and borrows money in God's name; the which he hath used so long, and never paid, that now men grow hard-hearted, and will lend nothing for God's sake: Pray you, examine him upon that point. LEON. I thank thee for thy care and honest. pains.

DOGB. Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverend youth; and I praise God for you. LEON. There's for thy pains.

DOGB. God save the foundation!1

LEON. Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I thank thee.

DOGB. I leave an arrant knave with your worship; which, I beseech your worship, to correct yourself, for the example of others. God keep your worship; I wish your worship well; God restore you to health: I humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.-Come, neighbour.

[Exeunt DOGBERRY, VERGES, and Watch.

Edward Sackville, Earl of Dorset, painted by Vandyck, (now at Knowle,) exhibits this lock with a large knotted ribband at the end of it. It hangs under the ear on the left side, and reaches as low as where the star is now worn by the knights of the garter.

The same fashion is alluded to in an epigram already quoted: "Or what he doth with such a horse-tail-lock," &c.

MALONE

9 and borrows money in God's name ;] i. e. is a common beggar. This alludes, with too much levity, to the 17th verse of the xixth chapter of Proverbs: "He that giveth to the poor, lendeth unto the Lord." STEEVENS.

1God save the foundation!] Such was the customary phrase employed by those who received alms at the gates of religious houses. Dogberry, however, in the present instance, might have designed to say-God save the founder!" STEEVENS.

LEON. Until to-morrow morning, lords, farewell. ANT. Farewell, my lords; we look for you to

morrow.

D. PEDRO. We will not fail.

CLAUD.

To-night I'll mourn with Hero. [Exeunt Don PEDRO and CLAUDIO.

LEON. Bring you these fellows on; we'll talk with Margaret,

How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow."

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

Leonato's Garden.

Enter BENEDICK and MARGARET, meeting.

BENE. Pray thee, sweet mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands, by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.

MARG. Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?

BENE. In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.

2

-lewd fellow.] Lewd, in this, and several other instances, has not its common meaning, but merely signifies-ignorant. So, in King Richard III. Act I. sc. iii:

"But you must trouble him with lewd complaints." Again, in the ancient metrical romance of the Sowdon of Babyloyne, MS:

"That witnessith both lerned and lewde."

Again, ibid:

"He spared neither lewde ner clerke." STEEVENS.

MARG. To have no man come over me? why, shall I always keep below stairs? 3

BENE. Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth, it catches.

MARG. And your's as blunt as the fencer's foils, which hit, but hurt not.

BENE. A most manly wit, Margaret, it will not hurt a woman; and so, I pray thee, call Beatrice: I give thee the bucklers."

To have no man come over me? why, shall I always keep below stairs?] I suppose, every reader will find the meaning.

JOHNSON.

Lest he should not, the following instance from Sir Aston Cockayne's Poems is at his service:

"But to prove rather he was not beguil❜d,

"Her he o'er-came, for he got her with child." And another, more apposite, from Marston's Insatiate Countess,

1613:

"Alas! when we are once o'the falling hand,

"A man may easily come over us." COLLINS.

Mr. Theobald, to procure an obvious sense, would read— above stairs. But there is danger in any attempt to reform a joke two hundred years old.

The sense, however, for which Mr. Theobald contends, may be restored by supposing the loss of a word; and that our author wrote "Why, shall I always keep men below stairs?” i. e. never suffer them to come up into my bed-chamber, for the purposes of love. STEEvens.

I give thee the bucklers.] I suppose that to give the bucklers is, to yield, or to lay by all thoughts of defence, so clypeum abjicere. The rest deserves no comment. JOHNSON.

Greene, in his Second Part of Coney-Catching, 1592, uses the same expression: "At this his master laught, and was glad, for further advantage, to yield the bucklers to his prentise."

Again, in A Woman never vex'd, a comedy by Rowley, 1632: into whose hands she thrusts the weapons first, let him take up the bucklers."

Again, in Decker's Satiromastix: "Charge one of them to take up the bucklers against that hair-monger Horace.”

MARG. Give us the swords, we have bucklers of

our own.

BENE. If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a vice; and they are dangerous weapons for maids.

MARG. Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who, I think, hath legs. [Exit MARGARET.

BENE. And therefore will come.

The god of love,

That sits above,5

And knows me, and knows me,

How pitiful I deserve,

[Singing.]

I mean, in singing; but in loving,-Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of dars, and a whole book full of these quondam car

Again, in Chapman's May-Day, 1611:

"And now I lay the bucklers at your feet.”

Again, in Every Woman in her Humour, 1609:

66

pan

if you lay down the bucklers, you lose the victory.'

Again, in P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, B. X. ch. xxi: "it goeth against his stomach (the cock's) to yeeld the gantlet and give the bucklers." STEEVENS.

5 The god of love, &c.] This was the beginning of an old song, by W. E. (William Elderton) a puritanical parody of which, by one W. Birch, under the title of The Complaint of a Sinner, &c. Imprinted at London, by Alexander Lacy, for Richard Applow, is still extant. The words in this moralised copy are as follows:

"The god of love, that sits above,

"Doth know us, doth know us,

"How sinful that we be." RITSON.

In Bacchus Bountie, &c. 4to. bl. l. 1593, is a song, begin.

ning

"The gods of love

"Which raigne above." STEEVENS.

pet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self, in love: Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried; I can find out no rhyme to lady but baby, an innocent rhyme; for scorn, horn, a hard rhyme; for school, fool, a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

Enter BEATRICE.

Sweet Beatrice, would'st thou come when I called thee?

BEAT. Yea, signior, and depart when you bid me. BENE. O, stay but till then!

BEAT. Then, is spoken; fare you well now:and yet, ere I go, let me go with that I came for," which is, with knowing what hath passed between you and Claudio.

BENE. Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.

BEAT. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.

BENE. Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit: But, I must tell

6

in festival terms.] i. e. in splendid phraseology, such as differs from common language, as holidays from common days. Thus, Hotspur, in King Henry IV. P. I:

"With many holiday and lady terms."

STEEVENS.

7 with that I came for,] For, which is wanting in the old copy, was inserted by Mr. Rowe.

MALONE.