P. 36. A whoreson puck-fist.] Ford in his Love's Sacrifice (Dyce ed. ii. 30) has "Petrarch was a dunce, Dante a jig-maker, Sanazzar a goose, and Ariosto a puckfist to me." To this Gifford appended a note which ought to be given here: "Puckfist, i. e. an empty boaster. The word is common in our old writers for anything vile or worthless. The fungus so-called is better known to our villagers by the name of puff-ball." In the folio this line is printed thus: "This clod? A whoreson puck-fist? O god, god, god, god," &c. See post, p. 263.

P. 36. These mushroom gentlemen.] The folio has mushrompe, and I am inclined to think that this is one of the old words that ought to have been preserved. Marlowe uses it in his Edward II. A. i. S. 4— "But cannot brook a night-grown mushrump,"

where, as here, the word requires to be pronounced as a trisyllable, as it still is by the London hawkers. That this was the ancient pronunciation is proved by the Promptorium Parvulorum (circa 1440) where it is spelt muscheron, and the Manipulus Vocabulorum (1570) musheron.

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P. 37. He answers him like an echo.] In the folio this is 'Sheart, he answers him," &c., and at the foot of the page, "Oh, 'tis Macilente," in the folio is "S'bloud 'tis Macilente." Gifford's note, post, p. 39, would lead one to suppose that although, very properly, he had not "nauseated the reader by bringing back what the author, upon better consideration, flung out of his text," yet that he had retained what had been approved by this "better consideration."

P. 38. I envy not this Buffone.] Jonson here spells the word Buffon, and, as the rhythm indicates, intentionally. See note, vol. i. p. 54; also post, p. 45, where this particular line is twice repeated, and the original spelling necessarily preserved.

P. 39. What, is't a prognostication raps him so.] Raps is the present tense of the verb so much better known in its past form of rapt.

P. 40. Why, it should rain forty days after.] This superstition. is of very old date, and when the New Style made a difference of eleven days in the calendar, the saint still held on to the 15th. By observations made at Greenwich in 1841, and the nineteen succeeding years, it appeared that in the average of twenty years, the greatest number of rainy days had occurred when the 15th was dry!

P. 40. 21, some rain.] Here the folio has "the one-and-twentieth, some rain," which gives an agreeable variety to the enumeration.

P. 42. Within the hoary ricks.] It is worth while noting that here, and elsewhere in this play, where Gifford prints rick and ricks, the folio has reeke and reekes.

P. 43. Ay, their exclaims.] Shakspeare has the same :

"Alas! the part I had in Glo'ster's blood,
Doth more solicit me than your exclaims."
Richard II. A. i. S. 2.

P. 44. My house and I can feed on peas and barley.] Jonson wrote pease, which is worth noting, as the true form of the word is disputed. At vol. vi. p. 102, he has, "I'll cleanse him with a pill as small as a pease;" and at vol. viii. p. 238, "Every clerk eats artichokes and peason."

P. 47. These be our nimble-spirited catsos.] Horne Tooke regards this word as the same as Gadso, under which head in the Diversions of Purley, he says, "Cazzo, a common Italian oath (or rather obscenity in lieu of an oath), first introduced about the time of James I., and made familiar in our language afterwards by our affected travelled gentlemen in the time of Charles II. See all our Comedies about that period. Ben Jonson ridiculed the affectation of this oath at its commencement, but could not stop its progress."

P. 51. His humour arrides me exceedingly.] Jonson uses this word twice again in Cynthia's Revels, post, pp. 270, 291; and Charles Lamb introduces it occasionally with a very pleasant affectation. Taylor, the water poet, also works it into a characteristic couplet :

"Thy amphitritean muse grows more arrident,

And Phoebus' tripos stoopes to Neptunes trident."

P. 52. Hang'd in pomander chains.] One of Thomas Becon's early works is entitled The Pomaunder of Prayer, and its motto is, "Eccl. xxiv. Pleasantly do I smell, even as it were cynamome and swete balme." In spite of this spelling of Becon's, there are numerous passages of verse to prove that the accent was on the first syllable. Old Gervase Markham, who seems to have supposed that prices were unalterable, gives the following recipe: "To make Pomanders :-Take two pennyworth of labdanum, two pennyworth of storax liquid, one pennyworth of calamus aromaticus, as much balm, half a quarter of a pound of fine wax, of cloves and mace two pennyworth, of liquid aloes three pennyworth, of nutmegs eight pennyworth, and of musk four grains. Beat all these exceedingly together, till they come to a perfect substance, then mould it in any fashion you please, and dry it."-English Housewife, ed. 1675, p. 109. Another meaning of the word was a perfume-holder. These pomanders were sometimes made of silver, and we read of one being sold in 1546, which weighed 3 oz. See vol. iv. p. 43.

P. 55. Close under this terras.] Jonson uses the old form tarras. Terras is neither one thing nor another. Spenser speaks of a palace,

"With many towres and tarras mounted hye;" North, translating Plutarch, describes the "tarrasses and pleasant walks" of Lucullus; and Fuller mentions a "leaden tarras with railes and bannisters."

P. 56. Humanum est Errare.] Gifford says that the Puritans were the only description of people who never made use of the expression. He forgot editors of Quarterly Reviews and Old Dramatists.

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P. 57. Magnanimous as the skin between your brows.] This expression has puzzled commentators and dictionary-makers. Shakspeare has, as honest as the skin between your brows," and the saying indeed was proverbial. It may either mean it is the first part of the face to relax with a smile, or to contract with a frown; or, what I think more likely, that it was the sprouting place of the emblematic horns, which were so constantly present to the minds of our old writers.

P. 58. Then he has travelled.] The folio reads "is travelled," and just below "beyond sea" for "beyond seas." Two characteristic forms of speech are thus lost.

P. 58. As if he went in a frame.] This means secured in a frame like a pit-saw, to make bending impossible. There cannot be a better image.

P. 59. Eastcheap, among the butchers.] Stowe, writing in 1598, says: "This Eastcheape is now a flesh-market of butchers, there dwelling on both sides of the street; it had sometime also cooks mixed among the butchers, and such other as sold victuals ready dressed of all sorts."

P. 59. Ride upon a mule.] Gifford is right in saying that Jonson was not consistent in his spelling of this word, and varied between moyle, moile, and mule. It was in fact in a transition state, and in 1635 the form moyle had become vulgar. So at least I gather from a dialogue between a gentleman and a rustic in R. Brome's Sparagus Garden, A. iv. S. 5:

"Curate: They are a paire of the Sedan mules, I take it.

Coulter: Moyles, Sir, wee be no moyles, you should well know." Who that has ever been to the Bodleian Library can forget the admirable portrait of the great Lord Burghley, riding to Court on his mule, with a pink and honeysuckle in his right hand?

P. 6o. O, no; it's a mere flood,] i. e. an absolute flood, a flood and nothing short of it; one about which there is no mistake. Jeremy Taylor speaks of "joys mere and unmixed."

P. 61. Those innated virtues and fair parts.] This is the original form of our word innate; so Daniel "To Delia,” s. 18:

"Still must I whet my young desires abated,
Upon the flint of such a heart rebelling;
And all in vain, her pride is so innated,

She yields no place at all for pity's dwelling."

P. 61. Copy of wit.] Gifford justly says that this word, which in this sense sounds so awkwardly to our ears, was not introduced by Jonson, but as far as my reading goes, it was more frequently used by him than by other writers of the period. We have for instance, "copy of fool" in this very play, p. 98; and in the Magnetic Lady, vol. vi. p. 31, the "copy" of lovers confounds a lady in choosing a husband. In the Address to the Alchemist, vol. iv. p. 7, authors are spoken of who utter all they can, "to gain the opinion of copy," i. e. I suppose fertility of mind. I have found the word in Chapman.

P. 62. Potatoe-pies and such good unctuous meats.] In 1599, the potato was less common than it is now, and a particular virtue was attached to it, which is not contradicted by the population of Ireland at the Census before the fatal disease broke out. Jonson couples "potatoes" with "oyster-pies" in Cynthia's Revels (A. ii. S. 1), post, p. 241, and Dekker has (iii. 285):

"Potatoes ike if you shall lack

To corroborate the back."

Pp. 62-3. Stumble upon a yeoman-feuterer.]

The yeoman

feuterer was the attendant who held the "slips," and let the greyhound loose at the right moment.

P. 63. Husht.] We always now say Hush, but the Scotch say whisht, which perhaps is the same word.

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P. 64. I'd ask no more of heaven.] Jonson wrote: Ask no more of God." I should have thought one word was as innocent as the other.

P. 66. There's Plowden, Dyar, Brooke, and Fitz-Herbert.] It is interesting to know what constituted a student's "parcel of lawbooks," in Jonson's time. Edmund Plowden (1517-1584) wrote the Commentaries. Chief Justice Sir James Dyer (1512-1582) published Reports. Sir Robert Brooke (d. 1558) wrote La graunde Abridgement, and Le Liver des Assises et Plees del Corone. Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert (d. 1538) wrote Grand Abridgement of the Common Law.

m

P. 66. Send me good luck.] In folio, "God send me good luck." P. 67. I am the most beholden to that lord.] The folio reads, "the most beholding," and Gifford elsewhere speaks scornfully of another, who made the same mistaken change. The form beholding was so perfectly recognized, that the substantive was formed from it. Sir P. Sidney (Arcadia, iii.) speaks of "means that might either establish a beholdingness, or at least awaken a kindness;" and Marston in the Malcontent has :

"Their presence still

Upbraids our fortune with beholdingnesse."

P. 67. This feather grew in her sweet fan.] In Cynthia's Revels (A. iii. S. 2), post, p. 266, there is a gallant who

"Salutes his mistress' pumps,

Adores her hems, her skirts, her knots, her curls,

Will spend his patrimony for a garter,

Or the least feather in her bounteous fan."

P. 68. She goes tired in cobweb lawn.] Cotgrave translates the French word " Crespe, cipres, also cobweb lawn."

P. 68. That sweet, quick grace, and exornation in the composure.] Exornation is formed direct from the Latin exornatio, and I am glad to find that Jonson is not the first culprit who uses it. Sir Thomas Wilson, in the Art of Retorique (1553), says: "Exornation is a gorgious beautifying of the tongue with borrowed words, and change of sentence, or speech with much varietie." Composure is used for composition by so elegant and recent a writer as Atterbury, when he says that people generally read the scripture "with no greater attention and care than we employ in perusing mere human composures."

P. 69. In Green's works, whence she may steal with more security.] Jonson introduces Green's Groatsworth of Wit in the Silent Woman (A. iv. S. 2), vol. iii. p. 428. Sidney's Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia was not published till 1590, four years after his death.

P. 69. I will associate you to court myself.] This use of the word was common in Jonson's time. Shakspeare has it in Romeo and Juliet, A. v. S. 2:

"Find a barefooted brother out, One of our order, to associate me

Here in the citie, visiting the sick."

P. 70. To put forth some five thousand pound.] Sir Walter quotes this in a note to a passage in sir Robert Cary's Memoirs, where he records that "having given out some money to go on foot