How low am I? I am not yet so low,
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.

HEL. I pray you, though you mock me, gentle

men,

Let her not hurt me: I was never curst ;7

I have no gift at all in shrewishness ;

I am a right maid for my cowardice;

Let her not strike me: You, perhaps, may think,

Because she's fomething lower than myself,

That I can match her.

HER.

Lower! hark, again.

HEL. Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.

I evermore did love you, Hermia,

Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong'd you;
Save that, in love unto Demetrius,

I told him of your stealth unto this wood:
He follow'd you; for love, I follow'd him.
But he hath chid me hence; and threaten'd me
To ftrike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too :
And now, fo you will let me quiet go,
To Athens will I bear my folly back,
And follow you no further: Let me go:
You fee how fimple and how fond I am.8

of Abuses, 8vo. 1583 : "But their cheefeft iewell thei bryng from thence is their Maie pole, whiche thei bryng home with great veneration, as thus: Thei have twentie or fourtie yoke of oxen, every oxe hauyng a sweete nofegaie of flowers placed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen drawe home this Maie pole, (this stinckyng idoll rather) whiche is couered all ouer with flowers and hearbes bounde rounde aboute with strynges from the top to the bottome, and some tyme painted with variable colours," &c. STEEVENS.

7curst;] i. e. fhrewish or mischievous.

Thus in the old proverbial saying: "Curst cows have short horns." STEEVENS.

8

- how fond I am.] Fond, i. e. foolish. So, in The Merchant of Venice:

HER. Why, get you gone: Who is't that hinders you?

HEL. A foolish heart, that I leave here behind. HER. What, with Lysander ?

HEL.

With Demetrius.

Lrs. Be not afraid: she shall not harm thee, Helena.

DEM. No, fir; she shall not, though you take her

part.

HEL. O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd:

She was a vixen, when she went to school ;9
And, though she be but little, she is fierce.

HER. Little again? nothing but low and little?

Why will you fuffer her to flout me thus?

Let me come to her.

Lys.

Get you gone, you dwarf;

You minimus, of hind'ring knot-grafs made;1

"Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art fo fond
"To come abroad with him." STEEVENS.

She was a vixen, when she went to school;] Vixen or fixen primitively signifies a female fox. So, in The Boke of Hunting, that is cleped Mayster of Game; an ancient MS. in the collection of Francis Douce, Esq. Gray's Inn: "The fixen of the Foxe is affaute onys in the yer. She hath venomous biting as a wolfe" STEEVENS.

I

of hind'ring knot-grass made;] It appears that knotgrafs was anciently supposed to prevent the growth of any animal or child.

Beaumont and Fletcher mention this property of it in The Knight of the Burning Pestle:

" Should they put him into a straight pair of gaskins, 'twere worse than knot-grass, he would never grow after it."

Again, in the Coxcomb:

"We want a boy extremely for this function, kept under, for a year, with milk and knot-grass." Daisy-roots were supposed to have the fame effect.

You bead, you acorn.
DEM.

You are too officious,

In her behalf that scorns your services.
Let her alone; speak not of Helena;

Take not her part: for if thou dost intend 2

Never fo little show of love to her,

Thou shalt aby it.3

Lys.

Now the holds me not;

Now follow, if thou dar'st, to try whose right,
Or thine or mine, is most in Helena.4

DEM. Follow? nay, I'll go with thee, cheek by [Exeunt Lys. and DEM.

jole.

HER. You, mistress, all this coil is 'long of you: Nay, go not back.

That prince of verbose and pedantic coxcombs, Richard Tomlinson, apothecary, in his tranflation of Renodæus his Difpenfatory, 1657, informs us that knot-grafs " is a low reptant hearb, with exile, copious, nodose, and geniculated branches." Perhaps no hypochondriack is to be found, who might not derive his cure from the perufal of any fingle chapter in this work. STEEVENS.

2

-

intend-] i. e. pretend. So, in Much Ado: "Intend a kind of zeal both to the prince and Claudio." STEEVENS.

3 Thou shalt aby it.] To aby is to pay dear for, to fuffer. So, in The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601:

Had I fword and buckler here,

"You should aby these questions."

The word has occurred before in this play. See p. 420, line 4. Again, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599:

but thou shalt dear aby this blow." STEEVENS.

"If

Thou shalt aby it.] Aby it, is abide by it; i. e. stand to it, answer to it. So, in Pfalm cxxx. v. 3, in Common Prayer : thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss: O Lord, who may abide it?" HARRIS.

4 Or thine or mine, &c.] The old copies read-Of thine. The emendation is Mr. Theobald's. I am not fure that the old reading is corrupt. If the line had run-" Of mine or thine," I should have fuspected that the phrafe was borrowed from the. Latin :-Now follow, to try whose right of property, of meum or tuum, is the greatest in Helena. MALONE.

HEL.

I will not trust you, I; Nor longer stay in your curst company. Your hands, than mine, are quicker for a fray; My legs are longer though, to run away. [Exit. HER. I am amaz'd, and know not what to say. [Exit, pursuing HELENA.

OBE. This is thy negligence: ftill thou mistak'ft, Or else commit'st thy knaveries wilfully.

PUCK. Believe me, king of fhadows, I mistook. Did not you tell me, I should know the man By the Athenian garments he had on ? And fo far blameless proves my enterprize, That I have 'nointed an Athenian's eyes : And fo far am I glad it so did fort,5 As this their jangling I esteem a sport.

OBE. Thou seest, these lovers seek a place to fight:
Hie therefore, Robin, overcaft the night;
The starry welkin cover thou anon
With drooping fog, as black as Acheron;
And lead these testy rivals so aftray,
As one come not within another's way.
Like to Lyfander sometime frame thy tongue,
Then ftir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;
And fometime rail thou like Demetrius;

And from each other look thou lead them thus,
Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting fleep
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep :
Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye;
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,

sfo did fort,] So happen in the issue. JOHNSON. So, in Monfieur D'Olive, 1606:

STEEVENS.

- never look to have any action fort to your honour." -virtuous property,] Salutiferous. So he calls, in The Tempest, poisonous dew, wicked dew. JOHNSON.

6

To take from thence all error, with his might,
And make his eye-balls roll with wonted fight.
When they next wake, all this derifion
Shall seem a dream, and fruitless vision;
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,"
With league, whose date till death shall never end.
Whiles I in this affair do thee employ,
I'll to my queen, and beg her Indian boy;
And then I will her charmed eye release
From monster's view, and all things shall be peace.
PUCK. My fairy lord, this must be done with

hafte;

For night's fwift dragons & cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghofts, wandering here and

there, Troop home to church-yards: damned spirits all, That in cross-ways and floods have burial,

1-wend.] i. e. go. So, in The Comedy of Errors: Hopeless and helpless doth Ægeon wend." STEEVENS. 8 For night's swift dragons &c.] So, in Cymbeline, Act II. fc. ii:

"Swift, swift, ye dragons of the night!"

See my note on this paffage, concerning the vigilance imputed to the ferpent tribe. STEEVENS.

This circumstance Shakspeare might have learned from a passage in Golding's tranflation of Ovid, which he has imitated in The Tempest :

"Among the earth-bred brothers you a mortal war did set, "And brought afleep the dragon fell, whose eyes were

never shet." MALONE.

damned Spirits all,

That in cross-ways and floods have burial,] The ghosts of self-murderers, who are buried in cross-roads; and of those who being drowned, were condemned (according to the opinion of the ancients) to wander for a hundred years, as the rites of fepulture had never been regularly bestowed on their bodies. That the waters were sometimes the place of refidence for damned Spirits,