(7) the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-offices; one that would circumvent God] Has official superiority over. "O'er-reaches," the reading of the quarto, gives an idea more closely and immediately corresponding with the whole of this sentence, and the beginning of the next but one. Upon those readings Dr. Johnson has well observed, "I believe, both these words were Shakespeare's. An author, in revising his work, when his original ideas have faded from his mind, and new observations have produced new sentiments, easily introduces images which have been more newly impressed upon him, without observing their want of congruity to the general texture of his original design." (8) This might be my lord such-a-one, that prais'd my lord such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it] See Tim. I. 2. Tim. (9) but to play at loggats with them] But to be used, to be thought fit materials, to play with at a rustic game. This is a game played in several parts of England even at this time. A stake is fixed into the ground; those who play, throw loggats at it, and he that is nearest the stake, wins: I have seen it played in different counties at their sheep-shearing feasts, where the winner was entitled to a black fleece, which he afterwards presented to the farmer's maid to spin for the purpose of making a petticoat, and on condition that she knelt down on the fleece to be kissed by all the rusticks present. So Ben Jonson, Tale of a Tub, Act IV. sc. vi: "Now are they tossing of his legs and arms, Again, in an old collection of Epigrams, Satires, &c. "To play at loggats, nine holes, or ten pinnes." Again, in Decker's If this be not a good Play, the Devil is in it, 1612: two hundred crowns! "I've lost as much at loggats." It is one of the unlawful games enumerated in the statute of 33 of Henry VIII. STEEVENS. Loggeting in the fields is mentioned for the first time among other "new and crafty games and plays," in the statute of 33 Henry VIII. c. 9. Not being mentioned in former acts against unlawful games, it was probably not practised long before the statute of Henry the Eighth was made. MALONE. A loggat-ground, like a skittle-ground, is strewed with ashes, but is more extensive. A bowl much larger than the jack of the game of bowls is thrown first. The pins, which I believe are called loggats, are much thinner, and lighter at one extremity than the other. The bowl being first thrown, the players take the pins up by the thinner and lighter end, and fling them towards the bowl, and in such a manner that the pins may once turn round the air, and slide with the thinner extremity foremost towards the bowl. The pins are about one or two-andtwenty inches long. BLOUNT. (10) A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, For-and a shrouding sheet: O, a pit of, &c.] For O, the quartos read Or. The original song runs thus: A pick-axe and a spade, And eke a shrowding sheet; (11) quiddits] Subtleties. A term, borrowed from the schools. 66 "Entermedlyng and troubling their braynes with scrupulous quiddityes and diffuse questions." Newton's Lemnie's Touchstone of Complexions, 12mo. 1581, fo. 77. Plays with his sophemes and quyddities." Taverner's Garden of Wysdom, 12mo. 1539, signat. B. 4, b. "Diogenes mockyng suche quidificall trifles (the Idees, as the tableitees and cuppytees of Plato), that wer all in the cherubyns." Nic. Udall's Erasm. Apopthegm, 12mo. 1542, fo. 124. Mr. Steevens instances, "I am wise, but quiddits will not answer death." And Mr. Malone, "By some strange quiddit, or some wrested clause, (12) quillets] Nice and frivolous points or distinctions. Cole renders it res frivola. Dict. 1679. MALone. See L. L. L. IV. 3. Longuev. (13) knock him about the sconce] Pate. In its first sense, blockhouse, from schantsen, Teut. to fortify. Bailey and Todd. See M. W. of W. II. 2. Falst., and Com. of Err. I. 4. Antiph. S. Mr. Steevens cites Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594: "Laudo ingenium; I like thy sconce." And Ram-Alley, 1611: "But 'tis within this sconce to go beyond them." (14) Statutes] Statutes-merchant and staple are particular, modes of recognisance or acknowledgment for securing debts, which thereby become a charge upon the party's land. Statutes and recognisances are mentioned together in the covenants of a purchase deed. RITSON. (15) his double vouchers, &c.] A recovery, with double voucher is the one usually suffered, and is so denominated from two persons (the latter of whom is always the common cryer, or some such inferior person,) being successively voucher, or called upon, and made to answer the warrant of the tenant's title. Both fines and recoveries are fictions of law, used to convert an estate tail into a fee simple. RITSON. (16) seek out assurance in that] Deeds, which are usually written on parchment, are called the common assurances of the kingdom. Malone. Seek assurance is, in one sense," look for security, put your trust in:" in the other, "require a certain and indefeasible title." (17) With an eulogy of our author, most of the topics in this dialogue are imitated in a poem called Dolarny's Primerose, 4to. 1606. It is a very mean performance, and the fact is mentioned merely to show the popularity of this piece. (18) by the card] i. e. we must speak with the same precision and accuracy, as is observed in marking the true distances of coasts, the heights, courses, &c. in a sea-chart, which in our poet's time was called a card. In 1589 was published in 4to. A briefe Discourse of Mappes and Cardes, and of their Uses. MALONE. "In the shipman's card." Macb. 1 Witch. I. 3. For undo, the fo. of 1632 reads follow. (19) the age is grown so picked, that, &c.] "At once pointed so fine and sharp, and having also so much of vogue and fashionable character." The two ideas are so clung together, that one appears plainly to have drawn on the other. The general and particular allusion is so incorporated, that it must be taken as a twin birth, not to be separated without injury to itself, and confusion to the reader. See L. L. L. V. 1. Holofern. For that, the fo. of 1632 reads and. It was ordered, Mr. Steevens says, by proclamation, in 5 Ed. IV., that the "beaks or pykes of shoes and boots should not pass two inches, upon pain of cursing by the clergy, and forfeiting twenty shillings." In the preceding reign, the pykes were of such length, that they were obliged to be tied up to the knee with chains of silver, and gilt, or at least silken, laces. (20) that young Hamlet was born] By this scene it appears that Hamlet was then thirty years old, and knew Yorick well, who had been dead twenty-two years. And yet in the beginning of the play he is spoken of as a young man, one that designed to go back to school, i. e. to the University of Wittenberg. The poet in the fifth Act had forgot what he wrote in the first. BLACKSTONE. In these matters our author was too careless; and this was a sort of episode, in which he would venture to take the largest licence. (21) hold the laying in] We have "hold taking” in Tim, I. 2. Apem.; where Mr. Steevens cites II H. IV. “ a rotten case abides no handling." (22) Here's a scull now: this scull has lain in the earth, &c.] The quartos read, "Here's a scull now hath lyen you i'the earth," &c. (23) A pestilence on him for a mad rogue] We have in Ro. and Jul. 1. Music. IV. 5. " a pestilent knave." (24) my gorge rises at it] "Cast the gorge," Tim. IV. 3. lish." Othel. II. 1. lago. Stomach. from gorge, Fr. throat. (25) Imperial Cæsar, dead, and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that the earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw] The quartos read imperious; which Shakespeare (see Cymb. IV. 3. Imog. and Tr. and Cr. V. 5. Hect.) and his contemporaries use for imperial: and it was so used down to at least the middle of the next century. Drayton in his Muse's Elysium has: And, "Or Jove's emperious Queene." Nimph. 1. "In the proud power of his emperious hand." Moses his Birth, b. 1. 4to. 1630. Without some historical reference, such as that subjoined, the reader would scarce believe that the text gives no very unfaithful picture of the general state of the habitations of our countrymen, at a period as late as the reign of Elizabeth. "In the fenny countries and northern parts, unto this day, for lack of wood they are enforced to continue the ancient manner of building (houses set up with a few posts and many raddles), so in the open and champain countries, they are enforced, for want of stuff, to use no studs at all, but only frank-posts, and such principals, with here and there a girding, whereunto they fasten their splints or raddles, and then cast it all over with thick clay, to keep out the wind. Certes this rude kind of building made the Spaniards in Q. Mary's day to wonder, and say, "these English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king." Harrison's Description of England, prefixed to Hollingsh. p. 187. Ellis's Specimen of Engl. Poets, 1811, l. 322. Hume, in his Hist. vol. V. note P. P. states Harrison's work to have been printed 1577. Cotgrave, in 1611, cited by Mr. Malone, interprets " Lis de vent, a gust or flaw of wind:" and Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, 1602, tells us, "one kind of these storms they call a flaw, or flaugh, which is a mightie gale of wind, passing suddainely to the shore, and working strong effects upon whatsoever it incountreth in his way." fo. 5, b. We find in Florio's Ital. Dict. 1598: "Groppo, a flaw, or berrie of wind." See pirry, Todd's Dict. And here we will add from Roberte Whytinton, poet laureate's Tullyes offyces, "That rageous pyrey of civyle and intestyne discensyon amonge them selfe. Illius civilis et intestini dissidii tumultus." To the Reader, 8vo. 1534. For winter's, the quartos read "water's flaw." (26) Shards] Broken pieces of earthenware, pot-sherds, something shorn off. Skærf, fragmen. Suio-Goth. testa. scherf. Belg. Anglif in d mutant. Shardes of an earthen pot. fragmentuin testæ ruptæ." Ihre's Gloss. Suiog. Shards, scare, and shreds, are all derived, says Mr. Tooke, from the Sax. verb to divide or separate. Divers. of Purley, II. 173. and consistently therewith, sheard, shard, and shern are used in the sense of fragment, shell, scale, or sheath, of insects' wings, and dung. "A sharde, or broken piece of a tyle. Testa." Wythals's shorte Dict. 4to. 1568, fo. 32, b. "Shardes, or pieces of stones, broken or shattered." Sub voce Rubble. Baret. Mr. Ritson cites Job, ii. 8: "And he took him a potsherd, (i. e. a piece of a broken pot,) to scrape himself withal." In Baret it is also "the shell of an egg or snail." For this sense, or that of sheath and scale, see Macb. III. 2. Macb. "the shard-borne beetle." Citing Drayton, as applicable to the last sense, "I scorn all earthly dung bred scarabies," Idea, XXXI. Mr. Tollet states, that in the north of Staffordshire cowsherd is the word generally used for cow-dung. "The humble-bee taketh no scorn to loge on a cowe's foule shard." A petite palace of Pettie his pleasure, p. 164. "Turf, and peat, and cow-sheards, are cheap fuels, and last long." Bacon's Nat. Hist. exp. p. 775; and Mr. Holt White adds, "how that nation, rising like the beetle from the cowshern, hurtleth against al things.' A brief Discourse of the Spanish State, 1590, p. 3. (27) virgin rites] For rites, crants, the reading of the quartos, is adopted by the modern editors: upon which Dr. Johnson says, I have been informed by an anonymous correspondent, that crants is the German word for garlands, and I suppose it was retained by us from the Saxons. To carry gar |