MRS. FORD. Boarding, call you it? I'll be fure to keep him above deck. MRS. PAGE. So will I; if he come under my hatches, I'll never to fea again. Let's be revenged on him: let's appoint him a meeting; give him á (how of comfort in his fuit; and lead him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawn'd his horfes to mine Hoft of the Garter. MRS. FORD. Nay, I will confent to act any villainy against him, that may not fully the charinefs of our honefty. O, that my hufband faw this letter! it would give eternal food to his jealousy. MRS. PAGE. Why, look, where he comes; and my good man too: he's as far from jealouly, as I am from giving him caufe; and that, I hope, is an unmeafurable diftance. MRS. FORD. You are the happier woman. MRS. PAGE. Let's confult together against this greafy knight: Come hither. [they retire. Enter FORD, PISTOL, PAGE, and NYM. FORD. Well, I hope, it be not fo. 9 PIST. Hope is a curtail dog in fome affairs: With what encounter fo uncurrent have I "Strain'd to appear thus?" And again, in Timon: May catch a wrench." STEEVENS. -the charinefs of our honesty.] i. e. the caution which ought to attend on it. STEEVENS. O, that my husband faw this letter!] Surely Mrs. Ford does not wish to excite the jealoufy of which fie complains. I think we fhould read-O, if my husband, &c. and thus the copy, 1619: "O lord, if my husband should fee the letter! i' faith, this would even give edge to his jealoufe." STEEVENS. The 9 curtail dog-] That is, a dog that miffes his game. tail is counted pecellary to the agility of a greyhound. JOHNSON : Sir John affects thy wife. FORD. Why, fir, my wife is not young. PIST. He wooes both high and low, both rich and poor, 3 Both young and old, one with another, Ford; 1 PIST. With liver burning hot: Prevent, or go thou, -curtail-dog-] that is, a dog of small value ;-what we now call a cur. MALONE. 3 gally-maufry ;] i. e. A medley. So, in The Winter's Tale: They have a dance, which the wenches fay is a galli- · maufry of gambols." Pistol ludicroully ufes it for a woman. Thus, in A Woman never vex'd, 1632: "Let us show ourfelves gallants or galli-maufries." STEEVENS. The first folio has-the gallymaufry. Thy was introduced by the editor of the fecond. The gallymawfry may be right: He loves a medley; all forts of women, high and low, &c. Ford's reply, Love my wife!" may refer to what Piftol had faid before: "Sir John affects thy wife." Thy gallymawfry founds however more like Pifol's language than the other; and therefore I have followed the modern editors in preferring it. MALONE. -Ford, perpend.] This is perhaps a ridicule on a pompous word too often used in the old play of Cambyfes : My fapient words I fay perpend.” "My queen perpend what I pronounce." Shakspeare has put the fame word into the mouth of Polonius. STEEVENS. Piftol again ufes it in K. Henry V.; fo does the Clown in Twelfth Night: I do not believe therefore that any ridicule was here aimed at Prefton, the author of Cambyfes. MALONE. 5 With liver burning hot:] So, in Much ado about Nothing: The liver was anciently fuppofed to be the infpirer of amorous paffions. Thus in an old Latin diftich: Cor ardet, pulmo loquitur, fel commovet iras; Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur. STEEVENS. Like Sir Acteon he, with Ring-wood at thy heels:O, odious is the name! FORD. What name, fir? PIST. The horn, I fay: Farewel. Take heed; have open eye; for thieves do foot by night: Take heed, ere fummer comes, or cuckoo-birds do fing."— Away, fir corporál Nym. Believe it, Page; he speaks sense. 6 [Exit PISTOL. FORD. I will be patient; I will find out this. cuckoo-birds do fing.] Such is the reading of the folio. The quartos, 1602, and 1619, read-when cuckoo-birds appear. The modern editors-when cuckoo-birds affright. For this laft reading I find no authority. STEEVENS. Away for corporal Nym Believe it, Page; he speaks fenfe.] Nym, I believe, is out of place, and we fhould read thus: Away, fir corporal. He feems Nym. Believe it. Page; he speaks fenfe. JOHNSON. Perhaps Dr. Johnson is miftaken in his conjecture. not to have been aware of the manner in which the author meant this fcene fhould be reprefented. Ford and Piftol, Page and Nym, enter in pairs, each pair in feparate converfation; and while Piftol is informing Ford of Falstaff's defign upon his wife, Nym is, during that time, talking afide to Page, and giving information of the like plot against him. When Piftol has finished, he calls out to Nym to come away; but feeing that he and Page are ftill in clofe debate, he goes off alone, firft affuring Page, he may depend on the truth of Nym's flory. Believe it, Page, &c. Nym then proceeds to tell the remainder of his tale out aloud. And this is true, &c. A little further on in this fcene, Ford fays to Page, You heard what this knave (i. e. Piftol) told me, &c. Page replies, Yes; And you heard what the other (i. c. Nym.) told me. STEEVENS. Believe it, Page, he speaks fenfe.] Thus has the paffage been hitherto printed, fays Dr. Farmer; but furely we should read-→ Believe it, Page, he speaks; which means no more than-Page, believe what he fays. This fenfe is expreffed not only in the manner peculiar to Pilol, but to the grammar of the times. VOL. V. F STEEVENS, NYM. And this is true; [to Page.] I like not the humour of lying, He hath wrong'd me in fome humours: I fhould have borne the humour'd letter to her; but I have a fword, and it fhall bite upon my neceffity. He loves your wife; there's the fhort and the long. My name is corporal Nym; Ispeak, and I avouch. 'Tis true my name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife.-Adieu! I love not the humour of bread and cheefe; and there's the humour of it. Adieu. [Exit NYM. PAGE. The humour of it quoth 'a! here's a fellow frights humour out of his wits. 8 I have a fword, and it fhall bite upon my neceffity. He loves your wife; &c.] Nym, to gain credit, fays, that he is above the mean office of carrying love-letters; he has nobler means of living; he has a sword, and upon his neceffity, that is, when his need drives him to unlawful expedients his fword fhall bite. JOHNSON. 9 The humor of it,] The following epigram, taken from Hu mor's Ordinarie, where a man may bee verie merrie and exceeding well ufed for his fixpence, quarto, 1607, will beft account for Nym's frequent repetition of the word humour. Epig. 27: "Afk HUMORS what a feather he doth weare, "What cause his purfe is fo extreame diftreft 1 "Or why with fergeants he is fo oppreft, That like to ghofts they haunt him ev'rie day; "A rafcal humour doth not love to pay. Object why bootes and spurres are itill in feafon, FORD. I will feek out Falftaff. PAGE. I never heard fuch a drawling, affecting rogue. FORD. If I do find it, well. 2 PAGE. I will not believe such a Cataian, though the priest o' the town commended him for a true man. 2 "When you behold his lookes pale, thin, and poore, STEEVENS. I will not believe fuch a Cataian, ] All the mystery of the term Cataian, for a liar, is only this. China was anciently called Cataia or Cathay, by the firft adventurers that travelled thither; fuch as M. Paulo, and our Mandeville, who told fuch incredible wonders of this new discovered empire (in which they have not been outdone even by the Jefuits themfelves, who followed them,) that a notorious liar was afually called a Cataian. Warburton. This fellow has fuch an odd appearance, is fo unlike a man civilized, and taught the duties of life, that I cannot credit him.” To be a foreigner was always in England, and I fuppofe every where elfe, a reafon of diflike. So Piftol calls Sir Hugh in the firft a&t, a mountain foreigner; that is, a fellow uneducated, and of grofs behaviour; and again in his anger calls Bardolph, Hungarian wight. JOHNSON. I believe that neither of the commentators is in the right, but am far from profeffing, with any great degree of confidence, that I am happier in my own explanation. It is remarkable, that in Shakspeare, this expreffion. -a true man, is always put in oppofition (as it is in this inftance) to-a thief. So, in Henry IV. P. I : 66 now the thieves have bound the true men.' " The Chinese ( anciently called Cataians) are faid to be the most dextrous of all the nimble-finger'd tribe; and to this hour they deferve the fame character. Piftol was known at Windfor to have had a hand in picking Slender's pocket, and therefore might be called a Cataian with propriety, if my explanation be admitted. That by a Cataian fome kind of sharper was meant, I infer from the following paffage in Love and Honour, a play by Sir Williama D'Avenant, 1649: Hang him, bold Cataian, he indites finely, "And will live as well by fending fhort epiftles, Or by the fad whisper at your gamefter's ear, |