sense.

1 Pass not. Care not. The phrase was once very common in that So Latimer wrote "that men do not pass for their sins, do lightly regard them," meaning that their sins cause them no passio, no suffering, care, or concern. The word "pass," from Latin "patior," participle "passus," or from the root of "patior," is to be distinguished from the other word "pass," in the sense of passing along a road, or passing by another, which is from Latin "pando," I stretch out, whence passus," a pace or step. "Pass" is from "pando," where it means going beyond. "Why this passes! Master Ford, you are not to go loose any longer," says Master Page of Master Ford's new fury of jealousy, meaning that it extends beyond what had been seen in him before. To let anything pass, again, is simply equivalent to letting it go by. "Pass" in the sense ("patior") of suffering any care or trouble about a thing, is another word with a distinct root. In this sense Jack Cade exclaims in the "Second Part of King Henry VI.," act iv., sc. 2

"As for these silken-coated knaves, I pass not:

It is to you, good people, that I speak."

The phrase was commonly negative, and is explained in Cotgrave's "French and English Dictionary" (1611). "I pass not for it. Il ne m'en chaut, ie ne m'en soucie point.”

2 Fulfil. Fill full.

Should know the thing we mean : And if you will thus wisely do,

As I think to be best,

Then have you surely won the field,
And set my heart at rest.

I pray you keep this Nosegay well,
And set by it some store:-

And thus farewell, the gods thee guide,

Both now and evermore !—

Not as the common sort do use,

To set it in your breast,

That when the smell is gone away On ground he takes his rest.

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120

Impart here means share with me, by having it communicated to you. To impart is to share with another, or communicate.

I. Tomson might be Bottom himself. The next piece the last we will take-from the same collection, is of higher flight.

THE LOVER COMPARETH HIMSELF TO THE PAINFUL

FALCONER.

The soaring hawk, from fist that flies,

Her Falconer doth constrain Sometime to range the ground unknown

To find her out again;

And if by sight or sound of bell

His falcon he may see:

"Wo ho!" he cries, with cheerful voice,

The gladdest man is he.

By lure then in finest sort

He seeks to bring her in,

But if that she full gorged be

He cannot so her win;

Although with becks and bending eyes

She many proffers makes:

"Wo ho ho!" he cries, away she flies,

And so her leave she takes.

This woeful man with weary limbs

10

50

Then from his sheath he drew his blade and to his heart

His falcon swift of flight:

"Wo ho ho!" he cries, she empty gorged,

60

He thrust the point, and life did vade3

Upon his lure doth light.

How glad was then the Falconer there,

No pen nor tongue can tell;

He swam in bliss that lately felt

Like pains of cruel hell.

Tongue, not a word :

Come, trusty sword;

Come, blade, my breast imbrue: And farewell, friends;

Thus Thisby ends:

Adieu! adieu! adieu!"

Shakespeare took the story from Arthur Golding's version of it, in his translation of Ovid, where it also has its comic side:"Dwelt hard together two young folke in houses ioynde so nere, That under all one roof well nie both twaine conuayed were. The name of him was Pyramus, and Thisbe call'd was she.

The wall that parted house from house had riuen therein a crane, Which shroonke at making of the wall; this fault not markt of anie Of many hundred yeeres before (what doth not love espie ?) These lovers first of all found out, and made a way whereby To talke together secretly, and through the same did go Their loving whisprings very light and safely to and fro. Now as on one side Pyramus, and Thisbe on t'other Stood often drawing one of them the pleasant breath from other: O thou enuious wall (they sayd), why leist thou lovers thus ?" and so forth.

Before the Knight is Peril placed,
Which he by skipping overgoes,
And yet that Pawn can work a cast
To overthrow his greatest foes;
The Bishop's, Prudence, prying still
Which way to work his master's will.

The Rooks' poor Pawns are silly swains
Which seldom serve, except by hap,
And yet these Pawns can lay their trains
To catch a great man in a trap:
So that I see sometimes a groom
May not be spared from his room.

The Nature of the Chess men.

The King is stately, looking high;
The Queen doth bear like majesty ;
The Knight is hardy, valiant, wise;

The Bishop prudent and precise;
The Rooks are rangers out of ray;1
The Pawns the pages in the play.

L'Envoy.

Then rule with Care and Quick Conceit, And fight with Knowledge as with Force,

So bear a Brain to dark deceit,

And work with Reason and Remorse: Forgive a fault when young men play, So give a mate, and go your way.

And when you play beware of check,

Know how to save and give a neck,

And with a check beware of mate,

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60

Much ado there was, God wot,

He would love and she would not.

She said, "Never man was true;"
He says, "None was false to you."

He said, he had lov'd her long;

She "Love should have no wrong."

says,

Corydon would kiss her then. "Maids must kiss no men,

She says,

Till they do for good and all;" When she made the shepherd call All the heavens to witness truth Never lov'd a truer youth;

Then with many a pretty oath, Yea and nay, and faith and troth, Such as seely shepherds use

When they will not love abuse, Love that had been long deluded, Was with kisses sweet concluded: And Phillida with garlands gay, Was made the Lady of the May.

Henry Willobie published in 1594 his “

Avisa,

or the True Picture of a Modest Maid and of a Chaste and Constant Wife," from which the following short poem is taken :

But chief ware "Had-I-wist "2 too late:

Lose not the Queen, for ten to one
If she be lost, the game is gone.

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Let no man know that I did love.

Nicholas Breton, the writer of this, was probably the second son of a William Breton of London, who died in 1559, and whose widow married George Gascoigne the poet. He perhaps served in the Low Countries, under the Earl of Leicester, before he married a daughter of Sir Edward Leigh of Rushall, had nine children, and died in 1624.

The following piece is also by Nicholas Breton, and taken from "England's Helicon :"—

PHILLIDA AND CORYDON.

In the merry month of May,
In a morn by break of day,

1 Ray, order of battle, shorter form of array. "So when that both the armies were in ray" (Cassibellane to Cæsar in the "Mirror for Magistrates").

* Had-I-wist. "If I had only known." See Note 4, page 228.

The "Phoenix Nest" was followed in 1600 by "England's Helicon," which contains pieces by famous writers with their names attached; among them Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd" with the "Nymph's Reply," and some other pieces that have been already quoted. In the same year 1600 there was another collection entitled 66 England's Parnassus : the Choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets, with their Poeticall Comparisons," a book largely consisting of extracts. Its editor signed himself "R. A." to two introductory sonnets. Then followed, in 1602, a "Poetical Rhapsody," edited by Francis Davison

From Figures introduced into a Picture of Richmond Palace by Vinckenboom; copied in Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare."

2 The Maypole. In Stubbes's "Anatomy of Abuses," the "order of May games" during Elizabeth's reign is thus described :-" Against May, Whitsuntide, or some other time of the year, every parish, town and village assemble themselves together, both men, women, and children; and . . they go, some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountains, and return bringing with them birch boughs and branches of trees to deck their assemblies withal. But their chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their May-pole, which they bring home with great veneration as thus: They have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers tied to the tip of his horns; and these oxen draw home this May-pole, which is covered all over with flowers and herbs bound round about with strings from the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefs and flags streaming on the top, they strew the ground about, bind green boughs about it, set up summer halls, bowers and arbours hard by it, and then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it."