An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set: The spring, the summer,

turbed state in which the king and queen had lived for some time past. MALONE.

Perhaps Mr. Malone has truly explained the force of the word in question. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

"Thou art up-rous'd by some distemperature."

STEEVENS.

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I Fall in the fresh LAP of the crimson rose ;] To have snow in the lap of June," is an expression used in Northward Hoe, 1607, and Shakspeare himself in Coriolanus, talks of the consecrated snow that lies on Dian's lap :" and Spenser in his Fairy Queen, b. ii. c. ii. has:

"And fills with flow'rs fair Flora's painted lap.”

STEEVENS. This thought is elegantly expressed by Goldsmith in his Traveller :

"And winter lingering chills the lap of May."

M. MASON. 2- Hyems' CHIN,] Dr. Grey, not inelegantly, conjectures, that the poet wrote:

on old Hyems' chill and icy crown.

It is not indeed easy to discover how a chaplet can be placed on the chin. STEEVENS.

I believe this peculiar image of Hyem's chin must have come from Virgil, (Eneid iv. 253,) through the medium of the translation of the day;

"Precipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba." S. W. Thus translated by Phaer, 1561:

"And from his hoary beard adowne,

"The streames of waters fall; with yce and frost his face doth frowne."

This singular image was, I believe, suggested to our poet by Golding's translation of Ovid, book ii.:

"And lastly, quaking for the colde, stood Winter all forlorne,
"With rugged head as white as dove, and garments all to torne,
"Forladen with the isycles, that dangled up and downe
"Upon his gray and hoarie beard, and snowie frozen crown."
MALONE.

I should rather be for thin, i. e. thin-hair'd. TYRWHITT.
So, Cordelia, speaking of Lear:

The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the 'mazed world,
By their increase *, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissention;
We are their parents and original.

OBE. Do you amend it then; it lies in you;
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?
I do but beg a little changeling boy,
To be my henchman 5.

"White-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps "Against thy majesty;-" STEEVENS.

Thinne is nearer to chinne (the spelling of the old copies) than chill), and therefore, I think, more likely to have been the author's word. MALONE.

3 The CHILDING autumn,] Is the pregnant autumn, frugifer autumnus. So, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613:

Fifty in number childed all one night."

Again, in his Golden Age, 1611:

"I childed in a cave remote and silent."

Again, in his Silver Age, 1613:

"And at one instant he shall child two issues."

There is a rose called the childing rose. STEEVENS.

Again, in Tasso's Godfrey of Bulloigne, by Fairfax, b. xviii. st. 26:

"An hundreth plants beside (even in his sight)

"Childed an hundreth nymphes so great, so dight." Childing is an old term in botany, when a small flower grows out of a large one: "the childing autumn," therefore means the autumn which unseasonably produces flowers on those of summer. Florists have also a childing daisy, and a childing scabious. HOLT WHITE.

4 By their INCREASE,] That is, By their produce. JOHNSON. So, in our author's 97th Sonnet:

"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

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Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime."

The latter expression is scriptural : "Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our God, shall give us his blessing." Psalm lxvii. MALONE.

5- henchman.] Page of honour. This office was abolished by Queen Elizabeth. GREY.

This office might be abolished at court, but probably remained

TITA.

Set your heart at rest,

The fairy land buys not the child of me.

in the city. Glapthorne, in his comedy called Wit in a Constable, 1640, has this passage:

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I will teach his hench-boys,

Serjeants, and trumpeters to act, and save "The city all that charges."

So, again :

"When she was lady may'ress, and you
"As her trim hench-boys."

Again, in Ben Jonson's Christmas Masque : as well as any of the sheriff's hench-boys."

humble

"-he said grace

Skinner derives the word from Hine A. S. quasi domesticus famulus. Spelman from Hengstman, equi curator, intoxopos.

STEEVENS.

In a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury dated 11th of December, 1565, it is said: "Her Highness (i. e. Queen Elizabeth) hathe of late, whereat some do muche marvell, dissolved the auncient office of Henchemen." (Lodge's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 358.) On this passage Mr. Lodge observes that Henchmen were a certain number of youths, the sons of gentlemen, who stood or walked near the person of the monarch on all public occasions. They are mentioned in the sumptuary statutes of the 4th of Edward the Fourth, and 24th of Henry VIII. and a patent is preserved in the Fœdera, vol. xv. 242, whereby Edward VI. gives to William Bukley, M. A. "propter gravitatem morum et doctrinæ abundantiam, officium docendi, erudiendi, atque instituendi adolescentulos vocatos Henchmen;" with a salary of 40l. per annum. Henchmen, or Heinsmen, is a German word, as Blount informs us in his Glossographia, signifying a domestick, whence our ancient term hind, a servant in the house of a farmer. Dr. Percy, in a note on the Earl of Northumberland's household-book, with less probability, derives the appellation from their custom of standing by the side, or Haunch, of their Lord. REED.

Upon the establishment of the household of Edward IV. were "henxmen six enfants, or more, as it pleyseth the king, eatinge in the halle," &c. There was also “a maister of the henxmen, to shewe them the schoole of nurture, and learne them to ride, to wear their harnesse; to have all curtesie-to teach them all languages, and other virtues, as harping, pipynge, singing, dauncing, with honest behavioure of temperaunce and patyence." MS. Harl. 293.

"At the funeral of Henry VIII. nine henchmen attended with Sir Francis Bryan, master of the henchmen."

Strype's Eccl. Mem. v. 2. App. n. 1. TYRWHITT.

His mother was a vot'ress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side:
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood;
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive,
And grow big-bellied, with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait,
(Following, her womb, then rich with my young
'squire',)

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Henchman." Quasi haunch-man. One that goes behind another. Pedisequus. BLACKSTONE.

The learned commentator might have given his etymology some support from the following passage in King Henry IV. P. II. Act IV. Sc. IV. :

"O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,

"Which ever in the haunch of winter sings

"The lifting up of day." STEEVENS.

And grow BIG-BELLIED, with the wanton wind;] Dryden, in his translation of the 1st book of Homer's Iliad (and Pope after him) were perhaps indebted to the foregoing passage:

winds suffic'd the sail

"The bellying canvas strutted with the gale." Dryden. indulgent gales

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"Supply'd by Phoebus, fill the swelling sails,

"The milk-white canvas bellying as they blow." Pope.

STEEVENS.

Why the wind was termed wanton we may learn from Othello: "The bawdy wind that kisseth all it meets."

Again, in The Merchant of Venice:

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Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind." MALONE. 7 Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait,

FOLLOWING (her womb, then rich with my young 'squire,) Would imitate-] Perhaps the parenthesis should begin sooner; as I think Mr. Kenrick observes:

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(Following her womb, then rich with my young 'squire.) " So, in Trulla's combat with Hudibras :

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She press'd so home,

"That he retired, and follow'd's bum."

And Dryden says of his Spanish Friar, "his great belly walks in state before him, and his gouty legs come limping after it."

FARMER.

This passage, thus printed, appears to me ridiculous. Every

Would imitate; and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandize.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And, for her sake, I do rear up her boy :
And, for her sake, I will not part with him.

If

OBE. How long within this wood intend you stay? TITA. Perchance, till after Theseus' wedding-day. you will patiently dance in our round,

And see our moon-light revels, go with us;

If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

OBE. Give me that boy, and I will go with thee. TITA. Not for thy fairy kingdom.-Fairies, away": We shall chide down-right, if I longer stay.

[Exeunt TITANIA, and her train. OBE. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this

grove,

Till I torment thee for this injury.—

My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's musick 9.

woman who walks forward must follow her womb. The absurdity is avoided by leaving the word-following out of the parenthesis. Warburton's grammatical objection has no foundation.

M. MASON.

8 Not for thy kingdom.-Fairies, away:] The ancient copies read:

"Not for thy fairy kingdom.-Fairies, away."

By the advice of Dr. Farmer I have omitted the useless adjective fairy, as it spoils the metre; Fairies, the following substantive, being apparently used, in an earlier instance, as a trisyllable. STEEVENS.

-Thou remember'st

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,