To doat thus on such luggage? Let's along, STE. Be you quiet monster.---Misress line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line:' now, jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin. yesterday by the frippery, I spied two of them hanging out at a stall with a gambrell thrust from shoulder to shoulder." The person who kept one of these shops was called a fripper. Strype in the life of Stowe, says, that these frippers lived iv Birchin.lane and Cornhill. STEEVENS. 8 - Let's along,) First edit. Let's alone. JOHNSON, I believe the poet wrote: Let it alone, " And do the murder first." Caliban had used the same expresbon beforea Mr. Theobald reads-let's along. MALONE. Let's alone, may mean-Let you and I only go to commit the murder, leaving Trinçulo, who is so solicitous about the trash of dress, behind us. STEEVENS. 9 --under the line:) An allusion to what often happens to pcoa ple who pass the line. The violent fevers, which they contra& in that hot climate, make them lose their hair. EDWARDS' MSS. Perhaps the allusion is to a more indelicate disease than any peculiar to the equinoxial. So, in The Noble Soldier, 1632 : “ 'Tis hot going under the line there." Again, in Lady Alimony, 1659: - Look to the clime " Yea, there goes the hair away." Shakspeare seems to design an equivoquc between the equinoxial and the girdle of a woman. It may be necessary, however, to observe, as a further elucidation of this miserable jest, that the lines on which clothes are huug, are usually made of twisted horse-hair. STEEVENS, TRIN. Do, do: We steal by line and level, and't like your grace. STE. I thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for’t : wit shall not go unrewarded, while I am king of this country: Steal by line and level, is an excellent pass of pate; there's another garment for't. Trin. Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest. Cal. I will have none on't: we shall lose our time, And all be turn'd to barnacles or to apes? With foreheads villainous low.* -put some lime, &c.] That is birdlime. JOHNSON, So, in Green's Disputation between a He and She Conycatcher, 1392: "— mine eyes are stauls, and my hands lime twigs.' STEEVENS. 3 to barnacles, or to apes---] Skinner says barnacle is Anfer Scoticus. The barnacle is a kind of fhell-fish growing on the bote toms of ships, and which was anciently supposed, when broken off, to become one of these geese. Hall, in his Virgidemiarum, lib. iv. {at. 2. feems to favour this supposition: " The Scottish barnacle, if I might choose, " That of a worme doth waxe a winged goose," &c. So likewise Maríton, in his Malecontent, 1604: - like your Scotch barnacle, now a block, Instantly a worm, and presently a great goose.” " There are" (says Gerard, in his Herbal, edit. 1597, page 1391,) "in the north parts of Scotland certaine trees, whereon do grow shell-fishes, &c. &c. which, falling into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnakles; in the north of England brant geefe; and in Lancashire tree geefe.” &c. This vulgar error deserves no serious confutation. Commend me, however, to Holinshed, (Vol. 1. p. 38.). who declares himself to have seen the feathers of these barnacles hang out of the shell at least two inches." Aud in the 27th song of Drayton's Polyolbion, the same account of their generation is given. Collins. 4 With foreheads villainous low.] Low foreheads were anciently STE. Monster, lay-to your fingers; help to bear this away, where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you out of my kingdom; go to, carry this, TRIN. And this. A noise of hunters heard.' Enter divers Spirits, in hark! [CAL. STE. and Trin. are driving out. Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their finews With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them, Than pard, or cat o'mountain. reckoned among deformities, So, in the old bl. 1. ballad, entitled A Peerles Paragon: " Her beetle brows all men admire, " Her forehead wondrous low.'' Again, (the quotation is Mr. Malone's,) in Antony and Cleopatra : -And her forehead 66 As low as she would wish it." STEEVENS. 5 A noise of hunters heard.] Shakspeare might have had in view 56 Arthur's Chace, which many believe to be in France, and think that it is a kennel of black dogs followed by unknown huntsmen with an exceeding great sound of horns, as if it was a very hunting of some wild beast." See a Treatise of Spe&tres translated from the French of Peter de Loier, and published in quarto, 1605. GREY. “ HECATĖ, (says the same writer, ibid.) as the Greeks afirmed, did use to send dogges unto men, to feare and terrifie them.” MALONE. ARI. Hark, they roar. (Exeunt, Before the Cell of Prospero. Pro. Now does my project gather to a head: Ari. On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord, I did say so, Confin'd together 6 and time Goes upright with his carriage. ) Alluding to one carrying a burthen. This critical period of my life proceeds as I could wilh. Time brings forward all the expe&ed events, without faultering uoder his burthen. STEEVENS. 7 - the king and his?) The old copy reads the king and his followers ?" But the word followers is evidently an interpolation, (or gloss which had crept into the text) and spoils the metre without help 10 the fense. STEEVENS. 8 They cannot budge, till your release. The king, you term’d, sir, The good old lord, Gonzalo; His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops From eaves of reeds : your charm so strongly works them, do'st thou think so, spirit? And mine shall. quick, 2 8 9 till your release. ] i. e, till you release them. Malone. a touch, a feeling--[ A touch is a sensation. So, in Cymbeline : - a touch more rare ". Nor tender feeling to base touches prone." . STEEVENS. Tafe grief, necd friends, like you,” &c. STEEVENS. |