12-in a bottle like a cat.] As to the cat and bottle, I can procure no better information than the following, which does not exactly suit with the text. In some counties of England, a cat was formerly closed up with a quantity of soot in a wooden bottle, (such as that in which shepherds carry their liquor,) and was suspended on a line. He who beat out the bottom as he ran under it, and was nimble enough to escape its contents, was regarded as the hero of this inhuman diversion. STEEVENS. 13 -and called Adam.] Adam Bell was a companion of Robin Hood, and famous for shooting with a bow... 14 I cannot hide what I am :) This is one of our author's natural touches. An envious and unsocial mind, too proud to give pleasure, and too sullen to receive it, always endeavours to hide its malignity from the world and from itself, under the plainness of simple honesty, or the dignity of haughty independence. JOHNSON. 15 I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his grace;] A canker is the canker rose, dog-rose, cynosbatus, or hip. The sense is, I would rather live in obscurity the wild life of nature, than owe dignity or estimation to my brother. 16-heart-burn'd an hour after.] The pain commonly called the heart-burn, proceeds from an acid humour in the stomach, and is therefore properly enough imputed to tart looks. JOHNSON. 17 Well then, &c.] Of the two next speeches Mr. Warburton says, All this impious nonsense thrown to the bottom is the players, and foisted in without rhyme or reason. He therefore puts them in the margin. They do not deserve indeed so honourable a place, yet I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our author, who is sometimes trying to purchase merriment at too dear a rate. JOHNSON. 18 My visor is Philemon's roof, within the house is love.] Thus the whole stream of the copies, from the first downwards. Hero says to Don Pedro, God forbid the lute should be like the case! i. e. that your face should be as homely and as coarse as your mask. Upon this, Don Pedro compares his visor to Philemon's roof. 'Tis plain, the poet alludes to the story of Baucis and Philemon from Ovid: and this old couple, as the Roman poet describes it, liv'd in a thatch'd cottage; -Stipulis & canna tecta palustri. But why, within the house is love? Though this old pair lived in a cottage, this cottage received two strag gling Gods (Jupiter and Mercury) under its roof. So, Don Pedro is a prince; and though his visor is but ordinary, he would insinuate to Hero, that he has something godlike within: alluding either to his dig nity or the qualities of his person and mind. By these circumstances, I am sure, the thought is mended: as, I think verily, the text is too by the addition of a single letter-within the house is Jove. Nor is this emendation a little confirmed by another passage in our author, in which he plainly alludes to the same story. As you Like it. Clown. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most cupricious poet, honest Ovid, was amongst the Goths. Jaq. O knowledge ill inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatch'd house! THEOBALD. This emendation, thus impressed with all the power of his eloquence and reason, Theobald found in the quarto edition of 1600, which he professes to have seen; and in the first folio, the I and the I are so much alike, that the printers, perhaps, used the same type for either letter. JOHNSON. 19 Hundred merry Tales;] The book to which Shakspeare alludes, was an old translation of Les cent Nouselles Nouvelles. The original was published at Paris, in the black letter, before the year 1500; and is said to have been written by some of the royal family of France. Ames mentions a translation of it, prior to the time of Shakspeare. STEEVENS. 20-his villainy;) By which she means his malice and impiety. By his impious jests, she insinuates, he pleased libertines; and by his devising slanders of them, he angered them. WARBURTON. 21-like an usurer's chain-) I know not whether the chain was, in our author's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses usurer and alderman as synonimous terms. JOHNSON. A gold chain was the common ornament of wealthy citizens in the time of Shakspeare. 22 It is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, who puts the world into her person.] That is, It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only says herself. JOHNSON, 23 -the infernal Até in good apparel.] This is, as Mr. Warburton remarks, a pleasant allusion to the ancients' custom of representing the furies, &c. in rags. 24 bring you the length of Prester John's foot: fetch you a hair of the great cham's beard:] i. e. I will undertake the most difficult task, rather than have any conversation with lady Beatrice. Alluding to the difficulty of access to either of those monarchs, but more particularly to the former. So Cartwright, in his comedy called The Siege, or Love's Convert, 1641. "-bid me take the Parthian king by the "beard; or draw an eye-tooth from the jaw royal of "the Persian monarch." STEEVENS. 25 Thus goes very one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd;] What is it, to go to the world? perhaps, to enter by marriage into a settled state: but why is the unmarry'd lady sun-burnt? I believe we should read, Thus goes every one to the wood but I, and I am sun-burnt. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and sun. The nearest way to the wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the wood, and at last taken a crooked stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Shakspeare, in All's well that End's well, uses the phrase, to go to the world, for marriage. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of wood to sun-burnt. JOHNSON. VOL. IV. K 26 We'll fit the kid-for with a pennyworth.] i. e. we will be even with the fox now discovered. So the word kid, or kidde, signifies in Chaucer, "The sothfastness that now is hid, Romaunt of the Rose, 2171, &c. "Perceiv'd or shew'd. "He kidde anon his bone was not broken." Troilus and Cresseide, lib. i. 208. "With that anon sterte out daungere, "Out of the place where he was hidde, "His malice in his cheere was kidde." Romaunt of the Rose, 2130. GRAY. 27 into a thousand half-pence;] By half-pence the poet can here mean nothing but that the shreds of her letter were no bigger than that coin. 28 contemptible spirit.] That is, a temper inclined to scorn and contempt. It has been before remarked, that our author uses his verbal adjectives with great licence. There is therefore no need of changing the word with sir T. Hanmer to contemptuous. JOHNSON. 29 haggards of the rock.] The haggard-hawk is excessively shy, and very difficult to be tamed. 30 If low, an agate very vilely cut:] But why an agate, if low? For what likeness between a little man and an agate? The ancients, indeed, used this stone to cut upon; but very exquisitely. I make no question but |