guerdon! I will do it, Sir, in print. Guerdon, remuneration.

[Exit. Biron. O! and I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip; A very beadle to a humorous figh: A critick ; nay, a night-watch constable, A domineering pedant o'er the boy, Than whom no mortal more magnificent. This whimpled, whining, purblind wayward boy, This Signior Junio's giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid, (17), Regent of love-rhimes, lord of folded arms, Thi anointed Sovereign of fighs and groans : Liege of all loiterers and malecontents : Dread Prince of plackets, King of codpieces: Sole Imperator, and great General Of trotting parators.

(O my little heart !) (17) This Signior Junio's giant dwarf, Dan Cupid.] It was some time ago ingeniously hinted to me, (and I readily came into the opinion;) that as there was a contrast of terms in gianı-dwarf, fo, probably, there should be in the words immediately preceding them; and therefore that we should restore,

This Senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid. i. e. this old, young man. And there is, indeed, afterwards in this play, a description of Cupid, which forts very aptly with such an emendation.

That was the way to make his godhead wax,

For be harb been five thousand years a boy. The conjecture is exquisitely weil imagin'd, and ought by all means to be embrac'd, unless there is reason to think, that, in the former reading, there is an allusion to some tale, or character in an old play. I have not, on this account, ventur’d to disturb the text, because there seems to me some reason to suspect, that our author is here alluding to Beaumont and Fletcher's Bonduca. In that tragedy there is the character of one Junius, a Reman captain, who falls in love to distraction with one of Bonduca's daughters; and becomes an arrant whining Nave to this passion. He is afterwards cur’d of his infirmity, and is as absolute a tyrant against the sex. Now, with regard to thefe two extremes, Cupid might very properly be filed Junius's giant-dwarf : a giant in his eye, while the dotage was upon him; but shrunk into a dwarf, so soon as he had got the better of it. Our poet writing the name with the Italian termination, and calling him Signior Junio, would, I think, be an objection of little weight to urge, that the Roo man capcain could not therefore be meant.

And

And I to be a corporal of his file, (18)
And wear his colours ! like a tumbler, stoop!
What? I love! I sue! I seek a wife !
A woman that is like a German clock,
Still a repairing ; ever out of frame,
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd, that it may still go right!
Nay, to be perjur’d, which is worst of all :
And among three, to love the worst of all;
A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes;
Ay, and by heav'n, one that will do the deed,
Tho' drgus were her eunuch and her guard ;
And I to figh for her! to watch for her!
To
pray
for her! go to :

-It is a plague,
That Cupid will impofe for my neglect
Of his almighty, dreadful, little, might.
Well, I will love, write, figh, pray, sue and groan:
Some men must love my Lady, and some Joan. [Exit.
(18) And I to be a coporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop !]
A corporal of a field is quite a new term: neither did the tumblers ever
adorn their bocps with ribbands, that I can learn: for those were not
carried in parade about with them, as the fencer carries his sword :
Nor, if they were, is the fimilitude at all pertinent to the case in hand.
But to foop like a tumbler agrees not only with that profession, and the
servile condescensions of a lover, but with what follows in the context.
What mised the wise transcribers at first, seems this: When once the
tumbler appear’d, they thought, his boop must not be far behind.

Mr. Warburton.

ACT

ACT III. SCENE, a Pavilion in the Park near the

Palace.

W4

Enter the Princess, Rosaline, Maria, Catharine, Lords,

Attendants, and a Forefter.

PRINCESS.
AS that the King, that spurr'd his horse so hard

Against the steep uprising of the hill?
Boyet. I know not; but, I think, it was not he.

Prin. Who e'er he was, he shew'd a mounting mind, Well, Lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch: On Saturday we will return to France. Then Forester, my friend, where is the buh, That we must stand and play the murderer in?

For. Here by, upon the hedge of yonder coppice; A stand, where you may make the faireft shoot.

Prin. I thank my beauty, I am fair, that shoot : And thereupon thou speak'st the faireft shoot.

For. Pardon me, madam : for I meant not fo.

Prin. What, what? first praise me, then again say, no? O fhort-liv'd pride ! not fair? alack, for woe!

For. Yes, madam, fair.

Prin. Nay, never paint me now;
Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.
Here, good my glais, take this for telling true;
Fair

payment for foul words is more than due,
For. Nothing but fair is that, which you inherit,

Prin. See, see, my beauty will be sav'd by merit. O heresy in fair, fit for these days! A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise. But come, the bow ; now mercy goes to kill, And shooting well is then accounted ill. Thus will I save my credit in the shoot, Not wounding, pity would not let me do't:

If

If wounding, then it was to fhew my skill;
That more for praise, than purpose, meant to kill.
And, out of question, so it is sometimes;
Glory grows guilty of detested crimes;
When for fame's fake, for praise, an outward part,
We bend to that the working of the heart.
As I for praise alone now seek to spill
The
poor

deer's blood, that my heart means no ill.
Boyet. Do not curft wives hold that self-sovereignty
Only for praise-fake, when they strive to be
Lords o'er their Lords?

Prin. Only for praise; and praise we may afford To any Lady, that subdues her Lord.

Enter Costard. Boyet. Here comes a member of the commonwealth

Coff. God dig-you-den all; pray you, which is the head Lady!

Prin. Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads.

Cot. Which is the greatest Lady, the highest ?
Prin. The thickest and the tallest.

Coft. The thickest and the tallest? it is so, truth is truth. An your waste, mistress, were as flender as my wit, One o' these maids girdles for your waste should be fit. Are not you the chief woman? you are the thickest here.

Prin. What's your will, Sir? what's your will ?
Coft. I have a letter from Monsieur Biron, to one Lady

Rofaline.
Prin. Othy letter, thy letter: he's a good friend of mine.
Stand afide, good bearer.--Boyet, you can carve ; (19)

Break (19) Boyet, you can carve;

Break up this capon.) i. e, open this letter. Our poet uses this metaphor, as the French do their poulet ; which fignifies both a young fowl, and a love letter. Poulet, amatoria litteræ ; says Richelet : and quotes from Voiture, repondre au plus obligeant poulet du monde ; to reply to the most obliging letter in the world. The Italians use the same manner of expreflicn, when they calla love-epistle, una pollicetta amorosa. low'd the hint of this equivocal use of the word . to my ingenious friend Mr. Bijbup. I observe in Weft-wardboe, a comedy

written

Break up this capon.

Boyet. I am bound to serve.
This letter is mistook, it importeth none here;
It is writ to Jaquenetta.

Prin. We will read it, I swear.
Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear.

Boyet reads.
Y heaven, that thou art fair, is most infallible ;

;

thou art lovely; more fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth itself; have commiseration on thy heroical vaffal. The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon; and he it was that might rightly say, veni, vidi, vici ; which to anatomize in the vulgar, (O base and obscure vulgar!) videlicet, he came, law, and overcame; he came, one; saw, two; overcame, three. Who came? the King. Why did he come? to see. Why did he fee? to overcome. To whom came he ? to the beggar. What saw he? the beggar. Who overcame he! the beggar. The conclufion is victory; on whose fide! the King's; the captive is inrich’d: on whose fide? the beggar's. The catastrophe is a nuptial: on whose sider the King's ? no, on both in one, or one in both: I am the King, (for so stands the comparison) thou the beggar, for so witnesseth thy lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may. Shall I enforce thy love ? I could. Shall I entreat thy love? I will. What shalt thou exchange for rags? robes; for tittles? titles: for thyself? me. Thus expecting thy reply, I prophane my lips on thy foot, my eyes on thy picture, and my heart on thy every part. Thine in the dearest defign of industry.

Don Adriano de Armado. written by a contemporary with our author, that one of these letters is likewise calld a wild-fowl. Act. 2. Sc. 2.

At the skirt of that sheet in black work is wrought his name. Break not up the wild-fowl till anon, and then feed upon him in private.

Thus