depravation a duré plus de deux siécles? Aussi sont ce moins les noms de ces pâtisseries qu'il faut blâmer que les formes qu'on leur donnait. Champier, apres avoir décrit les differentes pâtis. series usitées de son temps, dit, Quædam pudenda muliebria, aliæ virilia (si diis placet) representant. Sunt quos c.... saccharatos appellitent. Adeò degeneravere boni mores, ut etiam Christianis obscoena el pudenda in cibis placeant.”

οικογενης,

Minsheu's tale of the cock neighing, and Casaubon's derivation of cockney from onoyevs i. e. domi natus, may serve to increase those smiles of compassion which it is to be feared some of the present remarks may have already excited.

It is worth remarking, although not immediately connected with the present subject, that in the Celtic languages coeg, and kok, signified any thing foolish or good for nothing. They seem connected with the radical word for a cuckow, a silly bird, which has thus transmitted its appellation to persons of a similar nature. See the words cog in the Welsh dictionaries, and cok in Pryce's Cornish vocabulary. In the North they call the cuckow a gowk, whence genkit, foolish, and gawky. Our term cokes, for a fool, is of the same family, and, perhaps, cuckold.

Sc. 4. p. 132.

LEAR. Thou art a boil.

The note on this word states that it was written byle in the old copies, which all the modern editors have too strictly followed; that the mistake arose from the word boil being often pronounced as if written bile; and that in the folio we find in Coriolanus the same false spelling as here.-But this charge against the editors seems to have originated in a misconception. The ancient and true orthography is byle and bile, and such was the common pronunciation. The modern boyl and boil are corruptions. Thus in the Promptuarium parvulorum, 1516, we have " Byle sore,-Pustula." In Mathews's bible, 1551, "Satan smote Job with marvelous soore byles." In Whetstone's Mirour for magestrates of cyties, 1584, 4to, "Dicyng houses are of the substance of other buildinges, but within are the botches and byles of abhomination." Bile is pure Saxon, and is so given in most of the old dic tionaries.

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws.

On the word flaws we have the following note:

"A flaw, signifying a crack or other similar imperfection; our author, with his accustomed license, uses the word here for a small broken particle. So again in the fifth act,

Now there is some reason for supposing that flaw might signify a fragment in Shakspeare's time, as well as a mere crack; because among the Saxons it certainly had that meaning, as may be seen in Somner's Diction. Saxon. voce floh. It is to be observed that the quartos read flowes, approaching nearer to the original. In the above quotation flaw'd seems to be used in the modern

sense.

ACT III.

Scene 2. Page 147.

FOOL. Marry, here's grace, and a cod-piece; that's a wise man and a fool.

Shakspeare has with some humour applied the above name to the fool, who, for obvious reasons, was usually provided with this unseemly part of dress in a more remarkable manner than other persons. To the custom Gayton thus alludes, when

speaking of the decline of the stage: "No fooles with Harry codpieces appeare." Festivous notes upon Don Quixote, p. 270.

Sc. 2. p. 150.

FOOL. No hereticks burn'd but wenches suitors.

Dr. Johnson has very well explained why wenches suitors were burned; but Mr. Steevens's quotation from Isaiah iii. 24, "-and burning instead of beauty," has not been applied on this occasion with his usual discernment. Not to mention the improbability that the burning in question should have existed in the time of Isaiah, the expression itself is involved in the deepest obscurity. Saint Jerome has entirely omitted it; and if the Hebrew word which in some translations has been rendered adustio, be susceptible of any fair meaning, it is that of shrivelled or dried up by heat. It is, therefore, in the bishops' bible and some foreign translations paraphrastically given, "and for their bewty witherednesse and sunne burning." The manuscript regulations for the stews in Southwark, printed but abridged in Stowe's Annals, would have furnished the learned commentator with a far more apposite illustration.

In these it is said, "no stewholder shall keep any woman that hath the perilous infirmity of burning."

Sc. 4. p. 160.

EDG. Pillicock sat on pillicock's hill.

In the metrical romance of Sir Gawain and Sir Galaron, there is this line,

"His polemous with pelicocus were poudred to pay." Pinkerton's Scotish poems, vol. iii. 214.

In the comedy of Ignoramus by Ruggles, Act iii. Sc. 6, Cupes talks of "quimbiblos, indenturas, pilicoccos, calimancas;" where it is perhaps a new-fangled term for any kind of stuff or cloth. There is an attempt to explain the word in Warner's Letter to Garrick, p. 30; but whoever would be certain of finding the exact meaning, may consult, besides the article in Minsheu, 9299, the following books-Durfey's Pills to purge melancholy, iv. 311-The Nightingale, (a collection of songs) 1738, p. 380— Lyndsay's Works, as edited by Mr. Chalmers, ii. 145, and the excellent glossary.Florio's Italian dictionary, 1611, under the articles piviolo, and rozzone.