Christmas. "Ay, antiquity was the mother of ignorance," &c. and then proceeds to give reasons for such a decay in mirth and house-keeping. The confusion of seasons here described, is no more than a poetical account of the weather, which happened in England about the time when this play was first published. For this information I am indebted to chance, which furnished me with a few leaves of an old meteorological history. STEEVENS. 107. distemperature,] is perturbation of the elements. STEEVENS. 109. 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 Shakspere himself in Coriolanus, talks of the "consecrated snow that lies on Dian's lap :" and Spenser in his Faery Queen, B. II. c. 2. has: 110. And fills with flow'rs fair Flora's painted lap.”" And on old Hyem's chin, and icy crown,] I believe this peculiar image of Hyem's chin must come from Virgil, through the medium of the translation of the day. n. iv. 251. 66 Tum flumina mento "Præcipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba." Virgil bonowed the idea from Sophocles' Trachiniæ, v. 13. S. W. For chin, Mr. Tyrwhitt conjectures the poet wrote thin, i. e. thin-hair'd. So, 113. The childing autumn- -] Is the pregnant autumn, frugifer autumnus. So, in Heywood's Golden Age, 1611: "I childed in a cave remote and silent." Again, in his Silver Age, 1613: "And at one instant she shall child two issues." "The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, "Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime" 122. MALONE. -henchman.] Page of honour. This office was abolished by queen Elizabeth. GREY, The office might be abolished at court, but probably remained in the city. Glapthorne, in his comedy, called, Wit in a Constable, 1637, has this passage: -I will teach his hench-boys, "Serjeants, and trumpeters to act, and save So, again: "When she was lady may'ress, and you humble "As her trim kench-boys." Again, in Ben Jonson's Christmas Masque," he said grace as well as any of the sheriff's hench-boys.' Skinner Skinner derives the word from Hine A. S. quasi domesticus famulus. Spelman from Hengstman, equi curator, ἱπποκομα. STEEVENS. 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, pypinge, singinge, dauncinge, 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 hench men. Strype's Eccl. Mem. v. 2 App. n. 1. TYRWHITT. -Henchmen. 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. Part II. "O Westmoreland! thou art a summer bird, STEEVENS. And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, And And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid's musick.] The first thing observable on these words is, that this action of the mermaid is laid in the same time and place with Cupid's attack upon the vestal. By the vestal every one knows is meant queen Elizabeth. It is very natural and reasonable then to think, that the mermaid stands for some eminent personage of her time. And if so, the allegorical covering, in which there is a mixture of satire and panegyrick, will lead us to conclude, that this person was one of whom it had been inconvenient for the author to speak openly, either in praise or dispraise. All this agrees with Mary queen of Scots, and with no other. Queen Elizabeth could not bear to hear her commended; and her successor would not forgive her satirist. But the poet has so well marked out every distinguished circumstance of her life and character in this beautiful allegory, as will leave no room to doubt about his secret meaning. She is called a mermaid, 1. to denote her reign over a kingdom situate in the sea, and 2. her beauty, and intemperate lust: “Desinat in piscem mulier formosa supernè.” For as Elizabeth for her chastity is called a vestal, this unfortunate lady, on a contrary account, is called a mermaid. 3. An ancient story may be supposed to be here alluded to. The emperor Julian tells us, -Epistle 41. that the Sirens (which, with all the modern poets, are mermaids) contended for precedency with the the Muses, who, overcoming them, took away their wings. The quarrels between Mary and Elizabeth had the same cause, and the same issue. on a dolphin's back,] This evidently marks out that distinguishing circumstance of Mary's fortune, her marriage with the dauphin of France, son of Henry II. Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,] This alludes to her great abilities of genius and learning, which rendered her the most accomplished princess of her age. The French writers tell us, that, while she was in that court, she pronounced a Latin oration in the great hall of the Louvre, with so much grace and eloquence, as filled the whole court with admiration. That the rude sea grew civil at her song;] By the rude sea is meant Scotland encircled with the ocean; which rose up in arms against the regent, while she was in France. But her return home presently quieted those disorders: and had not her strange ill conduct afterwards more violently inflamed them, she might have passed her whole life in peace. There is the greater justness and beauty in this image, as the vulgar opinion is, that the mermaid always sings in storms : And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, T · To hear the sea-maid's musick. Thus concludes the description, with that remarkable circumstance of this unhappy lady's fate, the destruction she brought upon several of the English nobility, whom |