THER. Why, thou picture of what thou feemeft, and idol of idiot-worshippers, here's a letter for thee. ACHIL. From whence, fragment? THER. Why, thou full difh of fool, from Troy. PATR. Who keeps the tent now? 8 THER. The furgeon's box, or the patient's wound. PATR. Well faid, Adverfity!' and what need thefe tricks? THER. Pr'ythee be filent, boy; I profit not by thy talk: thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet. PATR. Male varlet, you rogue! what's that? one time, without heating the oven afresh. So, Ben Jonson, in his Catiline: 66 Except he were of the fame meal and batch." Again, in Decker's If this be not a good Play the Devil is in it, 1612: "The beft is, there are but two batches of people moulded in this world." Again, in Summer's Laft Will and Teftament, 1600: "Haft thou made a good batch? I pray thee give me a new loaf." Again, in Every Man in his Humour: "Is all the reft of this batch?" Therfites had already been called cobloaf. STEEVENS. 8 The furgeon's box,] In this anfwer Therfites only quibbles upon the word tent. HANMER, 9 Well faid, Adverfity!] Adverfity, I believe, in this inftance, fignifies contrariety. The reply of Therfites has been ftudiously adverfe to the drift of the queftion urged by Patroclus. So, in Love's Labour's Loft, the Princefs, addreffing Boyet, (who had been capriciously employing himself to perplex the dialogue,) fays—avaunt, Perplexity!" STEEVENS. 66 2 Male varlet,] Sir T. Hanmer reads-Male harlot, plausibly enough, except that it feems too plain to require the explanation which Patroclus demands. JOHNSON. This expreffion is met with in Decker's Honeft Whore: " —’tis a male varlet, fure, my lord!" FARMER. THER. Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases of the fouth, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o'gravel i'the back, lethargies, cold palfies,' raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of impofthume, fciaticas, limekilns i'the palm, incurable bone-ach, and the rivell❜d fee-fimple of the tetter, take and take again fuch prepofterous discoveries! PATR. Why thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meaneft thou to curse thus? THER. Do I curse thee? PATR. Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whorefon indiftinguishable cur,' no. The perfon spoken of in Decker's play is Bellafronte, a harlot, who is introduced in boy's clothes. I have no doubt that the text is right. MALONE. There is nothing either criminal or extraordinary in a male varlet. The word prepofterous is well adapted to exprefs the idea of Therfites. The fenfe therefore requires that we should adopt Hanmer's amendM. MASON. ment. Man-mistress is a term of reproach thrown out by Dorax, in Dryden's Don Sebaftian, King of Portugal. STEEVENS. 3 cold palfies,] This catalogue of loathfome maladies ends in the folio at cold palfies. This paffage, as it ftands, is in the quarto: the retrenchment was in my opinion judicious. It may be remarked, though it proves nothing, that, of the few alterations made by Milton in the fecond edition of his wonderful poem, one was, an enlargement of the enumeration of diseases. JOHNSON. -you ruinous butt; &c.] Patroclus reproaches Therfites with deformity, with having one part crowded into another. JOHNSON. The fame idea occurs in the Second Part of King Henry IV: STEEVENS. indiftinguishable cur,] i. e. thou cur of an undeterminate fhape. STEEVENS. THER. NO? why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial fkein of fleive filk,' thou green farcenet flap for a fore eye, thou taffel of a prodigal's purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pefter'd with fuch water-flies; diminutives of nature!" PATR. Out, gall!" THER. Finch egg!' 4 ACHIL. My fweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite From my great purpose in to-morrow's battle. Here is a letter from queen Hecuba; A token from her daughter, my fair love; An oath that I have fworn. I will not break it: 3 thou idle immaterial skein of sleive filk,] All the terms ufed by Therfites of Patroclus, are emblematically expreffive of flexibility, compliance, and mean officioufnefs. JOHNSON. Sleive filk has been already explained. See Vol. VII. p. 418, n. 3. MALONE. 4 fuch water-flies;] So, Hamlet, fpeaking of Ofrick: "Doft know this water-fly?" STEEVENS. diminutives of nature !] So, in Antony and Cleopatra: be shown "For poor'ft diminutives, for dolts,." STEEVENS. Out, gall!] Sir T. Hanmer reads-nut-gall, which answers well enough to finch-egg; it has already appeared, that our author thought the nut-gall the bitter gall. He is called nut, from the conglobation of his form; but both the copies read-Out gall! JOHNSON. Finch egg!] Of this reproach I do not know the exact meaning. I suppose he means to call him finging bird, as implying an useless favourite, and yet more, fomething more worthless, a finging bird in the egg, or generally, a flight thing eafily crushed. JOHNSON. A finch's egg is remarkably gaudy; but of fuch terms of reproach it is difficult to pronounce the true fignification. STEEVENS. 8 A token from her daughter, &c.] This is a circumftance taken from the story book of The Three Deftructions of Troy. HANMER. Fall, Greeks; fail, fame; honour, or go, or stay; [Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS. THER. With too much blood, and too little brain, these two may run mad; but if with too much brain, and too little blood, they do, I'll be a curer of madmen. Here's Agamemnon,-an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails; but he has not fo much brain as ear-wax: And the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull, the primitive ftatue, and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty fhooing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's leg, to what form, but that he is, fhould wit larded with malice, and malice forced with wit,2 turn him to? To an ass, were 9 And the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull,the primitive ftatue, and oblique memorial of cuckolds;] He calls Menelaus the transformation of Jupiter, that is, as himfelf explains it, the bull, on account of his horns, which he had as a cuckold. This cuckold he calls the primitive ftatue of cuckolds; i. e. his story had made him fo famous, that he stood as the great archetype of his character. WARBURTON. Mr. Heath obferves, that "the memorial is called oblique, because it was only indirectly fuch, upon the common fuppofition, that both bulls and cuckolds were furnished with horns." STEEVENS. Perhaps Shakspeare meant nothing more by this epithet than borned, the bull's horns being crooked or oblique. Dr. Warburton, I think, mistakes. It is the bull, not Menelaus, that is the primitive ftatue, &c. MALONE. 2 -forced with wit,] Stuffed with wit. A term of cookery. In this fpeech I do not well understand what is meant by loving quails. JOHNSON. By loving quails the poet may mean loving the company of harlots. A quail is remarkably falacious. Mr. Upton fays that Xenophon, in his memoirs of Socrates, has taken notice of this nothing; he is both afs and ox: to an ox were nothing; he is both ox and afs. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care: but to be Menelaus,-I would confpire against destiny. Afk me not what I would be, if I were not Therfites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, fo I were not Menelaus.-Hey-day! fpirits and fires! 3 Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, MENELAUS, and DIOMED, with lights. AGAM. We go wrong, we go wrong. No, yonder 'tis ; I trouble you. Here comes himself to guide you. quality in the bird. A fimilar allufion occurs in The Hollander, a comedy by Glapthorne, 1640: 66 -- the hot defire of quails, "To yours is modeft appetite." STEEVENS. In old French caille was fynonymous to fille de joie. In the Dia. Comique par le Roux, under the article caille are these words: "Chaud comme une caille. "Caille coeffée,-Sobriquet qu'on donne aux femmes. Signifie femme eveillée, amoureufe." So, in Rabelais:-" Cailles coiffées mignonnement chantans;"which Motteux has thus rendered (probably from the old tranflation): "coated quails and laced mutton, waggifhly finging." 2 MALONE. a fitchew,] i. e. a polecat. So, in Othello: ""Tis fuch another fitchew, marry a perfum'd one." STEEVENS. 3fpirits and fires!] This Therfites fpeaks upon the first fight of the diftant lights. JOHNSON, |