastily. [Exeunt.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

A Room in Morose's House.

Enter TRUEWIT and CLERIMONT.

True. Was there ever poor bridegroom so tormented? or man, indeed?

Cler. I have not read of the like in the chronicles of the land.

True. Sure, he cannot but go to a place of rest, after all this purgatory.

Cler. He may presume it, I think.

True. The spitting, the coughing, the laughter, the neezing, the farting, dancing, noise of the music, and her masculine and loud commanding, and urging the whole family, makes him think he has married a fury.

4 And we will have a rouse in each of them,] A rouse, it may be just necessary to observe, is a full glass, a bumper, and was usually drank to some toast. See more of this in Massinger, Vol. I. 237. Whalley justly observes that this scene is conducted with consummate art and judgment: the gradual accumulation and swell of the several noises, from the speaking of Epicone to the grand finale, or chorus of boisterous shouts, drams, and trumpets, which drives Morose off the stage, is highly comic, and, in action, must be singularly amusing.

5 He has married a fury.] This, with what precedes it, is

Cler. And she carries it up bravely.

True. Ay, she takes any occasion to speak: that's the height on't.

Cler. And how soberly Dauphine labours to satisfy him, that it was none of his plot !

True. And has almost brought him to the faith, in the article. Here he comes.

Enter sir DAUPHINE.

Where is he now? what's become of him, Dauphine?

Daup. O, hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else." He has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and lock'd himself up in the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peep'd in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of the roof, like him on the sadler's horse in Fleet-street, upright: and he will sleep there.

Cler. But where are your collegiates ?

Daup. Withdrawn with the bride in private. True. O, they are instructing her in the college-grammar. If she have grace with them, she knows all their secrets instantly.

Cler. Methinks the lady Haughty looks well to-day, for all my dispraise of her in the morning. I think, I shall come about to thee again, Truewit.

True Believe it, I told you right. Women ought to repair the losses, time and years have

from Libanius: ἁπανα παλαχοθεν, ήνικα ήγεμην ταύτην την εξίννυν, x. T. a. See p. 303.

6 Daup: O, hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else.] I shall faint, or fall down with laughing. WHAL.

Is it not rather, I shall expire in my fit, i. e. die with laughing?

made in their features, with dressings. And an intelligent woman, if she know by herself the least defect, will be most curious to hide it: and it becomes her. If she be short, let her sit much, lest, when she stands, she be thought to sit. If she have an ill foot, let her wear her gown the longer, and her shoe the thinner. If a fat hand, and scald nails, let her carve the less, and act in gloves. If a sour breath, let her never discourse fasting, and always talk at her distance. If she have black and rugged teeth,

7 True. Believe it, I told you right. Women ought to repair the losses time and years have made in their features, with dressings.] Truewit, as Upton observes, here resumes the subject of ladies dressings, &c. into which he had entered on his first meeting with Clerimont, (p. 349.) and which he continues to illustrate from Ovid. He certainly could not easily have had recourse to better authority; but the reader, perhaps, will be inclined to think that he has availed himself of it too freely. All that can be said is, that in Jonson's days the original was less familiarly known than at present; that it is copied with ele. gance and spirit, and adapted to the language and manners of the age with no inconsiderable degree of ingenuity. Upton (for Whalley, who merely copies him, is out of the question) had produced a few of the passages imitated, to which I have added such as readily occurred to me. More might unquestionably be found; but the subject is not of sufficient importance to justify a laborious research.

8 If she be short, &c.]

Rara tamen mendo facies caret; occule mendas,
Quamque potes, vitium corporis abde tui.

Si brevis es, sedeas, ne stans videare sedere,
Inque tuo jaceas quantulacunque toro--

Pes malus in nivea semper celetur aluta

Arida nec vinclis crura resolve suis.-
Exiguo signet gestu quodcunque loquetur,
Cui digiti pingues, et scaber unguis erunt.
Cui gravis oris odor, nunquam jejuna loquatur,
Et semper spatio distet ab ore viri.

Si niger, aut ingens, aut non erit ordine natus
Dens tibi, ridendo maxima damna feres.

Art. Amand. Lib. iii. 260.

let her offer the less at laughter, especially if she laugh wide and open.

Cler. O, you shall have some women,' when they laugh, you would think they brayed, it is so rude and—

True. Ay, and others, that will stalk in their gait like an estrich, and take huge strides.' I cannot endure such a sight. I love measure in the feet, and number in the voice: they are gentlenesses, that oftentimes draw no less than the face.

Daup. How camest thou to study these creatures so exactly? I would thou wouldst make me a proficient.

True. Yes, but you must leave to live in your chamber, then, a month together upon Amadis de Gaul, or Don Quixote, as you are wont; and come abroad where the matter is frequent, to court, to tiltings, public shows and feasts, to plays, and church sometimes: thither they come to shew their new tires too, to see, and to be seen. In these places a man shall find whom to 9 O, you shall have some women, &c.]

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Illa sonat raucam, quiddam inamabile stridet,

Ut rudit ad scabram turpis asella molam.”
Ay, and others that will take huge strides, &c.]
Est et in incessu pars non temnenda decoris :
Allicit ignotos ille fugatque viros,

Hæc movet arte latus, tunicisque fluentibus auras
Excipit; extensos fertque refertque pedes, &c.

Ibid.

Ibid. v. 300.

2 Thither they come to shew their new tires, to see and be

seen, &c.]

Sic ruit ad celebres cultissima fæmina ludos,

Copia judicium sæpe morata meum :
Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ;
Ille locus casti damna pudoris habet.—
Sed tu præcipue curvis venare theatris;
Hæc loca sunt voto fertiliora tuo.
Illic invenies quod ames, quod ludere possis,
Quodque semel tangas, quodque tenere velis.

Lib. i. 90.

love, whom to play with, whom to touch once, whom to hold ever. The variety arrests his judgment. A wench to please a man comes not down dropping from the ceiling, as he lies on his back droning a tobacco-pipe.' He must go where she is.

Daup. Yes, and be never the nearer.

True. Out, heretic! That diffidence makes thee worthy it should be so.

Cler. He says true to you, Dauphine.
Daup. Why?

3 A wench to please a man comes not down dropping from the ceiling, as he lies on his back droning a tobacco-pipe.] When I first observed this passage quoted by Upton, I turned to it with some curiosity, in the hope of discovering the meaning of droning a tobacco-pipe, an expression which had puzzled me in a former play, (Vol. II. 139,) and was not a little confounded at meeting with the following note, which may perhaps amuse the reader: "A wench, puella: so the word was used formerly." Shakspeare is then quoted for the fact-and the critic proceeds: "The etymology of the word seems to me to come from juvenca, juvencula, per apharesin; uti uncle ab avunculus, belly ab umbilicus, pars pro toto"! (p. 81.) There was not a person in the kingdom who wanted any information concerning the meaning of wench; (which, by the way, is not given after all;) whereas many, perhaps, would have thanked him for an explanation of "droning a tobacco-pipe." Whether this alludes to inhaling the smoke with a monotonous sound, imitative of the sleepy hum of a drone; or simply, to using the pipe with the characteristic indolence of this insect, or to both, as I have never met with the expression in any other writer, I cannot tell; but think the last not improbable. As to Upton's ridiculous derivation of wench, it is kept in excellent countenance by Horn Tooke, who brings it from the Saxon pincian, to wink: i.e. "one who may be had by a nod or wink"! To conclude a note already too long, wench (wensch) was used by the Saxons, as it is by their descendants at this day, for a young woman, (generally for a domestic, or one of inferior degree,) and the context, as in all similar cases, determines whether it means any thing more. The idea is from Ovid:

Elige cui dicas, Tu mihi sola places :
Hæc tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras;
Quærenda est oculis apta puella tuis.

Ib. v. 678.

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