wit :

Long. I'll stay with patience ; but the time is long.
Mar. The liker you; few taller are so young.

Biron. Studies my lady? mistress, look on me,
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble suit attends thy answer there;
Impose some service on me for thy love.

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Birón,
Before I saw you : and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks ;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts ;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy

of

your To weed this wormwood from

your

fruitful brain;
And, therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won,)
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be ; it is impossible :
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools :
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,
Deafʼd with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you, and that fault withal ;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.

Biron. A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal,
I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

(3] Dear should here, as in many other places, be dere, sad, odious. JOHNS. (4) The characters of Biron and Rosaline suster much by comparison with those of Benedick and Beatrice. We know that Love's Labour's Lost was the elder per. formance; and as our author grew more experienced in drainalic writing, be might Lave seen how much he could improve on his own origioals. To this circumstance. perhaps, we are indebted for the more perfect comedy of Much Ado aboul Nothing.

STEEVENS

lord ;

Prin. Ay, sweet my

and so I take

my

leave.

(To the King King. No, madam: we will bring you on your way.

Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old play ;
Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.

King. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, And then t'will end.

Biron. That's too long for a play.

Enter ARMADO.
Arm. Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me,-
Prin. Was not that Hector ?
Dum. The worthy knight of Troy ?

Arm. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave : I am a votary ; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo ? it should have followed in the end of our show.

King. Call them forth quickly, we will do so.

Arm. Holla! approach.-Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, Moth, CoSTARD, and

others. This side is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the spring ; the one maintain’d by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.

SONG.

Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every"tree,
Mocks married inen, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo ;

(5) Gerard, in his Herbal, 1597, says, that the pos cuculi cardamine, &c. are called " in English curkoo-flowers, in Norfolk Canterbury-bells, and at Namplwich in Cheshire ladie-smocks." Shakespeare, however, might not have been sufficiently skilled in botany to be aware of this partir ular.

Mr. Tollet has observed, that Lyte in his llerbal, 1578 and 1579, remarks, that conslips are in French, of some called coqun, prime vere, and brayes de coqui. 'This, he thinks, vill sufliciently account for our author's cuckwu-buus, by which be surposes cuns buds to be beau. STLEVENS.

.

Cuckoo, cuckoo,-0 word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear?

II.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughinen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo ;
Cuckoo, cuckoo,-0 word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear?

III.

Winter. When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who ;
Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While
greasy

Joan doth keel the pot.

[6] i e from the eaves of the thatch or other roofing, from which in the morning icicle: are found depending in great abundance, after a night of frost. Our author (whose images are all taken from nature) has alluded in The Tempest, to the drops of water that after rain tion from such coverings, in their natural unfrozen state:

“ His tears run down his beard, like rrinter's drops

“ From caves of reeds." MALONE. [7] So, in King Henry VI. Part III:

" What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,

“ Can neither call it perfect day or night.", MALONE
[8] This word is yet used in Ireland, and signifies to scum the pot.

GOLDSMITH Kerl the pot. i. e. cool the pot : “ The thing is, they mix their thicking of oatmeal and water, which they call blending the litting (or lihing.) and put it in the pot, when they set it on, because when the meat, pudding and turnips are all in, ibey cannot so well mix it, but ris apt to go into Jumps; yet this method of theirs reolers the pot liable to boil over at the first risine, and every subsequent increase of the Sre: to prevent which it become necessary for one to atiend to cool it oeca fonally, by lading it up frequently with a laule, which they call keeling the pot, and is indeed a greasy office." Gent. Mag. 1760. This account seems to be accurate. RITSON

To keel sirnises to cool in general, without any reference to the kitchen. Mr. Lambe observes, in his pete: on the ancient metrical History of The Balth of Fladdon, that it is a common thing in the North “ for a maid servant to take out of

IV.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs' hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;
Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While
greasy

Joan doth keel the pot.

Arm. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You, that way; we, this way.

[Exeunt. a boiling pot a wheen, i. e. a small quantity, viz a porringer or two of broth, and then to fill up the pot with cold water. The broth ibus taken out, is called the keeling wheen. In this manner greasy Joan keeled the pot.

* Gie me beer, and gie me grots,
“ And lumps of beei to grum abeen;
“ And ilka time that I stir the pot,

“ He's hae frae me the keeling wheen." STEEVENS. [9] Sano seems anciently to have meant, not as at present, a proverb, a sentence, but the whole tenor of any instructive discourse. STEEVENS.

Yet in As you like it, our author uses this word in the sense of a sentence, or maxim: “ Dead shepherd, now I find thy sew of might," &c. It is, I believe, 60 used bere. MALONE.

[1] i e. the wild apples so called. STEEVENS.

The bowl must be supposed to be filled with ale ; a toast and some spice and sugar being added, what is called Lamb's wool it produced. MALONE