466. remorse] i. e. pity.
467. plough] Old ed. “plows.”
468. wrench’d] i. e. perhaps, rinsed.
470. It is a world to see] Equivalent to—It is a wonder to see.
473. breath] i. e. breadth—for the rhyme.
474. world, hope] Qy. “world’s hope”?
475. Cut ... vail] Old ed. “Cuts ... vails:” (vail, i. e. lower, make to fall.)
477. Alastor’s] In chapter xvii. of this interminable poem, we find
and
Alastor meant frequently an evil genius, an avenging fury; it is also the name of one of Pluto’s horses (see Claudian, De Rap. Pros. i. 284): our author seems to have confounded these two significations.
478. alline] i. e. ally.
479. spill’d] i. e. destroyed.
480. sort] i. e. set, band.
481. spill’d] i. e. destroyed.
482. Make] Old ed. “Makes.”
483. hear ... read] Old ed. “heares ... reades:” and in the next line but one, “speeds.”
484. take] Old ed. “takes.”
485. wood] A wretched play on words—furious, mad.
486. bud] Old ed. “buds.”
487. incolants] i. e. inhabitants.
488. want] Old ed. “wants.”
489. know] Old ed. “knowes.”
491. Do] Old ed. “Doth.”
493. allines] i. e. allies.
494. make] Old ed. “makes.”
496. risse] i. e. risen.
497. cought] So written for the rhyme.
498. prevent] i. e. anticipate.
499. connizance] Or cognizance, i. e. badge.
500. bind] Old ed. “binds.”
501. rowl] i. e. roll.
502. remorse] i. e. pity.
503. sancited] i. e. ordained, ratified.
504. Vail’d] i. e. lowered.
506. Have] Old ed. “Hath.”
507. remorse] i. e. pity.
508. know] Old ed. “knowes.”
509. do] Old ed. “doth.”
510. spill] i. e. destroy.
511. thaw] Old ed. “thaws.”
513. her] Is frequently used for their by our early writers; but most probably in the present passage the author changed the number through carelessness.
514. Do] Old ed. “Doth.”
515. melt] Old ed. “melts.”
516. His defiance, &c.] In imitation of Hall, who had ushered in his Satires with A Defiance to Envy.
517. smazky] i. e., perhaps, smitchy or smeechy (reechy, black.)
518. satire-days] “Does he intend to pun upon the last day of the week—Saturday? It may be a misprint for Satyr-dogs, in allusion to his title, ‘Sixe Snarling Satyres.’” Collier’s Poet. Decam. vol. i. p. 286.
520. hast] Frequently thus written for the sake of the rhyme—even long after the date of the present poem (as by Butler in Hudibras, &c.).
521. beforne] i. e. before.
522. Cur eget, &c.] Hor. Sat. ii. 2. 103.
524. Burse] i. e. the Royal Exchange,—for the New Exchange in the Strand (which our early writers generally mean when they mention “the Burse”) was not yet built.
525. mere compact] i. e. wholly composed.
526. I, mortal] Qy. “immortal”?
527. compt] Qy. “complaint”?
528. bankerouts] i. e. bankrupts.
530. goodly] Qy. “godly”?
531. he] Old ed. “ye.”
532. he] Old ed. “she.”
533. Vail] i. e. lower.
534. Troynovant] i. e. London (founded, according to the fabulous account, by the Trojan Brutus).
535. bravery] i. e. finery of apparel, &c.
536. salts] i. e. salt-cellars.
537. manchets] i. e. small loaves or rolls of fine white bread.
540. quotes] i. e. notes.
542. match] i. e. pattern.
543. princocks] Or princox,—i. e. pert, conceited person: but perhaps the author uses the word here as the plural of princock.
544. jets] i. e. struts.
547. far-fet] i. e. far-fetched.
549. chates] i. e. chats, talks.
550. brave] i. e. fine, smart.
552. And] i. e. if.
553. the other] Old ed. “the tother.”
555. whist] i. e. still.
557. mantian] So written for the rhyme.
558. jets] i. e. struts.
560. counterfeits] i. e. portraits, likenesses.
561. juggling] Qy. “ingling”? (Old ed. “jugling.”)
563. Innocent] i. e. fool, idiot.
564. Way] To this word (which is doubtless the right reading), the “Why” of old ed. has been altered with a pen in the Bodleian copy.
566. scopious] i. e. spacious, ample.
568. the first book] No second Book is known to have appeared.
569. must have] The first word is deleted, and the second altered with a pen to “had,” in the Bodleian copy of this poem,—a probable correction.
570. Qui color, &c.] Ovid, Metam. ii. 541.
571. On the death, &c.] These lines (the meaning of which is sufficiently obscure) were first printed in Collier’s New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare, p. 26, from a MS. miscellany of poetry belonging to the late Mr. Heber. The celebrated actor, Burbage (who also handled the pencil, and is supposed to have painted the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare), died in March 1618-19.
572. In the just worth, &c.] Prefixed to Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, 1623.
573. luxury] i. e. lust, lewdness.
574. Woolners] Our old writers occasionally mention a person named Woolner, or Wolner, as a notorious gormandiser: Dekker calls him “that cannon of gluttony,” The Owles Almanacke, 1618, p. 53; and in The Life of Long Meg of Westminster, 1635, the seventh chapter relates “how she used Woolner the singing man of Windsor, that was the great eater, and how she made him pay for his breakefast.”
575. bulks] i. e. bodies.
576. luxurious] i.e. lustful.
577. throw] Old ed. “sowe.”
580. the Supplication, &c.] i. e. Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Diuell, one of the most celebrated and popular productions of that admirable prose-satirist, Thomas Nash. It first appeared in 1592, during which year (see Collier’s Bridgewater-House Catalogue, p. 209) it reached a third edition.
581. Gave me my titles freely] “To the high and mightie Prince of darknesse, Donsell dell Lucifer, King of Acheron, Stix and Phlegeton, Duke of Tartary, Marquesse of Cocytus, and Lord high Regent of Lymbo,” &c. Pierce Pennilesse, &c., sig. B 2. ed. 1595.
582. Knight of the Post]—Or, as the term is afterwards varied in the present piece, “Knight of Perjury”—means a hireling evidence, &c.: see note, vol. i. p. 308. Nash makes Pierce commit his Supplication to the care of a knight of the post, who describes himself to be “a fellow that wil sweare you any thing for twelue pence, but indeed I am a spirit in nature and essence, that take vpon me this humane shape, onely to set men together by the eares, and send soules by millions to hell.” Pierce Pennilesse, &c., sig. B. ed. 1595.
In “A priuate Epistle to the Printer,” originally prefixed to the second ed. of the tract just quoted, the author tells him that “if my leysure were such as I could wish, I might haps (halfe a yeare hence) write the returne of the Knight of the Post from hell, with the Diuels answere to the Supplication.” Sig. A 2. ed. 1595. What Nash wanted time or inclination to do, was attempted by others after his decease: a writer, who professes to have been his “intimate and near companion,” put forth The Returne of the Knight of the Post from Hell, 1606; and Dekker published a pamphlet, of the same date, called Newes from Hell, Brought by the Diuells Carrier, the running title of which is The Diuels Answere to Pierce Pennylesse.
583. Pict-hatch] Was a notorious haunt of prostitutes and the worst characters of both sexes,—“the very skirts of all brothel-houses,” as it is presently termed by our author. It is said to have been in Turnmill, commonly called Turnbull, Street, near Clerkenwell.
584. bill-men] i. e. watchmen,—who carried bills (a kind of pikes with hooked points), which in more ancient times were the weapons of the English foot-soldiers.
585. risse] i. e. rose.
586. fat-sagg chin] i. e. chin that sagged (hung down) with fat. Compare our author’s Chaste Maid in Cheapside;
When it is recollected that The Black Book and Father Hubburd’s Tales were published without the writer’s name, having merely the initials T. M. subscribed to a prefatory address, my object in citing parallel passages from Middleton’s dramas will be sufficiently apparent.
588. busk-points] i. e. the tagged laces by which the busks (pieces of wood or whalebone worn down the front of the stays) were fastened.
589. cruel garters] We have the same pun in Shakespeare’s King Lear, act ii. sc. 4, in Ben Jonson’s Alchemist, act i. sc. 1, and elsewhere. Crewel means a finer kind of yarn.
590. Derrick’s necklaces] i. e. the hangman’s ropes: Derrick, who is often mentioned by our old writers, was the common hangman.
591. Doctor Faustus] The well-known drama by Marlowe.
592. muchatoes] i. e. mustachios. So S. Rowley;
The lines just quoted seem to shew, that, when Ursula says to Knockem, “never tusk nor twirl your dibble” (B. Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair—Works, vol. iv. p. 414), she means mustachio, and not (as Gifford conjectured) beard. Mustachios, by being starched or gummed, were made to project from the corners of the mouth.
593. vaulting-house] i. e. brothel.
595. glory-fat Audrey] “Heres fine Backon Sister its glore Fat.” Yorkshire Dialogue, p. 44 (appended to The Praise of Yorkshire Ale, 1697), the Clavis to which has “Glore fat is very fat.”—The compiler of the Fourth Part of Bibliotheca Heberiana, in some remarks on The Black Book, says (p. 181), with reference to the present passage, that “nobody has noticed the allusion to Shakespeare’s As you like it, and the marriage of Touchstone and Audrey”!!!
596. bill-men] See note, p. 513.
597. house] Qy. “hose”?
598. take our ease in our inn] See note, p. 195.
599. Naud] A contraction of Audrey.
600. conveyances] i. e. dishonest tricks, juggling artifices.
601. bandileer] i. e. broad leathern belt, worn by a musqueteer over the left shoulder, to which were appended small powder-boxes, &c.
604. plaguy summer] i. e. summer during which the plague prevailed.
606. conceit] See note, p. 42.
607. former] “But force against force, skill against skill, so enterchangeably encountered, that it was not easy to determine, whether enterprising or preventing came former.” Sir P. Sidney’s Arcadia, lib. iii. p. 292. ed. 1633.
608. conclusions] i. e. experiments.
609. suckets of luxury] i. e. sweetmeats of lust.
610. the merciless antimony of the Common Law] So (see note, p. 514), in our author’s World tost at Tennis, the Lawyer says of his pills,
611. Grantham steeple] “A little fall will make a salt [salt-cellar] looke like Grantham Steeple with his cap to the Ale-house.” Dekker’s Owles Almanacke, 1618, p. 39.
613. lin] i. e. cease.
614. hose] i. e. pair of breeches.
615. infer] i. e. bring in.
616. Tartary] i. e. Tartarus, hell. Compare quotation from Nash, note, p. 512.