HOST. You will not pay for the glaffes you have burft ?5

SLY. No, not a denier: Go by, fays Jeronimy ;Go to thy cold bed, and warm thee."

let us be mery,

"With huff a galand, fynge tyrll on the bery,
"And let the wyde worlde wynde." STEEVENS.

you have burft?] To burst and to break were anciently fynonymous. Falstaff fays, that "John of Gaunt burst Shallow's head for crouding in among the marshal's men." Again, in Soliman and Perfeda:

"God fave you, fir, you have burft your thin." Again, in Dr. Philemon Holland's tranflation of Plutarch's Apophthegms, edit. 1603, p. 405. To braft and to burst have the fame meaning. So, in All for Money, a tragedy by T. Lupton, 1574:

"If you forfake our father, for forrow he will braft.” In the fame piece, burft is used when it suited the rhyme. Again, in the old morality of Every Man:

"Though thou weep till thy heart to-braft."

STEEVENS. Burft is ftill used for broke in the North of England. See Dodfley's Collection of Old Plays, edit. 1780, Vol. XII. p. 375.

6

REED.

Go by, fays Jeronimy ;-Go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.] The old copy reads-go by S Jeronimie-. STEEVENS. All the editions have coined a Saint here, for Sly to fwear by. But the poet had no fuch intentions. The paffage has particular humour in it, and must have been very pleafing at that time of day. But I muft clear up a piece of ftage hiftory to make it understood. There is a fuftian old play called Hieronymo; or The Spanish Tragedy: which I find was the common butt of raillery to all the poets in Shakspeare's time: and a paffage, that appeared very ridiculous in that play, is here humoroufly alluded to. Hieronymo, thinking himself injured, applies to the king for juftice; but the courtiers, who did not defire his wrongs fhould be fet in a true light, attempt to hinder him from an audience:

"Hiero. Juftice! O! juftice to Hieronymo.

"Lor. Back ;- -seest thou not the king is bufy?
"Hiero. O, is he fo?

HOST. I know my remedy, I must go fetch the thirdborough.7

[Exit.

King. Who is he, that interrupts our business?

"Hiero. Not I:-Hieronymo, beware; go by, go by." So Sly here, not caring to be dunn'd by the Hoftefs, cries to her in effect; "Don't be troublesome, don't interrupt me, go by ;" and to fix the satire in his allufion, pleasantly calls her Jeronimo.

THEOBALD.

The first part of this tragedy is called Jeronimo. The Tinker therefore does not fay Jeronimo as a mistake for Hieronymo. STEEVENS.

I believe the true reading is-Go by, fays Jeronimo, and that the s was the beginning of the word fays, which, by mistake, the printers did not complete. The quotation from the old play proves that it is Jeronimo himself that fays, Go by. M. MASON.

I have not fcrupled to place Mr. M. Mafon's judicious correction in the text. STEEVENS.

Surely Sly, who in a preceding speech is made to fay Richard for William, paucas pallabris for pocas palabras, &c. may be allowed here to mifquote a paffage from the fame play in which that fcrap of Spanish is found, viz. The Spanish Tragedy. He afterwards introduces a faint in form.-The fimilitude, however flight, between Jeronimy and S. Jerome, who in Sly's dialect would be Jeremy, may be supposed the occafion of the blunder. He does not, I conceive, mean to addrefs the Hoftefs by the name of Jeronimy, as Mr. Theobald fuppofed, but merely to quote a line from a popular play. Nym, Piftol, and many other of Shakspeare's low characters, quote fcraps of plays with equal infidelity.

There are two paffages in The Spanish Tragedy here alluded to. One quoted by Mr. Theobald, and this other :

"What outcry calls me from my naked bed?"

Sly's making Jeronimy a faint is furely not more extravagant than his exhorting his Hoftefs to go to her cold bed to warm herfelf; or declaring that he will go to his cold bed for the fame purpose; for perhaps, like Hieronymo, he here addreffes himself.

In King Lear, Edgar, when he affumes the madman, utters the fame words that are here put in the mouth of the tinker: Humph; go to thy cold bed, and warm thee." MALONE. I must go fetch the thirdborough.] The old copy reads I must go fetch the headborough.

7

Sly. Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, &c. STEEVENS. This corrupt reading had paffed down through all the copies,

SLY. Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I'll anfwer him by law: I'll not budge an inch, boy; let him come, and kindly.

[Lies down on the ground, and falls asleep.

and none of the editors pretended to guefs at the poet's conceit. What an infipid unmeaning reply does Sly make to his Hoftefs? How do third, or fourth, or fifth borough relate to Headborough ? The author intended but a poor witticism, and even that is lost. The Hoftefs would say, that she'd fetch a constable: and this officer the calls by his other name, a Third-borough: and upon this term Sly founds the conundrum in his answer to her. Who does not perceive at a single glance, fome conceit started by this certain correction? There is an attempt at wit, tolerable enough for a tinker, and one drunk too. Third-borough is a Saxon term fufficiently explained by the gloffaries: and in our statute-books, no further back than the 28th year of Henry VIII. we find it ufed to fignify a conftable. THEOBALD.

In the Perfonæ Dramatis to Ben Jonfon's Tale of a Tul, the high-conftable, the petty-conftable, the head-borough, and the third-borough, are enumerated as diftinct characters. It is difficult to fay precisely what the office of a third-borough was. STEEVENS.

The office of thirdborough is known to all acquainted with the civil conftitution of this country, to be co-extenfive with that of the conftable. SIR J. HAWKINS.

The office of Thirdborough is the fame with that of Constable, except in places where there are both, in which cafe the former is little more than the conftable's affiftant. The headborough, petty conftable, and thirdborough, introduced by Ben Jonfon in. The Tale of a Tub, being all of different places, are but one and the fame officer under fo many different names. In a book intitled, The Constable's Guide, &c. 1771, it is faid that "there are in feveral counties of this realm other officers; that is, by other titles, but not much inferior to our conftables; as in Warwickshire a thirdborough." The etymology of the word is uncertain. RITSON.

8 -falls asleep.] The spurious play, already mentioned, begins thus:

"Enter a Tapfter, beating out of his doores Slie drunken. Tapf. You whorefon drunken flave, you had best be gone, "And empty your drunken panch fomewhere else,

"For in this houfe thou shalt not reft to night. [Exit Tapfter.

Wind Horns. Enter a Lord from hunting, with Huntfmen and Servants.

LORD. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds:

Brach Merriman,-the poor cur is emboss'd,1

Omne bene.

"Slie. Tilly vally; by crifee Tapfter Ile fefe you anone: "Fills the t'other pot, and all's paid for: looke you, "I doe drink it of mine own instigation. "Heere Ile lie awhile: why Tapfter, I fay, "Fill's a fresh cufhen heere :

Heigh ho, here's good warme lying.

[He falls afleepe.

"Enter a noble man and his men from hunting."

STEEVENS.

Brach Merriman,-the poor cur is embofs'd,] Here, fays Pope, brach fignifies a degenerate hound: but Edwards explains it a hound in general.

That the latter of these criticks is right, will appear from the ufe of the word brach, in Sir T. More's Comfort against Tribulation, Book III. ch. xxiv :-" Here it must be known of fome men that can skill of hunting, whether that we mistake not our terms, for then are we utterly ashamed as ye wott well.-And I am fo cunning, that I cannot tell, whether among them a bitche be a bitche or no; but as I remember she is no bitch but a brache." The meaning of the latter part of the paragraph feems to be," I am fo little fkilled in hunting, that I can hardly tell whether a bitch be a bitch or not; my judgment goes no further, than just to direct me to call either dog or bitch by their general name-Hound." I am aware that Spelman acquaints his reader, that brache was used in his days for a lurcher, and that Shakspeare himself has made it a dog of a particular species: "Maftiff, greyhound, mungrill grim, "Hound or spaniel, brach or lym."

King Lear, A& III. fc. v. But it is manifeft from the paffage of More just cited, that it was sometimes applied in a general sense, and may therefore be fo understood in the paffage before us; and it may be added, that brache appears to be used in the fame sense by Beaumont and Fletcher:

"A. Is that your brother?

"E. Yes, have you loft your memory?

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd brach.

"A. As I live he is a pretty fellow.

"Y. O this is a sweet brach."

Scornful Lady, A&t I. fc. i. T. WARTON. I believe brach Merriman means only Merriman the brach. So in the old fong:

"Cow Crumbock is a very good cow."

Brach, however, appears to have been a particular fort of hound. In an old metrical charter, granted by Edward the Confeffor to the hundred of Cholmer and Dancing, in Effex, there are the two following lines:

"Four greyhounds & fix Bratches,

"For hare, fox, and wild cattes."

Merriman furely could not be defigned for the name of a female of the canine fpecies. STEEVENS.

It feems from the commentary of Ulitius upon Gratius, from Caius de Canibus Britannicis, from bracco, in Spelman's Gloffary, and from Markham's Country Contentments, that brache originally meant a bitch. Ulitius, p. 163, observes, that bitches have a fuperior fagacity of nofe:" fœminis [canibus] fagacitatis plurimum ineffe, ufus docuit ;" and hence, perhaps, any hound with eminent quickness of scent, whether dog or bitch, was called brache, for the term brache is fometimes applied to males. Our ancestors hunted much with the large fouthern hounds, and had in every pack a couple of dogs peculiarly good and cunning to find game, or recover the scent, as Markham informs us. To this cuftom Shakspeare seems here to allude, by naming two braches, which, in my opinion, are beagles; and this discriminates brach, from the lym, a bloodhound mentioned together with it, in the tragedy of King Lear. In the following quotation offered by Mr. Steevens on another occafion, the brache hunts truly by the fcent, behind the doe, while the hounds are on every fide:

"For as the dogs purfue the filly doe,

"The brache behind, the hounds on every side;
"So trac'd they me among the mountains wide."

Phaer's Legend of Owen Glendower. TOLLET. The word is certainly used by Chapman in his Gentleman Usher, a comedy, 1606, as fynonymous to bitch: "Venus, your brach there, runs fo proud," &c. So, alfo, our author in King Henry IV. P. I: "I'd rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.' The ftructure of the paffage before us, and the manner in which the next line is connected with this, [And VOL. IX.

C