2

(16) erring pilgrimage] In Othello, lago, I. 3. we have "" erring barbarian:" and see Haml. I. 1.

"The extravagant and erring spirit hies
"To his confine.” Horatio.

(17) That one body should be fill'd
With all graces wide enlarg'd]

"Of all complexions the cull'd sovereignty
"Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek;
"Where several worthies make one dignity."

(18) Atalanta's better part;

L. L. L. IV. 3. Bir

Sad Lucretia's, &c.] Atalanta had many eminent qualities: swiftness, wit, form, and grace; and is classed, as Mr. Steevens shews, with those ladies that were most the subject of panegyric.

"Atalanta and dame Lucrece fayre
"He doth them both deface."

Grange's golden Aphroditis, 1577.

And Mr. Malone instances Marston's Insatiable Countesse,

1613:

"That eye was Juno's;

"Those lips were hers, that won the golden ball;
"The virgin blush Diana's."

Dr. Farmer supposes the "better part" to be her wit: i. e. the swiftness of her mind. It is certain, that Jaques presently, in this scene, pays a compliment to the swiftness of her heels; but the reader will chuse for himself.

Sad is grave, composed. "She is never sad, but when she sleeps." Much ado, &c. II. 1. Leonat.

(19) I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat] Rosalind is a very learned lady. She alludes to the Pythagorean doctrine, which teaches that souls transmigrate from one animal to another, and relates that in his time she was an Irish rat, and by some metrical charm was rhymed to death. The power of killing rats with rhymes Donne mentions in his Satires, and Temple in his Treatises. Dr. Grey has produced a similar passage from Randolph :

66

My poets

"Shall with a satire, steep'd in gall and vinegar,
Rhyme them to death as they do rats in Ireland."
JOHNSON.

So, in an address to the reader at the conclusion of Ben Jonson's Poetaster:

"Rhime them to death, as they do Irish rats

"In drumming tunes." STEEVENS.

So, in Sidney's Defence of Poesie: " Though I will not wish unto you to be driven by a poet's verses, as Rubonax was, to hang yourself, nor to be rimed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland-"

MALONE.

(20) friends to meet; but, &c.] Alluding ironically to the proverb:

"Friends may meet, but mountains never greet."
Ray's Prov. STEEVENS.

(21) mountains-encounter] "Montes duo inter se concur. rerunt," &c. says Pliny, Hist. Nat. Lib. II. c. lxxxiii. or in Holland's translation: "Two hills (removed by an earthquake) encountered together, charging as it were, and with violence assaulting one another, and retyring again with a most mighty

noise.' TOLLET.

(22) out of all whooping] Literally beyond, or out of all call or stretch of the voice: metaphorically, and as we are to understand it, not to be expressed by any figure of admiration.

Mr. Steevens likens it to a proverbial phrase in our old writers, "out of cry;" i. e. out of all measure or reckoning.

(23) Good my complexion] A little unmeaning exclamatory address to her beauty; in the nature of a small oath. RITSON. And of the same character with what the princess says in L. L. L. IV. 1: "Here, good my glass."

(24) One inch of delay more is a South-sea-of discovery] Is, as referable to the narrow limits of my patience, a range of space, and waste of time, as broad and great as would be traversed and occupied in exploring the whole extent of that vast

ocean.

Mr. Henley says, a South-sea of discovery, is not a discovery, as FAR OFF, but as COMPREHENSIVE as the South-sea; which, being the largest in the world, affords the widest scope for exercising curiosity.

(25) count atomies] In Bullokar's English Expositor, 1616, "it is a mote flying in the sunne. Any thing so small that it cannot be made lesse." MALONE.

It is an extension of the word atom.

"Hee that can count the candles of the skie,

"Or number nomberlesse small attomie."

R. L.'s Diella. Sonn. XXX. 12mo. 1596.

(26) Cry, holla! to the tongue] Holla was a term of the ma> nege, by which the rider restrained and stopp'd his horse.

"What recketh he his rider's angry stir,
"His flattering holla, or his stand I say?"

See Cotton's Wonders of the Peak:

Ven, and Adon.

"But I must give my muse the hola here." REED. We cannot any where find so distinct and satisfactory an account of this term, as in a curious posthumous volume, the literary relics and amusement of the late ingenious Mr. Pegge, of Whitehall.

"When at tilts and tournaments the king or president gave the signal of discontinuance, by throwing down his warder, or baton, the heralds cried out to the combatants, ho: that is, stop. The French have enlarged the term to a dissyllable, by the assistance of their favourite adjunct, la; and used the compound word, ho-la, or stop there, in combats, and which we have adopted in common language, when we call to a person to stop. Mettre entre eux le hola, is a French expression, borrowed from the tilt-yard, used for putting an end to a dispute or verbal controversy. Shakespeare gives it, where it is closely connected in metaphor with a horse's motions: "Cry holla to thy tongue, I pr'ythee; it curvets unseasonably." It means cessation and desistance: and the waggoner, stopping his horses, uses, in the Danish language, a broad pronunciation of this word, wo: a term now degraded to horses in the harness of the present day; which was anciently applied to knights and combatants in armour, or harness, as it was then called. In nautical language it still exists in its pure and natural state, with a very trifling expansion: for, when one ship hails another, the words are, "what ship, hoy?" i. c. stop, and tell the name of your ship, &c. And perhaps the little trading vessel, termed a hoy, may have received its name from stopping at different places on its voyage to take in goods or passengers, when called to, or hailed from the shore." Anecdotes of Engl. language, 8vo. 1803, p. 14.

Ho, commonly called an interjection, and used formerly both as noun and verb, is, it is conceived, no more than an abbreviated form of the verb hold.

It is used as a verb in " Maid Emlyn, that had v husbandes, and all kockoldes," &c. before cited.

"God dyd bete her surely with the rod of poverte or she dyde

hens go

"Than she dyed as ye shall, but what of her dyde befall, naye there do I ho." Imprinted by Jhon Skot, 4to.

It is used as a noun in Newton's Lemnie's Touchstone of Complexions: "Night and day drowning themselves in a gulph of sensuality and belly chere, they live (as the proverbe is) a minstrelle's life, that is to say, nicely, ydly, and altogether in a

manner uppon other men's cost; and for that they keep neither ho nor measure in their affections, but wholly addict themselves to ingluvious excesse," &c. 12mo. 1581, fo. 101, b.

"Hillo," I. 5. Haml., Mr. Steevens says, is from the Fr. a hillaut." See Macb. I. 5. Lady M.

"ty

In quick pronunciation, thy tongue is sounded as here printed the.

(27) kill my hart] As here spelt, the animal, the game and prey of the hunter, the last word that dropped from the lips of Celia; but at the same time it means that, which, in this very familiar phrase of the day, imported the seat of her warmest affections. It is a play which often occurs in our author, and is given in his Venus and Adonis with a little variety:

they have murder'd this poor heart of mine."

(28) I answer you right painted cloth] A familiar mode of speaking, of which we have numberless examples. We say, "she talks right Billingsgate, or be speaks downright Dunstable.” From our author Mr. Steevens instances :

"He speaks plain cannon-fire, and bounce, and smoke."

"He speaks nothing but madman." Tw. N. Our author has many more of the same cast; as, "He smells April and May."

K. John.

M. W. of Winds. III. 2. Host.

"Smells brown bread and garlick."

M. for M. III. 2. Lucio.

"Rain and wind beat dark December."

Cymb. III. 3. Arvir.

The term painted cloth, Theobald says, alludes to the fashion in old tapestry hangings, of mottos and moral sentences from the mouths of the figures worked or painted in them.

"Who fears a sentence, or an old man's saw,
"Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe."

Tarq. and Lucr.

Steevens cites, "It is enough for him that can but robbe a painted cloth of a historie, a booke of a discourse, a fool of a fashion, &c." Barnaby Riche's Soldier's Wishe, &c. 1604, p. 1. And,

"There's a witty posy for you.

No, no; I'll have one shall savour of a saw.

Why then 'twill smell of the painted cloth."

A Match at Midnight, 1633.

And,

I have seen in Mother Redcap's hall "In painted cloth, the story of the prodigal."

Randolph's Muses* Looking Glass.

And, "Mayster Thomas More in hys youth devysed in hys father's house in London, a goodly hangyng of fyne paynted clothe, with nine pageauntes, and verses over every of those pageauntes; which verses expressed and declared what the ymages in those pageauntes represented: and also in those pageauntes were paynted the thynges that the verses over them dyd (in effecte) declare." Sir T. More's Engl. Works, Ras tell, 1577

And Mr. Malone observes, that a passage in No whipping nor tripping, but a kind of friendly snipping, octavo, 1601, may serve as a specimen of painted cloth language:

"Read what is written on the painted cloth:
"Do no man wrong; be good unto the poor;
"Beware the mouse, the maggot, and the moth,
"And ever have an eye unto the door;
"Trust not a fool, a villain, nor a whore;
"Go neat, not gay, and spend but as you spare ;
"And turn the colt to pasture with the mare;" &c.

We shall add, "he drops away at last in some obscure painted cloth, to which himself made the verses; and his life, like a cann too full, spills upon the bench.". A Pot-Poet, Earle's Characters.

(29) no breather in the world]

"When all the breathers of this world are dead."

"She shows a body, rather than a life;

"A statue, than a breather."

Sonn. 81.

Ant. and Cleop. MALONE.

(30) If it be but, &c. time's pace, &c. seems a length of years] "In desiderio etiam celeritas mora est. In desyre, in a thing that a man coveteth, even spede is counted a taryaunce." Taverner's Mimi Publiani, 4to. 1539, signat. B 7, b.

(31) unquestionable spirit] Untractable, that will admit no discourse.

"Live you, or are you aught

"That man may question?" Macb. I. 3. Banquo.

In the next scene Rosalind says, "I met the duke, and had much question with him :" and in the last scene, "the duke was converted after some question with a religious man."