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of our ancient sports and domestic employments is not now to be attained.. Historians have contented themselves to record the vices of Kings and Princes, and the minutiae of battles and sieges; and with very few exceptions, they have considered the discussion of private manners (a theme perhaps equally interesting to posterity) as beneath their notice and of little or no im

portance.

As a military sport or exercise, the use of the quintain is very ancient, and may be traced even among the Romans. It is mentioned in Justinian's Code, Lib. III. Tit. 43; and its most probable etymology is from, Quintus," the name of its inventor. In the days of chivalry it was the substitute or rehearsal of tilts and tournaments, and was at length adopted, though in a ruder way, by the common people, becoming amongst them a very favourite amusement. Many instances occur of its use in several parts of France, particularly as a seignorial right exacted from millers, watermen, new-married men, and others; when the party was obliged, under some penalty, to run at the quintain on Whitsunday and other particular times, at the lord's castle for his diver sion. Sometimes it was practised upon the water, and then the quintain was either placed in a boat, or errected in the middle of the river. Something of this kind is described from Fitzstephen by Stowe in his Survey, p. 145, edit. 1618, 4to. and still continues to be practised upon the Seine at Paris. Froissart mentions, that the shield quintain was used in Ireland in the reign of Richard II. In Wales it is still practised at weddings, and at the village of Offham, near Town Malling in Kent, there is now standing a

quintain, resembling that copied from Stowe, opposite the dwelling house of a family that is obliged under some tenure to support it, but I do not find that any use has been ever made of within the recollection of the inhabitants.

Shakspeare then has most probably alluded to that sort of quintain which resembled the human figure; and if this be the case, the speech of Orlando may be thus explained:,, I am unable to thank you for surprized and subdued by love, my intellectual powers, which are my better parts, fail me; and I resemble the quintain, whose human or active part being thrown down, there remains nothing but the lifeless trunk or block which once upheld it."

Or, if better parts do not refer to the quintain, ,, that which here stands up" means the human part of the quintain, which may be also not unaptly called a lifeless block, DOUCE.

NOTES

TO

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

The story of All's Well that ends Well, or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, Love's Labour Wonne,' is originally indeed the property of Boccace, but it came immediately to Shakspeare from Painter's Giletta of Narbon, in the First Vol. of the Palace of Pleasure, 4to. 1566, p. 88. FARMER.

Shakspeare is indebted to the novel only for a few leading circumstances in the graver parts of the piece. The comic business appears to be entirely of his own formation. STEEVENS.

This comedy, I imagine, was written in 1598. See An Attempt to ascertain the Order of Shak speare's Plays, Vol. I. MALONE.

P. 102, first 1. The persons were first enumerated by Mr. Rowe.

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P. 102, 1. 5. Lafeu,] We should read - Lefeu.

STEEVENS.

P. 102, 1. 6. Parolles,] I suppose we should write this name Paroles, i. e. a creature made STEEVENS.

up of empty words.

P. 102, 1. 16. Violenta only enters once, and then she neither speaks, nor is spoken to. This name appears to be borrowed from an old metrical history, entitled Didaco and Violenta, 1576.

STEEVENS,

P. 103, 1. 11. to whom I am now in ward,] Under his particular care, as my guardian, till I come to age. It is now almost, forgotten in England, that the heirs of great fortunes were the King's wards. Whether the same practice prevailed in France, it is of no great use to enquire, for Shakspeare gives to all nations the manner of England. JOHNSON,

Howell's fifteenth letter acquaints us that the province of Normandy was subject to wardships, and no other part of France besides ; but the supposition of the contrary furnished Shakspeare with a reason why the King compelled. Rousillon to marry Helen. TOLLET.

The prerogative of a wardship is a branch of the feudal law, and may as well be supposed to be incorporated with the constitution of France, as it was with that of England, till the reign of Charles II. SIR J. HAWKINS.

P. 104, 1, 6. (0, that had! how sad a passage tis!)] Imitated from the Heautontimorumenos of Terence, (then translated,) where Menedemus says:

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Filium unicum adolescentulum Habeo. Ah, quid dixi? habere me? imo habui, Chreme,

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Nunc habeam necne incertum est."

BLACKSTONE.

Passage is any thing that passes. So we now say, a passage of an author, and we said

about a century ago, the passages of a reign. When the Countess mentions Helena's loss of a father, she recollects her own loss of a husband, and stops to observe how heavily that word had passes through her mind. JOHNSON.

P. 104, 1. 54. By virtuous qualities are meant qualities of good breeding and erudition; in the same sense that the Italians say, qualità virtuosa; and not moral ones. On this account it is, she says, that, in an ill mind, these virtuous qualities are virtues and traitors too: i. e. the advantages of education enable an ill mind to go further in wickedness than it could have done without them WARBURTON.

Virtue, and virtuous, as I am told, still keep this signification in the north, and mean ingenuity and ingenious. STEEVENS.

P. 105, first 1. Her virtues are the better for their simpleness, that is, her exoellencies are the better because they are artless and open, without fraud, without design. The learned commentator has well explained virtues, but has not, I think, reached the force of the word traitors, and therefore has not shown the full extent of Shakspeare's masterly observation. Virtues in an unclean mind are virtues and traitors too. Estimable and useful qualities, joined with an evil disposi tion, give that evil disposition power over others, who, by admiring the virtue, are betrayed to the malevolence. The Tatler, mentioning the sharpers of his time, observes, that some of them are men of such elegance and knowledge, that a young man who falls into their way, is betrayed as much by his judgement as his passions.

JOHNSON.

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