494

WASSAIL-WATCH.

was printed in 1599, posterior to the date of this play. Numerous as this list is, the epitaph has one more, which, I suppose, was only rejected, because it would not easily fall into the verse, 'Lord Lovetoft of Worsop.' It concludes as here; 'Lord Falconbridge, Knight of the [most] noble order of St. George, St. Michael, and the Golden Fleece, Great Marshall to King Henry VI. of his realm in [of] France, who died in the battle of Bourdeaux [in the year of our Lord] 1453' [The Mansion of Magnanimitie, 1599, 4to, sig. E 4]" (MALONE): "Wexford was sometimes written Washford, even so late as the time of Sir William Temple; see my Memoirs of him, i. 384.-This enumeration of titles and honours is clearly conformable to a monumental inscription, said by Brooke the herald to have existed at Rouen; but this herald was imposed upon, and the enumeration is erroneous in the particulars which I have distinguished ["Lord Cromwell of Wingfield,”—“ The thricevictorious Lord of Falconbridge"].—I suppose that Brooke's work [no, Crompton's] is the tract printed after this play, in which Malone says he found the titles taken from the monumental plate at Rouen; but Talbot was buried at Whitchurch in Shropshire, where there is, or was, a correct description of him. See Vincent upon Brooke, p. 451-4, and Camden's Shropshire, i. 659." Courtenay's Comment. on the Historical Plays of Shakspeare, vol. i. pp. 234-6.

wassail, festivity, intemperance, drinking-bout (from the Saxon was hal, “be in health,”—the form of health-drinking), vii. 224; vii. 320; wassails, ii. 234; viii. 268.

wassail-candle-A, &c., iv. 317 : "A wassail-candle is a large candle lighted up at a feast. There is a poor quibble upon the word wax, which signifies increase as well as the matter of the honeycomb" (JOHNSON): see the preceding article.

waste-The night grows to, "The night is wasting apace” (MALONE), viii. 224.

wasteful cock—A, vii. 35 : see note 69, vii. 35.

Wat, a familiar name for a hare, ix. 246.

watch-Give me a, v. 446: Steevens was, no doubt, right when he observed; "I believe that particular kind of candle is here meant which was anciently called a watch, because, being marked out into sections, each of which was a certain portion of time in burning, it supplied the place of the more modern instrument by which we measure the hours. I have seen these candles represented with great nicety in some of the pictures of Albert Durer."

watch her, as we watch these kites, &c.—That is, to, iii. 161; I'll watch him tame, viii. 183; you must be watched ere you be made tame, vi. 59: These passages allude to the method of taming hawks by keeping them from sleep; but I do not believe (with

WATER-WAX.

49.5

Mr. Staunton) that there is the same allusion either in I think we've watch'd you now,i. 449, or in Had that was well worth watching, viii. 427.

water-False as, "As water, that will support no weight, nor keep any impression" (JOHNSON), viii. 238.

water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of-More, vi. 297:

Ray gives, among English proverbs, "Much water goes by the mill the miller knows not of. Assai acqua passa per il molino che il molinaio non vede. Ital. ;" and, among Scottish proverbs, “Meikle water runs where the miller sleeps." Proverbs, pp. 136, 299, ed. 1768.

water-galls, secondary rainbows, ix. 319 (This word, far from common even in our early writers, is several times used by Horace Walpole; "False good news are always produced by true good, like the watergall by the rainbow;" again, "Thank heaven it is complete, and did not remain imperfect like a watergall;" again, “But what signifies repeating the faint efforts of an old watergall opposed to its own old sun!" Letters, vol. i. p. 310, and vol. vi, pp. 1, 187, ed. Cunningham: In The Dialect of Craven we find "Weather-gall, A secondary or broken rainbow. Germ. wasser-galle, repercussio Iridis").

water-work: see German Hunting, &c.

waters-I am for all, "I can turn my hand to any thing, I can assume any character I please" (MALONE), iii. 381; the origin of the expression is quite uncertain.

watery star-The, The moon, iii. 404.

wax, to grow to make his godhead wax (with a quibble), ii. 223; Old I do wax, iv. 511; a full eye will wax hollow, iv. 516; the elder I wax, iv. 518; waxèd pale, i. 323; waxed shorter, vii. 46; waxen (increase) in their mirth (Farmer being wrong in supposing that here waxen is a corruption of the Saxon yezen, to hiccup), ii, 272; waxen deaf, v. 163.

wax-A man of, A man as perfectly formed as if he had been modelled in wax, vi. 389 (In some of the provinces a man of wax means nowadays" a smart cleverish fellow;" vide Moor's Suffolk Words and The Dialect of Craven: but assuredly Shakespeare does not employ the expression in that sense): and see the next article. wax-A sea of, vii. 7: Since I remarked on this passage (note 4, vii. 7) that "if the text be right, there is, of course, an allusion to the practice of writing with a style on table-books covered with wax," Dr. Ingleby has put forth a brochure entitled The Still Lion, An Essay towards the restoration of Shakespeare's text. Being part of the Shakespeare-jahrbuch, ii.; wherein he gives, with astonishing confidence, entirely new glosses of " a sea of wax " and of " a man

496

WAX.

of wax," his attempt to show that Shakespeare employs a SUBSTANTIVE wax" in the sense of "expandedness or growth" vying in absurdity with any of the misinterpretations that ignorance and conceit have ever tried to force upon the great dramatist. Lest an abridgment should do injustice to Dr. Ingleby's "discoveries," I subjoin them entire :

"The pedantic poet in Timon of Athens, i. 1, addresses the painter in the following tumid and bombastic terms;

'You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.

I have in this rough work [shewing his Ms.] shaped out a man
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment: my free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself

In a wide sea of waxe: no levell'd malice
Infects one comma of [in] the course I hold;
But flies an eagle's flight, bold and forth on,
Leaving no track behind.'

In this passage, my free drift, and a wide sea of wax, are contrasted
with the notion of halting particularly, and levelľ'd malice. In
other words, the poet is contrasting generality with particularity.
The visitors who throng the ante-room and presence-chamber of
Lord Timon, are compared by the poet to a sea at flood-time, and
are therefore designated a confluence and a great flood. Timon is
said to be embraced with amplest entertainment by this flood; and
the poet, disclaiming personal censure, declares that his 'free drift
moves itself in a wide sea of waxe.' What is the meaning of waxe?
Every one knows that the verb to wax means to grow; and the old
English writers employ it indifferently of increase and decrease; a
thing, with them, may wax smaller or greater, weaker or stronger.
To wax was to change condition simply. But more strictly it was
and is used in opposition to wane. If anything changes its condi-
tion, it either waxes or wanes. In this restricted sense, Shake-
speare in several places uses the verb to wax, of the sea:

'Who marks the waxing sea grow wave by wave.'

6

'His pupil age

Titus Andronicus, iii. 1.

Man-enter'd thus, he waxed like a sea.'

Coriolanus, ii. 1.

The old editors and commentators seem not to have had the faintest suspicion of the meaning of the expression, 'a wide sea of wax.' Hanmer and Steevens explain it as an allusion to the Roman and early English practice of writing with a style on tablets coated with wax, so that the poet in Timon must be supposed to have literally shaped out' his man in wax, as much so as if he had modelled him. All the editors have followed in this rut; even Messrs. Dyce and Staunton, of whom better things might have been expected. The only emendation that has been made on waxe is Mr. Collier's verse, which Mr. Staunton rejects, though he still thinks waxe a misprint for something. Very strange indeed is all this speculation, in the face of the certain fact that waxe or wax

occurs as a substantive, in the very sense of expandedness (or growth), in two other places in Shakespeare, and once in Ben Jonson. Here are the passages :

Chief Justice. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out. Falstaff. A wassail candle, my lord; all tallow : if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.' 2 Henry IV. i. 2. Romeo and Juliet, i. 3.

'Why, he's a man of wax.'

‘A man of wax' is a man of full growth.

Of Falstaff it would

mean, a man of ample dimensions; of Romeo it means, a man of puberty, a proper man.' Again in The Fall of Mortimer, a fragmentary drama by Ben Jonson, we read,

'At what a divers price do divers men

Act the same thing[s]! another might have had,
Perhaps the hurdle, or at least the axe,

For what I have, this crownet, robes, and waxe.'

Here waxe is 'personal aggrandisement-the substantive accomplishment of the verb to wax great.' (Collier, Coleridge, and Shakespeare, p. 129.) Let us hope that we have heard the last of 'the waxen tables of the ancients'!" pp. 226–8.

1. The passage of Timon of Athens is unquestionably a very difficult one, and perhaps not altogether free from corruption : but what must be that critic's idea of the proprieties of language who imagines that a sea of wax can mean "a sea of increase-a sea at flood-time"?

2. Who, except Dr. Ingleby, would ever have dreamed of quoting Falstaff's quibble, “A wassail candle, my lord; all tallow : if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth," as an evidence of the existence of a substantive "wax" in the sense of "expandedness or growth"?

3. Even if his own reading had not supplied him with some of the passages in various old authors that clearly show the true meaning of " a man of wax," it seems inconceivable that Dr. Ingleby should have so grossly misunderstood those words in Romeo and Juliet as to explain them “ a man of puberty, a proper man,” since he could hardly have overlooked the following notes in the Variorum Shakespeare, which are sufficiently to the purpose;

a man of wax] So in Wily Beguiled,

'Why, he's a man as one should picture him in wax.'
[Sig. D3 verso, ed. 1606]. STEEVENS :

a man of wax] Well made, as if he had been modelled in wax, as Mr. Steevens by a happy quotation has explained it. When you, Lydia, praise the waxen arms of Telephus,' says Horace [Waxen, well-shaped, fine-turned],' &c. S[tephen] W[eston]."

I add another passage which is decisive as to the true meaning a man of wax;

of

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VOL. X.

"A sweet face, an exceeding daintie hand;
A body, were it framed of wax

2 I

498

WAX-WAXEN.

By all the cunning artists of the world,

It could not better be proportioned."

A Pleasant Comedie of Faire Em, &c., sig. в, ed. 1631.

4. But Dr. Ingleby becomes almost an object of pity when he allows himself to be persuaded by a silly pamphleteer that in the line of the opening speech of Jonson's fragment, The Fall of Mortimer,

"For what I have, this crownet, robes, and waxe,"

the word "waxe" signifies "personal aggrandisement." Now, a little further on in the same speech we find

"To-day is Mortimer made Earl of March;"

and Jonson tells us in his Argument that "The First Act comprehends Mortimer's pride and security, raised to the degree of an earl, by the queen's favour and love," &c. ; which, taken together with the words "crownet and robes,” is quite enough to determine that waxe" means some sort of waxen seal connected with a patent confirming Mortimer in his new dignity of earl.

wax Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire—As a form of, iv. 88; like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, i. 309: Allusions to the alleged practice of witches in roasting before a fire images of the persons they wished to torment or destroy; whose bodies, it was supposed, wasted away as the images melted.

waxen coat, iv. 112: see note 14, iv. 112: In support of my explanation of waxen in this passage, I may cite the following lines from the ballad of Hardyknute (modern though it be);

"Tho' Britons tremble at his name,

I sune sall make him wail

That eir my sword was made sae sharp,
Sae saft his coat of mail."

waxen epitaph-Not worshipp'd with a, iv. 425: worshipp'd, i.e.
honoured: "Steevens says that the allusion is 'to the ancient
custom of writing on waxen tablets;' and Malone proves, at the
expense of two pages, that his friend has mistaken the poet's
meaning, and that he himself is-just as wide of it.
In many
parts of the continent it is customary, upon the decease of an
eminent person, for his friends to compose short laudatory poems,
epitaphs, &c., and affix them to the herse, or grave, with pins, wax,
paste, &c. Of this practice, which was once prevalent here also, I
had collected many notices. . . . To this practice Shakespeare
alludes. He had, at first, written 'paper' epitaph, which he judi-
ciously changed to 'waxen,' as less ambiguous, and altogether as
familiar to his audience. Henry's meaning therefore is, 'I will
either have my full history recorded with glory, or lie in an undis-
tinguished grave; not merely without an inscription sculptured in
stone, but unworshipped (unhonoured) even by a waxen epitaph,