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The feveral chairs of order look you fcour
With juice of balm,' and every precious flower:
Each fair inftalment, coat, and several crest,
With loyal blazon, evermore be bleft!
And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter's compafs, in a ring:
The expreffure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to fee;
And, Hony Soit Qui Mal y Penfe, write,
In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white;
Like faphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knight-hood's bending knee:
Fairies ufe flowers for their charactery."

The feveral chairs of order look you fcour

8

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With juice of balm, &c.] It was an article of our ancient luxury, to rub tables, &c. with aromatic herbs. Pliny informs us, that the Romans did the fame, to drive away evil spirits. STEEVENS. 8 In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white;

Like faphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,] Thefe lines are moft miferably corrupted. In the words -Flowers purple, blue, and white-the purple is left uncompared. To remedy this, the editors, who feem to have been fenfible of the imperfection of the comparifon, read AND rich embroidery; that is, according to them, as the blue and white flowers are compared to faphire and pearl, the purple is compared to rich embroidery. Thus, inftead of mending one falfe ftep, they have made two, by bringing Saphire, pearl, and rich embroidery under one predicament. The lines were wrote thus by the poet:

"In emerald tufts, flowers purfled, blue, and white;
"Like faphire, pearl, in rich embroidery."

i. e. let there be blue and white flowers worked on the greenfward, like faphire and pearl in rich embroidery. To purfle, is to over-lay with tinfel, gold thread, &c. fo our ancestors called a certain lace of this kind of work a purfling-lace. "Tis from the French pourfiler. So Spenfer :

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fhe was yclad,

"All in a filken camus, lilly white,

"Purfled upon, with many a folded plight.”

The change of and into in in the fecond verfe, is neceffary. For flowers worked, or purfled in the grafs, were not like faphire and pearl fimply, but faphire and pearl in embroidery. How the cor

Away; difperfe: But, till 'tis one o' clock,
Our dance of cuftom, round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.

EVA. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order fet:

And twenty glow-worms fhall our lanterns be,
To guide our measure round about the tree.
But, ftay; I fmell a man of middle earth.3

rupt reading and was introduced into the text, we have shown above. WARBURTON.

Whoever is convinced by Dr. Warburton's note, will show he has very little ftudied the manner of his author, whofe fplendid incorrectnefs in this inftance, as in fome others, is furely preferable to the infipid regularity propofed in its room. STEEVENS.

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-charactery.] For the matter with which they make letters. JOHNSON.

So, in Julius Cæfar:

"All the chara&tery of my fad brows." i. e. all that feems to be written on them.

Again, in Ovid's Banquet of Sence, by Chapman, 1595: "Wherein was writ in fable chare&try." STEEVENS. Bullokar, in his English Expofitor improved by R. Browne, 12mo. fays that charactery is " a writing by characters in ftrange marks.' In 1588 was printed-" Charactery, an arte of fhorte, fwift, and fecrete writing by character. Invented by Timothie Brighte, Doctor of Phifike." This feems to have been the first book upon fhorthand writing printed in England. DOUCE.

2

lock hand in hand;] The metre requires us to read"lock hands." Thus Milton, who perhaps had this paffage in his mind, when he makes Comus fay—

"Come, knit hands, and beat the ground

"In a light fantastic round." STEEVENS.

3 of middle earth.] Spirits are fuppofed to inhabit the ethereal regions, and fairies to dwell under ground; men therefore are in a middle ftation. JOHNSON.

So, in the ancient metrical romance of Syr Guy of Warwick, bl. 1. no date:

"And win the fayreft mayde of middle erde." Again, in Gower, De Confefione Amantis, fol. 26: "Adam, for pride loft his price

"In mydell erth."

FAL. Heavens defend me from that Welch fairy! left he transform me to a piece of cheese!

PIST. Vile worm, thou waft o'er-look'd even in thy birth.3

QUICK. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end: + If he be chafte, the flame will back defcend,

Again, in the MSS. called William and the Werwolf, in the library of King's College, Cambridge, p. 15:

"And feide God that madeft man, and all middel erthe." Ruddiman, the learned compiler of the Gloffary to Gawin Douglas's Tranflation of the Æneid, affords the following illuftration of this contefted phrase. "It is yet in ufe in the North of Scotland among old people, by which they understand this earth in which we live, in oppofition to the grave: Thus they fay, There's no man in middle erd is able to do it, i. c. no man alive, or on this earth, and fo it is ufed by our author. But the reafon is not fo eafy to come by ; perhaps it is because they look upon this life as a middle ftate (as it is) between Heaven and Hell, which laft is frequently taken for the grave. Or that life is as it were a middle betwixt non-entity, before we are born, and death, when we go hence and are no more feen; as life is called a coming into the world, and death a going out of it."-Again, among the Addenda to the Glossary aforefaid -" Myddil erd is borrowed from the A. S. MIDDAN-EARD, MIDDANGEARD, mundus, MIDDANEARDLICE, mundanus, SE LAESSA MIDDAN-EARD, microcofmus. STEEVENS.

The author of THE REMARKS fays, the phrafe fignifies neither more nor lefs, than the earth or world, from its imaginary situation in the midft or middle of the Ptolemaic fyftem, and has not the leaft reference to either spirits or fairies. REED.

Vile worm,] The old copy reads-vild. That wild, which fo often occurs in thefe plays, was not an error of the prefs, but the old fpelling and the pronunciation of the time, appears from these lines of Heywod, in his Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, 1637:

3.

born.

"EARTH. What goddefs, or how ftyl'd?
"AGE. Age, am I call'd.

"EARTH. Hence false virago vild." MALONE.

o'er-look'd even in thy birth.] i. e. flighted as foon as STEEVENS.

4 With trial-fire, &c.] So Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Faith

ful Shepherdess:

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In this flame his finger thruft,

* Which will burn him if he luft;

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And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

PIST. A trial, come.

EVA. Come, will this wood take fire?

[They burn him with their tapers.

FAL. Oh, oh, oh!

QUICK. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in defire!
About him, fairies; fing a scornful rhime:
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
EVA. It is right; indeed he is full of lecheries
and iniquity.

SONG. Fie on finful fantasy!

Fie on luft and luxury!"

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Luft is but a bloody fire,
Kindled with unchafte defire,

"But if not, away will turn,

"As loth unspotted flesh to burn." STEEVENS.

5 And turn him to no pain;] This appears to have been the common phrafeology of our author's time.

Tempeft:

66

O, my heart bleeds,

So again, in The

"To think of the teen that I have turn'd you to." Again, in K. Henry VI. P. III:

"Edward, what fatisfaction canft thou make,

"For bearing arms, for ftirring up my fubjects,

"And all the trouble thou haft turn'd me to."

Of this line there is no trace in the original play, on which the third Part of K. Henry VI. was formed. MALONE.

6 Eva. It is right; indeed, &c.] This short speech, which is very much in character for fir Hugh, I have inferted from the old quarto, 1619. THEOBALD.

I have not difcarded Mr. Theobald's infertion, though perhaps the propriety of it is queftionable. STEEVENS.

7

and luxury!] Luxury is here used for incontinence. So, in King Lear: ""To't luxury, pell-mell, for I lack foldiers."

STEEVENS.

8 Luft is but a bloody fire,] A bloody fire, means a fire in the blood. In The Second Part of Henry IV. Act IV. the fame expreffion occurs:

Fed in heart; whofe flames afpire,
As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
Pinch him, fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villainy;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
'Till candles, and star-light, and moon-shine be out.

2

During this fong, the fairies pinch Falstaff. Doctor Caius comes one way, and steals away a fairy in green; Slender another way, and takes off a fairy in white; and Fenton comes, and fleals away Mrs. Anne Page. A noife of hunting is made within. All the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck's head, and rises.

Enter PAGE, FORD, Mrs. PAGE, and Mrs. FORD.
They lay hold on him.

PAGE. Nay, do not fly: I think, we have watch'd
you now;

Will none but Herne the hunter ferve your turn?

"Led on by bloody youth," &c.

i. e. fanguine youth. STEEVENS.

In Sonnets by H. C. [Henry Constable,] 1594, we find the fame image:

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Luft is a fire, that for an hour or twaine

"Giveth a fcorching blaze, and then he dies;
"Love a continual furnace doth maintaine," &c.

So alfo, in The Tempeft:

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the ftrongeft oaths are straw

"To the fire i' the blood." MALONE.

9 During this fong,] This direction I thought proper to infert from the old quartos. THEOBALD.

2

the fairies pinch Falstaff.] So, in Lylly's Endymion, 1591: "The fairies dance, and, with a fong, pinch him." And, in his Maid's Metamorphofis, 1600, they threaten the fame punishment.

STEEVENS

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