expression in that age for God being my guide, or, when used to another, God be thy guide.

JOHNSON.

P. 59, 1. 3. There's for thy labour, &c.] It appears from many ancient books that it was always customary to reward a herald, whether he brought defiance or congratulation.

STEEVENS.

P. 60, 1. 7. 8. He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs;] Alluding to the bounding of tennis-balls, which were stuffed with hair, as appears from Much Ado about Nothing: "And the old, ornament of his check hath already stuff'd tennis-balls." WARBURTON.

P. 60, 1. 20. and all other jades you may call beasts.] It is plain that jades and beasts should change places, it being the first word and not the last, which is the teria of reproach; as afterwards it is said:

"I had as lief have my mistress' a jade." WARBURTON.

There is no occasion for this change. Jade is sometimes used for a post-horse. Beast is always employed as a contemptuous distinction. STEEVENS.

I agree with Warburton in supposing that the words beasts and jades, have changed places. Steevens says, that beast is always employed as a contemptuous distinction, and to support this assertion he quotes a passage from Macbeth, and another from Timon, in which it appears that men were called beasts, where abuse was intended. But though the word beast he a contemptuous distinction, as he terms it, when applied to a man, it does not follow that it should be so when applied to a horse.

He forgets the following speech in Hamlet which militates strongly against his assertion : " he grew unto his seat,

"And to such wond'rous doing brought his horse,

"As he had been incorps'd, and demi-natur'd "With the brave beast."

But the word jade is always us'd in a contemptuous sense; and in the passage which Steevens quotes from the Second Part of Henry IV. the aule borse is called a poor jade, merely because the poor beast was supposed to be jaded. The word is there an expression of pity, not of contempt. M. MASON,

I cannot forbear subjoining two queries to this note.

In the passage quoted by Mr. M. Mason from Hamlet, is not the epithet brave added,, to exempt the word beast from being received in a slight sense of degradation ?

Is not, in the instance quoted by me from Henry IV. the epithet poor supplied, to render jade an object of compassion?

Jade is a term of no very decided meaning. It sometimes signifies a hackney, sometimes a vicious horse, and sometimes a tired one; and yet I cannot help thinking, in the present instance, that as a horse is degraded by being called a jade, so a jade is vilified by being termed a beast. STEEVENS.

I do not think there is any ground for the transposition proposed by Dr. Warburton, who would make jades and beasts change places. Words under the hand of either a transcriber or compositor, never thus leap out of their places. The Dauphin evidently means, that no other

horse has so good a title as his, to the appellation peculiarly appropriated to that fine and useful animal. The general term for quadru→ peds may suffice for all other horses. MALONE. P. 61, first 1. I once writ a sonnet in his praise, and began thus: Wonder of nature, —] Here, I suppose, some foolish poem of our author's time is ridiculed; which indeed partly appears from the answer. WARBURTON.

The phrase is only reprehensible through its misapplication. It is surely proper when applied to a woman, but ridiculous indeed when addressed to a horse. STEEVENS.

P. 61, J. 17. in your strait trossers.] This word, which very frequently occurs in the old dramatick writers, is still preserved, but now written- trowsers. STEEVENS.

P. 63, 1. 12.. never any body saw it, but his lacquey:] He bas beaten nobody but his

footboy. JOHNSON.

P. 63, 1. 12. 13. 'tis a hooded valour; and, when it appears, it will bate.] This is said with allusion to falcons which are kept hooded when they are not to fly at game, aud, as soon as the hood is off, bait or flap the wing. The meaning is, the Dauphin's valour has never been let loose upon an enemy, yet, when he makes his first essay, we shall sce how he will flutter. JOHNSON.

P. 63, 1. 15. I will cap that proverb] Alluding to the practice of capping verses.

JOHNSON.

peevish -] in ancient lanfoolish, silly. STEEVENS.

P. 65, 1. 4. 5.

When creeping murmur, and

the poring dark, Fills the wide vessel, of the universe.] Universe for horison for we are not to think Shakspeare so ignorant as to imagine it was night over the whole globe at once. He intimates he knew otherwise, by that fine line in The Midsummer Night's Dream:

"following darkness like a dream." Besides, the image he employs shows he meant but half the globe; the horizon round, which has the shape of a vessel or goblet.

WARBURTON.

There is a better proof, that Shakspeare knew the order of night and day, in. Macbeth:

"Now o'er the one half world
"Nature seems dead."

But there was no great need of any justification. The universe, in its original sense, no more means this globe singly than the circuit of the horison; but, however large in its philosophical sense, it may be poetically used for as much of the world as falls under observation. Eet me remark further, that ignorance cannot be certainly inferred from inaccuracy. Knowledge is not always present. JOHNSON.

The wide vessel of the universe is derived, I apprehend, from a different source than that which Dr. Warburton supposes. Shakspeare in another play stiles night the blanket of the dark: it is probable that the affinity between blanket and sheet suggested to him the further relation between sheet and vessel, which occurs in the Acts, ch. x. v. 11: "and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as if

it had been a great SHEET, knit at the four corners, and let down unto the earth.”

P. 65, 1. 8.

HENLEY.

stilly sounds,] i. e. gently, lowly. So, in the Sacred writings: "a still small voice." MALONE.

P. 65, 1. 11. 12.

and through their paly flames,

Each battle sees the other's umber'd face:] Of this epithet used by Shakspeare in his description of fires reflected by night, Mr. Pope knew the value, and has transplanted it into the Iliad on a like occasion:

"Whose umber'd arms by turns thick flashes

send.??

Umber is a brown colour. So, in As you like if:

“And with a kind of umber smirch my face.” The distant visages of the soldiers would certainly appear of this hue, when beheld through the light of midnight fires. STEEVENS.

Umber'd certainly means here discoloured by the gleam of the fires. Umber is a dark yellow earth brought from Umbria in Italy, which being mixed with water produces such a dusky yellow colour as the gleam of fire by night gives to the countenance. Our author's profession probably furnished him with this epithet; for from an old manuscript play in my posses¬ sion, entitled The Telltale, it appears that umber was used in the stage-exhibitions of his time. In that piece one of the marginal diPretions is, "He umbers her face." MALONE.

R. 65, 1. 18. y. The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,