3 Worthy the owner, as the owner it.
The several chairs of Order look you scour,
With juice of balm and ev'ry precious flow'r:
Each fair Instalment-Coat and sev'ral Creft,
With loyal blazon evermore be blest !
And nightly-meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter-compass, in a ring:

Th'expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see ;
And, Hony Soit Qui Mal y Pense write,
6. In emrold-tuffs, flow'rs purfled, blue and white,
Like saphire, pearl, in rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair Knight-hood's bending I
Fairies use flow'rs for their charactery.

Away, 5 Worthy the owner, AND the runer it.] And cannot be the true reading. The context will not allow it; and his court to Queen Elizabeth directs us to another,

As the owner it. for, sure he had more address than to content bimself with wishing a thing to be, which his complaisance must suppose actually was, namely, the worth of the owner, 6 In emrold-tuffs, forw'rs PURPLE, blue and white,

Like saphire, pearl, and rich embroidery.) These lines are most miserably corrupted. In the words, - Flowers purple, blue and white, the purple is left uncompared. To remedy this, the Editors, who seem to have been sensible of the imperfection of the comparison, read, and rich embroidery; that is, according to them, as the blue and white flowers are compared to faphire and pearl, the purple is compared to rich embroidery. Thus instead of mending one false step they have made two, by bringing sapbire, pearl and rich embroidery under one predicament. The lines were wrote thus by the Poet,

In emrold-tuffs, foru’rs PURFLED, blue and white,

Like saphire, pearl, in rich embroidery. i. e. let there be blue and white Aow'rs worked on the greensword, like saphire and pearl in rich embroidery. To purfle is to over-lay with tinsel, gold thread, &c. fo our ancestors called a certain lace of this kind of work a purfing-lace. 'Tis from the French, pourfiler. So Spencer,

he was yclad
All in a filken Camus, lilly.wbitt,
PURFLED upon, with many a folded plighi.

2. 3. 26.

The

Away, disperse; but, 'till 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom round about the Oak
Of Herne, the hunter, let us not forget.
Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in

order set:
And twenty glow-worms shall our lanthorns be,
To guide our measure round about the tree.
But stay, I smell a man of middle earth.

Fal. Heav'ns defend me from that Welch fairy, left he transform me to a piece of cheese! Eva. Vild worm, thou wast o'er-look'd ev'n in thy

birth.
Quic. With tryal-fire touch me his finger-end;
If he be chaste, the flame will back descend,
And turn him to no pain ; but if he start,
It is the Aesh of a corrupted heart.
Eva. A tryal, come.

[They burn him with their tapers, and pinch him. Come, with this wood take fire.

Fal. Oh, oh, oh!

Quic. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire;
About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhime:
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

Eva. It is right, indeed, he is full of leacheries and iniquity.

The SONG,
Fie on finful phantafie,
Fie on lust and luxury!
Luft is but (a) i'tb blood, a fire,
Kindled with unchaste desire,

Fed in beart, whose flames aspire,

As thoughts to blow them, higher and higher. The change of and into in, in the second verse, is necessary. For flow'ss worked, or purfled in the grass, were not like saphire and pearl simply, but saphire and pearl in embroidery. How the corrupt reading and was introduced into the text, we have fhewa above. a) i'rbblood, a fire, Oxford EditorVulg. a bloody fire.)

Pinch bim, fairies, mutually ;

Pinch bim for his villany :
Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,

'Till candles, and star-light, and moon-spine be out. During this song, they pinch bim. Doctor Caius comes

one way, and steals away a boy in green ; Slender

another way, and be takes away a boy in white; and - Fenton comes, and steals away Mrs. Anne Page. A

noise of hunting is made within. All the Fairies rus away. Falstaff pulls off his Buck’s bead, and rises.

S CE N E V. Enter Page, Ford, &c. They lay bold on bim. Page. Nay, do not fly; I think, We've watcht you

. now ; Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn? Mrs. Page. I pray you, come; hold up the jeft no

higher. Now, good Sir John, how like you Windfor wives? See you these, husbands? do not these fair Yoaks Become the Forest better than the Town?

Ford. Now, Sir, who's a cuckold now? master Brook, Falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldly knąve, here are his homs, master Brook; and, master Brook, he hath enjoy'd nothing of Ford's but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of mony, which must be paid to master Brook; his horses are arrested for it, master Brook.

Mrs. Ford. Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again, but I will always count you my deer.

Fal. I do begin to perceive, that I am made an ass.

Ford. Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant.

Fal. And these are not fairies ? I was three or four times in the thought, they were not fairies; and yet the

guiltiness

quiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprize of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a receiv'd belief, in despight of the teeth of all rhime and reason, that they were fairies. See now, how wit may be made a jack-a-lent, when 'tis upon ill imployment!

Eva. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.

Ford. Well said, fairy Hugb.
Eva. And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.

Ford. I will never mistrust my wife again, 'till thou art able to woo her in good English.

Fal. Have I laid my brain in the sun and dry'd it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o’er-reaching as this ? am I ridden with a Welch goat too ? shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 'tis time, I were choak'd with a piece of toasted cheese.

Eva. Seese is not good to give putter; your pelly is all putter. • Fal. Seese and putter? have I liv'd to stand in the taunt of one, that makes fritters of English ? this is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking, through the Realm.

Mrs. Page. Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight ?

Ford. What, a hodge-pudding a bag of flax ?
Mrs. Page. A puft man?
Page. Old, cold, wither'd, and of intolerable en-

trails?

Ford. And one that is as Nanderous as Satan?
Page. And as poor as Job ?
Ford. And as wicked as his wife?

Eva. And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sacks, and wines, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and fwearings, and starings, pribbles and prabbles ?

Fal.

Fal. Well, I am your theme ; you have the start of me; I am dejected ; 7 1 am not able to answer the Welch Aannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me; use me as you will.

Ford. Marry, Sir, we'll bring you to Windfor to one Mr. Brook, that you have cozen'd of mony, to whom you should have been a pander : over and above that you have suffer'd, I think, to repay that mony will be a biting affliction. Mrs. Ford. Nay, husband, let That go to make

amends: Forgive that Summ, and so we'll all be Friends. .

Ford. Well, here's my hand; all's forgiven at lait.

Page. Yet be cheerful, Knight ; thou shalt eat a poffet to night at my house, where I will defire thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee. Tell her, Mr. Slender hath marry'd her daughter.

Mrs. Page. Doctors doubt that ; if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius's wife.

Afide.
S C E N E VI.

Enter Slender.
Slen. What hoe! hoe! father Page.

Page. Son, how now ? how now, lon, have you difpatch'd ?

Slen. Dispatch'd ? I'll make the best in GloucesterMire known on't ; would I were hang'd la, eise.

Page. Of what, fon?

7 I am not able to answer the Welch FLANNEL.] Shakespear possibly wrote Welch Flamen. As Sir Hugh was a choloric Priest, and apt to take fire, FLAMEN was a very proper name, it being given to that order of Latin priests from the flame coloured habit. By the same kind of humour che scullion, in The Comedy of Errors, is called the Kitchen-Vefal, it being her business to keep the fire in repair.