a like nature being sculptured on the ancient pieces of artillery, supplied them with the various appellations of serpentines, culverines, (from the French couleuvre,) flying dragons, &c. Of these the basilisk was the largest. It was sometimes called a double culverine, and was much used about the middle of the sixteenth century, especially by the Turks. It must have been of a prodigious size, as it carried a ball of near two hundred pounds weight. Coryat mentions that he saw in the citadel of Milan "an exceeding huge basiliske which was so great that it would easily contayne the body of a very corpulent man." Crudities, p. 104, quarto edition. Father Maffei, in his History of the Indies, relates that Badur king of Cambay, had at the siege of Chitor four basilisks of so large a size that each was drawn by a hundred yoke of oxen, so that the ground trembled beneath them. Sc. 3. p. 438. LADY PER. In faith I'll break thy, little finger Harry. This "token of amorous dalliance" is more particularly exemplified in an ancient song entitled Beware my lyttyl fynger, reprinted by Mr. Ritson from Sir John Hawkins's History of music. As the learned historian has not stated whence he procured this piece, it may be worth adding that it occurs in a small oblong quarto volume of songs with music, printed, according to appearance, by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1530; but as it varies in some instances from the reading in Sir John's work, it is possible that he might have used some other authority. Sc. 4. p. 442. P. HEN. I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff; but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle. The celebrity of Lais the Corinthian courtezan is said to have occasioned the proverb cited in Mr. Steevens's note, because from the extravagance of the lady's demands every one could not afford to go to Corinth, which, says Taverner in his Proverbs or adagies of Erasmus, 1569, 12mo, is of like sense with our English proverb, Every man may not be a lord. We are told by Strabo that the temple of Venus at Corinth was furnished with a thousand young girls who performed the rites of the goddess. In short, that city appears to have been so notorious for its luxury, that ancient writers are full of allusions on this subject. See particularly Aristophanes's Plu tus, Act i. Sc. 2, and Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, ch. v. verse 1. This may serve to explain why wenchers were called Corinthians. Sc. 4. p. 444. FRAN. Anon, anon, sir. This was the coming, sir, of the waiters in Shakspeare's time. In Summer's last will and testament, Harvest says, "Why, friend, I am no tapster to say, anon, anon, sir. Sc. 4. p. 461. P. HEN. Thou knotty-pated fool. Although it certainly stands thus in the old copy, the word should be changed without scruple to nott-pated, i. e. polled or cropped. The prince had a little before bestowed the same epithet on the drawer. In this place it may refer to the practice of nicking or cropping naturals. Sc. 4. p. 461. FAL. What upon compulsion? No; were I at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion. As the strappado has been elsewhere impro perly defined" a chastisement by blows," under an idea that a strap was used on the occasion, it may be necessary to take further notice of it on this occasion. It was a military punishment, by which the unfortunate sufferer was most inhumanly tortured in the following manner. A rope being fastened under his arms, he was drawn up by a pulley to the top of a high beam, and then suddenly let down with a jerk. The consequence usually was a dislocation of the shoulder blade. Representations of this nefarious process may be seen in Breughel's print of The punishments of the law; in one of Gerini's fine Views of Florence, and in Callot's Miseries of war. term is evidently taken from the Italian strappare, to pull or draw with violence. At Paris there was a spot called l'estrapade in the fauxbourg St. Jaques, where soldiers received this punishment. The machine, whence the place took its name, remained fixed like a perpetual gallows. The Sc. 4. p. 468. FAL. he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado. Amaimon, king of the East, was one of the principal devils who might be bound or restrained from doing hurt from the third hour till noon, and from the ninth hour till evening. See Scot's Discovery of witchcraft, B. xv. ch. 3. ACT III. Scene 1. Page 487. GLEN. The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes A cresset light was the same as a beacon light, but occasionally portable. It consisted of a wreathed rope smeared with pitch and placed in a cage of iron like a trivet, which was suspended on pivots in a kind of fork. The light sometimes issued from a hollow pan filled with combustibles. The term is not, as Hanmer and others have stated, from the French croissette, a little cross, but rather from croiset, a cruet or earthen pot; yet as the French language furnishes no similar word for the cresset itself, we might prefer a different etymology. Our Saxon glossaries afford no equivalent term, but it may perhaps exhibit a Teutonic origin in the German kerze, a light or candle, or even in the French cierge, |