our author grew more experienced in dramatic writing, he might have seen how much he could improve on his own originals. To this circum stance, perhaps, we are indebted for the more perfect comedy of Much ado about Nothing.

STEEVENS.

P. 101, 1. 2. The first lines of this song that were transposed, have been replaced by Mr. Theobald. JOHNSON.

P. 101, 1. 4. And cuckoo buds ] Gerard in his Herbal, 1597, says, that the flos cuculi car. damine, etc. are called,,in English cuckoo-flowers, in Norfolk Canterbury-bells, and at Namptwich fh Cheshire laidie smocks." Shakspeare, however, might not have been sufficiently skilled in botany to be aware of this particular.

al,

Mr. Tollet has observed that Lyte in his Herb

Fr and 1579, remarks, that cowslips are in

of some called coquu, prime vere, and brayes de coquu. This he thinks will sufficiently account for our author's cuckoo-buds, by which he supposes cowslip buds to be meant; and further directs the reader to Cotgrave's Dictionary, under the articles Cocu, and herbe a coqu.

STEEVENS. Cuckoo-buds must be wrong. I believe cowslipbuds, the true reading. FARMER.

Mr. Whalley, the learned editor of Ben Jonson's Works, many years ago proposed to read crocus buds. The cuckoo flower, he observed, could not be called yellow, it rather approaching to the colour of white, by which epithet, Cowley, who was himself no mean botanist, has distinguished it:

Albaque cardamine, etc. MALONE.

Crocus buds is a phrase unknown to naturalists and gardeners. STEEVENS.

P. 101, 1. 25. When icicles hang by the wall,] i. e. from the eaves of the thatch or other roofing, from which in the morning icicles are found de pending in great abundance, after a night of frost.

Our author (whose images are all taken from nature) has alluded in The Tempest, to the drops of water that after rain flow from such coverings, in their natural unfrozen state:

,,His tears run down his beard, like win

ter's drops

,,From eves of reeds." MALONE.

P. 101, 1. 26. And Dick the shepherd blows

his nail,] So, in King Henry VI. P. III.

"

What time the shepherd, blowing of his

nails,

,,Can neither call it perfect day or night." MALONE. P. 101, last 1. but one. Tu- whit, to-who,] So, in Lyly's Mother Bombie':

,,To-whit, to-whoo the owle does cry.

P. 101, last 1. — keel the pot. yet used in Ireland, and signifies to

HOLT WHITE.

This word is scum the pot.

GOLDSMITH.

So, in Marston's What you Will, 1607: ,,Faith, Doricus, thy brain boils, keel it, keel it, or all the fat's in the fire." STEEVENS.

To keel the pot is certainly to cool it, but in a particular manner: it is to stir the pottage with the ladle to prevent the boiling over. FARMER. keel the pot.] i. e. cool the pot.,,The thing is, they mix their thicking of oatmeal and water, which they call blending the litting (or

-

7

lithing], and put it in the pot, when they set on, because when the meat, pudding and turnips are all in, they cannot so well mix it, but 'tis apt to go into lumps; yet this method of theirs ren ders the pot liable to boil over at the first rising, and every subsequent increase of the fire; to pre vent which it becomes necessary for one to attend to cool it occasionally, by lading it up frequently with a ladle, which they call keeling the pot, and is indeed a greasy office." Gent. Mag. 1760. This account seems to be accurate. RITSON.

1

To keel signifies to cool in general, without any reference to the kitchen.

Mr. Lambe observes in his notes on the ancient metrical History of The Battle of Floddon, that it is a common thing in the North,,for a maid servant to take out of a boiling pot a wheen, i. e. a small quantity, viz. a porringer or two of broth, and then to fill up the pot with cold water. The broth thus taken out, is called the keeling wheen. In this manner greasy Joan keeled the pot." STEEVENS.

a

P. 102, 1. 3. the parson's saw,] Saw seems anciently to have meant, not as at present, proverb, a sentence, but the whole tenor of any iustructive discourse. STERVENS.

Yet in As you like it, our author uses this word in the sense of a sentence, or maxim:,,Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might," etc. It is, I believe, so used here. MALONE. P. 102, 1. 6.

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,] i. e. the wild

apples, so called. STEEVENS.

The bowl must be supposed to be filled with ale; a toast and some spice and sugar being added, what is called Lamb's wool is produced. MALONE.

In this play, which all the editors have concurred to censure, and some have rejected, as uuworthy of our poet, it must be confessed that there are many passages niean, childish, and vulgar; and some which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden Queen. , But there are scattered through the whole many sparks of genins; nor is there any. play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakspeare. JOHNSON.

This child of fancy, that Armado hight, etc.] This, as I have shown in the note in its place, relates to the stories in the books of chivalry. A few words, therefore, concerning their origin, and nature, may not be unacceptable to the reader. As I don't know of any writer, who has given any tolerable account of this matter: and espe cially as Mousieur Huet, the Bishop of Avranches, who wrote a formal treatise of the Origin of Romarices, has said little or nothing of these in that superficial work. For having brought down the account of Romances to the later Greeks, and entered upon those composed by the barbarous western writers, which have now the name of Romances almost appropriated to them, he puts the change upon his reader, and instead of giving us an account of these books of chivalry, one of the most curious and interesting parts of the subject he promised to treat of, he contents himself with a long account of the poems of the Provincial writers, called likewise romances; and so, under the equivoque of a common term, drops

his proper subject, and entertains us with another, that had no relation to it more than in the

name.

The Spaniards were of all others the fondest of these fables, as suiting best their extravagant turn to gallantry and bravery; which in time grew so excessive, as to need all the efficacy of Cervantes's incomparable satire to bring them back to their senses. The French suffered an easier cure from their Doctor Rabelais, who enough discredited the books of chivalry, by only using the extravagant stories of its giants, etc. as a cover for another kind of satire against the refined politicks of his countrymen; of which they were as much pos sessed as the Spaniards of their romantick bravery: a bravery our Shakspeare makes their characteristic in this description of a Spanish gentle

Have chose as umpire of their mutiny:
This child of fancy, that Armado hight,
For interim to our studies, shall relate,
In high born words, the worth of many
a knight,

From tawny Spain, lost in the world's
debate. *)

From tawny Spain, etc.] This passage may, as Dr. Warburton imagines, be in allusion to the Spanish Romances, of which several were extant in English, and very popular at the time this play was written. Such, for instance, as Amadis, de Gaule, Don Bellianis, Palmerin d'Oliva, Palmerin of England, the Mirrour of Knighthood, etc. But he is