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.

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 yeomanfeuterer 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.

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.

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

in twelve days to Berwick, I performed it that summer, which was worth to me two thousand pounds, which bettered me to live at court a good while after," p. 20.

P. 72. That had been single indeed.] We still employ the word in the sense of weak, as in Single Gloucester cheese, and Scott describes the ale in Alsatia as "sufficiently single-a nutshell of malt to a gallon of Thames."

P. 72. You are better traded with these things.] This was a not uncommon use of the word. Udal, addressing Katherine, speaks of the number of noble Englishwomen who were "as well seen, and as familiarly traded in the Greeke and Latine toungues, as in theyr owne mother language."

P. 72. Who haply would object the same you would do.] The folio reads "who happily would object the same you do." The change from "happily happily" to "haply" is unnecessary, and the insertion of the word "would" quite uncalled for.

P. 73. In cates, and every sort of good entreaty.] The folio reads intreaty, which in this particular instance where it means treatment, or treating, ought certainly to have remained.

P. 74. So passing fair! So passing-fair-unkind.] The folio reads in the second place "so passing farre unkind," which I am confident is right.

P. 76. Then here she hath a place, &c.] It is perhaps as well to mention that the back-side of a house was what we should now call the back-garden.

P. 76. All my rooms alter'd.] The folio has "all my room's altered," which is quite a different thing.

P. 78. 'Tis pity o' your naturals.] Bishop Hall uses this word in the same sense: "It is with depraved man in his impure naturalls, that we must maintaine this quarrel."

P. 78. My adamantine eyes might headlong hale

This iron world.] The word is now altogether disused, but it is included in Johnson's Dictionary, "To drag by force, to pull violently and rudely." In fact to haul.

P. 8o. I'll pay you again at my next exhibition.] Nothing can be better than Samuel Johnson's explanation of this word: "Allowance, salary; it is much used for pensions allowed to scholars at the University."

P. 8o. Whom, if a man confer,] i. e. Bring together (con-ferre) for comparison. Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, has "Conferre the debt and the paiment, Christ and Adam, sin and the cure of it, the disease and the medicine."

P. 81. This is her garter my dagger hangs in.] See post, p. 194.

P. 85. 'Slid, I had forgot it too: if anybody ask, has, and rightly, "Sister, if anybody ask," &c. farewell to his sister at the moment.

&c.] The folio He is bidding

P. 87. Some call him Apple-John,] i. e. Procuring John. See note to Bartholomew Fair (A. i. S. 1), vol. iv. p. 362. See also post, p. 155, and the note to Apple-Squire, vol i. p. 186.

P. 87. Clean shirts to his natures.] See Discoveries, No. 120, vol. ix. p. 185. "Many out of their own obscene apprehensions, refuse proper and fit words, as occupy, nature, and the like."

P. 91. He is at the herald's office yonder.] This should be, as in the folio, printed Herald's' Office, which was just across the road in Doctors' Commons. Without the capitals it appears as if it was some individual "harrot's" establishment.

P. 91. They go to read the bills.] The direction in the folio is "They go to look upon the bills," which is what they actually would do, selecting those for reading which appeared to be interesting.

P. 91. Let's walk in Mediterraneo.] See post, p. 100, Insula Paulina.

P. 92. If there be any lady, &c.] This is the same heading as the Si quis before mentioned.

P. 94. No better place than The Mitre.] See p. 107, where Puntarvolo declares, "Your Mitre is your best house." Gifford's note about it will be found, post, p. 171. It is mentioned again in Bartholomew Fair (A. i. S. 1), vol. iv. P. 357.

P. 95. Orange. O lord, sir !]

In folio, "O God Sir!"

P. 97. I'faith, I thank them.] This is in answer to a question, "Have you arms, have you arms?" so that the answer appears to be, "Yes, thank the arms." The folio has, "I'faith, thank God."

P. 97. Sog. Marry, sir, it is your boar without a head, rampant. A boar without a head, that's very rare!] In the folio, the latter part of this speech is given, and properly, to Puntarvolo.

:

P. 97. That ever this eye survised, e. surveyed. The forms of this are various. Spenser has "to survewe," i. e. " surview."