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And bootless, make the breathless housewife churn Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern.

Yet there is no necessity of alteration. (see 1765, I,106,1)

II.i.40 (24,6) [Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work] To those traditionary opinions Milton has reference in L'Allegro,

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

With stories told of many a feat.

How Fairy Mab the junkets eat;

She was pinch'd and pull'd she said.

And he by Frier's lapthorp led;

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat

To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

When in one night ere glimpse of morn

His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn

Which ten day-labourers could not end.

Then lies him down the lubber fiend.

A like account of Puck is given by Drayton,

He meeteth Puck, which most men call

Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall.—

This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,

Still walking like a ragged colt,

And oft out of a bed doth bolt,

Of purpose to deceive us;

And leading us makes us to stray.

Long winter's nights out of the way.

And when we stick in mire and clay.

He doth with laughter leave us.

It will be apparent to him that shall compare Drayton's poem with this play, that either one of the poets copied the other, or, as I rather believe, that there was then some system of the fairy empire generally received, which they both represented as accurately as they could. Whether Drayton or Shakespeare wrote first, I cannot discover.

II.i.42 (25,7) [Puck. Thou speak'st aright] I have filled up the verse which I suppose the author left complete,

It seems that in the Fairy mythology Puck, or Hobgoblin, was the trusty servant of Oberon, and always employed to watch or detect the intrigues of Queen Mab, called by Shakespeare Titania. For in Drayton's Nynphidia, the same fairies are engaged in the sane business. Mab has an amour with Pigwiggen; Oberon being jealous, sends Hobgoblin to catch them, and one of Mab's nymphs opposes him by a spell.

II.i.54 (26,8) [And tailor cries] The custom of crying tailor at a sudden fall backwards, I think I remember to have observed. He

that slips beside his chair falls as a taylor squats upon his board. The Oxford editor and Dr. Warburton after him, read and rails or cries, plausibly, but I believe not rightly. Besides, the trick of the fairy is represented as producing rather merriment than anger.

II.i.56 (26,9) [And waxen] And encrease, as the moon waxes.

II.i.58 (26,1) [But room, Faery] All the old copies read—But room Fairy. The word Fairy or Faery, was sometimes of three syllables, as often in Spenser.

II.i.84 (28,5) [paved fountain] A fountain laid round the edge with stone.

II.i.88 (28,6) [the winds, piping] So Milton,

While rocking winds are piping loud.

II.i.91 (28,7) [pelting river] Thus the quarto's: the folio reads petty.

Shakespeare has in Lear the same word, low pelting farms. The meaning is plainly, despicable, mean, sorry, wretched; but as it is a word without any reasonable etymology, I should be glad to dismiss it for petty, yet it is undoubtedly right. We have petty pelting officer in Measure for Measure.

II.i.92 (28,8) [over-born their continents] Born down the banks that contained then. So in Lear,

Close pent guilts

Rive their concealing continents.

II.i.98 (29,1) [The nine-men's morris] This was some kind of rural game played in a marked ground. But what it was more I have not found.

II.i.100 (29,2) [The human mortals want their winter here] After all the endeavours of the editors, this passage still remains to me unintelligible. I cannot see why winter is, in the general confusion of the year now described, more wanted than any other season. Dr. Warburton observes that he alludes to our practice of singing carols in December; but though Shakespeare is no great chronologer in his dramas, I think he has never so mingled true and false religion, as to give us reason for believing that he would make the moon incensed for the omission of our carols. I therefore imagine him to have meant heathen rites of adoration. This is not all the difficulty. Titania's