But those as sleep, and think not on their sins, Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins. fancy; and, by that means, could inspire wicked dreams into those who, on their going to sleep, had not recommended themselves to the protection of heaven. So Shakspeare makes Imogen, on her lying down, say: "From fairies, and the tempters of the night, "Guard me, beseech ye! As this is the sense, let us see how the common reading expresses it: "Raise up the organs of her fantasy;" i. e. inflame her imagination with sensual ideas; which is just the contrary to what the poet would have the speaker say. We cannot therefore but conclude he wrote: "Rein up the organs of her fantasy;' i. e. curb them, that she be no more disturbed by irregular imaginations, than children in their sleep. For he adds immediately:" Sleep she as sound as careless infancy." So, in The Tempest: "Do not give dalliance 66 Too much the rein." And, in Measure for Measure: "I give my sensual race the rein." To give the rein, being just the contrary to rein up. The same thought he has again in Macbeth : Merciful powers! "Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Warburton. "raise up the organs of her fantasy," may mean, 'elevate her ideas above sensuality, exalt them to the noblest contemplation.' This is highly plausible; and yet, Mr. Malone supposes the sense of the passage, collectively taken, to be as follows. STEEVENS. Go you, and wherever you find a maid asleep, that hath thrice prayed to the Deity, though, in consequence of her innocence, she sleep as soundly as an infant, elevate her fancy, and amuse her tranquil mind with some delightful vision; but those whom you find asleep, without having previously thought on their sins, and prayed to heaven for forgiveness, pinch, &c. It should be remembered that those persons who sleep very soundly, seldom dream. Hence the injunction to "raise up the organs of her fantasy, Sleep she," &c. i. e. though she sleep as sound, &c. The fantasies with which the mind of the virtuous maiden is to be amused, are the reverse of those with which Oberon disturbs Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream: QUICK. About, about; Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out: Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room 3; That it may stand till the perpetual doom, "There sleeps Titania; "With the juice of this I'll streak her eyes, Dr. Warburton, who appears to me to have totally misunderstood this passage, reads-Rein up, &c. in which he has been followed, in my opinion too hastily, by the subsequent editors. MALONE. 3 on every sacred room ;] See Chaucer's Cant. Tales, v. 3482, edit. Tyrwhitt: "On four halves of the hous aboute," &c. MALONE. In state as WHOLESOME,] Wholesome here signifies integer. He wishes the castle may stand in its present state of perfection, which the following words plainly show: 66 as in state 'tis fit." WARBURton. 5 Worthy the owner, AND the owner it.] And cannot be the true reading. The context will not allow it; and his court to Queen Elizabeth directs us to another: For, sure, he had more address than to content himself with wishing a thing to be, which his complaisance must suppose actually was, namely, the worth of the owner. WARBURTON. Surely this change is unnecessary. The fairy wishes that the castle and its owner, till the day of doom, may be worthy of each other. Queen Elizabeth's worth was not devolvable, as we have seen by the conduct of her foolish successor. The prayer of the fairy is therefore sufficiently reasonable and intelligible without alteration. STEEVENS. The several chairs of order look you scour With juice of balm, &c.] It was an article of our ancient luxury, to rub tables, &c. with aromatic herbs. Thus, in the Story of Baucis and Philemon, Ovid. Met. viii. : mensam æquatam Mentha abstersere virenti. Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest, In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white; Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery 7, Buckled below fair knight-hood's bending knee : Fairies use flowers for their charactery3. Pliny informs us, that the Romans did the same, to drive away evil spirits. STEEVENS. 7 In emerald tufts, flowers PURPLE, blue, and white; Like sapphire, pearl, AND rich embroidery,] These lines are most miserably corrupted. In the words-Flowers purple, blue and white-the purple is left uncompared. To remedy this, the editors, who seem to have been sensible of the imperfection of the comparison, read-and rich embroidery; that is, according to them, as the blue and white flowers are compared to sapphire and pearl, the purple is compared to rich embroidery. Thus, instead of mending one false step, they have made two, by bringing sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, under one predicament. The lines were wrote thus by the poet : "In emerald tufts, flowers purfled, blue, and white; i. e. let there be blue and white flowers worked on the greensward, like sapphire and pearl in rich embroidery. To purfle, is to overlay with tinsel, gold thread, &c. so our ancestors called a certain lace of this kind of work a purfling lace. 'Tis from the French pourfiler. So, Spenser; 66 -she was yclad, "All in a silken camus, lilly white, 66 Purfled upon, with many a folded plight." The change of and into in, in the second verse, is necessary. For flowers worked, or purfled in the grass, were not like sapphire and pearl simply, but sapphire and pearl in embroidery. How the corrupt reading and was introduced into the text, we have shown above. WARBURTON. Whoever is convinced by Dr. Warburton's note, will show he has very little studied the manner of his author, whose splendid incorrectness in this instance, as in some others, is surely preferable to the insipid regularity proposed in its room. STEEVENS. Away; disperse: But, till 'tis one o'clock, EVA. Pray you, lock hand in hand"; yourselves in order set: And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be, 8 ters. -charactery.] For the matter with which they make letJOHNSON. So, in Julius Cæsar : "All the charactery of my sad brows." i. e. all that seems to be written on them. Again, in Ovid's Banquet of Sence, by Chapman, 1595: "Wherein was writ in sable charectry." STEEVENS. Bullokar, in his English Expositor Improved by R. Browne, 12mo. says that charactery is "a writing by characters, in strange marks." In 1588 was printed-" Charactery, an Arte of Shorte, Swift, and Secrete Writing, by Character. Invented by Timothie Brighte, Doctor of Phisike." This seems to have been the first book upon short-hand writing printed in England. DOUCE. 9 -lock hand IN HAND;] The metre requires us to read"lock hands." Thus Milton, who perhaps had this passage in his mind, when he makes Comus say: "Come, knit hands, and beat the ground “In a light fantastic round." STEEVENS. I of MIDDLE EARTH.] Spirits are supposed to inhabit the ethereal regions, and fairies to dwell under ground; men therefore are in a middle station. JOHNSON." So, in the ancient metrical romance of Syr Guy of Warwick, bl. 1. no date : "And win the fayrest mayde of middle erde." Again, in Gower, De Confessione Amantis, fol. 26: "Adam, for pride lost his price "In mydell erth." Again, in the MSS. called William and the Werwolf, in the library of King's College, Cambridge, p. 15: "And saide God that madest man, and all middel erthe." Ruddiman, the learned compiler of the Glossary to Gawin Douglas's Translation of the Æneid, affords the following illustration of this contested phrase: "It is yet in use in the North of Scotland among old people, by which we understand this earth in which we live, in opposition to the grave: Thus they say, There's no man in middle erd is able to do it, i. e. no man alive, or on this earth, and so it is used by our author. But the reason is not so FAL. Heavens defend me from that Welch fairy! lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! PIST. Vile worm2, thou wast o'er-look'd even in thy birth 3. 3 QUICK. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end *: If he be chaste, the flame will back descend, And turn him to no pain; but if he start, It is the flesh of a corrupted heart. easy to come by; perhaps it is because they look upon this life as a middle state (as it is) between Heaven and Hell, which last is frequently taken for the grave. Or that life is as it were a middle betwixt non-entity, before we are born, and death, when we go hence and are no more seen; as life is called a coming into the world, and death a going out of it."-Again, among the Addenda to the Glossary aforesaid: 'Myddil erd is borrowed from the A. S. MIDDAN-EARD, MIDDANGEARD, mundus, MIDDANEARDLICE, mundanus, SE LAESSA MIDDAN-EARD, microcosmus." STEEVENS. 66 The author of The Remarks says, the phrase signifies neither more nor less, than the earth or world, from its imaginary situation in the midst or middle of the Ptolemaic system, and has not the least reference to either spirits or fairies. REED. 2 VILE worm,] The old copy reads-vild. That vild, which so often occurs in these plays, was not an error of the press, but the old spelling and the pronunciation of the time, appears from these lines of Heywood, in his Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, 1637: "Earth. What goddess, or how styl'd? 3 born. 66 Age. Age, am I call'd. "Earth. Hence false virago vild." MALONE. O'ER-LOOK'D even in thy birth.] i. e. slighted as soon as 4 With trial-fire, &c.] So, Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Faithful Shepherdess : 66 In this flame his finger thrust, "Which will burn him if he lust; "But if not, away will turn, "As loth unspotted flesh to burn.” STEEVENS. 5 And TURN him to no pain ;] This appears to have been the common phraseology of our author's tiine. So again, in The Tempest: 66 O, my heart bleeds, "To think of the teen that I have turn'd you to." Again, in K. Henry VI. Part III. : 66 Edward, what satisfaction canst thou make, |