from cereus, because the original materials were of wax. Stowe the historian has left us some account of the marching watches that formerly paraded many of the streets of London, in which he says that "the whole way ordered for this watch extended to two thousand three hundred taylors yards of assize, for the furniture wherof with lights there were appointed seven hundred cressets, five hundred of them being found by the companies, the other two hundred by the chamber of London. Besides the which lights every constable in London, in number more than two hundred and forty, had his cresset, the charge of every cresset was in light two shillings fourepence, and every cresset had two men, one to beare or hold it, another to beare a bagge with light, and to serve it: so that the poore men pertaining to the cressets, taking wages, besides that every one had a strawne hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost two thousand." Survay of London, 1618, 4to, p. 160. The following representations of ancient cressets have been collected from various prints and drawings.

Sc. 1. p. 492.

HOT. And cuts me from the best of all my land,

A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle.

The word in its strict sense, signifies a small piece of any thing, but here a portion or parcel. The French have chanteau and chantel, from the Latin quantulum.

GLEN.

Sc. 1. p. 494.

I framed to the harp

Many an English ditty, lovely well,
And gave the tongue a helpful ornament,
A virtue that was never seen in

you.

"Glendower means," says Mr. Ritson, "that he graced his own tongue with the art of singing." This is surely wrong. The meaning is, that, by setting the English ditties to Welsh music, he had embellished the language in a manner that Hotspur had never done, the roughness of his speech affording neither poetry nor music. Tongue was rightly explained by Dr. Johnson, the English language.

MORT.

Sc. 1. p. 499.

that pretty Welsh

Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens

I am too perfect in; and but for shame,

In such a parley would I answer thee.

According to Mr. Steevens, swelling heavens, are prominent lips. Are they not eyes swollen with tears? Glendower had just said that his daughter wept; and Mortimer tells his wife that he would answer the melting language of her eyes, if it were not for shame.

Sc. 2. p. 508.

P. HEN. By smiling pick-thanks.

A pick-thank is one who gathers or collects favour, thanks, or applause, by means of flattery. "Cave ne falsam gratiam studes inire." Terence; which is thus Englished by Udall in his Floures for Latine spekynge, 1533, 12mo, fo. 137. "Beware that thou desire not to pyke or to have a thanke of me undeserved."

Sc. 3. p. 522.

FAL. I never see thy face, but I think upon hell-fire.

Falstaff's wit at the expense of poor Bardolph's ruby face is inexhaustible. The same subject is treated with considerable humour in the following passage in Melton's Astrologaster, 1620, 4to: "But that which most grieves me, is, most of the varlets belonging to the citie colledges

(I meane both the prodigious compters) have fierie red faces, that they cannot put a cup of Nippitato to their snowts, but with the extreme heat that doth glow from them, they make it cry hisse again, as if there were a gadd of burning steele flung into the pot," &c.

Sc. 3. p. 528.

FAL. There's no more truth in thee, than in a drawn fox.

The quotation from Olaus Magnus does not support Mr. Steevens's assertion that the fox when drawn out of his hole was supposed to counterfeit death; for it is stated by that writer, and indeed by others, that he uses this device when hungry, to attract the birds, who mistake him for carrion. The following passage from Turbervile's Noble arte of venery or hunting is offered, but with no great confidence, as a possible illustration of the phrase in question: "Foxes which have been beaten have this subtletie, to drawe unto the largest part of the burrow where three or foure angles meete together, and there to stand at baye with the terriers, to the ende they may afterwardes shift and goe to which chamber they list."