FAL. I bought him in Paul's,' and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield: an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.

1 I bought him in Paul's,] At that time the resort of idle people, cheats, and knights of the post. WARBURTon.

So, in Fearful and lamentable Effects of Two dangerous Comets, &c. no date; by Nashe, in ridicule of Gabriel Harvey: "Paule's church is in wonderfull perill thys yeare without the help of our conscionable brethren, for that day it hath not eyther broker, maisterless serving-man, or pennilesse companion, in the middle of it, the usurers of London have sworne to bestow a newe steeple upon it."

In an old Collection of Proverbs, I find the following:

"Who goes to Westminster for a wife, to St. Paul's for a man, and to Smithfield for a horse, may meet with a whore, a knave, and a jade.”

See also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, edit. 1632, p. 631. In a pamphlet by Dr. Lodge, called Wit's Miserie, and the World's Madnesse, 1596, the devil is described thus:

"In Powls hee walketh like a gallant courtier, where if he meet some rich chuffes worth the gulling, at every word he speaketh, he maketh a mouse an elephant, and telleth them of wonders, done in Spaine by his ancestors," &c. &c.

I should not have troubled the reader with this quotation, but that it in some measure familiarizes the character of Pistol, which (from other passages in the same pamphlet) appears to have been no uncommon one in the time of Shakspeare. Dr. Lodge concludes his description thus: "His courage is boasting, his learning ignorance, his ability weakness, and his end beggary." Again, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611:

66

get thee a gray cloak and hat,

"And walk in Paul's among thy cashier'd mates,
"As melancholy as the best."

I learn from a passage in Greene's Disputation between a He Coneycatcher and a She Coneycatcher, 1592, that St. Paul's was a privileged place, so that no debtor could be arrested within its precincts. STEEVENS.

In The Choice of Change, 1598, 4to. it is said, "a man must not make choyce of three thinges in three places. Of a wife in Westminster; of a servant in Paule's; of a horse in Smithfield; least he chuse a queane, a knave, or a jade." See also Moryson's Itinerary, Part III. p. 53, 1617. REED.

"It was the fashion of those times," [the times of King

2

Enter the Lord Chief Justice, and an Attendant.

PAGE. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for striking him about Bardolph. FAL. Wait close, I will not see him. CH. JUST. What's he that goes there? ATTEN. Falstaff, an't please your lordship. CH. JUST. He that was in question for the robbery?

ATTEN. He, my lord: but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the lord John of Lan

caster.

CH. JUST. What, to York? Call him back again. ATTEN. Sir John Falstaff!

FAL. Boy, tell him, I am deaf.

PAGE. You must speak louder, my master is deaf.

CH. JUST. I am sure, he is, to the hearing of any thing good.-Go, pluck him by the elbow; I must speak with him.

James I.] says Osborne, in his Memoirs of that monarch," and did so continue till these, [the interregnum,] for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions, not merely mechanicks, to meet in St. Paul's church by eleven, and walk in the middle isle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six; during which time some discoursed of business, others of news. Now, in regard of the universal commerce there happened little that did not first or last arrive here." MALONE.

Lord Chief Justice,] This judge was Sir Wm. Gascoigne, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. He died December 17, 1413, and was buried in Harwood church, in Yorkshire. His effigy, in judicial robes, is on his monument. STEEVENS.

His portrait, copied from the monument, may be found in The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LI. p. 516. MALONE.

ATTEN. Sir John,—

FAL. What! a young knave, and beg! Is there not wars? is there not employment? Doth not the king lack subjects? do not the rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it.

ATTEN. You mistake me, sir.

FAL. Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so.

ATTEN. I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat, if you say I am any other than an honest man.

FAL. I give thee leave to tell me so! I lay aside that which grows to me! If thou get'st any leave of me, hang me; if thou takest leave, thou wert better be hanged: You hunt-counter, hence! avaunt!

3

-hunt-counter,] That is, blunderer. He does not, I think, allude to any relation between the judge's servant and the counter-prison. JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnson's explanation may be countenanced by the following passage in Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub:

66 -Do you mean to make a hare

"Of me, to hunt counter thus, and make these doubles, "And you mean no such thing as you send about?"

Again, in Hamlet:

"O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs."

It should not, however, be concealed, that Randle Holme, in his Academy of Armory and Blazon,, Book III. ch. 3. says: "Hunt counter, when hounds hunt it by the heel." STEEVENS. Hunt counter means, base tyke, or worthless dog. There can be no reason why Falstaff should call the attendant a blunderer, but he seems very anxious to prove him a rascal. After all, it

ATTEN. Sir, my lord would speak with you. CH. JUST. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you. FAL. My good lord!-God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad: I heard say, your lordship was sick: I hope, your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health.

CH. JUST. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

FAL. An't please your lordship, I hear, his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.

CH. JUST. I talk not of his majesty :-You would not come when I sent for you.

FAL. And I hear moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

CH. JUST. Well, heaven mendhim! I pray, let me speak with you.

FAL. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

CH. JUST. What tell you me of it? be it as it is. FAL. It hath its original from much grief; from

is not impossible the word may be found to signify a catchpole or bum-bailiff. He was probably the Judge's tipstaff. RITSON. Perhaps the epithet hunt-counter is applied to the officer, in reference to his having reverted to Falstaff's salvo. HENLEY.

I think it much more probable that Falstaff means to allude to the counter-prison. Sir T. Overbury, in his character of A Serjeant's Yeoman, 1616, (in modern language, a bailiff's follower,) calls him "a counter-rat." MALONE.

study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen; it is a kind of deafness.

CH. JUST. I think, you are fallen into the disease; for hear not what I say to you.

you

FAL. Very well, my lord, very well :* rather, an't

Fal. Very well, my lord, very well:] In the quarto edition, printed in 1609, this speech stands thus:

Old. Very well, my lord, very well :

I had not observed this, when I wrote my note to The First Part of Henry IV, concerning the tradition of Falstaff's character having been first called Oldcastle. This almost amounts to a selfevident proof of the thing being so: and that, the play being printed from the stage manuscript, Oldcastle had been all along altered into Falstaff, except in this single place by an oversight; of which the printers not being aware, continued these initial traces of the original name. THEOBALD.

I am unconvinced by Mr. Theobald's remark. Old. might have been the beginning of some actor's name. Thus we have Kempe and Cowley, instead of Dogberry and Verges, in the 4to. edit. of Much Ado about Nothing, 1600.

Names utterly unconnected with the Personæ Dramatis of Shakspeare, are sometimes introduced as entering on the stage. Thus, in The Second Part of King Henry IV. edit. 1600:"Enter th' Archbishop, Thomas Mowbray, (Earle Marshall,) the Lord Hastings, Fauconbridge, and Bardolfe." Sig. B 4.Again: "Enter the Prince, Poynes, Sir John Russell, with others." Sig. C 3.-Again, in King Henry V. 1600: "Enter Burbon, Constable, Orleance, Gebon." Sig. D 2.

Old. might have been inserted by a mistake of the same kind; or indeed through the laziness of compositors, who occasionally permit the letters that form such names as frequently occur, to remain together, when the rest of the page is distributed. Thus it will sometimes happen that one name is substituted for another. This observation will be well understood by those who have been engaged in long attendance on a printing-house; and those to whom my remark appears obscure, need not to lament their ignorance, as this kind of knowledge is usually purchased at the expence of much time, patience, and disappointment.

In 1778, when the foregoing observations first appeared, they had been abundantly provoked. Justice, however, obliges me VOL. XII.

D