In love, where scorn is bought with groans: coy looks,
With heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth,
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights:
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why then a grievous labour won;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished.

"This love

Thus explained by Dr. Johnson. will end in a foolish action, to produce which you are long to spend your wit, or it will end in the loss of your wit which will be overpowered by the folly of love ;" an explanation that is in part very questionable. The poet simply means that love itself is sometimes a foolish object dearly attained in exchange for reason; at others the human judgment subdued by folly. He is speaking of love abstractedly, and not alluding to that of Proteus.

Sc. 1. p. 178.

SPEED. I thank you, you have testern'd me.

Mr. Holt White's information from a passage in Latimer's sermons that the tester was then worth more than six-pence, is so far correct; but as an

inference might be drawn from the quotation that it was actually worth ten-pence, it becomes necessary to state that at that time, viz. in 1550, the tester was worth twelve-pence. It is presumed that no accurate account of this piece of coin has been hitherto given; and therefore the following attempt, which has been attended with no small labour, may not be unacceptable.

The term, variously written, teston, tester, testern, and, in Twelfth night, testril, is from the French teston, and so called from the king's head, which first appeared on this coin in the reign of Louis XII. A. D. 1513, though the Italians seem previously to have had a coin of the same denomination. In our own country the name was first applied to the English shilling (originally coined by Henry the Seventh) at the beginning of the reign of Henry the Eighth, probably because it resembled in value the French coin above described; so that shilling and teston were at that time synonymous terms. Although the teston underwent several reductions in value, it appears to have been worth twelve-pence at the beginning of Edward the Sixth's reign, from three several proclamations in his second and third years for calling in, and at length annihilating, this coin, on account of the forgeries that had been committed;

of

Sir William Sharington having falsified it to the amount of 12000l. for which by an express act In the of parliament he was attainted of treason. above proclamations the testons are specifically described as "pieces of xiid commonly called testons;" and in the last of them, the possessors are allowed twelve-pence a piece on bringing them to the mint. Sir Henry Spelman, who has asserted in his glossary that the teston was reduced to nine-pence in the first year of King Edward, must be mistaken. Stowe more correctly informs us that on the 9th of July 1551 (the fifth year the King's reign), the base shillings of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. were called down to nine-pence, and on the 17th of August following to six-pence. He afterwards, under the year 1559, cites a proclamation for reducing it still lower, viz. to fourpence halfpenny. We must conclude that it again rose in value as the coin became improved ; for it appears from Twelfth night, Act ii. Sc. 3. that it was in Shakspeare's time the same as the six-pence, and it has probably continued ever since as another name for that coin.

Sc. 2. p. 185.

JUL. I see you have a month's mind to them.

There is a great deal of quotation given in the

notes, but nothing after all that amounts to an explanation of the term. It alludes to the mind or remembrance days of our Popish ancestors. Persons in their wills often directed that in a month, or any other specific time from the day of their de cease, some solemn office for the repose of their souls, as a mass or dirge, should be performed in the parish church, with a suitable charity or benevolence on the occasion. Polydore Vergil has shown that the custom is of Roman origin; and he seems to speak of the month's mind as a ceremony peculiar to the English. De rer. invent. lib. vi. c. 10,

ACT II.

Scene 2. Page 201.

JUL. Keep this remembrance for thy Julia's sake.

[giving a ring. PRO. Why then we'll make exchange; here, take you this. JUL. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.

This was the mode of plighting troth between lovers in private. It was sometimes done in the church with great solemnity, and the service on this occasion is preserved in some of the old rituals. To the latter ceremony the priest alludes in Twelfth night, Act v. Sc. 1.

"A contract of eternal bond of love

Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips,

Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings, &c."

Sc. 4. p. 210.

SIL. That you are welcome?

PRO.

No; that you are worthless.

Dr. Johnson has here inserted the particle no, "to fill up the measure;" but the measure is not defective though the harmony is. Mr. Steevens, disputing the suggestion of a brother critic that worthless might have been designed as a trisyllable, asks whether worthless in the preceding speech of Sylvia is a trisyllable? Certainly not; but he should have remembered the want of uniformity of metre in many words among the poets of this period. Thus in p. 223, lines 8 and 9, the word fire is alternately used as a monosyllable and dissyllable; and where the quantity is compleat, as in the present instance, the harmony is often left to shift for itself.