Eva. Elves, lift your names; filence, you airy toys Cricket, to Windfor chimneys fhalt thou leap: Where fires thou find'ft unrak'd, and hearths unfwept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilbery.

Our radiant Queen hates fluts and fluttery.

Fal. They're fairies; he, that speaks to them, fhall die.

I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye. [Lyes down upon his face.

Eva. Where's Pede? go you, and where you find

a maid,

That, ere fhe fleep, hath thrice her prayers faid,
Rein up the organs of her fantafy';
Sleep fhe as found as carelefs infancy;

But

commended themselves to the protection of heaven. So Shakepeare makes one, on his lying down, fay,

From fairies, and the tempters of the night,

Protect us, heav'n! As this is the fenfe, let us fee how the common reading expreffes it;

Raife up, the organs of her fantafie,

i. e. inflame her imagination with fenfual ideas; which is just the contrary to what the Poet would have the fpeaker fay. We cannot therefore but conclude he wrote,

REIN up the organs of her fartafie,

i. e. curb them, that the be no more difturbed by irregular imaginations, than children in their fleep. For, he adds immediately,

Sleep fhe as found as careless infancy.

So in the Tempest,

But thofe, that fleep, and think not on their fins,
Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, fhoulders, fides and

fhins.

Quic. About, about;

Search Windfor caftle, elves, within and out.
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,
That it may ftand 'till the perpetual Doom,
In ftate as wholfom, as in ftate 'tis fit 2;
Worthy the owner, as the owner it 3.

The feveral chairs of Order look your fcour,
With juice of balm and ev'ry precious flow'r :
Each fair Inftalment Coat and fev'ral Creft,
With loyal blazon evermore be bleft!
And nightly-meadow-fairies, look, you fing,
Like to the Garter-compass, in a ring:
Th' expreffure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to fee;
And, Hony Soit Qui Mal y Penfe write,
In emrold-tuffs, flow'rs purple, blue and white,

Like faphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair Knight-hood's bending knee;
Fairies ufe flow'rs for their charactery*.
Away, difperfe; 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 fet:

And twenty glow-worms fhall our lanthorns be,
To guide our measure round about the tree.
But ftay, I fmell 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 waft o'er-look'd ev'n in thy birth.

PLE, blue and white,
Like faphire, pearl, AND rich
embroidery,] Thefe lines
are moft miferably corrupted.
In the words,-Flowers purple,
blue and white,the purple is
left uncompared. To remedy
this, the Editors, who feem to
have been fenfible of the imper-
fection 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 inftead of mending one
falfe flep they have made two,
by bringing faphire, pearl and
rich embroidery under one predi-
cament. The lines were wrote
thus by the Poet,

In emrold-tuffs, flow'rs PUR-
FLED, blue and white,
Like faphire, pearl, IN rich em-
broidery,

i. e. let there be blue and white
flow'rs worked on the green-
fword, like faphire and pearl in

Quic. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end;
If he be chafte, the flame will back defcend,
And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

Eva. A trial, come.

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

Fal. Oh, oh, oh!

Quic. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in defire; About him, fairies, fing a fcornful rhime:

And, as you trip, ftill pinch him to your time. Eva. It is right, indeed; he is full of leacheries and iniquity.

The SONG.

Fie on finful phantafy,
Fie on luft and luxury!
Luft is but a bloodifh fire",
- Kindled with unchafte defire,
Fed in heart, whofe flames afpire,

As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
Pinch him fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villainy:

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, 'Till candles, and star-light, and moon-shine be out,

During this Song, they pinch him. Doctor Caius comes one way, and steals away a boy in green; Slender another way, and he takes away a boy in white;

and Fenton comes, and fteals way Mrs. Ann Page, A noise of hunting is made within. All the Fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his Buck's head, and rifes.

SCENE V.

Enter Page, Ford, &c. They lay hold on him. Page. Nay, do not fly; I think, we've watcht you

now;

Will none but Herne the hunter ferve 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 thefe, hufbands? do not thefe fair Yoaks? Become the Foreft better than the Town?

Ford. Now, Sir, who's a cuckold now? mafter Brook, Falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldly knave, here are his horns, mafter Brook; and, mafter 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 mafter Brook; his horfes are arrested for it, mafter 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 afs.

See you these bufbands? Do not thefe fair Oaks Become the Foreft better than the Town] What Oaks, in the Name of Nonfenfe, do our fagacious Editors make Mrs. Page talk of? The Oaks in the Park? But there was no Intention of tranfplanting them into the Town.

-Talis infcitie me quidem pudet, pigetque. The firft Folio reads, as the Poet intended, Yoaks: and

Mrs. Page's Meaning is this. She fpeaks it to her own, and Mrs. Ford's Hufband, and asks them, if they fee the Horns in Falfaff's Hand; and then, alluding to them as the Types of Cuckoldom, puts the Queftion, whether those Yoaks are not more proper in the Forefts than in the Town, i. e. than in their Families, as a Reproach to them. THEOBALD.

Ford,