P. 491. Alas! that were no modern consequence, To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence.] The use of the word modern, as "slight, trivial," is now confined to antiquaries. Archdeacon Nares mentions a curious instance of its having, not very long ago, been otherwise. "I knew a very old lady, after whose death a miscellaneous paper of trifles was found among her property, inscribed by herself, Odd and Modern Things." See vol. iv. p. 112. With regard to "cothurnal buskins," I find a MS. note of Mr. Dyce's, in which he says that if Gifford had not been prejudiced against Marston, he might have quoted the Spanish Tragedy: "Tragoedia cothurnata, fitting kings." P. 491. Upon that puft-up lump of balmy froth.] The word balmy is of course a misprint for barmy. The word was used by Burns, and John Gibson Lockhart winds up his sparkling letter to sir Adam Ferguson by comparing James and John Ballantyne and sir Walter Scott to "the two barrels of heavy wet and twopenny " that may be seen any day "barming away on a truck cart at the foot of Edinburgh Castle, that eternal mass of granite, crowned with royal towers, and hallowed with the reverence of ages." P. 492. Of strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist.] I could not adduce a better proof of the extraordinary vigilance with which Jonson corrected his own text than this word vengeance, which he is careful to spell venge-ance. I find that Marston uses it four times, and in each instance makes it a tri-syllable : May I be fettered slave to coward chaunce, Ibid. i. 131. "The fist of strenuous venge-ance is clutcht." Ibid. i. 132. "Sound dolefull tunes, a solemne hymne advance P. 493. A critic, that all the world bescumbers.] Gifford refers to the lines, but does not quote the passage, in which this word occurs. It is in the Scourge of Villanie: "To this uncivill groome Ill-tutored pedant, Mortimer's numbers With muck-pit esculine filth bescumbers." I suspect that this refers to Drayton's Mortimeriados, the name of which was changed in the second edition, on account of the laugh raised against the first by some "ill-tutored pedants"—most probably by Jonson himself, among others. In the preface to the edition of 1603, Drayton says, "Grammaticasters have quarrell'd at the title of Mortimeriados, as if it had been a sin against Syntaxis to have inscribed it in the second case." Jonson spoke of this to Drummond, see vol. ix. p. 382. P. 494. Whom I could wish in time should him fear.] The folio has "would wish." P. 498. Parcel-guilty, I.] See ante, p. 238. There is of course here a play upon the common term "parcel-gilt." P. 498. Lictors, gag him; do.] This feeble word do is not in the folio. P. 507. The lances burst.] "Fractâ pereuntes cuspide Gallos." The reader will remember that John of Gaunt "burst" Falstaff's head in the tilt-yard. P. 508. Might make road upon the empire.] In the folio it is rode. Jonson no doubt had the Annandale word raid in his mind. Two lines below he has the kindred word Borderer, where the original is merely "Appula gens." P. 510. And thou thence set free.] This should be sit free, as in the folio. The alteration is ridiculous. P. 511. Enter Nasutus and Polyposus.] These names are from a line in Martial, which supplies the motto to Cynthia's Revels in the 1616 folio, "Nasutum volo, nolo polyposum." P. 513. The barking students of Bears college.] See the facsimile of Radulph Agas' plan of London in the time of Elizabeth, where these barking students occupy a conspicuous place in the foreground. Jonson has the same expression again in the Gipsies Metamorphosed, vol. vii. p. 401, and again in the Famous Voyage, vol. viii. p. 236. P. 515. Like so many screaming grasshoppers.] In the Fox, vol. iii. p. 233, "Ah me, I have ta'en a grass-hopper by the wing,' and in the Magnetic Lady, vol. vi. p. 39, "You do hold a cricket by the wing." P. 515. Unto True Soldiers.] Sir William D'Avenant, who was one of Jonson's "sons," refers to this in his News from Plymouth, first printed in 1673: "In my cabinet I have the character of a True Soldier, Writ by my father." The allusion was of course unknown to the editors of 1873. P. 516. Angry for the captain.] This was of course not Tucca, but the captain Hungry of Epigram cvii. vol. viii. p. 209, a bitterly personal attack on some one who had offended him, in which he certainly did not maintain the boast at p. 144: "To spare the persons and to speak the vices." P. 518. Rhime them to death as they do Irish rats.] Jonson has another allusion to this idea in the Staple of News, vol v. p. 271: "The fine madrigal man in rhyme to have run him out of the country like an Irish rat." P. 520. These vile Ibides.] D'Israeli refers to this idea in his Quarrels of Authors, p. 489, ed. 1867. "Among those arts of imitation which man has derived from the practice of animals, naturalists assure us that he owes the use of clysters to the Egyptian Ibis. There are some who pretend this medicinal invention comes from the stork. The French are more like ibises than we are: ils se donnent des lavements eux mêmes. . . . I recollect in Wickliffe's version of the Pentateuch, which I once saw in MS. in the possession of my valued friend Mr. Douce, that that venerable translator interpolates a little to tell us that the ibis "giveth to herself a purge." P. 521. A dark pale face.] This exactly corresponds with the appearance of Jonson in the Hardwicke portrait, and as unlike as may be to the "parboiled face full of pocky holes and pimples," "the face punched full of oylet holes like the cover of a warming pan," and "the most ungodly face, like a rotten russet apple when 'tis bruised," of the Satiromastix. Aubrey also says that "he was (or rather had been) of a clear and faire skin." END OF VOL. II. ゲー CHISWICK PRESS PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, |