along; Ireland for it's bogs, Scotland for it's barren foil, and France for a disease that is well known there, In her forehead, making war against her bair, is an allufion to a certain ftage of the distemper, when it breaks out in crufty fcabs in the forehead and hairy fcalp, making war against the hair, as Shakespeare fays, by destroying it; 'tis called corona veneris, the venereal crown: armed and reverted, are terms borrowed from heraldry. And this allufion, obvious to the audience, frequently occurs in Johnson, as well as elsewhere in our author, upon mentioning a French crown. Mercutio 3 Fracaftorii Siphylis. I, 6. 4 A Midfummer Night's dream. A&t. I. “ Quin. Some "of your French crowns have no hair at all." In Meafure for Measure, a Gentleman says to Lucio, "Thou art 66 a three pil'd piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a "lift of an English kersey, as be pil'd, as thou art pil'd, "for a French velvet." B. Johnson in Cynthia's Revels. "A& I. Sc. IV. " I'll affure you 'tis a beaver, it cóft me eight crowns but this morning. Am. After their "French account? A. Yes, Sir. Ori. And so near "his head? Beshrew me, dangerous." And in Every Man out of his Humour. A& II. Sc. I. "Car. You "should give him a French crown for it: the boy would Mercutio likewise in Romeo and Juliet A& II. ridiculing the frenchified coxcombs, has an allufion to another stage of this disease, when it gets into the bones. 66 Why is not this a lamentable "thing, grandfire, that we should be thus "afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion mongers, these pardonnez-moy's, who stand so "much on their new FORMS, that they cannot "fit at ease on the old BENCH? O their bones ! "their bones !" In "finde two better figures i' that, and a good figure of "their bountie befide. Faft. Tut, the boy wants no 66 crowns. Car. No crowne speak i'th' fingular num "ber, and wee'le beleeve you" 5 They have altered this into, O their bons! their bons! But the fame allufion Lucio makes in Measure for Measure. A& I. " Thy bones are hollow; impiety hath made a feast "of thee!" And Therfites in Troilus and Creffida. A& II." After this the vengeance on the whole champ! or " rather the bone-ach, for that methinks is the curfe dependant on those that war for a placket." And Pandarus, or rather (in the Пagalaos) the poet in the conclufion of Troilus and Creffida. "As many as be here of Pandar's hall, "Your eyes half out, weep out at Pandar's fall; "Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, 66 Though not for me, yet for your aking bones. "Brethren and fifters of the hold-door trade, "Some two months hence my will shall here be made : In Henry V. A&t III. The French king and his nobles are speaking contemptibly of Henry the fifth and the English army. "Duke of Bourb. If thus they march along Unfought withal, but I will fell my dukedom, "To buy a foggy and a dirty farm 66 "In that short nooky ifle of Albion. There is a figure in rhetoric named meiofis, which is not unelegantly ufed when we extenuate and undervalue "It fhould be now; but that my fear is this, In the first part of King Henry VI. A& I. The Duke of "Thou that giv'ft whores indulgences to fin." And presently after calls him, Winchester goofe; which phrase B. Johnson ufes in a poem, entitled, An Execration upon Vulcan. And this a sparkle of that fire let loose That was lock'd up in the Wincheftrian Goofe When Venus there maintain'd in misterie. There is now extant an old manuscript (formerly the officebook of the court-leet held under the jurisdiction of the undervalue any thing. The Frenchman therefore calls our inland fhort nooky, according to the figure it made in the maps, and according 6 bishop of Winchester in Southwark) in which are mention'd the several fees arising from the brothel-houfes allowed to be kept in the bishop's manour, with the cuftoms and regulations of them. One of the articles is, De his, qui cuftodiunt mulieres, habentes nefandam infirmitatem. Item, Chat no flewholder keep any woman within his house, that hath any sickness of bzenning, but that the be put out upon pain of making a fpne unto the Lozd of C Chillings! This fickness of brenning is alluded to in the second part of K. Henry IV. A& II. the late editors did not fee the "P. allufion, and therefore have altered the paffage. Henry. For the women- -Fal. For one of them, fhe is in "hell already, and burns poor souls: for the other, &c." and the antiquity of the disease is mention'd in two letters printed in the philosophical transactions, No. 357 and 365. This might vindicate Shakespeare from an anacronifm, in mentioning a disease in the reign of K. Henry VI. which some think never existed in the world till the reign of Henry VII. about the year 1494. after Columbus and his crew returned from the famous expedition to the Indies. And the fwelling in the groin occafion'd by this filthy disease was call'd a Winchefter goofe. But Shakespeare, as a poet, might claim privileges which a hiftorian cannot, be the state of the controverfie how it will. Aut famam fequere, aut fibi convenientia finge. 6 Infula natura triquetra. Caef. de bell, Gall. L. V. to 151 to the comparison of it to the great ideas, which Frenchman-like he conceived of his own country. How much more poetical is this, than the alteration of the editors into nook-fbotten ifle? In the first part of K. Henry VI. A& I. st Daup. Thy promifes are like Adonis' garden, ¢• A poet can create: what fignifies it then if the grotto of Calypfo, or the gardens of Alcinous and Adonis, had not any existence but in poetical imagination? 7 Pliny fays, That Antiquity bad nothing in greater admiration than the gardens of the Hefperides and of the kings Adonis and Alcinous. i. e. as they existed in the defcriptions of the poets. Spencer defcribes the gardens of Adonis in his Fairy Queen B. III. c. 6. f. 42. and copies Homer's description of the gardens of Alcinous. Shakespeare had his eye on both these poets. To omit what Johnson writes, in Every man out of his humour, A&t IV. fc. 8. I fhall cite Milton. IX, 439. 7 Pliny L. XIX. c. iv. 8 Hom. Od. n. 117. " Spot L 4 |