"That Grief and Patience, rooted in him both, "Mingle their spurs together." I am aware that Homer's danguos yɛhaoɑoa, and a passage in Macbeth : -My plenteous joys "Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves may be urged against what has been suggested; but it should be remembered, that in these instances it is joy which bursts into tears. There is no instance, I believe, either in poetry or real life, of sorrow smiling in anguish. In pain indeed the case is different; the suffering Indian having been known to smile in the midst of torture.-But, however this may be, the sculptor and the painter are confined to one point of time, and cannot exhibit successive movements in the countenance. Dr. Percy, however, observes to me, that grief may mean here grievance, in which sense it is used in Dr. Powel's History of Wales, 1584, 4to. p. 356. "Of the wrongs and griefs done to the noblemen at Stratalyn," &c. In the original (printed at the end of Wynne's History of Wales, 8vo.) it is gravamina, i. e. grievances. The word is certainly likewise used by our author in this sense in one of his historical plays, but not, I believe, in the singular number. MALONE. 416. I am all the daughters of my father's house, And all the brothers too -] This was the most artful A& II. artful answer that could be given. The question was of such a nature, that to have declined the appearance of a direct answer, must have raised suspicion. This has the appearance of a direct answer, that the sister died of her love: she (who passed for a man) saying, she was all the daughters of her father's house. WARBURTON. Such another equivoque occurs in Lylly's Galathea, -my father had but one daughter, and STEEVENS. 1592: 420. bide no denay.] Denay is denial. To denay is an antiquated verb sometimes used by Holinshed: so, p. 620:" -the state of a cardinal which was naied and denaied him." Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, b. ii. c. 10. -thus did say "The thing, friend Battus, you demand, not gladly I denay." STEEVENS. 436. nettle of India ?] The poet must here mean a zoophyte, called the Urtica Marina, abounding in the Indian seas. "Quæ tacta totius corporis pruritum quendam excitat, unde nomen urtica est sortita." Wolfgang. Frangii Hist. Animal. "Urtica marinæ omnes pruritum quendam movent, et acrimoniâ suâ venerem extinctam et soptam excitant.” Johnstoni Hist. Nat. de Exang. Aquat. p. 56. Perhaps the same plant is alluded to by Greene in -the flower of India his Card of Fancy, 1608: " pleasant to be seen, but whoso smelleth to it, feeleth present present smart." Again, in his Mamillia, 1593: "Consider, the herb of India is of pleasant smell, but whoso cometh to it feeleth present smart." Again, in P. Holland's translation of the 9th book of Pliny's Nat. Hist, "As for those nettles, there be of them that in the night raunge to and fro, and likewise change their colour. Leaves they carry of a fleshy substance, and of flesh they feed. Their qualities is to raise an itching smart." The old copy, however, reads-mettle of India, which may mean, my girl of gold, my precious girl; and this is probably the true reading. The change, which I have not disturbed, was made in the the second folio. STEEVENS. how, he jets] To jet is to strut, to agitate the body by a proud motion. So, in Arden of Feversham, 1592: 453. " "Is now become the steward of the house, Again, in Bussy's D' Ambois, 1640: "To jet in others' plumes so haughtily." STEEVENS. 461. the lady of the Strachy] We should read Trachy, i. e. Thrace; for so the old English writers called it. Mandeville says, "As Trachye and Macedoigne, of which Alisandre was kyng." It was common to use the article the before names of places; and this was no improper instance, where the scene was in Illyria. WARBURTON. What we should read is hard to say. Here is an allusion to some old story which I have not yet discovered. JOHNSON. Straccio (see Torriano's and Altieri's dictionaries) signifies clouts and tatters; and Torriano in his grammar, at the end of his dictionary, says that straccio was pronounced stratchi. So that it is probable that Shakspere's meaning was this, that the lady of the queen's wardrobe had married a yeoman of the king's, who was vastly inferior to her. SMITH. Such is Mr. Smith's note; but it does not appear that Strachy was ever an English word, nor will the meaning given it by the Italians be of any use on the present occasion. Perhaps a letter has been misplaced, and we ought to read-starchy: i. e. the room in which linen underwent the once most complicated operation of starching. I do not know that such a word exists; and yet it would not be unanalogically formed from the substantive starch. In Harsnett's Déclaration, 1603, wę meet with "a yeoman of the sprucery;" i. e. wardrobe; and in the Northumberland Household-Book, nursery is spelt nurcy. Starchy, therefore for starchery may be admitted. In Romeo and Juliet, the place where paste was made, is called the pastry. The lady who had the care of the linen may be significantly opposed to the yeoman, i. e. an inferior officer of the wardrobe. While the five different coloured starches were worn, such a term might have been current. In the year 1564, a Dutch-woman professed to teach this art to our fair country-women. "Her usual price (says Stowe) was four four or five pounds to teach them how to starch, and twenty shillings how to seeth starch." The alteration was suggested to me by a typographical error in The World toss'd at Tennis, 1620, by Middleton and Rowley, where straches is printed for starches. I cannot fairly be accused of having dealt much in conjectural emendation, and therefore feel the less reluctance to hazard a guess on this desperate passage. STEEVENS. In Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, a gingerbread woman is called lady of the basket. 465. MALONE. -blows him.] i. e. puffs him up. So, in "There is a vent of blood, and something blown." 468. which shoots stones. STEEVENS. -stone-bow,- -] i. e. a cross-brow, a bow JOHNSON. This instrument is mentioned again in Marston's Dutch Courtesan, 1605" whoever will hit the mark of profit, must, like those who shoot in stone-bows, wink with one eye." Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's King and no King: -children will shortly take him "For a wall, and set their stone-bows in his fore 470. head." STEEVENS. come from a day-bed, -] Spenser, in the first canto of the third book of his Faerie Queene, has dropped a stroke of satire on this lazy fashion: |