ruin [who] sees this overgrown rule of Cornwall, a man that exercises the power intrusted with him by Lear, only in acts of oppression and cruelty; and who (she, Cordelia) shall yet find a time to give to losers their remedies' to virtue the means of seeking redress for her wrongs." Thus the reasoning acquires closeness, and exhibits a proper inference which was wanting before. B.

Edg. The country gives me proof and prece-
dent

Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Strike in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;

Of Bedlam beggars,] In the Bell-man of London, by Decker, 5th edit. 1640, is the following account of one of these characters, under the title of an Abraham Man. "he sweares he hath been in Bedlam, and will talke frantickely of purpose: you see pinnes stuck in sundry places of his naked flesh, espe cially in his armes, which paine he gladly puts himselfe to, only to make you believe he is out of his wits. He calles himselfe by the name of Poore Tom, and comming near any body cries out, Poor Tom is a-cold. Of these Abraham-men, some be exceeding merry, and doe nothing but sing songs fashioned out of their owne braines: some will dance, others will doe nothing but either laugh or weepe: others are dogged, and so sullen both in loke and speech, that spying but a small company in a house, they boldly and bluntly enter, compelling the servants through feare to give them what they demand." To sham Abraham, a cant term, still in use among sailors and the vulgar, may have this origin. STEEV.

Of Bedlam beggars.' These Bedlam beggars, as also the Turlupins, greatly resemble in manners the Santos of the East. B.

Edg. Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and

mills,

Poor pelting villages,] Pelting is used by Shakspeare in the sense of beggarly: I suppose from pelt, a skin. The poor being generally clothed in leather. WARB.

Pelting is, I believe, only an accidental depravation of petty. Shakspeare uses it in the Midsummer Night's Dream of smal brooks. JOHN.

Beaumont and Fletcher often use the word in the same sense as Shakspeare. So in King and no King, Act IV.; "This pelting, prating peace is good for nothing." "To learn the pelting

Spanish Curate, Act II. sc. ult.

law." Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream," every pelling river." Measure for Measure, Act II. sc. vii: "And every pelting petty officer."

Again, in Troilus and Cressida, Hector says to Achilles : "We have had pelting wars since you refus'd

"The Grecian cause."

From the first of the two last instances it appears not to be a corruption of petty, which is used the next word to it, but seems to be the same as paltry; and if it comes from pelt a skin, as Dr. Warburton says, the poets have furnished villages, peace, law, rivers, officers of justice and wars, all out of one wardrobe. STEEV.

"Pelting" should in this place be "palting," which signifies paltry, trifling: "Pelting" is fuming, fretful. Pelting and pulting, or paltring, are frequently confounded and mistaken for each other. But I will endeavour to shew, from the above quoted passages, the different significations of the words.

"This pelting, prating peace." It should be palting, meaning this trifling, prating peace, &c.

"To learn the pelting law." Here too it should be palling, or pallring. To pulter, is sometimes to shift, to dodge. The propriety of the epithet, therefore, when applied to law, is easily seen.

"Every pelting river." Palting, i. e. paltry.

"Every pelting petty officer," i. e. noisy, turbulent. "We have had pelting wars," &c. i. e. fuming, angry wars, &c. B.

Edg.

Poor Turlygood! poor Tom!

That's something yet.

-poor Turlygood! poor Tom!] We should read Turlupin. In the fourteenth century there was a new species of gipsies, called Turlupins, a fraternity of naked beggars, which ran up and down Europe. However, the Church of Rome hath dignified them with the name of heretics, and actually burned some of them at Paris. But what sort of reli

gionists they were, appears from Genebrard's account of them. "Turlupin Cynicorum sectam suscitantes, de nuditate pudendorum, et publico coitu." Plainly, nothing but a band of Tom-o'-Bedlam's. WARB.

Hanmer reads poor Turlurù. It is probable the word Turlygood was the common corrupt pronunciation. John.

- poor

Poor Turlygood! poor Tom.' Warburton is certainly right in saying that the Turlupins are the people alluded to by Edgar. We must, however, instead of poor Turlygood read as follows-poor Turly! good! Tom! that's something yet.' He is practising the speech which may accord with his character, and therefore calls himself poor Turly, a name contracted of Turlupin, literally a vagabond. He then goes on- good—i. e. "this will do." B.

Fool. When a man is over-lusty at legs, then he wears wooden nether-stocks.

-over-lusty in this place has a double signification. Lusti ness anciently meant sauciness.

So, in Decker's If this be not a good play the Devil is in it, 1612:

upon pain of being plagued for their lustyness." STEEV. 'Over-lusty at legs.' It does not appear from either of the above quotations, that lusty was at any time used for saucy. It certainly means sturdy, resolute, when not taken in its primitive and particular sense of large, corpulent. Legs as well as lusty' is here employed equivocally. The forced signification of legs is embassy. It is contracted of legation, (leg')-The ambiguity is this. Kent has his over-lusty' (large or thick) legs in the stocks; and as he has been over-sturdy, or over-resolute in his quality of ambassador from Lear;-in the legations, in the businesses on which he had been sent, he is in the stocks. B.

Fool. Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels, when she put them i' the paste alive; she rapt 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cry'd, Down, wantons, down.

--the cockney] It is not easy to determine the exact power of this term of contempt, which, as the editor of the Canterbury

Tales of Chaucer observes, might have been originally borrowed from the kitchen. From the ancient ballad of the Turnament of Tottenham, published by Dr. Percy in his second volume of Ancient Poetry, p. 24, it should seem to signify a cook:

"At that feast were they served in rich array;
"Every five and five had a cokenay."

i. e. a cook, or scullion, to attend them.

Shakspeare, however, in Twelfth Night, makes his Clown. say, "I am afraid this great lubber the world, will prove a cockney." In this place it seems to have a signification not unlike that which it bears at present; and, indeed, Chaucer in his Reve's Tale, ver. 4205, appears to employ it with such a

meaning:

"And when this jape is tald another day,

"I shall be halden a daffe or a cokenay."

Meres likewise, in the second part of his Wit's Commonwealth, 1598, observes, that "many cockney and wanton women are often sick, but in faith they cannot tell where." Decker, also, in his Newes from Hell, &c. 1606, has the following passage, "Tis not their fault, but our mother's, our cockering mothers, who for their labor made us to be called cockneys." notes on the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Vol. IV. p. 253. where the reader will meet with more information on this subject. STEEV.

See the

Dr. Percy imagines it signifies a cook, in the ballad of the Turnament of Tottenham :

Every five and five had a cokeney.

Certainly it cannot be a cook or scullion, but is some dish which I cannot ascertain. My authority is the following epigram from Davies :

He that comes every day, shall have a cocknay,

And he that comes but now and then, shall have a fat hen. Ep. on Engl. Prov. 179. WHAL.

The Cockney. The quotation from Decker's News from Hell leads us to the meaning, though not to the particular meaning of Cockenay, or as it is now written Cockney. To cocker is to pamper, to indulge a person in his humors. They who had been always kept at home were supposed to be cockered or pampered. Hence the stigmatizing term in some instances of Cockney i. e. cockered person.

It may be necessary to remark that to cocker has at this time precisely the same meaning that it had in former days.

The true signification of Cockney, however, I take to be simpleton, and not Londoner merely, as is generally con

ceived of it. It is compounded, I think, of two French words coq' (contracted of coque fredouille, a fool, a ninny,) and né, born. Coq-ne anglicè Cockney, i. e. fool-born. This derivation or formation of the term is totally different from any that has gone before; but when duly considered will not, perhaps, be thought implausible; far-fetched it certainly is not. It should at the same time be observed that in the quotation from the Tournament of Tottenham, and in Davies's epigram, the word in question has two several meanings: in the one it is spelled Cokenay, and in the other Cocknay. The first (T. of T.) is Cockney or fool (as explained above) and such zany or fool was, we know, in former days accustomed to attend at feasts and assemblies, for the amusement of his retainer. The second Cock'nay or Cocken-ay signifies cock's-egg-that egg, of which, according to the fable, the Cockatrice is engendered. It should here be remarked that in Shakespeare's time the Saxon participial and plural termination en was also used to mark the genitive singular :-(Cocken, Cock's) Ey or ay is egg (sy Teut. an egg.) The lines in Davies are proverbial: the first of which is meant to be expressive of a troublesome person, and is employed at once in the way of censure and banter: the other line is intended to note a totally different character, as the words, 'he that comes but now and then,' very, plainly shew. The sense of the epigram is certainly this" The importunate fellow shall be sent away ungratified, or he shall have nothing worth while the modest one, he that times his visits, shall meet with reward."

The difficulties in respect of this word cockney, have arisen from its being always written in the same or nearly the same manner, by reason of its sound, though of various import. Thus for instance, the Cockney' in our author is the foolish cook. It is here formed of Coke (Cook) and niais fr. (foolish) which latter is pronounced ni-ai. Hence Coke-ni-ai-mistakenly printed Cockney. B.

Reg. I pray you, sir, take patience; I have hope,

You less know how to value her desert,
Than she to scant her duty.