happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm and the greatest of my pride is, to see my ewes graze, and my lambs suck. TOUCH. That is another simple sin in you; to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle: to be bawd to a bell-wether; and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth, to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damn'd for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst 'scape. COR. Here comes young master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother. 7 Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper. Ros. From the east to western Ind, Her worth, being mounted on the wind, Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind, bawd to a BELL-WETHER;] Wether and ram had anciently the same meaning. JOHNSON. 8-fairest LIN'D,] i. e. most fairly delineated. Modern editors read-limn'd, but without authority from the ancient copies. STEEVENS. 9 But the FAIR of Rosalind.] Thus the old copy. Fair is beauty, complexion. See the notes on a passage in The Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I. Sc. I. and The Comedy of Errors, Act II. Sc. I. The modern editors read-the face of Rosalind. Lodge's Novel will likewise support the ancient reading: "Then muse not, nymphes, though I bemone "The absence of fair Rosalynde, "Since for her faire there is fairer none," &c. Again : "And hers the faire which all men do respect." STEEVENS. Face was introduced by Mr. Pope. MALONE. TOUCH. I'll rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted; it is the right butter-woman's rate to market'. Ros. Out, fool! 1 TOUCH. for a taste : If a hart do lack a hind, RANK to market,] Sir T. Hanmer reads-rate to market. Dr. Grey, as plausibly, proposes to read-rant. "Gyll brawled like a butter-whore," is a line in an ancient medley. The sense designed, however, might have been-it is such wretched rhyme as the butter-woman sings as she is riding to market. So, in Churchyard's Charge, 1580, p. 7: "And use a kinde of ridynge rime —.” Again, in his Farewell from the Courte: "A man maie," says he, 66 use a kinde of ridyng rime "To sutche as wooll not let me clime." Ratt-ryme, however, in Scotch, signifies some verse repeated by rote. See Ruddiman's Glossary to G. Douglas's Virgil. STEEVENS. The Clown is here speaking in reference to the ambling pace of the metre, which, after giving a specimen of, to prove his assertion, he affirms to be "the very false gallop of verses." HENLEY. A passage in All's Well that End's Well “ Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman's mouth, and buy myself another of Bajezet's mules, if you prattle me into these perils;" once induced me to think that the volubility of the butter-woman selling her wares at market was alone in our author's thoughts, and that he wrote-rate at market: but I am now persuaded that Sir T. Hanmer's emendation is right. The hobbling metre of these verses, (says Touchstone,) is like the ambling, shuffling pace of a butterwoman's horse, going to market. The same kind of imagery is found in King Henry IV. Part I.: "And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, "'Tis like the forc'd gait of a shuffling nag." MALONE. "The right butter-woman's rank to market" means the jogtrot rate (as it is vulgarly called) with which butter-women uniformly travel one after another in their road to market in its application to Orlando's poetry, it means a set or string of verses in the same coarse cadence and vulgar uniformity of rythm. WHITER. If the cat will after kind, They that reap, must sheaf and bind; Sweetest nut hath sowrest rind, He that sweetest rose will find, Must find love's prick, and Rosalind. This is the very false gallop of verses 2; Why do you infect yourself with them. Ros. Peace, you dull fool; I found them on a tree. TOUCH. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit 3 in the country for you'll be rotten e'er you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar. TOUCH. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge. Enter CELLA, reading a paper. Ros. Peace! Here comes my sister, reading; stand aside. CEL. Why should this desert silent be? 66 2 This is the very FALSE GALLOP OF VERSES ;] So, in Nashe's Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse, 4to. 1593: "I would trot a false gallop through the rest of his ragged verses, but that if I should retort the rime doggrell aright, I must make my verses (as he doth his) run hobbling, like a brewer's cart upon the stones, and observe no measure in their feet." MALONE. 3 the EARLIEST fruit-] Shakspeare seems to have had little knowledge in gardening. The medlar is one of the latest fruits, being uneatable till the end of November. STEEVENS. 4 Why should this desert SILENT be?] The word silent is not in Tongues I'll hang on every tree, 'Twixt the souls of friend and friend : But upon the fairest boughs, Or at every sentence' end, Will I Rosalinda write; Teaching all that read, to know the old copy. Mr. Pope attempted to correct the passage by reading-Why should this a desert be?" The present judicious emendation was made by Mr. Tyrwhitt, who justly observes that "the hanging of tongues on every tree would not make it less a desert." MALONE. But although the metre may be assisted by this correction, the sense still is defective; for how will the hanging of tongues on every tree, make it less a desert? I am persuaded we ought to read: Why should this desert silent be? TYRWHITT. The notice which this emendation deserves, I have paid to it, by inserting it in the text. STEEVENS. Yet see the last sentence of Johnson's note immediately following, which will obviate the necessity of Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendation, if we adopt the slight insertion proposed by Mr. Pope. BOSWELL. s That shall CIVIL sayings show.] Civil is here used in the same sense as when we say civil wisdom or civil life, in opposition to a solitary state, or to the state of nature. This desert shall not appear unpeopled, for every tree shall teach the maxims or incidents of social life. JOHNSON. Civil, I believe, is not designedly opposed to solitary. It means only grave, or solemn. So, in The Twelfth-Night, Act III. Sc. IV.: Where is Malvolio? he is sad, and civil.” i, e. grave and demure. Again, in A Woman's Prize, by Beaumont and Fletcher : "That fourteen yards of satin give my woman; "I do not like the colour; 'tis too civil." STEEVENS. 6 The quintessence of every sprite Sad Lucretia's modesty. -in LITTLE show,] The allusion is to a miniature-portrait. The current phrase in our author's time was painted in little." MALONE. a hundred ducats a-piece, for his picture 7 Therefore heaven nature charg'd-] From the picture of Apelles, or the accomplishments of Pandora: So, before: 66 Πανδώρην οτι πανίες Ολυμπια δωματ' εχονίες But thou "So perfect, and so peerless, art created 66 Of every creature's best." Tempest. Perhaps from this passage Swift had his hint of Biddy Floyd. JOHNSON. 8 Atalanta's BETTER PART;] I know not well what could be the better part of Atalanta here ascribed to Rosalind. Of the Atalanta most celebrated, and who therefore must be intended here where she has no epithet of discrimination, the better part seems to have been her heels, and the worse part was so bad that Rosalind would not thank her lover for the comparison. There is a more obscure Atalanta, a huntress and a heroine, but of her nothing bad is recorded, and therefore I know not which was her better part. Shakspeare was no despicable mythologist, yet he seems here to have mistaken some other character for that of Atalanta. JOHNSON. Perhaps the poet means her beauty and graceful elegance of shape, which he would prefer to her swiftness. Thus Ovid: nec dicere posses, Laude pedum, formæne bono præstantior esset. Ut faciem, et posito corpus velamine vidit, But cannot Atalanta's better part mean her virtue or virgin |