P. 449. Sting him, my little neufts,] i. e. newts. This spelling bears out Skinner's idea that a newt is an eft, a small lizard-just as an awl is a nawl; an eyass, a niaise, &c. P. 449. We wait you, sir.] Jonson printed, "We await you." P. 451. Caduceus and petasus.] The rod and winged hat of Mercury. Cooper (1587) has, "Caduceum, a little white rodde that harroudes used, goyng to intreate of peace." This is very near the harrots of Jonson's common characters. P. 453. Away with your mattery sentences,] i. e. "full of solid sense and observation," as Gifford explains "material," post, p. 476. P. 453. Reach him one of our cates.] The word one is an unmeaning interpolation. Jonson printed, "Reach him of our cates." P. 454. How now, Vulcan! will you be the first wizard,] i. e. wise man, the original signification of the word. Sir John Cheke, in his translation of St. Matthew, has, "when Jesus was boorn in beethleem a citi of Juri in king heroods dais, lo then ye wisards cam from th'eest parties to Jerusalem." Milton also uses it for the same "wise men" in his Ode on the Nativity. P. 455. Throw thee down into the earth.] The folio has, "throw thee down into earth," and, I apprehend, correctly. P. 455. We are a king, cotquean.] See Gifford's note at p. 456. Johnson's explanation, "A man who busies himself with women's affairs," is quite correct. Cotquean is, I suspect, a corruption of cock-quean, quasi "male-wife," whereas cuck-quean is "cuckold's quean," the wife of a cuckold. Gifford found out his mistake when he came to edit Ford, where (ed. Dyce, i. 117) he defines "Cotquean, a contemptuous term for one who concerns himself with female affairs: an effeminate meddler." P. 456. Heaven is like to have but a lame skinker, then.] A skinker is a drawer or tapster. See vol. ix. p. 73. P. 457. Why, ay, you whoreson blockhead, 'tis your only block of wit.] The word ay is an unmeaning interpolation. For block of wit, see ante, p. 233. In Satiromastix (p. 194) Dekker puts it into the mouth of Tucca: "But, sirra Ningle, of what fashion is this knight's wit, of what blocke?" P. 458. We banish him the quire of gods.] In the folio, quire is printed queere, which I note as showing how Jonson must have pronounced the word. "This P. 463. The poult-foot stinkard.] See vol. vii. p. 234: polt-footed philosopher, old Smug here of Lemnos." Taylor, the Water-poet (Ep. 23), has a similar epithet: "And saw the net the stump foot blacksmith made And Heywood, in the Brazen Age, employs the same word as "I heard her once mock that polt-foot of yours." P. 463. He's turn'd faun now.] Against Gifford's note on this word Southey wrote: "A Faune or Fawne, I suppose, is synonymous with a fawner." P. 464. Take heed how you give this out; Horace is a man of the sword.] Dekker did not forget this in Satiromastix, from which I make a rather long extract, as being so highly illustrative of the desperately personal tone of Dekker's retaliation. I have modernized the spelling: "Boy. Captain, captain, Horace stands sneaking here. Tucca. I smelt the foul-fisted mortar treader! Come my most damnable fastidious rascal; I have a suit to both of you. Asinius. O hold, most pitiful captain, hold. Horace. Hold, captain! 'Tis known that Horace is valiant, and a man of the sword. Tucca. A gentleman, or an honest citizen, shall not sit in your penny bench theatres, with his squirrel by his side cracking nuts; nor sneak into a tavern with his mermaid, but he shall be Satyr'd and Epigram'd upon, and his Humour must run upon the stage. You'll have Every gentleman in's humour, and Every gentleman out on's humour. We that are Heads of legions and bands, and fear none but these same shoulder clappers, shall fear you, you serpentine rascal ! Horace. Honour'd captain! Tucca. Art not famous enough yet, my mad Horasratus, for killing a Player, but thou must eat men alive! Thy friends! sirra wildman, thy patrons? Thou anthropophagite, thy Maecenasco!" P. 465. This wolfish train.] Jonson, I think, invariably prints wolvish, as was indeed the custom of the time. P. 465. Gifford's characteristic note cannot be understood without referring to his edition of Massinger. In the Duke of Milan, vol. i. p. 281, is a line, "Battening like scarabs in the dung of peace," to which he appended a note: "Scarabs means beetles. M. MASON. Very true; and beetles means scarabs! W. GIFFORD." For this he was attacked by the Edinburgh Reviewers, and against them his note at p. 465 is directed. Jonson has the word again, vol. iv. p. 15. P. 466. Who, to endear themselves to an employment,] i. e. to make themselves valuable-the reverse of cheap. The folio has any in place of an-of course, rightly. P. 466. To be the props and columns of their safety.] This passage requires to be read with care, to understand how completely the sense is destroyed by substituting "their safety" for the "his safety" of the folio. P. 470. Note." This ridiculous love scene."] I had written that "I failed to see anything ridiculous in the love passage " before I discovered that it had been selected by Charles Lamb, as a justification of his eloquent eulogy on the Poetaster. See my note to P. 363, ante. P. 474. What think you three of Virgil, gentlemen.] Here Jonson inserted a marginal note: "Viz Mecænas, Gallus, Tibullus." P. 474. Pathless, moorish minds.] Moorish means moor-like, or barren. Chapman has a line in his continuation of Marlowe's Hero and Leander, Sest. iii. : "Base fools! when every Moorish fool can teach," which puzzled the editors until Mr. Dyce pointed out that the second fool was a play upon the word fowl, which is still a fertile source of merriment in Scotland, and that Moorish should be spelt with a small m, the allusion being to the lap-wing. P. 478. Venus' Dardane nephew.] Jonson states in the margin of the folio that "Venus' Dardane nephew" is Iulus; that the "Trojan prince" is Eneas; that "Earth and Heaven's great dame" is Juno; and that the "giant race" are Caus, Enceladus, &c. P. 481. Remember to beg their land betimes.] As Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, stood a horsewhipping from lord Ramsay, and then "begged the lands" of sir Henry James. So Ford in Love's Sacrifice (ed. Dyce, ii. 79): "I fear my lands and all I have is begged; Else, woe is me, why should I be so ragged." P. 485. The body of the state.] The folio has properly, "body of a state." Ten lines lower down, the stage direction in the folio is, "This while the rest whisper Cæsar." P. 485. Dost thou think I meant to have kept it, old boy?] For old boy," the folio has "bold boy!" How much more characteristic of Tucca. P. 485. I scorn it with my three souls.] So Shakspeare in Twelfth Night, A. ii. S. 3: Shall we rouze the night owl with a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver ?" P. 486. Skeldering for a drachm.] See ante, pp. 7 and 375. P. 487. Make them hold up their spread golls.] Dyce says golls are "hands, fists, paws." To quote Richard Brome as to the use of a word is almost the same as quoting Jonson himself: "Now strike up, piper, and each lover here Jovial Crew, iii. 428. P. 488. Demetrius Fannius, play-dresser and plagiary.] Dekker (dresser) throws this back upon Jonson. "Demetrius shall write thee a scene or two in one of thy strong garlicke Comedies; and thou shalt take the guilt of conscience for't, and sweare 'tis thine owne, old lad, 'tis thine owne." Satiromastix, p. 201. P. 489. Note 9.] It is curious that Marston should attack Jonson for employing "new minted words, such as real, intrinsicate, and delphicke," when he makes use of two of them himself in his earliest works: Delphick Apollo ayde me to unrip These intricate deepe oracles of wit." Vol. iii. p. 218. And, "By your sweete selfe, than whome I knowe not a more exquisite, illustrate, accomplished, pure, respected, ador'd, observed, pretious, reall, magnanimous, bounteous." Vol. i. p. 23. Never was there a more reckless user of words: "Straight chops a wave, and in his sliftred paunch Down fals our ship, and there he breaks his neck; Which in an instant up was belkt again." Vol. i. p. 17. When he wants to indicate morning, in a most tragic scene, it is: And now Aurora's horse trots azure rings.” And at a still more melancholy time, we have: Vol. i. p. 79. "The black jades of swart night trot foggy rings But if one verse is to be admired above all the others, it is : "He will unline himself from bitchery." P. 491. Alas! that were no modern consequence, To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence.] The use of the word modern, as "slight, trivial," is now confined to antiquaries. Archdeacon Nares mentions a curious instance of its having, not very long ago, been otherwise. "I knew a very old lady, after whose death a miscellaneous paper of trifles was found among her property, inscribed by herself, Odd and Modern Things." See vol. iv. p. 112. With regard to "cothurnal buskins," I find a MS. note of Mr. Dyce's, in which he says that if Gifford had not been prejudiced against Marston, he might have quoted the Spanish Tragedy: "Tragœdia cothurnata, fitting kings.” P. 491. Upon that puft-up lump of balmy froth.] The word balmy is of course a misprint for barmy. The word was used by Burns, and John Gibson Lockhart winds up his sparkling letter to sir Adam Ferguson by comparing James and John Ballantyne and sir Walter Scott to "the two barrels of heavy wet and twopenny " that may be seen any day "barming away on a truck cart at the foot of Edinburgh Castle, that eternal mass of granite, crowned with royal towers, and hallowed with the reverence of ages." P. 492. Of strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist.] I could not adduce a better proof of the extraordinary vigilance with which Jonson corrected his own text than this word vengeance, which he is careful to spell venge-ance. I find that Marston uses it four times, and in each instance makes it a tri-syllable : "May I be fettered slave to coward chaunce, Ibid. i. 131. "The fist of strenuous venge-ance is clutcht." Ibid. i. 132. "Sound dolefull tunes, a solemne hymne advance P. 493. A critic, that all the world bescumbers.] Gifford refers to the lines, but does not quote the passage, in which this word It is in the Scourge of Villanie: occurs. "To this uncivill groome Ill-tutored pedant, Mortimer's numbers With muck-pit esculine filth bescumbers." I suspect that this refers to Drayton's Mortimeriados, the name of which was changed in the second edition, on account of the laugh raised against the first by some "ill-tutored pedants"-most |