dom: but the midwives fay, the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily ftrengthened.

POINS. How ill it follows, after you have laboured fo hard, you should talk fo idly? Tell me, how many good young princes would do fo, their fathers being fo fick as yours at this time is ?

P. HEN. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?

POINS. Yes; and let it be an excellent good thing.

P.HɛN. It fhall ferve among wits of no higher breeding than thine.

POINS. Go to; I ftand the pufh of your one thing that you will tell.

P. HEN. Why, I tell thee,-it is not meet that I should be fad, now my father is fick : albeit I could tell to thee, (as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend,) I could be fad, and fad indeed too.

POINS. Very hardly, upon fuch a fubject.

P. HEN. By this hand, thou think'ft me as far in the devil's book, as thou, and Falstaff, for obduracy and perfiftency: Let the end try the man. But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly, that my father is fo fick and keeping fuch vile company as thou art, hath in reafon taken from me all oftentation of forrow.6

"Out the ruins" is the fame as "out of" &c. Of this elliptical phrafeology I have seen inftances, though I omitted to note them. STEEVENS.

all oftentation of forrow.] Oftentation is here not boastful fhow, but fimply thow. Merchant of Venice: -one well ftudied in a fad oftent

66

"To please his grandame." JOHNSON.

POINS. The reafon?

P. HEN. What would'ft thou think of me, if I fhould weep?

POINS. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

P. HEN. It would be every man's thought and thou art a bleffed fellow, to think as every man thinks; never a man's thought in the world keeps the road-way better than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your moft worshipful thought, to think fo?

POINS. Why, because you have been fo lewd, and fo much engraffed to Falstaff.

P. HEN. And to thee.

POINS. By this light, I am well spoken of, I can hear it with my own ears: the worst that they can fay of me is, that I am a second brother, and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I confefs, I cannot help. By the mafs, here comes Bardolph.

P. HEN. And the boy that I gave Falstaff: he had him from me chriftian; and look, if the fat villain have not transformed him ape.

7

•proper fellow of my hands;] A tall or proper fellow of his hands was a ftout fighting man. JOHNSON.

In this place, however, it means a good looking, well made, perfonable man. Poins might certainly have helped his being a fighting fellow. RITSON.

A handsome fellow of my fize; or of my inches, as we should now express it. M. MASON.

Proper, it has been already obferved, in our author's time, fignified handfome. See Vol. VI. p. 74, n. 8; and Vol. VII. p. 248, n. 1. "As tall a man of his hands" has already occurred in The Merry Wives of Windfor. See Vol. V. p. 50, n. 4. MALONE.

Enter BARDOLPH and Page.

BARD. 'Save your grace!

P. HEN. And yours, moft noble Bardolph!

BARD. Come, you virtuous afs,8 [To the Page.] you bafhful fool, muft you be blushing? wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man at arms are you become? Is it fuch a matter, to get a pottlepot's maidenhead.

PAGE. He called me even now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could difcern no part of his face from the window: at laft, I fpied his eyes; and, methought, he had made two holes in the alewife's new petticoat, and peeped through.

P. HEN. Hath not the boy profited?

BARD. Away, you whorefon upright rabbit, away! PAGE. Away, you rascally Althea's dream, away ! P. HEN. Inftruct us, boy: What dream, boy?

I

PAGE. Marry, my lord, Althea dreamed she was delivered of a fire-brand; and therefore I call him her dream.

Bard. Come, you virtuous afs, &c.] Though all the editions give this fpeech to Poins, it seems evident, by the Page's immediate reply, that it must be placed to Bardolph: for Bardolph had called to the boy from an ale-house, and it is likely, made him half-drunk; and, the boy being ashamed of it, it is natural for Bardolph, a bold unbred fellow, to banter him on his aukward bashfulnefs. THEOBALD.

9—through a red lattice,] i. e. from an ale-house window. See Vol. V. p. 83, n. 4. MALONE.

Althea dreamed &c.] Shakspeare is here mistaken in his mythology, and has confounded Althea's firebrand with Hecuba's. The firebrand of Althea was real: but Hecuba, when she was big with Paris, dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand that confumed the kingdom. JOHNSON.

P. HEN. A crown's worth of good interpretation. There it is, boy. [Gives him money.

POINS. O, that this good bloffom could be kept from cankers!-Well, there is fixpence to preserve thee.

BARD. An you do not make him be hanged among you, the gallows fhall have wrong.

P. HEN. And how doth thy mafter, Bardolph ? BARD. Well, my lord. He heard of your grace's coming to town; there's a letter for you.

POINS. Delivered with good refpect.-And how doth the martlemas, your mafter ? 3

BARD. In bodily health, fir.

POINS. Marry, the immortal part needs a phyfician but that moves not him; though that be fick, it dies not.

P. HEN. I do allow this wen4 to be as familiar with me as my dog: and he holds his place; for, look you, how he writes.

POINS. [Reads.] John Falstaff, knight,

2 A crown's worth of good interpretation.] A Pennyworth of good Interpretation, is, if I remember right, the title of fome old tract. MALONE.

3

the martlemas, your mafter ?] That is, the autumn, or rather the latter fpring. The old fellow with juvenile paffions. JOHNSON.

In The First Part of King Henry IV. the Prince calls Falstaff "the latter fpring,-all-hallown fummer." MALONE.

Martlemas is corrupted from Martinmas, the feaft of St. Martin, the eleventh of November. The corruption is general in the old plays. So, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599: "A piece of beef hung up fince Martlemas."

STEEVENS.

this wen-1 This fwoln excrefcence of a man.

JOHNSON.

Every man muft know that, as oft as he has occafion to name himself. Even like thofe that are kin to the king; for they never prick their finger, but they fay, There is fome of the king's blood Spilt: How comes that? fays he, that takes upon him not to conceive: the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap; 5 I am the king's poor coufin, fir.

P. HEN. Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But the letter:

POINS. Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the fon of the king, nearest his father, Harry prince of Wales, greeting.-Why, this is a certificate.

P. HEN. Peace!

-the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap;] Old copy-a borrowed cap. STEEVENS.

But how is a borrowed cap fo ready? Read, a borrower's cap, and then there is fome humour in it: for a man that goes to borrow money, is of all others the moft complaisant; his cap is always at hand. WARBURTON.

Falstaff's followers, when they ftole any thing, called it a purchafe. A borrowed cap, in the fame dialect, might be a stolen one; which is fufficiently ready, being, as Falstaff says, " to be found on every hedge." MALONE.

Such caps as were worn by men in our author's age, were made of filk, velvet, or woollen; not of linen; and confequently would not be hung out to dry on hedges. STEEVENS.

I think Dr. Warburton's correction is right. A cap is not a thing likely to be borrowed, in the common fenfe of the word: and in the sense of stealing the sense should be a cap to be bor rowed. Befides, conveying was the cant phrase for Stealing. FARMER. Dr. Warburton's emendation is countenanced by a paffage in Timon of Athens :

be not ceas'd

"With flight denial; nor then filenc'd, when

"Commend me to your master-and the cap

Plays in the right hand, thus:-."
- STEEVENS.

"P. Hen.] All the editors, except Sir Thomas Hanmer, have