Mark now, how plain a tale shall put you down.Then did we two set on you four: and, with a word, out-faced you from your prize, and have it; yea, and can show it you here in the house :-and, Falstaff, you carried your guts away as nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roared for mercy, and still ran and roared, as ever I heard bull-calf. What a slave art thou, to hack thy sword as thou hast done; and then say, it was in fight? What trick, what device, what starting-hole, canst thou now find out, to hide thee from this open and apparent shame ? POINS. Come, let's hear, Jack; What trick hast thou now? FAL. By the Lord, I knew ye, as well as he that made ye. Why, hear ye, my masters: Was it for me to kill the heir apparent? Should I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest, I am as valiant as Hercules: but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince". Instinct is a great matter *; I was a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself and thee, during my life; I, for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by 3 - the lion will not touch the true prince.] So, in The Mad Lover, by Beaumont and Fletcher: 66 66 Fetch the Numidian lion I brought over; I Will do her reverence, else he'll tear her," &c. STEEVENS. 4 INSTINCT is a great matter;] Diego, the host, in Love's Pilgrimage, by Beaumont and Fletcher, excuses a rudeness he had been guilty of to one of his guests, in almost the same words: 66 thers? 66 should I have been so barbarous as to have parted bro Philippo. "" Diego. You knew it then? I knew 'twas necessary "You should be both together. Instinct, signior, Is a great matter in an host." STEEVENS. the Lord, lads, I am glad you have the money.— Hostess, clap to the doors; watch to-night, pray to-morrow.-Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, All the titles of good fellowship come to you! What, shall we be merry? shall we have a play extempore ? P. HEN. Content ;-and the argument shall be, thy running away. FAL. Ah! no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me. Enter Hostess. HOST. My lord the prince, P. HEN. How now, my lady the hostess? what say'st thou to me? HOST. Marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of the court at door, would speak with you: he says, he comes from your father, P. HEN. Give him as much as will make him a royal man*, and send him back again to my mother. FAL. What manner of man is he? 4 there is a nobleman-Give him as much as will make him a ROYAL man,] I believe here is a kind of jest intended. He that received a noble was, in cant language, called a nobleman : in this sense the Prince catches the word, and bids the landlady 'give him as much as will make him a royal man,' that is, a real or royal man, and send him away. JOHNSON. The same play on the word-royal, occurs in The Two Angry Women of Abington, 1599: "This is not noble sport, but royal play. "It must be so where royals walk so fast." STEEVENS. "Give him as much as will make him a royal man." The royal went for 10s.-the noble only for 6s. and 8d. TYR WHITT. This seems to allude to a jest of Queen Elizabeth. Mr. John Blower, in a sermon before her majesty, first said: My royal Queen," and a little after: "My noble Queen." Upon which says the Queen : "What am I ten groats worse than I was? This is to be found in Hearne's Discourse of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford; and it confirms the remark of the very learned and ingenious Mr. Tyrwhitt. ToLLET. HOST. An old man. FAL. What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight ?-Shall I give him his answer? P. HEN. Pr'ythee, do, Jack. FAL. 'Faith, and I'll send him packing. [Erit. P. HEN. Now, sirs; by'r lady, you fought fair ;so did you, Peto ;-so did you, Bardolph: you are lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince; no,-fye! BARD. 'Faith, I ran when I saw others run. P. HEN. Tell me now in earnest, How came Falstaff's sword so hacked? PETO. Why, he hacked it with his dagger; and said, he would swear truth out of England, but he would make you believe it was done in fight; and persuaded us to do the like. BARD. Yea, and to tickle our noses with speargrass, to make them bleed; and then to beslubber our garments with it, and to swear it was the blood of true men". I did that I did not this seven year before, I blushed to hear his monstrous devices. P. HEN. O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blushed extempore: S -to tickle our noses with spear-grass, &c.] So, in the old anonymous play of The Victories of Henry the Fifth : Every day when I went into the field, I would take a straw, and thrust it into my nose, and make my nose bleed," &c. 66 6 7 STEEVENS. the blood of true men.] That is, of the men with whom they fought, of honest men, opposed to thieves. JOHNSON. taken WITH THE MANNER,] Taken with the manner is a law phrase, and then in common use, to signify taken in the fact. But the Oxford editor alters it, for better security of the sense, to" taken in the manor; "—i. e. I suppose, by the lord of it, as a stray. WARBURTON. The expression" taken in the manner," or "with the manner,' is a forensick term, and common to many of our old dramatick writers. So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife : 8 Thou hadst fire and sword on thy side, and yet thou ran'st away; What instinct hadst thou for it? BARD. My lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these exhalations? "How like a sheep-biting rogue taken in the manner, Again, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613: "Take them not in the manner, though you may." STEEVENS. Manour, or Mainour, or Maynour, an old law term, (from the French mainaver or manier, Lat. manu tractare,) signifies the thing which a thief takes away or steals; and to be taken with the manour or mainour, is to be taken with the thing stolen about him, or doing an unlawful act, flagrante delicto, or, as we say, in the fact. The expression is much used in the forest-laws. See Manwood's edition in quarto, 1665, p. 292, where it is spelt manner. HAWKINS. Dr. Pettingall, in his Enquiry into the Use and Practice of Juries among the Greeks and Romans, 4to. p. 176, observes, that "in the sense of being taken in the fact, the Romans used the expression manifesto deprehensus. Cic. pro Cluentio-et pro Colio. The word manifesto seems to be formed of manu. Hence the Saxons expressed this idea by words of the same import, hand, habend, having in the hand, or back berend, bearing on the back. The Welsh laws of Hoel-dda, used in the same sense the words lledrad un ny llaw-latrocinium vel furtum in manu, the theft in his hand. The English law calls it taken with the manner, instead of the mainer, from main, the hand, in the French language, in which our statute laws were written from Westminst. primer 3 Edward I. to Richard III. In Westminst. primer, c. xv. it is called prise ove le mainer. In Rot. Parliament. 5 Richard II. Tit. 96, Cotton's Abridgement, and Coke's Institutes, it is corruptly called taken with the manner; and the English translators of the Bible, following the vulgar jargon of the law, rendered Numbers v. 13, relating to a woman taken in the fact of adultery, by taken with_the_manner."—" In the Scotch law it is called taken with the fang. See Reg. Majest. lib. iv. c. xxi. And in cases of murder manifest, the murderer was said to be taken with the red hand and hot blade. All which modes of expression in the Western Empire took their origin from the Roman manifesto deprehensus." REED. Thou hadst fire and sword, &c.] The fire was in his face. A red face is termed a fiery face: "While I affirm a fiery face "Is to the owner no disgrace." Legend of Capt. Jones. JOHNSON. P. HEN. I do. BARD. What think you they portend? Re-enter Falstaff. Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet creature of bombast?? How long is't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee? FAL. My own knee? when I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the waist; I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring3: 9 Hot livers, and cold purses.] That is, drunkenness and poverty. To drink was, in the language of those times, to heat the liver. JOHNSON. So, in Antony and Cleopatra, Act I. Sc. II. as Charmian replies to the Soothsayer: "Sooth. You shall be more beloving, than belov'd. 1 Bard. CHOLER, my lord, if rightly taken. STEEVENS. P. Hen. No, if rightly taken, HALTER.] The reader who would enter into the spirit of this repartee, must recollect the similarity of sound between collar and choler. So, in King John and Matilda, 1655: "O. Bru. Son, you're too full of choler. "Y. Bru. Choler! halter. "Fitz. By the mass, that's near the collar." STEEVENS. 2-bombast ?] Is the stuffing of clothes. JOHNSON. Stubbs, in his Anatomie of Abuses, 1595, observes, that in his time "the doublettes were so hard quilted, stuffed, bombasted, and sewed, as they could neither worke, nor yet well play in them." And again, the same chapter, he adds, that they were "stuffed with foure, five, or sixe pounde of bombast at least." Again, in Deckar's Satiromastix: "You shall swear not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests." Bombast is cotton. Gerard calls the cotton plant "the bombast tree." STEEVENS. 3- I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring:] Aristophanes has the same thought: |