As frozen dung-hils in a winter's morne, 24 See Malone's Shakespeare.-Ed. 1790. pp. 115, 116. E. 23 24 huf-cap termes-blustering, swaggering terms. Soouping-flaunting proudly: alluding, perhaps, to the swooping or descent of a bird of prey on his quarry. 25 -skrub—look mean and filthy: taken, probably, from scrub, a short and dirty fellow. See Reed's Shakespeare, vol. vii. p. 383. 26 There if he can with termes ITALIANATE. Alluding to the prevailing custom of innovating on our native tongue from the Italian. See also, in B. v. Sat. 2. When Mavio's first page of his poesy, Nail'd to a hundred postes for novelty, Layes siege unto the backward buyer's groat. So Marston, in his Satires, 1598 I cannot quote A MOTTE ITALIANATE Or brand my Satires with a SPANISH TERME. E. 27 He ravishes the gazing scaffolders: Those who sat on the Scaffold; a part of the Piay-House, which answered to the Upper Gallery. So, again, B. iv. Sat. 2. When a CRAZ'D SCAFFOLD, and a rotten stage, Was all rich Nænius his heritage. See the conformation of an old English Theatre accurately investigated in the Supplement to Shakespeare: I. 9. seq. W. Then, certes, was the famous Corduban 28, Now, least such frightfull showes of Fortune's fall", And laughes, and grins, and frames his mimik face, 30 With gladsome noyse of that applauding croud. When each base clown his clumbsie fist doth bruise", But, if each periode might the synode please, To curse and ban, and blame his likerous eye, SATIRE IV. 28 Too popular is Tragicke Poesie, Strayning his tip-toes for a farthing fee, The famous Corduban. Seneca. 29 Now, least such frightfull showes of Fortune's fall, &c. &c. But, adds the critical Satirist, that the minds of the astonished audience may not be too powerfully impressed with the terrors of tragic solemnity, a VICE, or Buffoon, is suddenly, and most seasonably introduced. W. See Malone's Shakespeare. Ed. 1790. pp. 115, 116. 30 Russettings-a coarse kind of stuff. "When each base clown his clumbsie fist doth bruise. In striking the benches to express approbation. W. 32 33 gesturement-gesture. geare a general word for things or matters. See Reed's Shake speare: vol. vii. 240. xiii. 261. 1 And doth besides on Rimelesse numbers tread, And maketh up his hard-betaken tale With straunge enchantments, fetcht from darksom vale, To Tuscans' soyle transporteth Merlin's Toombe 3. Write what you wil, and write not what you might: Th' eternall Legends of thy Faery Muse, Yeeld up the Lawrell Girlond ye have lost : SATIRE V 37. ANOTHER, Whose more heavie hearted Saint From these lines Warton supposes Hall was no friend to blank verse, And he soon after condemns such licentious fictions as occur in Orlando Furioso. E. Yet, in his Postscript, he speaks pretty decisively against rhyme, at least as applicable to satire:-" the fettering together the series of the verses, with the bonds of like cadence or desinence of rhyme, which if it be unusually abrupt, and not dependent in sense upon so near affinity of words, I know not what a loathsome kind of harshness and discordance it breedeth to any judicial ear &c." And maketh up his hard-betuken tale With straunge enchantments, fetcht from darksom vale, Of some Melissa, that, by magicke doome, To Tuscans' soyle transporteth Merlin's Toombe. Referring to the beginning of the Third Book of Orlando Furioso; where the Tomb of Merlin is transferred by the poet from Wales to France. Compare Warton's Observations on the Fairy Queen. I. 37. E. Salust of France Guillaume Salluste, Seigneur du Bartas, the translation of whose "Semaines" was once popular, and to which Hall prefixed Commendatory Verses. E. "The Book, to which this Satire alludes, is the " Mirrour of Magistrates:" in which poem many of the most eminent characters in English History are intro Urgeth his melting muse with solemne teares And, when he hath parbrak'd his grieved minde, SATIRE VI. ANOTHER Scorns the home-spun threed of rimes 4o, Manhood and garboiles shall he chaunt with chaunged feets, The drawling Spondees, pacing it below: The breath-lesse Dactils, with a sudden stay ". Yok'd with a slow-foote oxe on fallow field, duced relating their own misfortunes. It was originally written by Thomas Sackville, first Lord Buckhurst, about 1557; and was afterwards digested anew, and continued by several of the greatest wits of the Elizabethan Age. E. 38 Rime-i. e. To rhyme. 39 i. 20., has · parbrak'd,— i. e. sickened to vomiting. Spenser, Book I. Canto Her filthy PARBREAKE all the place defiled has. See Mr. Todd's note. In the old translation of the Bible, edit. 1569, at Prov. v 16. we read, "If thou findest honey, eate so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be over full, and perbrake it out agayne." 40 Another scorns the home-spun threed of rimes, &c. &c. Alluding to a servile imitation of Latin verse, in which the mistaken zeal of pedantry had engaged, and for which some of the finest poets of the Elizabethan Age would have rejected rhyme. Mr. Warton thought that the hexametral translation of Virgil to which Hall alluded was Webb's Translation of the Bucolics: but it would rather seem to be Stanihurst's Translation of the Æneid, Syo. 1579: for Hall, in his fifth line, says "MANHOOD AND GARBOILES shall he chaunt with chaunged feete;" and Stanihurst's fifth line of the First Æneid runs thus, Now MANHOOD AND GARBOILS I chaunt, and martial horror. E. "These four lines exhibit the earliest specimen of representative harmony, which I remember to have met with. E. Can right areed" how handsomly besets SATIRE VII 43. GREAT is the follie of a feeble braine, It breedes high thoughts, that feed the fancie best: Shee's white as morrows milk, or flakes new blowne: areed-understand. * In Hall's time, Sonnets to Beauty were embarrassed by Wit and Fancy. They were ceremonious and strained; abounded in laboured and affected gallantries, were replete with combinations of contrarieties, and marked by complaints which moved no compassion. E. 44 Careth the world, thou love, thou live, or die ? i. e. whether thou love &c." 45 Fond WIT-WAL, that wouldst lode thy wit-less head With timely hornes Ford, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, reflects on himself as conscious of his own injury under the opprobrious epithet of "wittol-cuckold" which Mr. Malone explains as "one who knows his wife's falsehood, and is contented with it: from wittan, Sax. to know." In Book IV, Sat 1, our author seems to use wit-old in much the same sense : That hee, base wretch, may clog his wIT-OLD head, |