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of John of Gaunt, as if he had been sworn brother to him and I'll be sworn he never saw him but once in the Tilt-yard; and then he burst his head, for crowding among the marshal's men. I

means that droll character in the old plays (which I have several times mentioned in the course of these notes) equipped with affes ears and a wooden dagger. It was very fatirical in Falstaff to compare Shallow's activity and impertinence to fuch a machine as a wooden dagger in the hands and management of a buffoon.

See Vol. V. p. 362, n. 6. STEEVENS.

THEOBALD.

Vice was the name given to a droll figure, heretofore much shown upon our stage, and brought in to play the fool and make sport for the populace. His dress was always a long jerkin, a fool's cap with afs's ears, and a thin wooden dagger, fuch as is still retained in the modern figures of Harlequin and Scaramouch. Minthew, and others of our more modern criticks, strain hard to find out the etymology of the word, and fetch it from the Greek: probably we need look no further for it than the old french word Vis, which fignified the fame as Visage does now. From this in part came Vifdafe, a word common among them for a fool, which Menage says is but a corruption from Vis d'afne, the face or head of an afs. It may be imagined therefore that Vifdafe, or Vis d'afne, was the name first given to this foolish theatrical figure, and that by vulgar use it was shortened to plain Vis or Vice. HANMER.

The word Vice is an abbreviation of Device; for in our old dra. matic shows, where he was first exhibited, he was nothing more than an artificial figure, a puppet moved by machinery, and then originally called a Device or 'Vice. In these representations he was a conftant and the most popular character, afterwards adopted into the early comedy. The smith's machine called a vice, is an abbreviation of the fame fort. Hamlet calls his uncle " kings," a fantastic and factitious image of majefty, a mere puppet of royalty. See Jonfon's Alchymist, Act I. fc. iii:

a vice of

" And on your stall a puppet with a vice." T. WARTON.

The

6he burft his head,] Thus the folio and quarto. modern editors read broke. To break and to burst were, in our poet's time, synonymously used. Thus Ben Jonfon, in his Poet after, tranflates the following passage in Horace:

--fracta pereuntes cuspide Gallos.

"The lances burst in Gallia's flaughter'd forces.",

saw it; and told John of Gaunt, he beat his own name:' for you might have trufs'd him, and all his apparel, into an eel-skin; the cafe of a treble hautboy was a manfion for him, a court; and now has he land and beeves. Well; I will be acquainted with him, if I return: and it shall go hard, but I will make him a philofopher's two fstones to me:* If

So, in The Old Legend of Sir Bevis of Hampton :

"But fyr Bevis fo hard him thrust, that his shoulder-bone

he burst."

Again, in the Second Part of Tamburlaine, 1590 :

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Whose chariot wheels have burst th' Affyrian's bones." Again, in Holinshed, p. 809: " that manie a speare was burst, and manie a great ftripe given."

or a breaker

To braft had the fame meaning. Barrett, in his Alvearie, Quadruple Di&ionary, 1580, calls a housebreaker " and brafter of doors." The fame author conftantly uses burft as fynonymous to broken. See Vol. IX. p. 206, n. 6. STEEVENS.

a fellow fo

7 beat his own name:) That is, beat gaunt, flender, that his name might have been gaunt. JOHNSON.

8

philofopher's two stones - ) One of which was an univerfal medicine, and the other a transmuter of base metals into gold.

WARBURTON.

I believe the commentator has refined this passage too much. A philosopher's two ftones is only more than the philosopher's ftone. The univerfal medicine was never, so far as I know, conceived to be a stone before the time of Butler's stone.

JOHNSON.

Mr. Edwards ridicules Dr. Warburton's note on this passage, but without reason. Gower has a chapter in his Confefsio Amantis, "Of the three stones that philosophers made:" and Chaucer, in his tale of the Chanon's Yeman, expressly tells us, that one of them is Alixar cleped; and that it is a water made of the four elements. Face, in the Alchymist, affures us, it is " a stone, and not a stone."

FARMER.

That the ingredients of which this Elixir, or Universal Medicine was composed, were by no means difficult of acquifition, may be proved by the following conclusion of a letter written by Villiers Duke of Buckingham to King James 1. on the fubje& of the Philosopher's Stone. See the Second volume of Royal Letters in the British Museum, No. 6987, art. 101:

the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I fee no reason, in the law of nature, but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there an end.

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I confess, so longe as he conseled the meanes he wrought by, I dispised all he said: but when he tould me, that which he hath given your sovrainship to preserve you from all ficknes ever hereafter, was extracted out of a t-d, I admired the fellow; and for theis reasons: that being a stranger to you, yett he had found out the kind you are come of, and your natural affections and apetis; and so, like a skillful man, hath given you natural fisicke, which is the onlie meanes to preferve the radicall hmrs: and thus I conclude: My fow is healthfull, my divill's luckie, myfelf is happie, and needs no more than your bleffing, which is my trew Felofophers Stone, upon which I build as upon a rocke:

Your Majesties most humble slave and doge

Stinie."

The following passage in Churchyard's Commendation to them that can make Gold &c. 1593, will fufficiently prove that the Elixir was supposed to be a stone before the time of Butler:

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"Of this rich art that thousands hold full deere: "Remundus too, that long liud heere indeede, " Wrate fundry workes, as well doth yet appeare, "Of ftone for gold, and shewed plaine and cleere, "A tone for health. Arnolde wrate of the fame, " And many more that were too long to name. Again, in the dedication of The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and certaine Satyres, 1598:

"Or like that rare and rich Elixar ftone,

"

" Can turne to gold leaden invention." STEEVENS.

I think Dr. Johnson's explanation of this passage is the true "I will make him of twice the value of the philosopher's flone." MALONE.

one.

9

If the young dace] That is, if the pike may prey upon the dace, if it be the law of nature that the stronger may feize upon the weaker, Falstaff may, with great propriety, devour Shallow.

JOHNSON

ACT IV. SCENE I.

A Forest in Yorkshire.

Enter the Archbishop of York, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and Others.

ARCH. What is this forest call'd?

HAST. 'Tis Gualtree foreft, an't shall please your

grace.

ARCH. Here stand, my lords; and send disco

verers forth,

To know the numbers of our enemies.

HAST. We have fent forth already.

ARCH.

'Tis well done.

My friends, and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have receiv'd
New-dated letters from Northumberland;
Their cold intent, tenour and substance, thus:-
Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
As might hold fortance with his quality,
The which he could not levy; whereupon
He is retir'd, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers,
That your attempts may overlive the hazard,
And fearful meeting of their oppofite.

'Tis Gualtree foreft,] "The earle of Westmoreland, &c. made forward against the rebels, and coming into a plaine, within Gathree foreft, caused their standards to be pitched down in like fort as the archbishop had pitched his, over againft them." Holinshed, p. 529.

1

STEEVENS.

1

MoWB. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch

ground,

And dash themselves to pieces.

HAST.

Enter a Messenger.

Now, what news?

MESS. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,

In goodly form comes on the enemy:
And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number
Upon, or near, the rate of thirty thousand.

MOWB. The just proportion that we gave them

out.

Let us sway on, and face them in the field.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

ARCH. What well-appointed leader fronts us here?

3 Let us sway on, I know not that I have ever seen sway in this sense; but I believe it is the true word, and was intended to express the uniform and forcible motion of a compact body. There is a sense of the noun in Milton kindred to this, where, speaking of a weighty sword, he says, " It descends with huge two-handed Sway." JOHNSON.

The word is used in Holinshed, English History, p. 986: "The left fide of the enemy was compelled to fway a good way back, and give ground," &c. Again, in King Henry VI. Part III. A& I. fc. v:

"Now Sways it this way, like a mightie sea,
"Forc'd by the tide to combat with the wind;
"Now fways it that way," &c.

Again, in King Henry V:

4

"Rather Swaying more upon our part," &c. STEEVENS.

well-appointed leader ] Well-appointed is completel

accoutred. So, in The Miferies of Queen Margaret, by Drayton " Ten thousand valiant, well-appointed men."

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