of the history little called for it, he introduces the lady again, manifesting her strong affection, and engaging the sympathy and best feelings of the audience; or he might wish thus a second time to turn the public sympathy towards the sister of Essex, and wife of the morose Earl of Northumberland. The whole of this speech is singularly beautiful, and the few lines quoted above present us a natural image sharply cut, and most picturesquely placed.

II. 4. HOSTESS.

TILLY-FALLY, Sir John, never tell me.

"Tilly-fally" occurs again in Twelfth Night, written about the same time with this play. This foolish interjection appears to be of Cornish extraction. In The Creation of the World, a dramatic poem, written in the Cornish language, 1681, published by Mr. Davies Gilbert, when the wife of Cain remonstrates with him on the murder of his brother, he replies,

Tety valy, bram en gath, &c.

which is thus translated,

Tittle-tattle, the wind of a cat, &c.

It was a favourite phrase of the wife of Sir Thomas More; and it is remarkable that the Hostess just before is made to use another of the phrases which were favourites of the same lady, "What the good-year, one must bear," which looks as if Shakespeare might lately have been reading one of the Lives of Sir Thomas, in which there are amusing specimens at once of the philosophy and eloquence of the lady whom he married, when he had lost his first wife, the mother of his accomplished daughters.

II. 4. DOLL.

What with two points on your shoulder? MUCH!

The commentators seem to have failed in their attempts at explaining this word. It was used as a substantive, and is probably allied to mich, a filcher, rather than to the particle much. I quote the following authority from An Essay of the means how to make our travels into foreign countries the more profitable and honourable, 4to. 1606, the author of which was Sir Thomas Palmer, of Wingham, in Kent.

There is another kind of intelligencers, (but base in respect of the former, by reason they assume a liberty to say what they list,) who are inquisiters or divers into the behaviours or affections of men belonging to a state, the carriages of whom are very insupportable; oftentimes exercising any liberty or licentiousness to pry into the hearts of men, to know how such stand affected. But being also necessary evils in a state, I would counsaile such as unhappily shall have to deal with this pack of muches not so favourably to suffer them to rail upon the nobility of the land and discover faults in the state, to blaspheme and dishonour the Majesty of God and of their prince, but rather to conjure such so as never afterwards they shall delight in that humorous-carnal-tempting, and divellish profession.-p. 5.

III. 1. K. HENRY.

And leav'st the kingly couch

A watch-case or a common 'larum-bell.

The Poet seems to have had in his mind Spenser's beautiful allegory of the Cottage of Care, with its

Thousand iron hammers beating rank.

He has the same idea of incessant iteration, represented by the ceaseless ticking of a clock.

V. 3. PISTOL.

Under which king, BEZONIAN? speak, or die.

The commentators have not given a correct idea of the meaning of this word, which occurs again in 2 Henry VI. iv. 1. "Great men oft die by vile Bezonians," It was a word used in the army for "a raw soldier, unexpert in his weapon and other military points." Thus it is explained by Barret in his Explanation of Terms added to his Theorike and Prac

tike of Modern Warres, fol. 1598, dedicated to Lord Herbert. The word occurs several times in this book as a term of reproach for soldiers. The dedication to Lord Herbert of a work on this subject, is a proof additional to those already produced of the young lord's military ardour, one of the points in which he resembles Benedick.

KING HENRY THE FIFTH.

SHAKESPEARE fulfilled the promise made at the close of the Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, that he would introduce the wars of King Henry the Fifth upon the stage, and make the audience merry with fair Catherine of France. The adherence of the Poet to the party of the Earl of Essex, is shewn in nothing more decisively than in his allusion to the Earl's campaign in Ireland, and his hoped-for return with victory.

As, by a lower but a loving likelihood,

Were now the general of our gracious Empress
(As in good time he may) from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit,

To welcome him!

This, also, seems to fix the date of the play. The Earl joined the army in Ireland in April, and returned in September, 1599. But he did not return in triumph, as was here promised for him.

I have already remarked on Shakespeare's introduction of Welsh characters in his plays; and its probable origin in his early acquaintance with several persons of that nation who were settled, we know not by what means, at Stratford. The name, Fluellin, given to the Welsh soldier in this play, was, probably, taken from the name of one of these people, William Fluellin, who was buried at Stratford July 9, 1595.

For, once the eagle England being in prey,

To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,
Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,

To spoil and havoc more than she can eat.

Westmoreland was one of the lords of the northern border, which is another proof that this speech belongs to him, and not, as others represent it, to the Duke of Exeter or the Bishop of Ely. Perhaps the Poet intended, by making Westmoreland speak according to the wisdom of Proverbs, and reason from the habits of wild animals, to exhibit a specimen of the native and natural eloquence of one born and brought up far from the court and city. He makes the Archbishop afterwards adopt the same style of oratory to give utterance to refined and just sentiments, to shew how a highly cultivated mind can, on occasion given, beat the less cultivated, even at their own peculiar eloquence. There is the most splendid affluence of illustration

So work the honey bees;

Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king, and officers of sorts;

Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;

Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor :

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;

The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.

As to the sentiment itself, it is but a reflection of what

was a very common notion in England at that time of the