,, I have seen (says he) a quinten set up on Cornehill, by the Leaden Hall, where the attend-/ ants on the lords of merry disports have runne, and made greate pastime; for hee that hit not the broad end of the quinten was of all men laughed to score; and here that hit it full, if he rid not the faster, had a sound blow in the necke with a bagge full of sand hanged on the other end." Here we see were no shields hung, no trophies of war to be thrown down. 99 The great design of the sport, (says Dr. Plott in his History of Oxfordshire) is to try both man and horse, and to break the board; which whoever does, is for the time Princeps juventutis.“ Shakspeare's

1 am

similes seldom correspond on both sides. ,,My better parts being all thrown down, my youthful spirit being subdued by the power of beauty, now, (says Orlando) as inanimate as a wooden quintaine is (not when its better parts are thrown down, but as that lifeless block is at all times). " Such, perhaps, is the meaning. If however the words better parts, 68 are to be applied to the quintaine, as well as to the speaker,

the board abovementioned, and not any shield of trophy, must have been alluded to. thief

Our author has in Macbeth used

part of man" for manly spirit:

"

"my better

Accursed be the tongue that tells me so, ,, For it has cow'd my better part of man" part of MALONE.

LOVE

The explanations of this passage as well as the accounts of the quintain, are by no means" satisfactory; nor have the labours of the critic or the antiquary been exhausted. The whole (of Orlando's speech should seem to refer to the quintain, but not to such a one as has been de scribed in any of the preceding notes. Mr. Guthrie is accused of having borrowed his account from Matthew Paris, an author with whom, as it has been already observed, Shakspeare was undoubtedly not acquainted; but this charge is erroneous, for no such passage as that above cited is to be found in M. Paris. This writer does indeed speak of the quintain under the year 1255, but in very different words. Eodem tem pore juvenes Londinenses statuto pavone pro bravio ad stadium quod quintena vulgariter dicitur, vires proprias et equorum cursus sunt experti. He then proceeds to state that some of the King's pages, and others belonging to the houshold, being offended at these sports, abused the Loudoners with foul language, calling them scurvy clowns and greasy rascals, and ventured to dispute the prize with them; the consequence of which was, that the Londoners received them very briskly, and so belaboured their backs with the broken lances, that they were either put to flight, or tumbled from their hoses and most

terribly bruised. They afterwards went before the King, the tears still trickling from their eyes, and complained of their treatment, beseeching that he would not suffer so great an offence to remain unpunished; aud the King, with his usual spirit of revenge, extorted from the citizens a very large fine, So far M, Paris; but Mr. Malone has through some mistake cited Robert Monachus, who wrote before M. Paris, and has left an extremely curious account of the Crusades. He 'is describing the arrival of some messengers from Babylon, who upon entering the Christian camp, find, to their great astonishment (for they had heard that the Christians were perishing with fear and hunger) the tents curiously ornamented, and the young men practising themselves and their horses in tilting against shields hung upon poles. In the oldest edition of this writer, instead of quintanae ludus" it is ludus equestris." However, this is certainly not the quintain that is here wanted, and therefore Mr. Malone has substituted another, copied indeed from a comtemporary writer, but still not illustrative of the passage in question. I shall beg leave then to present the reader with some others, from which it will appear, that the quintain was a military exercise in Shakspeare's time, and not a mere rustic ́sport, as Mr. Malone imagines.

2

No. 1. is copied from an initial letter in an Italian book printed in 1560. Here is the figure of a man placed upon the trunk of a tree, holding in one hand a shield, in the other a bag of sand. No. 2. is the Saracen quintain from Pluvinel' instruction du Roi Louis XIII. dans l'exercise de monter à cheval. This sort of quintain,

according to Menestrier, was invented by the Germans, who, from their frequent wars with the Turks, accustomed their soldiers to point their lances against the figure of their enemy. The skill consisted in shivering the lance to pieces, by striking it against the head of the man, for if it touched the shield, the figure turned round and generally struck the horseman a violent blow with his sword. No. 3. is the Flemish quintain, copied from a print after Wouvermans; it is called La bague Flamande, from the ring which the figure holds in his right hand, and here the object was to take away the ring with the point of the lance, for if it struck any other part, the man turned round and hit the rider with his sand bag. This is a mixture of the quintain and running at the ring, which two sports have been some how or other in like manner confounded by the Italians, who sometimes express the running at the ring by correre alla quintana. The principle of all these was the same, viz. to avoid the blow of the sword or sand- bag, by striking the quintain in a particular place.

It might have been expected that some instance had been given of the use of the quintains in England; and for want of it an objection may be taken to this method of illustrating the present subject: but let it be remembered, that Shakspeare has indiscriminately blended the usages of all na tions; that he has oftentimes availed himself of hearsay evidence; and again, that as our manners and customs have at all times been borrowed from the French and other nations, there is every reason to infer that this species of the quintain had found its way into England. It is hardly needful to add, that a knowledge of very many