not...

session of the devil, viz. "The disease, I spake of was a spice of the Mother, wherewith I had bene troubled... before my going into Fraunce: whether I doe rightly term it the Mother or no, I knowe When I was sicke of this disease in Fraunce, a Scottish doctor of physick then in Paris, called it, as I remember, Vertiginem Capitis. It riseth... ..... of a winde in the bottome of the belly, and proceeding with a great swelling, causeth a very painfull collicke in the stomack, and an extraordinary giddines in the head.”

It is at least very probable, that Shakspeare would not have thought of making Lear affect to have the Hysterick Passion, or Mother, if this passage in Harsnet's pamphlet had not suggested it to him, when he was selecting the other particulars from it, in order to furnish out his character of Tom of Bedlam, to whom this demoniacal gibberish is admirably adapted. PERCY.

1

In p. 25 of the above pamphlet it is said “Ma: Maynie had a spice of the Hysterica passio, as seems, from his youth, he himselfe terms it the Moother." RITSON.

P. 48, 1. 15. 16. We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no labouring in the winter.] "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, (says Solomon,) learn her ways, and be wise; which having no guide, over-seer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest."

By this allusion more is meant than is expressed. If, says the Fool, you had been school'd by the ant, you would have known that the King's train, like that sagacious animal, prefer the summer of prosperity to the colder season of adversity, from

which no profit can be derived; and desert him, whose "mellow hangings" have been shaken down, and who by "one winter's brush" has been left 'open and bare for every storm that blows."

MALONE.

P. 48, 1. 16-19. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but blind men; and there's not a nose among twenty, but can smell him that's stinking.] The word twenty refers to the noses of the blind men, and not to the men in general. STEEVENS.

Mr. M. Mason supposes we should read sinking. What the Fool, says he, wants to describe is, the sagacity of mankind, in finding out the man whose fortunes are declining. REED.

Stinking is the true reading. STEEVENS.

P. 48, 1. 22-25. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knaves follow it, since a foot gives it.] One cannot too much commend the caution which our moral poet uses, on all occasions, to prevent his sentiment from being perversely taken. So here, having given an ironical precept in commendation of perfidy and base desertion of the unfortunate, for fear it should be understood seriously, though delivered by his buffoon or jester, he has the precaution to add this beautiful corrective, full of fine sense; -"I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it." WARBURTON.

P. 48, 1. 30. -33. But I will tarry; the fool

--

passage erroneous, though both the copies concur, The sense will be mended if we read:

But I will tarty; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly;

The fool turns knave, that runs away;
The knave no fool,

That I stay with the King is a proof that I am a fool; the wise men are deserting him. There is knavery in this desertion, but there is no folly.

JOHNSON P. 49, last 1. & P. 50, first 1. That this remotion of the Duke and her

Is practice only.] From their own house to that of the Earl of Gloster. MALONE.

Practice is in Shakspeare, and other old writers, used commonly in an ill sense for unlawful artifice. JOHNSON.

P. 50, 1. 5.

Sleep to death.] This, as it stands, appears to be a mere nonsensical rhapsody.Perhaps we should read Death to sleep instead of Sleep to death. M. MASON.

P. 50, 1. . ro. Cry to it, nuncle, as the Cockney did to the eels, when she put them i' the paste alive;] Cockney. It is not easy to determine the exact power of this term of contempt, which, as the editor of the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer observes, might have been originally borrowed from the kitchen. From the ancient ballad of The Turnament of Tottenham, published by Dr. Percy in his second volume of Ancient Poetry, p. 24, it should seem to signify a cook:

"As that feast were they served in rich array; "Every five and five had a cokeney." i. e. a cook, or scullion, to attend them.

Shakspeare, however, in Twelfth Night, makes his Clown say, "I am afraid this great lubber the

world, will prove a cockney." In this place it seems to have a signification not unlike that which it bears at present.

See the notes on the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer Vol. IV. p. 253. where the reader will meet with more information on this subjeet. STEEVENS.

Cockenay, as Dr. Percy imagines, cannot be cook or scullion, but is some dish which I am unable to ascertain. My authority is the following epigram from Davies:

"He that comes every day, shall have a cock

nay,

"And he that comes but now and then, shall have a fat hen.

Ep. on Eng. Prov. 179.

WHALLEY.

Mr. Malone expresses his doubt whether cockney means a scullion, &c. in Turnament of Tottenham; and to the lines already quoted from J. Davies's Scourge of Folly, adds the two next:

"But cocks that to hens come but now and then, "Shall have a cook-nay, not the fat hen." I have been lately informed by an old lady that, during her childhood, she remembers having eaten a kind of sugar pellets called at that time cockneys. STEEVENS.

When she put them i' the paste alive;] Hinting that the eel and Lear are in the same danger. JOHNSON.

This reference is not sufficiently explained. The paste, or crust of a pie, in Shakspeare's time, was called a coffin. HENLEY.

P. 50, 1. 25. 26. - she hath tied

Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture,

P. 50, 1. 31. 32. You less know how to value her desert,

Than she to scant her duty,] The word scant is directly contrary to the sense intended. The quarto reads:

slack her duty,