6

And thorough this distemperature, we see

Sydney's Memorials, Vol. I, p. 94: " - he hath verie much distempered diverse parts of his bodie, as namely, his hedde, his stomach, &c. and thereby is always subject to coughes, distillations, and other rumatic diseases." Malone.

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, &c.] The repeated adverb therefore, throughout this speech, I suppose to have constant reference to the first time, when it is used. All these irregularities of season happened in consequence of the disagreement between the king and queen of the fairies, and not in consequence of each other. Ideas crouded fast on Shakspeare; and, as he committed them to paper, he did not attend to the distance of the leading object from which they took their rise. Mr. Malone concurs with me on this occasion.

That the festivity and hospitality attending Christmas, decreased, was the subject of complaint to many of our ludicrous writers. Among the rest to Nash, whose comedy called Summer's Last Will and Testament, made its first appearance in the same year with this play, viz. 1600. There Christmas is introduced, and Summer says to him:

"Christmas, how chance thou com'st not as the rest,
"Accompanied with some music or some song?
"A merry carrol would have grac'd thee well,
"Thy ancestors have us'd it heretofore."

"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 the Midsummer Night's Dream was written. For this information I am indebted to chance, which furnished me with a few leaves of an old meteorological history.

The date of the piece, however, may be better determined by a description of the same weather in Churchyard's Charitie, 1595, when, says he, "a colder season, in all sorts, was never seene." He then proceeds to say the same over again in rhyme :

"A colder time in world was neuer seene:

"The skies do lowre, the sun and moone waxe dim;
"Sommer scarce knowne but that the leaues are greene.
"The winter's waste driues water ore the brim;
"Upon the land great flotes of wood may swim.
"Nature thinks scorne to do hir dutie right,

"Because we have displeasde the Lord of Light.”

Let the reader compare these lines with Shakspeare's, and he will find that they are both descriptive of the same weather and its consequences.

Churchyard is not enumerating, on this occasion, fictitious but real misfortunes. He wrote the present poem to excite Charity on his own behalf; and among his other sufferings, very natu

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

rally dwelt on the coldness of the season, which his poverty had rendered the less supportable.

L'Allegro, and il Penseroso, will naturally impute one incident to different causes. Shakspeare, in prime of life and success, fancifully ascribes this distemperature of seasons to a quarrel between the playful rulers of the fairy world; while Churchyard, broken down by age and misfortunes, is seriously disposed to represent the same inclemency of weather, as a judgment from the Almighty on the offences of mankind. Steevens.

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, &c.] This line has no immediate connection with that preceding it, as Dr. Johnson seems to have thought. It does not refer to the omission of hymns or carols, but of the fairy rites, which were disturbed in consequence of Oberon's quarrel with Titania. The moon is, with peculiar propriety, represented as incensed at the cessation-not of the carols, (as Dr. Warburton thinks) nor of the heathen rites of adoration, (as Dr. Johnson supposes) but of those sports, which have been always reputed to be celebrated by her light. As the whole passage has been much misunderstood, it may be proper to observe, that Titania begins with saying:

"And never, since the middle summer's spring,
"Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,-

"But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport." She then particularly enumerates the several consequences that have flowed from their contention. The whole is divided into four clauses:

1. "Therefore the winds, &c.

"That they have overborne their continents:

2. "The ox hath therefore strech'd his yoke in vain;
"The ploughman lost his sweat ;-

"No night is now with hymn or carol blest;

3. " Therefore the moon-washes all the air,
"That rheumatic diseases do abound:

4. "And, thorough this distemperature, we see,
"The seasons alter;-

and the 'mazed world,

"By their increase, now knows not which is which,
"And this same progeny of evils comes

"From our debate, from our dissention."

In all this there is no difficulty. All these calamities are the . consequences of the dissention between Oberon and Titania; as seems to be sufficiently pointed out by the word therefore, so of ten repeated. Those lines which have it not, are evidently put in apposition with the preceding line, in which that word is found. Malone.

6 this distemperature,] Is, this perturbation of the elements.

Steevens.

By distemperature, I imagine is meant, in this place, the per

Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose ;7
And on old Hyems' chin, and icy crown,

8

turbed state in which the king and queen had lived for some time past. Malone.

Perhaps Mr. Malone has truly explained the force of the word in question. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

"Thou art up-rous'd by some distemperature." Steevens. 7 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 Shakspeare himself, in Coriolanus, talks of the "consecrated snow that lies on Dian's lap." and Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, B. II, c. ii, has:

"And fills with flow'rs fair Flora's painted lap." Steevens. This thought is elegantly expressed by Goldsmith, in his Traveller:

"And winter lingering chills the lap of May." M. Mason. 8 ·Hyems' chin,] Dr. Grey, not inelegantly, conjectures, that the poet wrote:

on old Hyems' chill and icy crown.

It is not indeed easy to discover how a chaplet can be placed

on the chin. Steevens.

I believe this peculiar image of Hyems' chin must have come from Virgil, (Eneid iv, 253,) through the medium of the translation of the day:

66 -tum flumina mento

"Precipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba." S. W. Thus translated by Phaer, 1561:

66 and from his hoary beard adowne,

"The streames of waters fall; with yce and frost his face doth frowne."

This singular image was, I believe, suggested in our poet by Golding's translation of Ovid, Book II:

"And lastly, quaking for the colde, stood Winter all forlorne,
"With rugged head as white as dove, and garments all to
torne,

"Forladen with the isycles, that dangled up and downe
"Upon his gray and horie beard, and snowie frozen crown."

I should rather be for thin, i. e. thin-hair'd.

So, Cordelia, speaking of Lear:

66

to watch, poor perdu!

"With this thin helm."

Again, in King Richard II:

Malone.

Tyrwhitt.

"White-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps "Against thy majesty;

Steevens.

Thinne is nearer to chinne (the spelling of the old copies) than chill, and therefore, I think, more likely to have been the author's word. Malone.

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change

9

Their wonted liveries; and the 'mazed world,

By their increase,1 now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissention:

We are their parents and original.

Obe. Do you amend it then; it lies in you: Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

I do but beg a little changeling boy,

To be my henchman.2

9 The childing autumn,] Is the pregnant autumn, frugifer auSo, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613:

tumnus.

"Fifty in number childed all one night."

Again, in his Golden Age, 1611:

"I childed in a cave remote and silent."

Again, in his Silver Age, 1613:

"And at one instant he shall child two issues." There is a rose called the childing rose. Steevens. Again, in Tasso's Godfrey of Bulloigne, by Fairfax, B. st. 26:

XVIII,

"An hundreth plants beside (even in his sight) "Childed an hundreth nymphes so great, so dight." Childing is an old term in botany, when a small flower grows out of a large one; "the childing autumn," therefore, means the autumn which unseasonably produces flowers on those of summer. Florists have also a childing daisy, and a childing scabious.

Holt White.. 1 By their increase,] That is, By their produce. Johnson. So, in our author's 97th Sonnet:

"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

"Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime."

The latter expression is scriptural: "Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our God, shall give us his blessing." PSALM lxvii. Malone.

2

henchman.] Page of honour. This office was abolished by Queen Elizabeth Grey.

This office might be abolished at court, but probably remained in the city. Glapthorne, in his comedy called Wit in a Constable, 1640, has this passage:

66

I will teach his hench-boys,

"Serjeants, and trumpeters to act, and save
"The city all that charges."

So, again:

"When she was lady may'ress, and you humble
"As her trim hench-boys.”

Set your heart at rest,

Tita.
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a vot'ress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side;
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,

Again, in Ben Jonson's Christmas Masque: ". as well as any of the sheriff's hench-boys.'

-he said grace

Skinner derives the word from Hine A. S. quasi domesticus famulus. Spelman from Hengstman, equi curator, innoxoμos.

Steevens.

In a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, dated 11th of December, 1565, it is said; "Her Highness (i. e. Queen Elizabeth) hathe of late, whereat some doo moche marvell, dissolved the auncient office of Henchemen." (Lodge's Illustrations, Vol. I, p. 358.) On this passage Mr. Lodge observes, that Henchmen were "a certain number of youths, the sons of gentlemen, who stood or walked near the person of the monarch on all public occasions. They are mentioned in the sumptuary statutes of the 4th of Edward the Fourth, and 24th of Henry VIII; and a patent is preserved in the Fadera, Vol. XV, 242, whereby Edward VI, gives to William Bukley, M. A. propter gravitatem morum et doctrine abundantiam, officium docendi, erudiendi, atque instituendi adolescentulos vocatos HENCHMEN; with a salary of 401. per annum. Henchman, or Heinsmen, is a German word, as Blount informs us in his Glossographia, signifying a domestic, whence our ancient term Hind, a servant in the house of a farmer. Dr. Percy, in a note on the Earl of Northumberland's houshold-book, with less probability, derives the appellation from their custom of standing by the side, or Haunch, of their Lord. Reed.

Upon the establishment of the houshold of Edward IV, were "henxmen six enfants, or more, as it pleyseth the king, eatinge in the hall, &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, pipynge, singing, dauncing, 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 henchmen.

Strype's Eccl. Mem, v. 2, App. n. 1. Tyrwhitt. Henchman. 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, P. IĮ, Act IV, sc. iv:

"O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,
"Which ever in the haunch of winter sings
"The lifting up of day." Steevens.