often as thou hast or shalt so say, so oft do I and will I say that thou doest lye. Of these kinde of Lyes giuen in this manner often arise much contention in words, and diuers intricate worthy battailes, multiplying wordes vpon wordes, whereof no sure conclusion can arise.' By which he means, they cannot proceed to cut one another's throats while there is an if between. Which is the reason of Shakespeare making the Clown say, 'I knew when seven justices,' &c. Caranza was another of these authentic authors upon the Duello. Fletcher, in his last act of Love's Pilgrimage, ridicules him with much humour" (WARBURTON,-whose note I have greatly altered and corrected by means of the old ed. of the transl. of Saviolo's work).

Book of Riddles-The, i. 350: Was, in all probability, what is called in the edition of 1629, The Booke of Meery Riddles, &c., a copy of which is preserved at Bridgewater House. No earlier edition is known; but earlier editions must have once existed, as the work is mentioned by Laneham in his Letter from Kenilworth, 1575. Book of Songs and Sonnets, i. 350: Most probably the Songes and Sonnettes by Lord Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and others, printed in 1557, and very popular during the time of Queen Elizabeth. books for good manners, iii. 74: There were several books of this kind, the earliest of which was probably The boke named and intytled Good Maners, printed by De Worde in 1507.

boot, profit, gain, something added: with boot, i. 471; vii. 345; it is no boot (it is of no avail), iii. 179; v. 63; Grace to boot (over and above, in addition), iii. 423; there's some boot (" something over and above," JOHNSON), iii. 484; without boot! what a boot is here, &c. iii. 485; there is no boot ("no advantage, no use, in delay or refusal," JoHNSON), iv. 109; make boot of this, v. 165; Young York he is but boot ("that which is thrown in," JOHNSON, a makeweight), v. 426; Saint George to boot (over and above, in addition), v. 451; Make boot of his distraction, vii. 563. (In the passages, Grace to boot and Saint George to boot, Malone explains to boot by "to help.”)

boot, booty: Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage, &c. iv. 430; boot and glory too, viii. 130.

boot, to benefit, to enrich: I will boot thee with what gift beside Thy modesty can beg, vii. 527.

boot, to put on boots: Boot, boot, Master Shallow, iv. 397. boots-Give me not the, i. 264: "A proverbial expression, though now disused, signifying, don't make a laughing-stock of me; don't play upon me. The French have a phrase, Bailler foin en corne; which Cotgrave thus interprets, To give one the boots; to sell him a bargain" (THEOBALD,-whose explanation of the text I believe to be right): "An allusion, as it is supposed, to the diabolical torture of the boot. Not a great while before this play was written

it had been inflicted in the presence of King James on one Dr. Fian, a supposed wizard, who was charged with raising the storms that the king encountered in his return from Denmark . . . . The unfortunate man was afterwards burned" (DoUCE): This torture consisted in the leg and knee of the criminal being enclosed within a tight iron boot or case, wedges of iron being then driven in with a mallet between the knee and the iron boot: but probably most readers will recollect the description of Macbriar undergoing this punishment in Scott's Old Mortality.

bore in hand: see bear in hand.

bore of the matter-Much too light for the, vii. 186: "The bore is the caliber of a gun, or the capacity of the barrel. The matter (says Hamlet) would carry heavier words'" (JOHNSON).

bores me with some trick-He, "He stabs or wounds me by some artifice or fiction" (JOHNSON), "He undermines me with some device" (STAUNTON), v. 488.

borne in hand: see bear in hand.

borrows money in God's name, ii. 137: "i.e. is a common beggar. This alludes to the 17th verse of the 19th chapter of Proverbs ; 'He that giveth to the poor lendeth unto the Lord" (STEEVENS). bosky, woody, i. 220 (where, according to Steevens, bosky acres "are fields divided from each other by hedge-rows"); iv. 274. bosom, wish, desire: And you shall have your bosom on this wretch, i. 503.

bosom of thy love—Even in the milk-white, i. 297; “In her excellent

white bosom, these,” vii. 134 : "Women anciently had a pocket in the fore part of their stays, in which they not only carried loveletters and love-tokens, but even their money and materials for needle-work" (STEEVENS).

boss'd, embossed, studded, iii. 138.

botcher, a mender of old clothes, iii. 266, 336; vi. 161.

bottled spider, "a large, bloated, glossy spider, supposed to contain venom proportionate to its size" (RITSON), v. 369, 427.

bottles, bottles of hay: Some two hundred bottles, viii. 199.

bottom, a low ground, a valley: the neighbour bottom, iii. 62; so rich a bottom, iv. 259.

bottom, a ball of thread: a bottom of brown thread, iii. 163.

bottom it on me, wind it on me, make me the bottom or centre on which it is wound, i. 302.

bots, worms that breed in the entrails of horses, iii. 144; iv. 224 ; bots on't (a comic execration), viii. 23.

bought and sold: see buy and sell.

bourn, a limit, a boundary: Bourn, bound of land, i. 197; No bourn 'twixt his and mine, iii. 424; a bourn, a pale, a shore, vi. 43; from whose bourn No traveller returns, vii. 149; this chalky bourn (“ this chalky boundary of England, towards France," STEEVENS), vii. 323; I'll set a bourn, vii. 497; From bourn to bourn, viii. 54.

bourn, a brook, a rivulet: Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me, vii. 305. bow, a yoke: As the ox hath his bow, iii. 48.

bow, &c.-If I, v. 61 see note 119, v. 97.

bowling-Top the, viii. 184: see bolins.

boy my greatness-Some squeaking Cleopatra, vii. 593: An allusion to female characters being acted by boys in Shakespeare's time (at least on the English stage).

boy-queller, boy-killer, vi. 95.

brabble, a squabble, a quarrel, iii. 386; vi. 299.

brabbler, a clamorous quarrelsome person, a wrangler, iv. 68. Brabbler, the name of a hound, vi. 83.

brace, "armour for the arm" (STEEVENS): and pointed to this brace, viii. 23.

brace, state of defence: it stands not in such warlike brace, vii. 384. brach-The deep-mouth'd, iii. 106; Lady, my brach, iv. 252; Achilles' brach, vi. 30 (on which expression see note 46, vi. 108); the lady brach, vii. 266; spaniel, brach, or lym, vii. 307: "Brach. From the French brac or braque, or the German bract, a scenting dog: a lurcher, or beagle; or any fine-nosed hound. Spelman's Glossary. Used also, by corruption, for a bitch, probably from similarity of sound; and because, on certain occasions, it was convenient to have a term less coarse in common estimation than the plain one. See Du Cange in Bracco. The following account shows the lastmentioned corruption: 'There are in England and Scotland two kinds of hunting-dogs, and no where else in the world: the first kind is called ane rache (Scotch), and this is a foot-scenting creature, both of wild beasts, birds, and fishes also, which lie hid among the rocks the female thereof in England is called a brache. A brach is a mannerly name for all hound-bitches.' Gentleman's Recreation, p. 27, 8vo." Nares's Gloss.: "Brach. The kennel term for a bitch-hound." Gifford's note on Ford's Works, vol. i. p. 22. braid-Since Frenchmen are so, iii. 261: Here Steevens understands braid to mean "crafty or deceitful;" while Richardson (in his Dict.) would refer it to "the suddenness and violence" of Bertram's wooing. (In Dr. Latham's edition of Johnson's Dict. is a long and very unsatisfactory article on this word.)

braid, to upbraid, to reproach: 'Twould braid yourself too near, viii. 9. brain, to beat out the brains, i. 212; That brain'd (defeated) my purpose, i. 517.

brain, to comprehend, to understand: such stuff as madmen Tongue, and brain not, vii. 719.

brainish apprehension, " distempered, brain-sick mood, or conceit" (CALDECOTT), vii. 173.

brain-pan, the skull, v. 185.

brakes of vice, and answer none-Some run from, i. 458: Here the meaning of brakes (a word which was used in sundry significations) has been much disputed: the context, I think, shows that we ought to understand it in the sense of "engines of torture." brands - Nicely Depending on their, vii. 668: Here brands likely to have been the inverted torches mentioned by Mr. Steevens" (DOUCE).

are

brass of this day's work-Shall witness live in, iv. 482: "in brass, i.e. in brazen plates anciently let into tomb-stones" (STEEVENS). brave, a boast, a vaunt, a defiance: There end thy brave, iv. 68; This brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head, vi. 71; to bear me down with braves, vi. 298.

brave, to make fine or splendid: thou hast braved many men; brave not me (with a quibble), iii. 162; He should have brav'd the east an hour ago, v. 451.

brave, to defy, to bluster: Enter Demetrius and Chiron, braving, vi.

298.

bravery, finery, sumptuous apparel, magnificence: witless bravery,

i. 453; his bravery is not on my cost, iii. 32; double change of bravery, iii. 160; There shall want no bravery, viii. 189.

bravery, bravado: the bravery of his grief, vii. 202; malicious bravery, vii. 378.

brawl-A French, ii. 183: "The word brawl in its signification of a dance is from the French branle, indicating a shaking or swinging motion. The following accounts [account] of this dance may be found more intelligible than that cited from Marston [in his Malcontent, act iv. sc. 2]. It was performed by several persons uniting hands in a circle and giving each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. It usually consisted of three pas and a pied-joint, to the time of four strokes of the bow; which being repeated was termed a double brawl. With this dance balls were usually opened" (DoUCE). But there was a great variety of brawls. brazen tombs-Live register'd upon our, ii. 163: The allusion, as was first remarked by Douce, is "to the ornamenting the tombs of eminent persons with figures and inscriptions on plates of brass." breach than the observance-More honour'd in the, vii. 120: Samuel Rogers used to maintain that this line, though it has passed into a sort of proverbial expression, is essentially nonsense: "how," he

E

50

BREACH-BREATHE.

would ask, "can a custom be honour'd in the breach ?" Compare the following line of a play which has been printed as a joint production of Jonson, Fletcher, and Middleton ;

"He keeps his promise best that breaks with hell." The Widow, act iii. sc. 2. breach of the sea, breaking of the sea, iii. 343 ("the boat. ... would

be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea." Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, vol. i. p. 43, ed. 1755; "the wind.... made a great breach of the sea upon the point." Id. vol. i. p. 132; “a breach of the sea upon some rocks." Id. vol. i. p. 134).

break cross or across, a metaphor from tilting, at which it was reckoned disgraceful for the tilter to break his spear across the body of his opponent, instead of breaking it in a direct line: this last [staff] was broke cross, ii. 133; breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover, iii. 50; so I had broke thy pate. ... Good faith, across, iii. 224.

break up, to break open: Break up the gates, v. 14.

break up, to carve,-used metaphorically of opening a letter: Boyet,

you can carve; Break up this capon, ii. 189; An it shall please you to break up this, ii. 365: On the first of these passages Theobald observes; "Our poet uses this metaphor as the French do their poulet; which signifies both a young fowl and a love-letter. Poulet, amatoriæ literæ, says Richelet; and quotes from Voiture, Repondre au plus obligeant poulet du monde, To reply to the most obliging letter in the world. The Italians use the same manner of expression, when they call a love-epistle una pollicetta [polizzetta] amorosa. I ow'd the hint of this equivocal use of the word to my ingenious friend, Mr. Bishop :" Farmer adds; "Henry IV., consulting with Sully about his marriage, says, 'My niece of Guise would please me best, notwithstanding the malicious reports that she loves poulets in paper better than in a fricasee. A message is called a cold pigeon in the letter [by Laneham] concerning the entertainments at Killingworth Castle."

break with, to open a subject to: now will we break with him, i. 272; to break with thee of some affairs, i. 292; I will break with her and with her father, ii. 82; Then after to her father will I break, ibid.; let us not break with him, vi. 634; Have broken with the king, v. 556. break with, to break an engagement with: I would not break with her for more money than I'll speak of, i. 379.

breast, a voice: the fool has an excellent breast, iii. 346.

breath, a breathing, an exercise: An after-dinner's breath, vi. 39; either to the uttermost, Or else a breath (“ a slight exercise of arms," STEEVENS), vi. 74.

breathe, to utter, to speak: The worst that man can breathe, vi. 541;

You breathe in vain, vi. 542; The youth you breathe of, vii. 129; to breathe What thou hast said to me, vii. 172.