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The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus fings he,
Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married ear!

II.

When Shepherds pipe on oaten ftraws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their fummer Smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus fings he,
Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married ear!

III. ·

Winter, When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the Shepherd blows his nail,”
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

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

Albaque cardamine, &c. MALONE.

Crocus buds is a phrafe unknown to naturalifts and gardeners. STEEVENS.

6 When icicles hang by the wall,] i. e. from the eaves of the thatch or other roofing, from which in the morning icicles are fouud depending in great abundance, after a night of froft. So, in K. Henry IV:

Let us not hang like roping icicles, "Upon our houses' thatch.

When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly fings the flaring owl,
To-who;

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Our author (whofe images are all taken from nature) has alluded in The Tempest, to the drops of water that after iain flow from fuch coverings, in their natural unfrozen ftaie:

"His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops

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"From eves of reeds. MALONE.

7 And Dick the fhepherd 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.

8 -nightly fings the staring owl,

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To-who; tu-whit, to who,] So, in Lyly's Mother Bombie: To-whit, to-whoo the owle does cry." HOLT WHITE. -doth keel the pot. ] This word is yet ufed in Ireland, and fignifies to fcum the pot. GOLDSMITH.

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So, in Marfton'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 flir 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 lithing], and put it in the pot, when they set on, because when the meat, pudding and turnips are áll in, they cannot fo well mix it, but 'tis apt to go into lumps; yet this method of theirs renders the pot liable to boil over at the firft rifing, and every fubfequent increase of the fire; to prevent which it becomes neceffary for one to attend to cool it occafionally, by lading it up frequendy with a ladle, which they call keeling the pot, and is indeed a greafy office. " Gent. Mag. 1760. This account feems to be accurate.

RITSON.

To keel fignifics to cool in general, without any reference to the kitchen. So, in Gower De Confeffione Amantis, lib. v. fol. 121, b: "The cote he found, and eke he feleth

"The mace, and then his herte keleth

"That there durft he not abide."

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IV.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parfon's faw,"
And birds fit brooding in the fnow,
And Marian's nofe looks red and raw,
When roafted crabs hifs in the bowl ̧3
Then nightly fings the flaring owl,
To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While greafy Joan doth keel the pot.

Again, fol. 131. b:

"With water on his finger ende

Thyne hote tonge to kele."

Mr. Lambe obteives 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 fervant to take out of a boiling pot a wheen, i. e. a fmall 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 greafy Joan keeled the pot.

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"Gie me beer, and gie me grots,
"And lumps of beef to fwum abeen;
"And ilka time that I ftir the pot,
"He's hae frae me the

keeling wheen."

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the parfon's faw,] Saw feems anciently to have meant, not as at prefent, a proverb, a fentence, but the whole tenor of any inftrudive difcourfe. So, in the fourth chapter of the first book of the Tragedies of John Bochas, tranflated by Lidgate:

"Thefe old poetes in their Jawes fwete

"Full covertly in their verfes do fayne," &c.

STEEVENS.

Yet in As you like it, our author ufes this word in the fenfe of

a fentence, or maxim: "Dead fhepherd, now I find thy faw of

might," &c. It is, I believe, fo ufed here. MALONE.

3 When roafted crabs, &c.] i. e. the wild apples fo called. Thus, in The Midfummer-Night's Dream:

"And fometimes lurk I in a goffip's bowl,

"In very likenefs of a roafted crab."

Again, in Like will to Like, quoth the Devil to the Collier, 1587: "Now a crab in the fire were worth a good groat:

That I might quaffe with my captain Tom Tofs-pot."

ARM. The words of Mercury are harsh after the

fongs of Apollo. You, that way; we, this way. [Exeunt.

Again, in Summer's laft Will and Teftament, 1600: "Sitting in a corner, turning crabs,

"

"Or coughing o'er a warmed pot of ale. STEEVENS. The bowl must be fuppofed to be filled with ale; a toaft and fome fpice and fugar being added, what is called Lamb's wool is produced. So, in K. Henry V. 1598 (not our author's play):

Yet we will have in flore a crab in the fire,

"With nut-brown ale, that is full ftale, &c. MALONE. 4 In this play, which all the editors have concurred to cenfure, and fome have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confeffed that there are many paffages mean, childish, and vulgar; and fome 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 fparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakspeare. JOHNSON.

ACT I. SCENE I. Page 191.

This child of fancy, that Armado hight, &c.] This, as I have fhown in the note in its place, relates to the ftories 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 efpecially as monfieur Huet, the bishop of Avranches, who wrote a formal treatise of the Origin of Romances, has faid little or nothing of these in that fuperficial work. For having brought down the account of Romances to the later Greeks, and entered upon those compofed by the barbarous weftern writers, which have now the name of Romances almoft 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 moft curious and interefting parts of the fubje&t he promised to treat of, he contents himself with a long account of the poems of the Provincial writers, called likewise romances; and fo, under the equivoque of a common term, drops his proper fubject, and entertains us with another, that had no relation to it more than in the name.

The Spaniards were of all others the fondeft of these fables, as fuiting belt their extravagant turn to gallantry and bravery; which in time grew fo exceffive, as to need all the efficacy of Cervantes's incomparable fatire to bring them back to their fenfes. The French

fuffered an easier cure from their do&or Rabelais, who enough difcredited the books of chivalry, by only ufing the extravagant stories of its giants, &c. as a cover for another kind of satire against the refined politicks of his countrymen; of which they were as much poffeffed as the Spaniards of their romantick bravery: bravery our Shakspeare makes their characteristic in this defcription of a Spanish gentleman:

A man of complements, whom right and wrong
Have chole as umpire of their mutiny:
This child of fancy, that Armado hight,
For interim to our ftudies, hall relate,

In high-born words, the worth of many a knight,
From tawny Spain, loft in the world's debate. *

The fenfe of which is to this effect: This gentleman, fays the fpeaker, Jhall relate to us the celebrated ftories recorded in the old romances, and in their very tile. Why he fays from tawny Spain, is because these romances, being of the Spanish original, the heroes and the scene were generally of that country. He fays, loft in the world's debate, because the fubje&s of thofe romances were the crufades of the European Chritians againft the Saracens of Alia and Africa.

Indeed, the wars of the Chriftians against the Pagans were the general fubject of the romances of chivalry. They all feem to have had their ground-work in two fabulous monkish hiftorians: the one, who under the name of Turpin, archbishop of Rheims, wrote the Hiftory and Atchievements of Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers; to whom, inftead of his father, they affigned the task of driving the Saraceus out of France and the fouth parts of Spain: the other, our Geoffry of Monmouth.

Two of thofe peers, whom the old romances have rendered most famous, were Oliver and Rowland. Hence Shakspeare makes Alençon, in the first part of Henry VI. fay; "Froyflard, a countryman of ours, records, England all Olivers and Rowlands bred, during the time Edward the third did reign." In the Spanish ro

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From tawny Spain, &c.] This paffage may, as Dr. Warburton imagines, be in allufion to the Spanish Romances, of which feveral were extant in English, and very popular at the time this play was written. Such, for inftance, as Amadis de Gaule, Don Bellianis, Palmerin d'Oliva, Palmerin of England, the Mirrour of Knighthood, &c. But he is egregiously mistaken in afferting that "the heroes and the fcene were generally of that country," which, in fact, (except in an inftance or two nothing at all to the prefent purpofe) is never the cafe. If the words left in the world's debate will bear the editor's conftrudion, there are certainly many books of chivalry on the fubject. I cannot, however, think that Shakipeare was particularly converiant in works of this defcription: But, indeed, the alternately rhyming parts, at leaft, of the prefent play are apparently by an inferior hand; the remains, no doubt, of the old platform. RITSON.

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