And I, poor monfter, fond as much on him ; What thriftless fighs fhall poor Olivia breathe? It is too hard a knot for me to untie. [Exit Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, and SIR ANDREW AGUE CHEEK. Sir To. Approach, fir Andrew: not to be a-bed after midnight, is to be up betimes; and diluculo furgere, thou know'it, Sir And. Nay, by my troth, I know not: but I know, to be up late, is to be up late. Sir To. A falfe conclufion; I hate it as an unfill'd can: To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then, is early; fo that, to go to bed after midnight, is to go to bed betimes. Do not our lives confift of the four elements ? Sir And. 'Faith, fo they fay; but, I think, it rather confifts of eating and drinking. 8 Sir To. Thou art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. —Marian, 1 fay !-a stoop 9 of wine! Enter Clown. Sir And. Here comes the fool, i'faith. Clo. A ridicule on the medical theory of that time, which fuppofed health to confift in the just témperament and balance of the four elements in the human frame. WARBURTON. 9 A floop, cadus, à proppa, Belgis, ftoop. Ray's Proverbs, p. 111, In Hexham's Low Dutch Dictionary, 1660, a gallon is explained by een kanne van twee floepen. A ftoop, however, feems to have been fomething more than half a gallon. In a Catalogue of the rarities in the Anatomy Hall at Leyden, printed there, 4to. 1701, is " The bladder of a man containing four floop (which is fomething above Two English gallons) f water." REED. Clo. How now, my hearts? Did you never see the picture of we three? 2 Sir To. Welcome, afs. Now let's have a catch. Sir And. By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast.3 I had rather than forty fhillings I had fuch a leg; and fo fweet a breath to fing, as the fool has. In footh, thou waft in very gracious fooling laft night, when thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians paffing the equinoctial of Queu bus; 'twas very good, i'faith. I fent thee fix-pence for thy leman; Hadft it ? 4 Clo. 2 An allufion to an old print, fometimes pafted on the wall of a country ale-houfe, representing Two, but under which the spectator reads "We three are affes." HENLEY. I believe Shakspeare had in his thoughts a common fign, in which two wooden heads are exhibited, with this infcription under it: "We three loggerheads be." The fpectator or reader is fuppofed to make the third. The clown means to infinuate, that Sir Toby and Sir Andrew had as good a title to the name of fool as himself. MALONE. 3 Breeft, voice. Breath has been here propofed: but many inftances may be brought to justify the old reading beyond a doubt. In the ftatutes of Stoke College, founded by Archbishop Parker, 1535, Strype's Parker, p. 9: Which faid querifters, after their breafts are changed," &c, that is, after their voices are broken. In Fiddes' Life of Wolfey, Append. p. 128: "Singing-men well-breafted." In Tuffer's Hufbandrie, p. 155. edit. P. Short: "The better breft, the leffer reft, "To ferve the queer now there now heere." Tuffer, in this piece, called The Author's Life, tells us, that he was a choir-boy in the collegiate chapel of Wallingford-castle; and that, on account of the excellence of his voice, he was fucceffively removed to various choirs. T. WARTON. B. Jonfon ufes the word breaft in the fame manner. I fuppofe this cant term to have been current among the muficians of the age. All profeffions have in fome degree their jargon; and the remoter they are from liberal fcience, and the lefs confequential to the general interests of life, the more they strive to hide themselves behind affected terms and barbarous phrafeology. STEEVENS. 4 The old copy reads-lemon. But the Clown was neither pantler, nor butler. The poet's word was certainly mistaken by the ignorance of the printer. I have restored leman, i. e. I fent thee fix-pence to fpend on thy miftrefs. THEOBALD. I receive Theobald's emendation, because it throws a light on the obfcurity of the following speech. Leman is frequently ufed by the ancient writers, and Spenfer in par. ticular. The Clo. I did impeticos thy gratillity; 5 for Malvolio's nofe is no whipftock: My lady has a white hand, and the Myrmi dons are no bottle-ale houfes. Sir And. Excellent! Why, this is the beft fooling, when all is done. Now, a song. Sir To. Come on; there is fix-pence for you: let's have a fong. a Sir And. There's a teftril of me too: if one knight gave Clo. Would you have a love-fong, or a fong of good Life? 6 Sir The money was given him for his leman, i. e. his mistress. We have ftill "Leman-street," in Goodman's-fields. He fays he did impeticoat the gratuity, i. e. he gave it to his petticoat companion; for (fays he) Malvolio's nofe is no whipftock, i. e. Malvolio may fmell out our connection, but his fufpicion will not prove the inftrument of our punishment. My mistress bas a white band, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale boufes, i. e. my mistress is handfome, but the houfes kept by officers of justice are no places to make merry and entertain her at. Such may be the meaning of this whimsical fpeech. A whipftock is, I believe, the handle of a whip, round which a strap of leather is ufually twisted, and is fometimes put for the whip itself. STEEVENS. 5 This, Sir T. Hanmer tells us, is the fame with impocket thy gratuity. He is undoubtedly right; but we must read-I did impeticoat thy gratuity. The fools were kept in long coats, to which the allufion is made. There is yet much in this dialogue which I do not understand. JOHNSON. Figure 12 in the plate of the Morris-dancers, at the end of K. Henry IV. P. I. fufficiently proves that petticoats were not always a part of the drefs of fools or jefters, though they were of ideots, for a reason which I avoid to offer. STEEVENS. It is a very grofs mistake to imagine that this character was habited like an ideot. Neither he nor Touchstone, though they wear a particoloured drefs, has either coxcomb or bauble, nor is by any means to be confounded with the Fool in King Lear, nor even, I think, with the one in All's Well that Ends Well.A Differtation on the Fools of Shakspeare, a character he has most judiciously varied and discriminated, would be a valuable addition to the notes on his plays. RITSON. The old copy reads " I did impeticos thy gratillity." The meaning, I think, is, I did impeticoat or impocket thy gratuity; but the reading of the old copy should not, in my opinion, be here difturbed. The clown ufes the fame kind of fantastick language elsewhere in this fcene. Neither Pigrogromitus, nor the Vapians would object to it. MALONE. I do not fuppofe that by a fong of good life, the Clown means a fong of a moral turn; though Sir Andrew anfwers to it in that fignification. Good Sir To. A love-fong, a love-fong. Sir And. Ay, Ay; I care not for good life. SONG. Clo. O mistress mine, where are you roaming? Sir And. Excellent good, i'faith! Clo. What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Then come kiss me, fweet and twenty,8 Sir And. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight. Sir And. Very fweet and contagious, i'faith. Sir To. To hear by the nofe, it is dulcet in contagion, But fhall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night owl in a catch, that will draw three fouls out of one weaver? fhall we do that? Sir Good life, I believe, is harmless mirth and jollity. It may be a Gallicism: we call a jolly fellow a bon vivant. STEEVENS. From the oppofition of the words in the Clown's question, I incline to think that good life is here ufed in its ufual acceptation. In The Merry Wives of Windfor, these words are used for a virtuous character. MALONE. 7 No man will ever be worth much, who delays the advantages offered by the prefent hour, in hopes that the future will offer more. 8 This line is obfcure; we might read: Come, a kifs then, fweet and twenty, STEEVENS, Yet I know not whether the prefent reading be not right, for in fome counties fweet and twenty, whatever be the meaning, is a phrafe of endearment. JOHNSON. 9 Our author reprefents weavers as much given to harmony in his time. Sir And. An you love me, let's do't: I am dog at a catch. Clo. By'r lady, fir, and fome dogs will catch well. Sir And. Moft certain : let our catch be, Thou knave. Clo. Hold thy peace, thou knave, knight? I fhall be conftrain'd in't to call thee knave, knight. Sir And. "Tis not the firft time I have constrain'd one to call me knave. Begin, fool; it begins, Hold thy peace. Clo. I fhall never begin, if I hold my peace. Sir And. Good, i'faith! Come, begin. [They fing a Catch." Enter I have fhewn the caufe of it elsewhere. This expreffion of the power of mufck is familiar with our author. Much ado about Nothing: "Now is bis foul ravifhed. Is it not frange that sheep's-guts fhould bale fouls out of men's bodies ". -Why, he fays, three fouls, is because he is fpeaking of a catch of three parts; and the peripatetic philofophy, then in vogue, very -Jiberally gave every man three fouls. The vegetative or plaftic, the animal, and the rational. To this, too, Jonfon alludes, in his Poetafter: "What, I will I turn fhark upon my friends? or my friends' friends? I fcorn it with my three fouls." By the mention of these three, therefore, we may fuppofe it was Shakspeare's purpofe, to hint to us thofe furprizing effects of mufick, which the ancients fpeak of, when they tell us of Amphion, who moved ftones and trees; Orpheus and Arion, who tamed favage beafts; and Timotheus, who governed, as he pleased, the passions of bis human auditors. So noble an obfervation has our author conveyed in the ribaldry of this buffoon character. WARBURTON. In a popular book of the time, Carew's tranflation of Huarte's Trial of Wits, 1594, there is a curious chapter concerning the three fouls, "wegetative, fenfitive, and reasonable." FARMER. I doubt whether our author intended any allufion to this divifion of fouls. Dr. Warburton's fuppofition that there is an allufion to the catch being in three parts, appears to me one of his unfounded refinements. MALONE. 2 They fing a catch.] This catch is loft. JOHNSON. A catch is a fpecies of vocal harmony to be fung by three or more perfons; and is fo contrived, that though each fings precifely the fame notes as his fellows, yet by beginning at ftated periods of time from each other, there refults from the performance a harmony of as many parts as there are fingers. Compofitions of this kind are, in ftrictness, called Canons in the unifon; and as properly, Catches, when the words in the different parts are made to catch or answer each other. One of the most remarkable examples of a true catch is that of Purcel, Let's live good boneft lives, in which, immediately after one perfon has uttered these words, "What need we fear the Pope ?" another in the courfe of his finging fills up a reft which the first makes, with the words, "The devil." The |