P. 99. Such stuff, such a wing.] This word was long retained for the particular kind of epaulet worn by light infantry, and flank companies of regiments.

P. 103. Flushing, Brill, and the Hague.] The folio reads Vlishing and the Haghe. The Earl of Leicester in his Correspondence spells them Vlussingue and Hage.

P. 103. I thought he had been playing o' the Jews trump, Z] Jonson mentions this instrument both in Bartholomew Fair, vol. iv. p. 421, and the Devil is an Ass, vol. v. p. 13. It is now generally called the Jews' harp.

P. 103. The valiant must eat their arms, or clem.] The example from the Poetaster, post, p. 384, shows that the verb clem, like its synonyme to starve, is both active and neuter.

P. 106. Expose one at Hounslow, a second at Stains.] This means that he retained the fumes in his inside quite distinct, and exhaled each separately at the intervals mentioned. In the folio Staines is spelt as it is now.

P. 106. He has a fair living at Fullam.] Since Gifford wrote, the Percy Society reprinted a scarce tract called, "A Manifest Detection of the most vyle and detestable Use of Dice Play." In this the various kinds of false dice are described with great minuteness. "Fine cheats" were made "both in the King's Bench and Marshalsea, yet Bird in Holborn is the finest workman." In the next century, according to Pope, false dice were called "Doctors :"

"Or chaired at White's, amid the Doctors sit,
Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit."
Dunciad, i. 203.

The common sort were made, it appears, to turn up as desired, by being shaped out of the true square, and were thus more easily detected than the fullams, which were perfectly accurate in mere outward shape, but were stuffed inside with lead so arranged as to make the desired face settle upwards. Fullams were thus filled, or what would now be called loaded dice. Jonson uses the term set dice, when he describes to Drummond, vol. ix. p. 395, how Queen Elizabeth was flattered by them in her old age. See also vol iv. p. 43.

P. 109. If the maker have fail'd.] See the Discoveries, No. 150, vol. ix. p. 217. See also Sidney's Defence of Poesie. "The Greekes named him ПОIНTAN, which name hath, as the most excellent, gone through other languages. It commeth of this word

ПOIEIN, which is To Make, wherein, I know not whether by luck or wisdome, wee Englishmen have mett with the Greekes in calling him a Maker."

P. 109. That my sleep shall be broken, and their hearts not broken.] The folio has sleeps, and rightly. Gifford has been caught napping at the opening of this speech, and allowed "God's precious" to remain without alteration.

P. 118. She does dart them abroad with that sweet, loose, and judicial aim.] The comma between sweet and loose is not found in the folio, and by the insertion of it nonsense is made of the passage. Fancy an aim that was at once sweet, loose, and judicial! The "loose" of an arrow was the act of releasing it from the finger and thumb. So Drayton :

"The loose gave such a twang as might be heard a mile." Jonson uses the word again in the Alchemist (A. ii. S. 1), vol. iv. p. 63, as also in the Discoveries, No. 124, vol. ix. p.191. "In throwing a lance or javelin, we force back our arms to make our loose the stronger."

P. 119. Mend the pipe, boy,] i. e. feed, supply, or arrange the pipe, as we say "mend the fire." The tobacco in that day very probably required the help of charcoal to keep it alight.

P. 120. Talks and takes tobacco between again.] In the folio, puff, puff," is inserted in the speeches of Fastidious wherever the occur here, the words making the meaning clearer

than the dashes.

P. 121. I love not the breath of a woodcock's head.] The term woodcock was more especially used for that particular kind of fool which we now call a pigeon, a gambler's victim, a bird to be plucked. See the Gull's Hornbook, chap. 2. I suspect that Shakspeare used it in this sense when Osric asked, "How is't, Laertes?" and was answered, "As a woodcock to my own springe." Birds are not in the habit of setting snares.

P. 122. Having so good a plain song can run no better division upon it.] Plain song was the simple notes of an air, written down without ornament or variation, as opposed to prick song, which was comparatively complicated. Division is still used in its technical musical sense. See post, p. 223.

P. 122. All her jests are of the stamp March was fifteen years ago.] This play was first acted in 1599, so that the reference must be to March 1584, or 1583.

P. 125. Nay, never play bo-peep with me.] The folio reads never play peeke-boe with me," which I suppose means the same thing. Jonson writes bo-peep at p. 323, post. Three lines lower down the folio has "send for musicians to supper," instead of at supper, which the commencement of the next speech confirms.

66

P. 126. Like the zany to a tumbler.] The folio spells it zani, as in the Italian. Florio, defines it-" Men that with fowle mouthes, unseemely speeches, disfigured faces, mimike gestures and strange actions, professe to procure laughter. Used also for cross-biting or coney-catching knaves."

P. 127. Now pease, and not peace.] Gifford says it is to be hoped that the two words were pronounced alike, but if they were so, how could the joke have told on the stage? Jonson has it over again in the Magnetic Lady (A. iv. S. 2), vol. vi. p. 84.

P. 127. Here's four angels.] It is worth remarking that in A. v. S. 7, post, p. 192, when Fallace has to speak of these coins again, she calls them "four sovereigns."

P. 130. Travel invisible by virtue of a powder.] See New Inn (A. i. S. 1), vol. v. p. 321.

"Indeed I had

No medicine, sir, to go invisible:
No fern-seed in my pocket."

P. 132. Let a man sweat once a week in a hot-house.] See ante, P. 47. The name is here applied in its legitimate sense to a Turkish bath. So in the Puritan (A. iii. S. 6), "Marry, it will cost me much sweat, I were better go to sixteen hot-houses."

P. 132. Be well rubb'd and froted.] Froter is from the French frotter, which Cotgrave translates, "to chafe, also to bathe, also to cudgell, thwack, baste, or knock soundly."

"She smelles, she kisseth, and her corps

She loves exceedingly;

She tufts her heare, she frotes her face;
She idle loves to be."

Kendall's Flowers of Epigrames, 1577.

See post, p. 325, from which it would appear to mean to "rub with

scent."

P. 132. What, the French, &c.] Morbus Gallicus. The reader will remember Ancient Pistol's soliloquy :

"News have I that my Nell is dead i' the 'spital

Of malady of France."

So also Suckling sings of a contemporary:

"Will D'Avenant ashamed of a foolish mischance
That he had got later travelling in France;
Modestly hoped the handsomeness of's muse,
Might any deformity about him excuse."

On which the annotator of Dodsley innocently remarks: "Wẹ have Suckling's testimony that this accident befel D'Avenant in France!" We know from Aubrey that "the black handsome wench that lay in Axe Yard, Westminster," was the culprit.

P. 132. He's a leiger at Horn's ordinary yonder.] I think it likely from the name, that Horn's ordinary was one of the thousand and one terms for an establishment where Apple-squires were the attendants.

P. 132. The making of the patoun.] "Patoun," says Mr. Halliwell, "was merely a species of tobacco. The Newe Metamorphosis, a MS. poem written between the years 1600 and 1614, has several allusions to it, of which the following is decisive—

'Puten transformed late into a plante,

Which no chirurgion willingly will wante;

Tobacco, and most soveraigne herbe approved,
And nowe of every gallant greatly loved.'"

The reader will perhaps think that "decisive" is rather a strong word to apply to such evidence.

P. 134. A good sleek forehead.] The folio has slick, and so no doubt Jonson wrote it. Sleek is a different word. Howell says in one of his letters: "Silk is more smooth and slik, and so is the Italian toung compared to the English." In Cynthia's Revels, post, p. 222, slick is allowed to stand, although in the folio it is printed slicke, not slieke, as it is here.

P. 135. Pockets full of blanks.] Under this word Nares says: "A mode of extortion by which blank papers were given to the agents of the Crown, which they were to fill up as they pleased, to authorize the demands they chose to make. No wonder they were thought oppressive." So Shakspeare in Richard II., A. ii. S. 1.

"And daily new exactions are devised,

As blanks, benevolence, and I know not what." This was going far beyond the blank warrants, about which such a noise was made in the succeeding century.

P. 135. Come within the verge.] This should have been printed The Verge. The Court of The Verge had jurisdiction for twelve miles round the King's place of residence, whether temporary or

permanent. It was placed on a new footing by Bacon, who described it as "a half-pace or carpet, spread about the king's chair of estate, which therefore ought to be cleared and voided more than other places of the kingdom" (Spedding's Life of Bacon, iv. 266). It was the predecessor of the iniquitous Palace Court, which fell in our own time under the blows of Mr. Higgins and Mr. Thackeray. See post, p. 278.

P. 135. A rank, raw-boned anatomy.] For rank the folio has lank, a more appropriate word.

P. 135. His rest! why, has he a forked head?] The double allusion about which Puntarvolo was "too quick, too apprehensive," was to the horns of the cuckold. This reference was so perpetual that the simple letter V in the margin of the stage copy of a play was sufficient to indicate that the actor was here to "make horns" with his fingers over his forehead. The old compositors frequently incorporated these directions with the text, and in Chapman's May-Day (A. iv. vol. ii. p. 394) we have: "That dare not I doe, but as often as he turnes his backe to me, I shall be here V with him, that's certaine." The new editor (1873) passed it by without a note, but Mr. H. Staunton explained its meaning in the Athenæum (April, 1874), not knowing that he had been anticipated in 1810 by the editor of the Ancient British Drama, vol iv. p. 98.

P. 137. His civet and his casting-glass.] Casting-glasses, as the name implies, were contrived for casting or sprinkling perfumed waters. They are common enough, in a cheaper form, at the present day. The following from Ford's Fancies Chaste and Noble (ed. Dyce, ii. 333) is very illustrative: "(Scene the Street) Enter Secco with a casting-bottle sprinkling his hat and face, and a little looking-glass at his girdle, settling his countenance." See note to p. 266, post (at p. 557). Lord Bacon in his Will, says: "I give unto my right honourable friend, my Lord Cavendish, my casting bottle of gold."

P. 137. After their garb, smile, and salute in French.] That is, "after their fashion," for "garb" was not, as now, confined to clothes. Fuller speaks of a man "conforming his mind to the garb of the ancients," and Drayton has :

"And with a lisping garb this most rare man,

Speaks French, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian."

P. 138. Nay, prithee leave,] i. e. leave off. So Marlowe, in the Queen of Carthage, A. ii. S. 1, makes Dido interrupt her lover in the middle of his narrative:

"I die with melting ruth, Æneas leave!"

See also post, p. 208.