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salutation of a vassal. God-a-mercy, felbow, his own supercilious reply to it.

P. 10,

STEEVENS.

1. 21. 22. 'Tis too respective, and to sociable,

For your conversion.] Respective is respectful, formal.

For your conversion, is the reading of the old copy, and may be right. It seems to mean, his late change of condition from a private gentleman to a knight. STEEVENS.

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Mr. Pope, without necessity, reads for your conversing. Our author has here, I think, used a licence of phraseology that he often takes. The Bastard has just said, that "new-made honour doth forget men's names;" and he proceeds as if he had said, "does not remember men's names." To remember the name of an inferior, he adds, has too much of the respect which is paid to superiors, and of the social and friendly familiarity of equals, for your conversion, — for your present conditions now converted from the situation of a common man to the rank of a knight. MALONE.

P. 10, 1. 22. Now your traveller,] It is said in All's well that ends well, that "a traveller is a good thing after dinner." In that age of newly excited curiosity, one of the entertainments at great tables seems to have been the discourse of a traveller. JOHNSON.

P. 10, 1. 23.- his tooth-pick] It has been already remarked, that to pick the tooth, and wear a piquet beard, were, in that time, marks of a man affecting foreign fashions. JOHNSON.

Among Gascoigne's poems I find one entitled, Councell given to Maister Bartholomew Withipoll a little before his latter Journey to Geane,

1572. The following lines may perhaps be acceptable to the reader who is curious enough to enquire about the fashionable follies imported in that age:

"Now, Sir, if I shall see your mastership

"Come home disguis'd, and clad in'quaint ar

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"As with a pike-tooth byting on your lippe; "Your brave mustachios turn'd the Turkie way; "A coptankt hat made on a Flemish blocke; "A night-gowne cloake down trayling to your

toes;

"A slender slop close couched to your dock; "A curtolde slipper, and a short silk hose." &c. STEEVENS.

P. 10, 1. 23. -at my worship's mess:] Means, at that part of the table where I, as a knight, shall be placed.

YourWorship was the regular address to a knight or esquire, in our author's time, as your Honour was to a lord. MALONE.

P. 10, 1. 26. My picked man of countries:] The word picked may not refer to the beard, but to the shoes, which were once worn of an immoderate length. To this fashion our author has alluded in King Lear, where the reader will find a more ample explanation. Picked may, however, mean only spruce in dress. STEEVENS.

So,

The last interpretation of picked, offered by Mr. Steevens, is undoubtedly the true one. in Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique, 1553: “—such riot, dicyng, carding, piking,“ &c. Piked or picked, (for the word is variously spelt,) in the writings of our author and his contemporaries, gcnerally means, spruce, affected, effeminate.

MALONE.

My picked man of countries, is velled fop. HOLT WHITE,

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P. 10, 1. 29. An ABC-book, or, ás and wrote it, an absey book, is a catechism. JOHNSON.

P. 10, 1. 34. Sir W. Cornwallis's 28th Essay thus ridicules the extravagance of compliment in our poet's days, 1601: "We spend even at his (i. e. a friend's or a stranger's) entrance, a whole volume of words. What a deal of synamon and ginger is sacrificed to dissimulation! O, how blessed do I take mine eyes for presenting me with this sight! O Signior, the star that governs my life in contentment, give me leave to interre myself in your arms! Not so, Sir, it is too unworthy an inclosure to contain such preciousness, &c. &c. This, and a cup of drink, makes the time as fit for a departure as can be," TOLLET.

P. 11, 1. 4. But he is but a bastard to the time, &c.] He is accounted but a mean man in the present age, who does not shew by his dress, his deportment, and his talk, that he has travelled, and made observations in foreign countries. MALONE.

P. 11, 1. 11 Which though I will not practise to deceive,] The construction will be mended, if instead of which though, we read this though. JOHNSON.

P. 11, 1. 14-16. But who comes &c. &c.] Milton, in his tragedy, introduces Dalilah with such an interrogatory exclamation. JOHNSON.

P. 11, I. 15. 16. — — hath she no husband, That will take pains to blow a horn before her?] IIe means, that a woman who travelled about like a post, was likely to horn her husband. JOHNSON.

P. 11, l. 18. James Gurney.] Our author

found his name in perusing the history of King John; who not long before his victory at Mirabeau over the French, headed by young Arthur, seized the lands and castle of Hugh Gorney, near Butevant in Normandy. MALONE.

P. 11. l. 26. Colbrand was a Danish giant, whom Guy of Warwick discomfited in the presence of King Athelstan. The combat is very pompously described by Drayton in his Polyolbion. JOHNSON.

P. 12, first 1. Good leave means a ready as-
STEEVENS.

sent.

P. 12. 1. 2. Philip?· sparrow!] Dr. Grey observes, that Skelton has a poem to the memory of Philip Sparrow; and Mr. Pope in a short note remarks that a sparrow is called Philip. JOHNSON. The Bastard means: Philip! Do you take me for a sparrow? HAWKINS.

The sparrow is called Philip from its note.

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Phip phip the sparrowes as they fly." Lyly's Mother Bombie. From the sound of the sparrow's chirping, Catullus in his Elegy on Lesbia's Sparrow, has formed a verb:

"Sed circumsiliens modo huc, modo illuc, "Ad solam dominam usque pipilabat." HOLT WHITE. P. 12, 1. 3. There's toys abroad;] i. e. runours, idle reports. STEEVENS.

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P. 12, l. 8. (to confess!)] Mr. M. Mason regards the adverb to, as an error of the press But I rather think, to confess, means to confession. "But, to come to a fair confession. now, (says the Bastard,) could he have been the instrument of my production?" STEEVENS.

P. 12, 1. 20. Knight, knight, good mother, Basiliscolike:] Thus must this passage' be pointed; and to come at the hunour of it, I must clear up an old circumstance of stage-history. Faulconbridge's words here carry a concealed piece of satire on a stupid drama of that age, printed in 1599, and called Soliman and Perseda. In this piece there is a character of a bragging cowardly knight, called Basilisco, His pretension to valour is so blown, and seen through, that Piston, a buffoon-servant in the play, jumps upon his back, and will not disengage him, till he makes Basilisco swear upon his dudgeon dagger to the contents, and in the terms he dictates to him; as, for instance:

"Bas. O, I swear, I swear.

"Pist.. By the contents of this blade, "Bas. By the contents of this blade,"Pist. I, the aforesaid Basilisco, "Bas. I, the aforesaid Basilisco, good fellow, knight.

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knight,

"Pist. Knave, good fellow, knave, knave.” So that it is clear, our poet is sneering at this play; and makes Philip, when his mother calls him knave, throw off that reproach by humourously laying claim to his new dignity of knighthood; as Basilisco arrogantly insists on his title of knight in the passage above quoted. The old play is an execrable bad one; and, I suppose, was sufficiently exploded in the representation: which might make this circumstance so well known, as to become the butt for a stage-sarcasm. THEOBALD. P. 13, 1. 6. Some sins do bear their privilege on earth,] There are sins, that whatever be determined of them above, are not much censured on earth. JoHNSON.

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