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PAGE. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water: but for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.

FAL. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to vent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee, like a sow, that hath overwhelmed all her litter but If the prince put thee into my service for

one.

investigating diseases by the inspection of urine only, was once so much the fashion, that Linacre, the founder of the College of Physicians, formed a statute to restrain apothecaries from carrying the water of their patients to a doctor, and afterwards giving medicines, in consequence of the opinions they received concerning it. This statute was, soon after, followed by another, which forbade the doctors themselves to pronounce on any disorder from such an uncertain diagnostic.

John Day, the author of a comedy called Law Tricks, or Who would have thought it? 1608, describes an apothecary thus: "his house is set round with patients twice or thrice a day, and because they'll be sure not to want drink, every one brings his own water in an urinal with him."

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady:

"I'll make her cry so much, that the physician,

"If she fall sick upon it, shall want urine

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"To find the cause by."

It will scarcely be believed hereafter, that in the years 1775 and 1776, a German, who had been a servant in a public ridingschool, (from which he was discharged for insufficiency,) revived this exploded practice of water-casting. After he had amply increased the bills of mortality, and been publicly hung up to the ridicule of those who had too much sense to consult him, as a monument of the folly of his patients, he retired with a princely fortune, and perhaps is now indulging a hearty laugh at the expence of English credulity. STEEVENS.

The time is not yet come, when this is to be thought incre dible. The same impudent quackery is carried on at this day. BOSWELL.

8 to GIRD at me :] i. e. to gibe. So, in Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594: "We maids are mad wenches; we gird them, and flout them," &c. STEEVens.

BARD. I cannot think, my lord, your son is

dead.

MOR. I am sorry, I should force you to believe That, which I would to heaven I had not seen: But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state, Rend'ring faint quittance, wearied and outbreath'd, To Harry Monmouth; whose swift wrath beat

down

The never-daunted Percy to the earth,

From whence with life he never more sprung up.
In few, his death (whose spirit lent a fire
Even to the dullest peasant in his camp,)
Being bruited once, took fire and heat away
From the best temper'd courage in his troops:
For from his metal was his party steel'd;
Which once in him abated, all the rest
Turn'd on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.
And as the thing that's heavy in itself,
Upon enforcement, flies with greatest speed;
So did our men, heavy in Hotspur's loss,

Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear,
That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim,
Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,
Fly from the field: Then was that noble Worcester
Too soon ta'en prisoner: and that furious Scot,
The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword
Had three times slain the appearance of the king,
'Gan vail his stomach, and did grace the shame

7 - faint QUITTANCE,] Quittance is return. By "faint quittance " is meant a 'faint return of blows.' So, in King Henry V.:

"We shall forget the office of our hand,

"Sooner than quittance of desert and merit." STEEVENS. 8 For from his metal was his party steel'd;

Which once in him ABATED,] Abated is not here put for the general idea of diminished, nor for the notion of blunted, as applied to a single edge. Abated means reduced to a lower temper, or, as the workmen call it, let down. JOHNSON.

9 'Gan vail his stomach,] spirits sink under his fortune.

Began to fall his courage, to let his
JOHNSON.

Of those that turn'd their backs; and, in his flight,
Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all
Is,-that the king hath won; and hath sent out
A speedy power, to encounter you, my lord,
Under the conduct of young Lancaster,
And Westmoreland: this is the news at full.
NORTH. For this I shall have time enough to

mourn.

In poison there is physic; and these news, Having been well that would have made me sick ', Being sick, have in some measure made me well: And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, Like strengthless hinges, buckle 2 under life, Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire

Out of his keeper's arms; even so my limbs,

Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief, Are thrice themselves3: hence therefore, thou nice*

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crutch;

From avaller, Fr. to cast down, or to let fall down.

MALONE.

This phrase has already appeared in The Taming of the Shrew, p. 521 :

vol. v.

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. Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot ;

"And place your hands below your husbands' foot."

REED.

Thus, to vail the bonnet is to pull it off. So, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599 :

"And make the king vail bonnet to us both."

To vail a staff, is to let it fall in token of respect. Thus, in the same play:

"And for the ancient custom of vail-staff,

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Keep it still; claim thou privilege from me :

"If any ask a reason, why? or how?

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Say, English Edward vail'd his staff to you."

See vol. ix. p. 178, n. 4. STEEVENS.

'Having been well, that would have made me sick,] i. e. that would, had I been well, have made me sick.

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MALONE.

buckle-] Bend; yield to pressure. JOHNSON.

even so my limbs,

Weaken'd with GRIEF, being now enrag'd with GRIEF,

Are thrice themselves:] As Northumberland is here comparing himself to a person, who, though his joints are weakened by a bodily disorder, derives strength from the distemper of the VOL. XVII.

C

any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now': but I will set * you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel; the juvenal', the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand, than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say, his face is a face-royal: God * Quartos, in-set.

9-mandrake,] Mandrake is a root supposed to have the shape of a man; it is now counterfeited with the root of briony.

JOHNSON.

I was never MANNED with an AGATE till now:] That is, I never before had an agate for my man. JOHNSON.

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Alluding to the little figures cut in agates, and other hard stones, for seals; and therefore he says, I will set you neither in gold nor silver." The Oxford editor alters it to aglet, a tag to the points then in use (a word, indeed, which our author uses to express the same thought): but aglets, though they were sometimes of gold or silver, were never set in those metals.

WARBURTON.

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It appears from a passage in Beaumont and Fletcher's Coxcomb, that it was usual for justices of peace either to wear an agate in a ring, or as an appendage to their gold chain: Thou wilt spit as formally, and show thy agate and hatched chain, as well as the best of them."

The same allusion is employed on the same occasion in The Isle of Gulls, 1606:

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Grace, you Agate! hast not forgot that yet?" The virtues of the agate were anciently supposed to protect the wearer from any misfortune. So, in Greene's Mamillia, 1593: the man that hath the stone agathes about him, is surely defenced against adversity." STEEVENS.

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I believe an agate is used merely to express any thing remarkably little, without any allusion to the figure cut upon it. So, in Much Ado About Nothing, vol. vii. p. 74, n. 3:

2

"If low, an agate very vilely cut." MALONE.

the JUVENAL,] This term, which has already occurred in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, and Love's Labour's Lost, is used in many places by Chaucer, and always signifies a young STEEVENS.

man.

3

may finish it when he will, it is not a hair amiss yet: he may keep it still as a face-royal 3, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it; and yet he will be crowing, as if he had writ man ever since his father was a batchelor. He may keep his own grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can assure him. What said master Dumbleton about the satin for my short cloak, and slops?

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4

PAGE. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph: he would not take his bond and yours; he liked not the security.

FAL. Let him be damned like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter!-A whoreson Achitophel!

3

he may keep it still as a FACE-ROYAL,] That is, a face exempt from the touch of vulgar hands. So, a stag-royal is not to be hunted, a mine-royal is not to be dug. JOHNSON.

Old copies at a face royal. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE.

Perhaps this quibbling allusion is to the English real, rial, or royal. The poet seems to mean that a barber can no more earn sixpence by his face-royal, than by the face stamped on the coin called a royal; the one requiring as little shaving as the other. STEEVENS.

was.

If nothing be taken out of a royal, it will remain a royal as it This appears to me to be Falstaff's conceit. A royal was a piece of coin of the value of ten shillings. I cannot approve either of Johnson's explanation, or of that of Steevens.

M. MASON.

4 - Dumbleton -] The folio has-Dombledon; the quarto Dommelton. This name seems to have been a made one, and designed to afford some apparent meaning. The author might have written-Double-done, (or, as Mr. M. Mason observes, Double-down,) from his making the same charge twice in his books, or charging twice as much for a commodity as it is worth.

I have lately, however, observed that Dumbleton is the name of a town in Glocestershire. The reading of the folio may therefore be the true one. STEEVENS.

The reading of the quarto (the original copy) appears to be only a mis-spelling of Dumbleton. MALONE.

Let him be damned like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter!] An allusion to the fate of the rich man, who had fared sumptuously every day, when he requested a drop of water to cool his tongue, being tormented with the flames. HENLEY.

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