In the old translation of the Menaechmi, 1595, Menaechmus says to Peniculus:,,Away, filthie mad drivell, away! I will talk no longer with thee." As I cannot suppose the author of this ballad designed that devil should be the corre sponding rhyme to devil, I read with Dr. Farmer, arivel. STEEVENS.

I believe, with Johnson, that this is an allusion to Malvolio's name, but not in his reading, which destroys the metre. We should read

n-evil:

Adieu, good mean..

that is, good Malvolio, literally translated.

M. MASON.

I think,

The last two lines of this song have, been misunderstood. They are not addressed in the first instance to Malvolio, but are quoted by the Clown, as the words, ah, ha! are, as the usual address in the old Moralities to the Devil, I do not therefore suspect any corruption in the words,,goodman Devil." We have in The Merry Wives of Windsor: ,,No man means evil but the devil;" and in Much ado about Nothing, God's a good man.“

The compound, good-man, is again used adjec-. tively, and as a word of contempt, in King Lear:

Part (says Edmund to Kent and the Steward.) ,,With you, (replies Kent,) good-man boy, if you please."

The reason why the Vice exhorts the Devil to pare his nails, is, because the Devil was supposed from choice to keep his nails always unpared, and therefore to pare them was an affront.

MALONE.

P. 71, 1. 18. I found this credit i. e. I found it justified, credibly vouched. Whether the word credit will easily dry this meaning, I

am doubtful. The expression seems obscure; and though I have not disturbed the text, much suspect that the poet wrote:

and there I found this credent.

I very

THEOBALD.

The Oxford as he does

Credit, for account, information. editor roundly alters it to current; almost every word that Shakspeare uses in an ano malous signification. WARBURTON.

Theobald proposes to read credent, but credent does not signify justified or vouched; it means probable only, as appears from the passage he himself has quoted. Warburton says, that credit means account or information; but as I know. no instance of the word's being used in that acceptation, I believe we should read, credited instead of credit. M. MASON.

Credent is creditable, not questionable. So, in Measure for Measure, Angelo says:

,,For my authority bears a credent bulk... STEEVENS.

Perhaps credit is here used for credited. So, in the first scene of this play, heat for heated; and in Hamlet, hoist for hoisted. MALONE. P. 71, 1. 24. Discourse, for reason.

P. 71, 1. 27. To any other trust,] To any other belief, or confidence, to any other fixed opinion.

JOHNSON. deceivable -] Our author

P. 72, 1. 2. licentiously uses this word for deceptious.

MALONE.

P. 72, 1. 7. Chantries (says Cowel in his Law Dictionary) are usually little chapels, or particu-' lar altars, in some cathedral or parochial church;

and endowed with revenues for the maintenance of one or more priests, whose office it is to sing masses for the souls of their founders, etc.

STEEVENS.

P. 72, 1. 12. Whiles] is until. This word is still so used in the northern countries. It is, I think, used in this sense in the preface to the Accidence. JOHNSON.

Almost throughout the old copies of Shakspeare, whiles is given us instead of white. Mr. Rowe, the first reformer of his spelling, made the change. STEEVENS.

P. 72, l. 16. Truth is fidelity. JOHNSON. P. 72, 1. 22. And heavens so shine,] Alluding perhaps to a superstitious supposition, the memory of which is still preserved in a prover bial saying: ̧„Happy is the bride upon whom the sun shines, and blessed the corpse upon which the rain falls.“ STEEVENS.

P. 73, 1. rg. 19. so that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives,] One cannot but wonder, that this passage should have perplexed the commentators. In Marlowe's Lust's Dominion, the Queen says to the Moor:

Come, let's kisse."
Moor.,,Away, away."

Queen.,,No, no, sayes, I; and twice away

sayes stay."

Sir Philip Sidney has enlarged upon this thought in the sixty-third stanza of his Astrophel and Stella.

FARMER.

P. 74, 1. 2. - or the bells of St. Bennet, -} That is, if the other arguments I have used are not sufficient, the bells of St. Bennet, etc.

MALONE!

We should read nét," etc. instead of or. M. MASON.

,,as the bells of St. Ben

When in this play Shakspeare mentioned the bed of Ware, he recollected that the scene was in Illyria, and added, in England; but his sense of the same impropriety could not restrain him from the bells of St. Bennet. JOHNSON.

are

Shakspeare's impropriety and anachronisms surely venial in comparison with those of contemporary writers. Lodge, in his True Tragedies of Marius and Sylla, 1594, has mentioned the razors of Palermo and St. Paul's steeple, and has introduced a Frenchman, named Don Pedro, who, in consideration of receiving forty crowns, undertakes to poison Marius. STEEVENS.

P. 74, I. 21. - scathful - i. e. mischievous, destructive. STEEVENS.

P. 74, 1. 31. Here in the streets, desperate of shame, and state,] Unattentive to his character or his condition, like a desperate man. JOHNSON. • P. 75, 1. 3. Dear is immediate, consequential. So, in Hamlet:

,,Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven," etc. STEEVENS. P. 76, 1. 13. Fat means dull; so we say a fatheaded fellow; fat likewise means gross, and is sometimes used for obscene. JOHNSON.

P. 76, k. 25. 26. Like to the Egyptian thief, at point of death,

Kill what I love; - In this simile, a particular story is presuppos'd, which ought to be known to show the justness and propriety of the comparison. It is taken from Heliodorus's AEthiopics, to which our outhor was indebted for the allusion. This Egyptian thief was Thyamis, who was a native of Memphis, and at the

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head of a band of robbers. Theagenes and Chariclea falling into their hands, Thyamis fell desperately in love with the lady, and would have married her. Soon after, a stronger body of robbers coming down upon Thyamis's party, he was in such fears, for his mistress, that he had her shut into a cave with his treasure. It was customary with those barbarians, when they despaired of their own safety, first to make away with those whom they held dear, and desired for com panions in the next life. Thyamis, therefore, benetted round with his enemies, raging with love, jealousy, and anger, went to his cave; and calling aloud in the Egyptian. tongue, So soon as he

heard himself auswer'd toward the cave's mouth. by a Grecian, making to the person by the direc tion of her voice, he caught her by the hair with his left hand, and (supposing her to be Chariclea) with his right hand plunged his sword into her breast. THEOBALD.

P. 77, I. 26. That makes thee strangle thy pro priety: i. e. suppress, or disown thy property.

P. 78, 1. 4. rings;] In our man received as

MALONE.

by interchangement of your ancient marriage ceremony, the well as gave a ring. STEEVENS. P. 78, 1. 12. Case is a word used contemptuously for skin. We yet talk of a fox-case, meaning the stuffed skin of a fox. JoHNSON. P. 79, 1. 21. 22. Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure, or a pavin, I hate a drunken rogue.] Bailey's Dictionary says, pavan is the 'lowest sort of instrumental music; and when this play was written, the pavin and the passamezzo might be in vogue only with the vulgar, as with Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet: and hence Sir Toby