In at the window, or else o'er the hatch: Who dares not stir by day must walk by night, And have is have, however men do catch: Near or far off, well won is still well shot,

And I am I, howe'er I was begot.

K. John. Go, Faulconbridge: now hast thou thy desire;

A landless knight makes thee a landed squire. Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed

For France, for France, for it is more than need.

181

Bast. Brother, adieu: good fortune come to thee! For thou wast got i' the way of honesty. [Exeunt all but Bastard.

A foot of honor better than I was;

But many a many foot of land the worse.
Well, now can I make any Joan a lady.

'Good den, sir Richard!'—'God-a-mercy, fel-
low!'-

And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter; For new-made honor doth forget men's names; 'Tis too respective and too sociable

For your conversion. Now your traveller,

171. “Or else o'er the hatch"; these expressions were common in the time of Shakespeare for being born out of wedlock.-H. N. H.

180. "Good fortune come to thee"; there was an old proverb,— "Bastards are born lucky." The speaker here wishes his brother may have good fortune, and implies that, had he been unlawfully begotten, the wish had been needless; alluding to the proverb.— H. N. H.

184. "any Joan," any peasant-girl.—C. H. H.

189. "Your conversion"; so in the original, which Pope changed to conversing. The speaker calls his new-made honor a conversion, that is, a change of condition; and means that to remember men's

He and his toothpick at my worship's mess, 190
And when my knightly stomach is sufficed,
Why then I suck my teeth and catechize
My picked man of countries: 'My dear sir,'
Thus, leaning on mine elbow, I begin,
'I shall beseech you'-that is question now;
And then comes answer like an Absey book:
'O sir,' says answer, 'at your best command;
At your employment; at your service, sir:'
'No, sir,' says question, 'I, sweet sir, at yours:'
And so, ere answer knows what question would,
Saving in dialogue of compliment,

And talking of the Alps and Apennines,
The Pyrenean and the river Po,

It draws toward supper in conclusion so.
But this is worshipful society,

And fits the mounting spirit like myself;

For he is but a bastard to the time

201

names is to be too careful, to punctilious, too respective, for one of his newly-acquired rank.-H. N. H.

190. “My worship's mess”; it is said, in All's Well that Ends Well, that “a traveler is a good thing after dinner." In that age of newlyexcited curiosity, one of the entertainments at great tables seems to have been the discourse of a traveler. To use a toothpick seems to have been one of the characteristics of a traveled man who affected foreign fashions.—“At my worship's mess" means at that part of the table where I, as a knight, shall be placed.-Your worship was the regular address to a knight or esquire, in Shakespeare's time, as. your honor was to a lord.-H. N. H.

193. "My picked man of countries" may be equivalent to my traveled fop: picked generally signified affected, over nice, or curious in dress. Conquisite is explained in the dictionaries exquisitely, pickedly: so that our modern exquisites and dandies are of the same race.-H. N. H.

196. "Absey book"; an A B C or absey-book, as it was then called, is a catechism.-H. N. H.

210

That doth not smack of observation; And so am I, whether I smack or no; And not alone in habit and device, Exterior form, outward accoutrement, But from the inward motion to deliver Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth: Which, though I will not practise to deceive, Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn; For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising. But who comes in such haste in riding-robes? What woman-post is this? hath she no husband That will take pains to blow a horn before her? Enter Lady Faulconbridge and James Gurney.

221

O me! it is my mother. How now, good lady? What brings you here to court so hastily? Lady F. Where is that slave, thy brother? where is he,

That holds in chase mine honor up and down? Bast. My brother Robert? old sir Robert's son? Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man? Is it sir Robert's son that you seek so?

208. "Smack of observation"; that is, he is accounted but a mean man, in the present age, who does not show by his dress, deportment, and talk, that he has traveled and made observations in foreign countries.-H. N. H.

216. "strew the footsteps," etc., i. e. make my footing surer.— C. H. H.

219. "Blow a horn before her"; a double allusion,-to the horn which a post blows to announce his coming, and to such a horn as the speaker's mother had bestowed on her husband.-H. N. H.

225. "Colbrand" was a Danish giant, whom Guy of Warwick discomfited in the presence of King Athelstan. The History of Guy was a popular book in the Poet's age. Drayton has described the combat in his Poly-Olbion, Song xii.

Lady F. Sir Robert's son! Aye, thou unreverend

boy,

Sir Robert's son: why scorn'st thou at sir Robert?

He is sir Robert's son, and so art thou.

Bast. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave

awhile?

Gur. Good leave, good Philip.

Bast.

230

Philip! sparrow: James, There's toys abroad: anon I'll tell thee more.

[Exit Gurney.

Madam, I was not old sir Robert's son:
Sir Robert might have eat his part in me
Upon Good-Friday and ne'er broke his fast:
Sir Robert could do well: marry, to confess,
Could he get me? Sir Robert could not do it:
We know his handiwork: therefore, good
mother,

To whom I am beholding for these limbs?

231. "Sparrow"; Warburton conjectured this should be, spare me; whereupon Coleridge has the following: "Nothing can be more lively or characteristic than 'Philip? sparrow! Had Warburton read old Skelton's Philip Sparrow, an exquisite and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in Shakespeare's time, even Warburton would scarcely have made so deep a plunge into the bathetic as to have deathified sparrow into spare me." The sparrow was called Philip, because its note resembles that name. Thus in Lyly's Mother Bombie: "Phip, phip, the sparrows as they fly." And Catullus, in his Elegy on Lesbia's Sparrow, formed the verb pipilabat, to express the note of that bird. Of course the new Sir Richard tosses off the name Philip with affected contempt.—Toys, in the next line, means rumors, idle reports.-H. N. H.

234-235. "eat his part upon Good-Friday"; evidently a popular proverb, cp. Heywood's Dialogue upon Proverbs:

"He may his part on Good Friday eat,

And fast never the wurs, for ought he shall geat” (i. e: get).

-I. G.

240

Sir Robert never holp to make this leg. Lady F. Hast thou conspired with thy brother too, That for thine own gain shouldst defend mine honor?

What means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?

Bast. Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like.
What! I am dubb'd! I have it on my shoulder.
But, mother, I am not sir Robert's son;

I have disclaim'd sir Robert and my land;
Legitimation, name and all is gone:

Then, good my mother, let me know my father;
Some proper man, I hope: who was it,

mother?

250

Lady F. Hast thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?

Bast. As faithfully as I deny the devil.

Lady F. King Richard Coeur-de-lion was thy father:

By long and vehement suit I was seduced
To make room for him in my husband's bed:
Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge!
Thou art the issue of my dear offense,

Which was so strongly urged past my defense.

244. "Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like"; an allusion to the old play called "Soliman and Perseda" (printed 1599, written probably some ten years before); Piston the buffoon, representing the old Vice of the Morality Plays, jumps on the back of Basilisco, the bragging coward, and makes him take oath on his dagger:

BAS. "I, the aforesaid Basilisco,-knight, good fellow, knight, knight,

PIST. Knave, good fellow, knave, knave."

(cp. Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, Vol. v. 271–2.)—I. G. 250. "proper," comely.-C. H. H.