without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell: Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valour is turned bear-herd: Pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, consider not the capacities of us that are young: you measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.

CH. JUST. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double ? your wit single?? and every part about you blasted

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I cannot Go, I cannot TELL :] I cannot be taken in a reckoning; I cannot pass current. JOHNSON.

Mr. Gifford, in a note on Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, vol. i. p. 125, objects to this explanation. "I cannot tell (he observes) means, I cannot tell what to think of it, and nothing more." The phrase, with that signification, was certainly common; but, as it will also bear the sense which Dr. Johnson has assigned to it, his interpretation appears to me to suit the context better. Let the reader judge. BOSWELL.

9 in these cOSTER-MONGER times,] In these times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money. JOHNSON.

A coster-monger is a costard-monger, a dealer in apples called by that name, because they are shaped like a costard, i. e. man's head. See vol. iv. p. 327, n. 6; and p. 330, n. 2. STEEVENS. -Pregnancy-] Pregnancy is readiness. So, in Hamlet: How pregnant his replies are ?" STEEVENS. are?

I

2.

your wit single?] We call a man single-witted, who attains but one species of knowledge. This sense I know not how to apply to Falstaff, and rather think that the Chief Justice hints at a calamity always incident to a grey-haired wit, whose misfortune is, that his merriment is unfashionable. His allusions are

with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fye, fye, fye, sir John!

to forgotten facts; his illustrations are drawn from notions obscured by time; his wit is therefore single, such as none has any part in but himself. JOHNSON.

I believe all that Shakspeare meant was, that he had more fat than wit; that though his body was bloated by intemperance to twice its original size, yet his wit was not increased in proportion to it.

In ancient language, however, single often means small, as in the instance of beer; the strong and weak being denominated double and single beer. So, in The Captain, by Beaumont and Fletcher: "sufficient single beer, as cold as chrystal." Macbeth also speaks of his " single state of man." See vol. xi. p. 49, n. 6.

STEEVENS.

Johnson's explanation of this passage is not conceived with his usual judgment.-It does not appear that Falstaff's merriment was antiquated or unfashionable; for if that had been the case, the young men would not have liked it so well, nor would that circumstance have been perceived by the Chief Justice, who was older than himself. But though Falstaff had such a fund of wit and humour, it was not unnatural that a grave judge, whose thoughts were constantly employed about the serious business of life, should consider such an improvident, dissipated old man, as single-witted or half-witted, as we should now term it. So, in the next Act, the Chief Justice calls him, a great fool; and even his friend Harry, after his reformation, bids him not to answer "with a fool-born jest," and adds, "that white hairs ill become a fool and jester."

I think, however, that this speech of the Chief Justice is somewhat in Falstaff's own style, which verifies what he says of himself, that all the world loved to gird at him, and that he was not only witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men." M. MASON.

I think Mr. Steevens's interpretation the true one. Single however, (as an anonymous writer has observed,) may mean, feeble or weak. So, in Fletcher's Queen of Corinth, Act III. Sc. I. : "All men believe it, when they hear him speak, "He utters such single matter, in so infantly a voice." Again, in Romeo and Juliet: "O single-soal'd jest, solely singular for the singleness," i. e. the tenuity.

In our author's time, as the same writer observes, small beer was called single beer, and that of a stronger quality, double beer. MALONE.

3 ---

antiquity?] To use the word antiquity for old age, is not peculiar to Shakspeare. So, in Two Tragedies in One, &c. 1601:

FAL. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon*, with a white head, and something a round belly. For my voice,—I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o' the ear that the prince gave you,-he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it; and the young lion repents: marry, not in ashes, and sackcloth; but in new silk, and old sack *.

CH. JUST. Well, heaven send the prince a better companion!

FAL. Heaven send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

CH. JUST. Well, the king hath severed you and prince Harry: I hear, you are going with lord John of Lancaster, against the archbishop, and the earl of Northumberland.

FAL. Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day! for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily if it be a hot day, an I brandish any thing but my bottle, I would I might never spit white again 5. There is not a * Folio omits about three of the clock in the afternoon, "For false illusion of the magistrates

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"With borrow'd shapes of false antiquity." STEEVENS. marry, not in ashes, and sackcloth; but in new silk, and old sack.] So, Sir John Harrington, of a reformed brother. Epigrams, 1. 3, 17:

"Sackcloth and cinders they advise to use;

'Sack, cloves and sugar thou would'st have to chuse." BOWLE.

would I might never SPIT WHITE again.] i. e. May I

6

dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it: Well, I cannot last ever: But it was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you will needs say, I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God, my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

CH. JUST. Well, be honest, be honest; And God bless your expedition!

FAL. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound, to furnish me forth?

CH. JUST. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses'. Fare you well: Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

[Exeunt Chief Justice and Attendant. FAL. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle3,

never have my stomach inflamed again with liquor; for, to spit white is the consequence of inward heat. So, in Mother Bombie, a comedy, 1594: "They have sod their livers in sack these forty years; that makes them spit white broth as they do." Again, in The Virgin Martyr, by Massinger:

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I could not have spit white for want of drink."

STEEVENS.

6 But it was always, &c.] This speech, in the folio, concludes at-" I cannot last ever." All the rest is restored from the quarto. A clear proof of the superior value of those editions, when compared with the publication of the players. STEEVENS. you are too impatient to bear CROSSES.] I believe a quibble was here intended. Falstaff had just asked his lordship to lend him a thousand pound, and he tells him in return that he is not to be entrusted with money. A cross is a coin so called, because stamped with a cross. So, in As You Like It:

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If I should bear you, I should bear no cross.”

STEEVENS.

FILLIP me with a THREE-MAN BEETLE.] A beetle wielded by three men. POPE.

A diversion is common with boys in Warwickshire and the adjoining counties, on finding a toad, to lay a board about two

-A man can no more separate age and covetousness, than he can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses". -Boy!

PAGE. Sir?

FAL. What money is in my purse ?

PAGE. Seven groats and two-pence.

FAL. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.-Go bear this letter to my lord of Lancaster; this to the prince; this to the earl of Westmoreland; and this to old mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly

or three feet long, at right angles, over a stick about two or three inches diameter, as per sketch. Then placing the toad at A, the

other end is struck by a bat or large stick, which throws the creature forty or fifty feet perpendicular from the earth, and its return in general kills it. This is called Filliping the Toad.-A threeman beetle is an implement used for driving piles; it is made of a log of wood about eighteen or twenty inches diameter, and fourteen or fifteen inches thick, with one short and two long handles, as per sketch. A man at each of the long handles manages the fall of the beetle, and a third man, by the short handle, assists in raising it to

strike the blow. Such an implement was, without doubt, very suitable for filliping so corpulent a being as Falstaff.

With this happy illustration, and the drawings annexed, I was favoured by Mr. Johnson, the architect. STEEVENS.

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So, in A World of Wonders, A Mass of Murthers, A Covie of Cosenages, &c. 1595, sign. F. whilst Arthur Hall was weighing the plate, Bullock goes into the kitchen and fetcheth a heavie washing betle, wherewith he comming behinde Hall, strake him," &c. REED.

9 PREVENT my curses.] To prevent means, in this place, to anticipate. So, in the 119th Psalm: "Mine eyes prevent the night watches." STEEVENS.