them his name embroudered on his basse and trapper." Halle's Chronicle. But here the term seems applied to the furniture of the horses. The bases appear to have been made of various materials. If in tilting they fell to the ground, the heralds claimed them as a fee, unless redeemed by money; this indeed was the case with respect to any piece of armour that happened to be detached from the owner. Sometimes bases denoted the hose merely; as in the comedy of Lingua, 1607, where Auditus, one of the characters, is dressed in "a cloth of silver mantle upon a pair of sattin bases." In Rider's Latin dictionary, 1659, bases are rendered palliolum curtum. The term seems to have been borrowed from the French, who at a very early period used bache for a woman's petticoat. See Carpentier Glossar. medii ævi.

Sc. 2. p. 454.

THAISA. And his device, a wreath of chivalry
The word, Me pompa provexit apex.

Pompa, and not Pompei, is undoubtedly the true word; and the whole of Mr. Steevens's reasoning in favour of the latter is at once disposed of by referring to the work which appears to have furnished the author of the play with this and the

two subsequent devices of the knights. It is a scarce little volume entitled, The heroicall devises of M. Claudius Paradin canon of Beaujeu, whereunto are added the lord Gabriel Symeon's and others. Translated out of Latin into English, by P. S. 1591, 24mo. The sixth device, from its peculiar reference to the situation of Pericles, may perhaps have been altered from one in the same collection used by Diana of Poitiers. It is a green branch issuing from a tomb with the motto SOLA VIVIT IN ILLO. The following are what have been immediately borrowed from Paradin; but it is also proper to state that the

As

torch and the hand issuing from a cloud are to be found in Whitney's Emblems, 1586, 4to. they are all more elegantly engraved in the original editions of Paradin and Symeon than in the English book above mentioned, the copies here given have been made from the former.

ACT III.

Scene 2. Page 498.

1. GENT. Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, To please the fool and death.

The notes on this passage having got into some little confusion by the introduction of the lines in Measure for measure which relate to the fool and death and the supplemental remarks on it, it will be necessary in all future editions to keep them separate, as it seems almost certain that they have no connexion with each other.

Cerimon in most express terms declares that he feels more real satisfaction in his liberal employment as a physician, than he should in the uncertain pursuit of honour, or in the mere accumulation of wealth; which would assimilate him to a miser, the result of whose labour is merely to entertain the fool and death. But how was such amusement as this to affect those personages in the other instance, where the vain attempts of a fool to escape the jaws of his adversary form the whole of the subject? The allusion therefore is to some such print as Mr. Steevens happily

remembered to have seen, in which death plun ders the miser of his money bags, whilst the fool is grinning at the process. It may be presumed that these subjects were common in Shakspeare's time. They might have ornamented the poor man's cottage in the shape of rude prints, or have been introduced into halfpenny ballads long since consigned to oblivion. The miser is at all times fair game; and to prove that this is not a chimerical opinion, and at the same time to show the extensive range of this popular subject, a few prints of the kind shall be mentioned. 1. Death and the two misers, by Michael Pregel. 2. An old couple counting their money, death and two devils attending, a mezzotint by Vander Bruggen. 3. A similar mezzotint by Meheux without the devils. 4. An old print on a single sheet of a dance of death, on which both the miser and the fool are exhibited in the clutches of the grim monarch.

The rear may be closed with the same subject as represented in the various dances of death that still remain. Nor should it be concluded that because these prints exhibit no fool to grin at the impending scene, others might not have done so. The satirical introduction of this character on many occasions supports the probability that they did. Thus in a painting of the school of Holbein,