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(0)-Gab

i. e. Mag, or jaw. See the " jaw. See the "Slang Dictionary." St.

Giles's Edition.

JOHNSON.

(p)-To blow

This word, powerful and expressive, has several signîfications: its present meaning is to turn nose, to divulge.

JOHNSON.

(q) That diddled me—

The true reading I believe to be, "that did me." To do a person is to cheat him.

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My friend, the glazier, is of opinion that Merry Andrew was a distant relation of Maid Marian's gentleman-usher, or, as I conceive him to have been, her pa

G

ramour ;* but a reference to the registers of the Heralds' College, places it beyond all doubt that he was the person represented by the figure which I mistcok for Tom the Piper, in my friend's painted window.

If the public are not yet surfeited with the remarks of myself and the other ingenious commentators on the Old Vice, Maid Marian, the Morris Dancers, &c. &c. &c. I shall republish them in thirteen volumes quarto, with additional observations on Merry Andrew, Little Jack Horner, and the whole of the dramatis persona of the Nursery mythology.

STEEVENS.

(s)-What's the row?

I have ventured to restore this from the old copies : in the later ones I find, what now?

STEEVENS.

(t) Needs must

The remainder of this old proverb is preserved in the

* See Mr. Tollet's Essay on Fools' Caps, or, as he very gravely calls it, his Opinion concerning the Morris-Dancers upon his Window.— ANNOTATIONS, HEN. IV. PART I.

pathetic ballad of the "Two Louers theyr melancolie Partynge"-Dr. Humbug's Reliques, Vol. 94:

"To leve thee here, mie Alys dere,
"Fulle sone ye tyme arryveth;
"Drie uppe yat tere, mie Alys dere,

"Needs must when the Devil dryveth.”

Rosencrantz means thus: 'We (Guildenstern and myself) have no alternative; were we to refuse attendance upon your mere invitation, you could then compel it by the interposition of the royal authority.'

MALONE.

ANNOTATIONS.

ACT THE SECOND.

(a)-Non compos mentis.

THE scraps of Latin, which we find scattered throughout our author's works, do not, in my opinion, furnish us with any substantial proof of his acquaintance with the learned languages: for it is certain that Ben Jonson, with whom he was once upon terms of the closest intimacy, not only furnished him with all the Latin he required, but even translated into English such Latin passages as accidentally came in his way. This is incontrovertibly proved by the following anecdote:

"Our poet was god-father to one of Ben Jonson's "children; and, after the christening, being in deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up, and asked him

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