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Nicolas Udall's admirable comedy of Ralph Roister Doister, Act i. Sc. I.

"But such sporte have I with him, as I would not leese,

Though I should be bounde to lyve with bread and cheese." Bacon too uses it in his Natural History (1639), p. 5.

P. 256. Women are but men's shadows.] In the Conversations, vol. ix. p. 397, Drummond says, "Pembrok and his lady discoursing, the earl said, The woemen were but men's shadowes, and she maintained them. Both appealing to Johnson he affirmed it true; for which my lady gave a pennance to prove it in verse: hence his epigrame."

This seems circumstantial enough; but a writer in Notes and Queries, 3rd S., viii. 187, gives some Latin lines, which if really written by Barthol. Anulus (who died circ. 1565) would tend to impugn the truth of the story:

"Umbra suum corpus radianti in lumine solis
Cum sequitur refugit; cum fugit insequitur.
Talis naturæ quoque sint muliebres amores :
Optet amans, nolunt: non velit, ultro volunt.
Phoebum virgo fugit Daphne inviolata sequentem;
Echo Narcissum, dum fugit, insequitur.
Ergo voluntati plerumque adversa repugnans
Fœmina, jure sui dicitur umbra viri."

P. 261. Pallas, nor thee I call on, mankind maid.] This word, which simply means masculine, is used very ludicrously by Morose, in The Silent Woman, vol. iii. p. 470.

P. 265. Peace, Luxury,] Stevens no doubt, as Gifford says, was not averse to "pour out pages of the grossest indecency." It would have been sufficient if he had quoted Florio and Cotgrave for the meaning attached to the word at that period in Italy and France. "Lussuria, lechery, lust, riot, rankness." "Luxure, sensuality, excess in carnal delights." This was departing from the Latin meaning. Seneca simply says, "Pestis blanda luxuria."

P. 267. Elizabeth countess of Rutland.] See ante, p. 186. She died in August, 1612, and was privately buried in St. Paul's, by the side of her father. Chamberlain (August 11, 1612), tells Carleton that "Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have sent her pills that dispatched her." She is mentioned particularly in the Conversations.

P. 267. And some one apteth to be trusted then.] This word is used twice by Jonson in The Poetaster, vol. ii. pp. 381, 520.

P. 269. You, and that other star.] For more about Jonson and Daniel, see Gifford's note, vol. i. p. 146.

P. 275. Maintain their leigers forth for foreign wires,

Melt down their husbands' lands,] i.e. retain persons as permanent emissaries to communicate foreign fashions. Lands is land in the folio.

P. 276. Hear what the Muses sing above thy root.] I cannot see why "above thy root" should have been substituted for the "about thy root," which Jonson wrote and printed.

P. 277. Sir William Sidney.] The eldest son of this noble family was a young man of high promise, and must have completed his twenty-first year very shortly before his death, as Jonson mentions that the birthday was in winter, and he died on December 3rd, 1612. The last mention of him in the Sidney Papers is on the 28th December, 1602, "The Queen kissed Mr. William Sidney in the presence as he came from the chappell; my Lady Warwick presented him" (vol. ii. p. 262). When Gifford speaks of "G. Wither, the Satyromastix," it is of course a slip of the pen for Chronomastix.

NOTES TO THE UNDERWOODS.

Page 288.

HE gladdest light dark man can think upon.] This was a favourite line of Southey's.

P. 296. Her triumph.] Hazlitt says of this: "One of his most airy effusions is The Triumph of his Mistress; yet there are some lines in it that seem inserted almost by way of burlesque. It is however well worth repeating. His Discourse with Cupid that follows is infinitely delicate and piquant, and without one single blemish. It is a perfect nest of spicery." Lit. of Elis. p. 183-4.

P. 300. Begging another, on colour of mending the former.] Jonson often repeated to Drummond a different version of this first stanza, or perhaps the lines got changed in Drummond's memory (see vol. ix. p. 372):

"But kisse me once and faith I will be gone;

And I will touch as harmelesse as the bee

That doth but taste the flower and flee away."

P. 312. My Picture, left in Scotland.] For another version of this, see vol. ix. p. 415, where we have it as recorded by Drummond. I certainly think it more likely that Jonson wrote "hundred of grey hairs" than hundreds, as we may suppose him to have been getting

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.

P. 323. Upon my dear brother Francis Beaumont.] Charles 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. 334. 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 Tiiades, 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:

“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."

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