to make Sir Andrew not only speak French, but understand what is said to him in it, who in the first act did not know the English of Pourquoi. THEOBALD. -the list] Is the bound, limit, farthest

80. point.

JOHNSON.'

81. Taste your legs, sir, &c.] Perhaps this expres. sion was employed to ridicule the fantastick use of a verb, which is many times as quietly introduced in the old pieces, as in this play, or in The true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla, 1594:

"A climbing tow'r that did not taste the wind." Again, in Chapman's version of the 21st Odyssey: -he now began

"To taste the bow, the sharp shaft took, tugg'd hard."

STEEVENS. 93. -most pregnant and vouchsafed car.] Pregnant for ready. As in Measure for Measure, act i. sc. i.

STEEVENS. 95. all three ready.] The old copy reads――

all three already.

117. -I beseech you:·

STEEVENS.

-] 1, which is not in

the first copy, was added in the third folio. MALONE.

118. After the last enchantment (you did hear)] Nonsense. Read and point it thus :

After the last enchantment you did here,

i. e. after the enchantment your presence worked in my affections.

WARBURTON. The present reading is no more nonsense than the emendation.

JOHNSON:

I have not the least doubt that Dr. Warburton's conjecture is right.-Throughout the first edition of our author's Rape of Lucrece, which was probably printed under his own inspection, the word that we now spell here, is constantly written heare. So also in many other ancient books.

Viola had not simply heard that a ring had been sent; she had seen and talked with the messenger. Besides," after the last enchantment you did hear," is so awkward an expression, that it is very unlikely to have been Shakspere's. MALONE.

126.

-to one of your receiving] i. e. to one of your ready apprehension. She considers him as an arch

page..

127.

WARBURTON.

-a cyprus, -] Is a transparent stuff.

JOHNSON.

So, in No Wit like a Woman's, by Middleton: “I have thrown a cypress over my face for fear of sunburning." STEEVENS.

128. Hides my poor heart ;- -] The word poor, which is not in the original copy, was added to supply the metre, by the editor of the second folio. What the omitted word was, is quite uncertain. It might have been-fond:-or perhaps there was no omission. Hear might have been used like tear, fire, &c. as a dissyllable. MALONE.

131. —a grice ;- -] Is a step, sometimes written greese from degres, French.

JOHNSON.

So, in Othello:

Fij

"Which

"Which, as a grise step, may help these lovers." STEEVENS. 142. Then westward-ho:]. This is the name of a comedy by T. Decker, 1607. He was assisted in it by Webster, and it was acted with great success by the children of Paul's, on whom Shakspere has bestowed such notice in Hamlet, that we may be sure they were rivals to the company patronized by himself.

167. And that no woman has.; -] And that heart and bosom I have never yielded to any woman.

JOHNSON.

188. Thomas Hanmer gives to Olivia probably enough.

-save I alone.] These three words Şir

JOHNSON.

-] The Brownists

were so called from Mr. Robert Browne, a noted separatist in Queen Elizabeth's reign.. [See Strype's Annal's of Queen Elizabeth, vol. iii. p. 15, 16, &c.] In his life of Whitgift, p. 323, he informs us, that Browne, in the year 1589, "went off from the separation, and came into the communion of the church.”

This Browne was descended from an ancient and honourable family in Rutlandshire; his grandfather Francis, had a charter granted him by king Henry VIII. and confirmed by act of parliament; giving him leave to put on his hat in the presence of the king, or his heirs,

ΟΥ

or any lord spiritual or temporal in the land, and not to put it off, but for his own ease and pleasure."

Neal's History of New England, vol. i.

p. 58. GREY.

The Brownists seem, in the time of our author, to have been the constant objects of popular satire. In the old comedy of Ram-alley, 1611, is the following stroke at them:

-“of a new sect, and the good professors, will, like the Brownist, frequent gravel-pits shortly, for they use woods and obscure holes already."

Again, in Love and Honour, by Sir W. Davenant:

"Go kiss her: by this hand, a Brownist is

"More amorous

STEEVENS.

213. ——in a martial hand-] Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neglect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed-a curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls and bites. JOHNSON.

215. -taunt him with the licence of ink; if thou thou'st him some thrice,--] There is no doubt, I think, but this passage is one of those in which our author intended to shew his respect for Sir Walter Raleigh, and a detestation of the virulence of his prosecutors. The words quoted, seem to me directly levelled at the attorney-general Coke, who, in the trial of Sir Walter, attacked him with all the following indecent expressions :-" All that he did was by thy instigation, thou viper; for I thou thee, thou traytor!" (Here, by the way, are the poet's three thou's.)" You

are an odious man.”??——“ Is he base? I return it into thy throat, on his behalf."—" O damnable Atheist."—" Thou art a monster; thou hast an English face, but a Spanish heart." "Thou hast a Spanish heart, and thyself art a spider of hell."- Go to, I will lay thee on thy back for the confident'st traytor that ever came at a bar," &c. Is not here all the licence of tongue, which the poet satirically prescribes to Sir Andrew's ink? And how mean an opinion Shakspere had of these petulant invectives, is pretty evident from his close of this speech: Let there be gall enough in thy ink: though thou write it with a goose-pen no matter.-A keener lash at the attorney for a fool, than all the contumelies the attorney threw at the prisoner, as a supposed traytor! THEOBALD. The same expression occurs in Shirley's Opportunity, 1640:

"How would he domineer an he were duke!" The resentment of our author, as Dr. Farmer observes to me, might likewise have been excited by the contemptuous manner in which lord Coke has spoken of players, and the severity he was always willing to exert against them. Thus in his Speech and Charge at Norwich, with a discoverie of the abuses and corruption of officers. Nath. Butter, 4to. 1607. "Because I must hast unto an end, I will request that you will carefully put in execution the statute against vagarants; since the making whereof I have found fewer theeves, and the gaole lesse pestered than before."

"The abuse of stage-players, wherewith I find the

country