Rob. And once defpatch'd him in an embassy
To Germany, there, with the emperor,
To treat of high affairs touching that time:
The advantage of his abfence took the king,
And in the mean time fojourn'd at my
father's;
Where how he did prevail, I fhame to fpeak:
But truth is truth; large lengths of feas and fhores.
Between my father and my mother lay,

(As I have heard my father speak himself,)
When this fame lufty gentleman was got.
Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath'd
His lands to me; and took it, on his death,3
That this, my mother's fon, was none of his ;
And, if he were, he came into the world
Full fourteen weeks before the courfe of time.
Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,
My father's land, as was my father's will.

K. John. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate;
Your father's wife did after wedlock bear him:
And, if the did play falfe, the fault was hers
Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands
That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,.
Who, as you fay, took pains to get this fon,
Had of your father claim'd this fon for his?
In footh, good friend, your father might have kept
This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world ;
In footh, he might; then, if he were my brother's,
My brother might not claim him; nor your father,
Being none of his, refufe him: 4 This concludes,--
My mother's fon did get your father's heir;
Your father's heir must have your father's land.
Rob. Shall then my father's will be of no force,

To difpoffefs that child which is not his ?
Baft. Of no more force to difpoffefs me, fir,
Than was his will to get me, as I think.

3i..e. entertained it as his fixed opinion, when he was dying.

Eli.

STEEVENS.

This is a decifive argument. As your father, if he liked him, could not have been forced to refign him, fo not liking him, he is not at liberty to reject him. JOHNSON.

Eli. Whether hadit thou rather,—be a Faulconbridge,
And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land;
Or the reputed fon of Coeur-de-lion,

Lord of thy prefence, and no land befide? 5

Baft. Madam, an if my brother had my shape,
And I had his, fir Robert his, like him; 6
And if my legs were two fuch riding-rods,
My arms fuch eelskins stuff'd; my face fo thin,
That in mine ear I durft not stick a rose,

Left men fhould fay, Look, where three-farthings goes! 7

B 6

And

5 Lard of thy prefence means, mafter of that dignity and grandeur of appearance that may fufficiently diftinguith thee from the vulgar, without the help of fortune.

Lord of bis prefence apparently fignifies, great in his own person, and is uf.d in this fenfe by King John in one of the following fcenes. JOHNSON.

And I bad bis, fir Robert his, like him ;] This is obfcure and ill expreffed. The meaning is—If I had bis fhape, fir Robert's— -as be has. Sir Robert bis, for Sir Robert's, is agreeable to the practice of that time, when the 's added to the nominative was believed, I think erroneoufly, to be a contraction of bis. So, Donne :

661 Who now lives to age,

"Fit to be call'd Methufalem bis page?" JOHNSON.

This ought to be printed:

Sir Robert bis, like him.

His according to a mistaken notion formerly received, being the sign of the genitive cafe. As the text before ftood there was a double genitive. MALONE.

7 In this very obfcure paffage our post is anticipating the date of another coin; humoroufly to rally a thin face, eclipfed, as it were, by a full blown rofe. We muft obferve to explain this allufion, that Queen Eliza beth was the first, and indeed the only prince, who comed in England three-half-pence, and three-farthing pieces. She coined fhillings, fixpences, groats, three-pences, two-pences, three-half-pence, pence, threefarthings, and half-pence. And thefe pieces all had her head, and were alternately with the rose behind, and without the rose. THOBALD.

Mr. Theobald has not mentioned a material circumitance relative to these three-farthing pieces, on which the propriety of the allufion in fome measure depends; viz. that they were made of filver, and confequently extremely thin. From their thinnefs they were very liable to be cracked. Hence Ben Jonfon, in his Every Man in bis Humour, fays, "He values. me at a crack'd three-farthings. MALONE.

The sticking rofes about them was then all the court-fafhion, as appears. from this paffage of the Confeffion Catholique du S. de Sancy. L. II. c. i:: Je luy ay appris à mettre des rofes far tous les coins," i. e. in every place:

abouts

And, to his fhape, were heir to all this land,
'Would I might never ftir from off this place,
I'd give it every foot to have this face;
I would not be fir Nob in any cafe.

Eli. I like thee well; Wilt thou forfake thy fortune,
Bequeath thy land to him, and follow me?

I am a foldier, and now bound to France.

Baft. Brother, take you my land, I'll take my chance: Your face hath got five hundred pounds a year;

Yet fell your face for fivepence, and 'tis dear.-
Madam, I'll follow you unto the death.

Eli. Nay, I would have you go before me thither.
Baft. Our country manners give our betters way.
K. John. What is thy name?

Baft. Philip, my liege; fo is my name begun ;
Philip, good old fir Robert's wife's eldest fon.

K. John. From henceforth bear his name whofe form thou bear'ft:

Kneel thou down Philip, but arife more great;

Arife fir Richard, and Plantagenet."

Baft.

about bim, fays the fpeaker, of one to whom he had taught all the courtfashions. WARBURTON.

The rofes stuck in the ear, were, I believe, only rofes compofed of ribbands.

I think I remember, among Vandyck's pictures in the Duke of Queensbury's collection at Ambrofbury, to have feen one, with the lock nearest the ear ornamented with ribbands which terminate in rofes; and Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, fays, " that it was once the fashion to flick real flowers in the ear."

At Kirtling, in Cambridgeshire, the magnificent refidence of the first Lord North, there is a juvenile portrait (fuppofed to be of Queen Elizabeth) with a red rofe sticking in her ear. STEEVENS.

From the epigrams of Sir John Davies, printed at Middleburgh, about 1598, it appears that fome men of gallantry in our author's time fuffered their ears to be bored, and wore their miftrefs's filken fhoeftrings in them. MALONE.

8 This expreffion (a Gallicifm,à la mort) is common among our ancient writers. STEEVENS.

9 It is a common opinion, that Plantagenet was the furname of the royal houfe of England, from the time of King Henry II.; but it is, as Camden obferves in his Remaines, 1614, a popular mistake. Plantagenet was not a family name, but a nick-name, by which a grandson of Gef

frey,

Baft. Brother by the mother's fide, give ine your hand;
My father gave me honour, yours gave
land:
Now bleffed be the hour, by night or day,
When I was got, fir Robert was away.

Eli. The very fpirit of Plantagenet!-
I am thy grandame, Richard; call me fo.

Baft. Madam, by chance, but not by truth: What though?

Something about, a little from the right,3

In at the window, or else o'er the hatch: 4
Who dares not ftir by day, muft walk by night;
And have is have, however men do catch:
Near or far off, well won is ftill well fhot;
And I am I, howe'er I was begot.

K. John. Go, Faulconbridge; now haft thou thy defire,
A landlefs knight makes thee a landed 'fquire.-
Come, madam, and come, Richard; we must speed
For France, for France; for it is more than need.
Baft. Brother, adieu; Good fortune come to thee!
For thou waft got i'the way of honefty.

[Exeunt all but the Baftard.

A foot of honour 5 better that I was;
many a many
foot of land the worse.

But

Well,

frey, the firft Earl of Anjou was distinguished, from his wearing a broomfalk in his bonnet. But this name was never borne either by the first Earl of Anjou, or by King Henry II. the fon of that Earl by the Emprefs Maude; he being always called Henry Fitz-Empress; his fon, Richard Caur-de-lion; and the prince who is exhibited in the play before us, John fans-terre, or lack-land. MALONE.

2 I am your grandson, madam, by chance, but not by bonesty;—what then? JOHNSON.

.

3 This fpeech, compofed of allufive and proverbial fentences, is obfcure. Iam, fays the fpritely knight, your grandfon, a little irregularly, but every man cannot get what he wishes the legal way. He that dares not go about his defigns by day, must make bis motions in the night; be, to whom the door is shut, must climb the quindow, or leap the batch. This, however, shall not deprefs me; for the world never enquires how any man got what he is known to poffefs, but allows that to bave is to bave, however it was caught, and that he who wins, foot well, whatever was his skill, whether the arrow fell near the mark, or far off it. JOHNSON. 4 Thefe expreffions mean, to be born out of wedlock. STEEVENS. 5 Aftep, un pas. JOHNSON.

Well, now can I make any Joan a lady :-
Good den, fir Richard,-God-a-mercy fellow ;-
And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter:
For new-made honour doth forget men's names;
'Tis too refpective, and too fociable,

For your converfion.8 Now your traveller,9-
He and his tooth-pick at my worship's mess;

2

Good den,] i. c. a good evening. STEEVENS.

3

And

7 Thus the old copy, and rightly. In Act IV. Salisbury calls him Sir Richard, and the King has juft knighted him by that name. The modern editors arbitrarily read, Sir Robert. Faulconbridge is now entertaining himself with ideas of greatnefs, fuggefted by his recent knighthood.Good den, fir Richard, he fuppofes to be the falutation of a vaffal, God-amercy, fellow, his own fupercilious reply to it. STEEVENS.

• Respective is refpectful, formal.

For your converfion, is the reading of the old copy, and may be right. It seems to mean, his late change of condition from a private gentleman to a knight. STEEVENS.

Mr. Pope, without neceffity, reads for your converfing. Our author has here, I think, ufed a licence of phrafeology that he often takes. The Baftard has just faid, that "new-made honour doth forget men's names;" and he proceeds as if he had faid, "does not remember men's names.' To remember the name of an inferior, he adds, has too much of the refpect which is paid to fuperiors, and of the focial and friendly familiarity of equals, for your converfion,-for your prefent conditions now converted from the fituation of a common man to the rank of a knight. MALONE.

9 It is faid in All's well that ends well, that " a traveller is a good thing after dinner." In that age of newly excited curiofity, one of the entertainments at great tables feems to have been the difcourfe of a traveller. JOHNSON. 2 It has been already remarked, that to pick the tooth, and wear a fiquet beard, were, in that time, marks of a man affecting foreign fashions. JOHNSON.

Among Gascoigne's poems I find one entitled, Councell given to Maifter Bartholomew Witbipoll a little before bis latter Journey to Geane, 1572. The following lines may perhaps be acceptable to the reader who is curious enough to enquire about the fashionable follies imported in that age: "Now, fir, if I fhall fee your mastership

"Come home difguis'd, and clad in quaint array ;-
As with a pike-tooth byting on your lippe ;

"Your brave mustachios turn'd the Turkie way;
"A coptankt hat made on a Flemish blocke;
"A night-gowne cloake down trayling to your toes;
A flender flop clofe couched to your dock;

"A curtolde flipper, and a fhort filk hofe." &c. STEEVENS.