́rigid scrupulosity, and whose information is delivered with oracular veracity, deserves praise, and merits commendation. JOHNSON. There is so surprising a display of intellect in this observation, that I shall forbear to question the truth of the position. (2)- Rig A row; a kick-up. STEEVENS. STEEVENS. Rig is not, strictly, a row, but rather a go; in which sense it is used in another part of this play. (m) You'd better hold your jaw JOHNSON. The folio reads mag; ; but I adopt jaw (from the quarto) as the more elegant, and as being more in the spirit of our author. (n)-Paws off Poeticè,-hands off. STEEVENS. WARBURTON. (0)-Gab i. e. Mag, or jaw. jaw. See the "Slang Dictionary." St. Giles's Edition. (p)-To blow JOHNSON. This word, powerful and expressive, has several significations: 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 a person is to cheat him. 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 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 mistook 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 còpies : 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.— ANNOTATION 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, "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. |