stone in your liver: You should then have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness. This was looked for at your hand, and this was baulked: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt, either of valour, or policy.

SIR AND. And't be any way, it must be with valour; for policy I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist', as a politician.

SIR TO. Why then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour. Challenge me the count's youth to fight with him; hurt him in eleven places;

7

as lief be a BROWNIST.] The Brownists were so called from Mr. Robert Browne, a noted separatist in Queen Elizabeth's reign. [See Strype's Annals 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."

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This Browne was descended from an ancient and honourable family in Rutlandshire; his grandfather Francis had a charter granted him by K. 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, 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. This was not a very extraordinary privilege. In a Booke of Presidentes, printed by Richard Tottyl, 1569, fo. 120, we meet with this form : "A lycence for a man to keepe on his cappe." BOSWELL.

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:

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

39

Again, in Love and Honour, by Sir W. D'Avenant :

"Go kiss her :-by this hand, a Brownist is
"More amorous." STEEVENS.

my niece shall take note of it: and assure thyself, there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman, than report of valour.

FAB. There is no way but this, sir Andrew.

SIR AND. Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?

SIR TO. Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent, and full of invention: taunt him with the licence of ink: if thou thou'st him some thrice 9, it

8

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in a martial hand; be CURST -] 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.

9 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 Shakspeare 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: "Does he thou me?

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"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

shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set 'em down; go, about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter: About it.

SIR AND. Where shall I find you? SIR TO. We'll call thee at the cubiculo 1: Go. [Exit Sir ANDREW. FAB. This is a dear manakin to you, sir Toby. SIR TO. I have been dear to him, lad; some two thousand strong, or so.

FAB. We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll not deliver it.

SIR TO. Never trust me then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think, oxen and

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 vagrants; 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 much troubled, may easily be reformed; they having no commission to play in any place without leave: and therefore, if by your willingnesse they be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them."

STEEVENS.

Though I think it probable Lord Coke might have been in Shakspeare's mind when he wrote the above passage, yet it is by no means certain. It ought to be observed, that the conduct of that great lawyer, bad as it was on this occasion, received too much countenance from the practice of his predecessors, both at the bar and on the bench. The State Trials will shew, to the disgrace of the profession, that many other criminals were thou'd by their secutors and judges, besides Sir Walter Raleigh. In Knox's History of the Reformation, are eighteen articles exhibited against Master George Wischarde, 1546, every one of which begins"thou false heretick," and sometimes with the addition of "thief, traitor, runagate," &c. REED.

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pro

at THE cubiculo:] I believe we should read-" at thy cubiculo." MALONE.

wainropes cannot hale them together 2. For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of the anatomy.

FAB. And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty.

Enter MARIA.

SIR TO. Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes 1.

MAR. If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me: yon' gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be saved by believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He's in yellow stockings.

SIR TO. And cross-gartered?

MAR. Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps

2 Oxen and wain ropes cannot hale them together.] So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Loyal Subject: "A coach and four horses cannot draw me from it." Boswell.

3 And his OPPOSITE,] Opposite in our author's time was used as a substantive, and synonymous to adversary. See before p. 425. MALONE.

4 Look, where the youngest WREN of NINE comes.] The women's parts were then acted by boys, sometimes so low in stature, that there was occasion to obviate the impropriety by such kind of oblique apologies. WARBURTON.

The wren generally lays nine or ten eggs at a time, and the last hatched of all birds are usually the smallest and weakest of the whole brood.

So, in A Dialogue of the Phoenix, &c. by R. Chester, 1601 : "The little wren that many young ones brings." Again, in A Mery Play betwene Johan the Husband, Tyb his Wyfe, &c. fol. Rastel, 1533:

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Syr, that is the lest care I have of nyne." The old copy, however, reads-" wren of mine." STEEVENS. Again, in Sir Philip Sidney's Ourania, a poem, by N. Breton, 1606:

"The titmouse, and the multiplying wren." The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. MALONE.

a school i' the church.-I have dogged him, like his murderer: He does obey every point of the letter that I dropped to betray him. He does smile his face into more lines, than are in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies: you have not seen such a thing as 'tis ; I can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know, my lady will strike him; if she do, he'll smile, and take't for a great favour.

SIR TO. Come, bring us, bring us where he is.

SCENE III.

A Street.

Enter ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN.

[Exeunt.

SEB. I would not, by my will, have troubled you; But, since you make your pleasure of your pains, I will no further chide you.

ANT. I could not stay behind you; my desire, More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth; And not all love to see you, (though so much, As might have drawn one to a longer voyage,) But jealousy what might befall your travel, Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger, Unguided, and unfriended, often prove

5 He does smile his face into MORE LINES, than are in the NEW MAP, WITH THE AUGMENTATION OF THE INDIES :] A clear allusion to a Map engraved for Linschoten's Voyages, an English translation of which was published in 1598. This Map is multilineal in the extreme, and is the first in which the Eastern Islands are included. STEEVENS.

6 I know, my lady will STRIKE him ;] We may suppose, that in an age when ladies struck their servants, the box on the ear which Queen Elizabeth is said to have given to the Earl of Essex, was not regarded as a transgression against the rules of common behaviour. STEEVENS.