thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do, to keep the terms of my honour precise. I, I,

Again, in Randolph's Muses Looking-glass, 1638: "the Lordship of Turnbull,

"Which with my Pict-hatch Grange, and Shore-ditch farm," &c.

Pict-hatch was in Turnbull-street :

66

your whore doth live

"In Pict-hatch, Turnbull-street."

Amends for Ladies, a Comedy, by N. Field, 1618. . The derivation of the word Pict-hatch may perhaps be discovered from the following passage in Cupid's Whirligig, 1607: Set some picks upon your hatch, and, I pray, profess to keep a bawdy-house.' Perhaps the unseasonable and obstreperous irruptions of the gallants of that age, might render such a precaution necessary. So, in Pericles Prince of Tyre, 1609: 66 - if in our youths we could pick up some pretty estate, 'twere not amiss to keep our door hatch'd." STEEVENS.

Pict-hatch was a cant name of some part of the town noted for bawdy-houses; as appears from the following passage in Marston's Scourge for Villanie, Lib. III. sat. x:

Looke, who yon doth go;

"The meager letcher lewd Luxurio.-
"No newe edition of drabbes comes out,
"But seen and allow'd by Luxurio's snout.

"Did ever any man ere heare him talke

"But of Pick-hatch, or of some Shoreditch baulke,
"Aretine's filth," &c.

Sir T. Hanmer says, that this was 66 a noted harbour for thieves and pickpockets," who certainly were proper companions for a man of Pistol's profession. But Falstaff here more immediately means to ridicule another of his friend's vices; and there is some humour in calling Pistol's favourite brothel, his manor of Pickt-hatch. Marston has another allusion to Pickt-hatch or Pick-hatch, which confirms this illustration :

66 His old cynick dad

"Hath forc'd him cleane forsake his Pick-hatch drab." Lib. I. sat. iii. T. WARTON.

Again, in Ben Jonson's Epig. XII. on Lieutenant Shift: "Shift, here in town, not meanest among squires "That haunt Pickt-hatch, Mersh Lambeth, and White fryers."

Again, in The Blacke Booke, 1604, 4to. Lucifer says:

"I

I myself sometimes, leaving the fear of heaven on the left hand, and hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch; and yet you, rogue, will ensconce your rags, your cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases, and

proceeded towards Pickt-hatch, intending to beginne their first, which (as I may fitly name it) is the very skirts of all Brothel houses." DOUCE.

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ensconce your rags, &c.] A sconce is a petty fortification. To ensconce, therefore, is to protect as with a fort. The word occurs again in K. Henry IV. P. I. STEEVENs.

6

·red-lattice phrases,] Your ale-house conversation.

JOHNSON.

Red lattice at the doors and windows, were formerly the external denotements of an ale-house. So, in A Fine Companion, one of Shackerley Marmion's plays: "A waterman's widow at the sign of the red lattice in Southwark." Again, in Arden of Feversham, 1592:

66

his sign pulled down, and his lattice born away." Again, in The Miseries of inforc'd Marriage, 1607:

66

tis treason to the red lattice, enemy to the signpost."

Hence the present chequers. Perhaps the reader will express some surprize, when he is told that shops, with the sign of the chequers, were common among the Romans. See a view of the left-hand street of Pompeii, (No. 9,) presented by Sir William Hamilton, (together with several others, equally curious,) to the Antiquary Society. STEEvens.

The following passage in Braithwaite's Strapado for the Divell, 1615, confirms Mr. Steevens's observation: "To the true discoverer of secrets, Monsieur Bacchus, master-gunner of the pottle-pot ordnance, prime-founder of red lattices," &c.

In King Henry IV. P. II. Falstaff's page, speaking of Bardolph, says, " he called me even now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could see no part of his face from the window." MALONE.

This designation of an ale-house is not altogether lost, though the original meaning of the word is, the sign being converted into a green lettuce; of which an instance occurs in Brownlow Street, Holborn.-In The Last Will and Testament of Lawrence Lucifer, the old Batchiler of Limbo, at the end of the "Blacke Booke," 1604, 4to. is the following passage: "watched

your bold-beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour! You will not do it, you?

PIST. I do relent; What would'st thou more of man?

Enter ROBIN.

ROB. Sir, here's a woman would speak with you. FAL. Let her approach.

Enter Mistress QUICKLY.

QUICK. Give your worship good-morrow.
FAL. Good-morrow, good wife.

QUICK. Not so, an't please your worship.

FAL. Good maid, then.

QUICK. I'll be sworn; as my mother was, the first hour I was born.

FAL. I do believe the swearer: What with me? QUICK. Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two?

FAL. Two thousand, fair woman; and I'll vouchfafe thee the hearing.

QUICK. There is one mistress Ford, sir ;-I pray, come a little nearer this ways:-I myself dwell with master doctor Caius.

FAL. Well, on: Mistress Ford, you say,

QUICK. Your worship says very true: I pray your worship, come a little nearer this ways.

FAL. I warrant thee, nobody hears ;—mine own people, mine own people.

sometimes ten houres together in an ale-house, ever and anon peeping forth, and sampling thy nose with the red Lattis."

DOUCE.

QUICK. Are they so? Heaven bless them, and make them his servants!

FAL. Well: Mistress Ford;-what of her?

QUICK. Why, sir, she's a good creature. Lord, lord! your worship's a wanton: Well, heaven forgive you, and all of us, I pray!

FAL. Mistress Ford;-come, mistress Ford,—

QUICK. Marry, this is the short and the long of it ;; you have brought her into such a canaries,' as 'tis wonderful. The best courtier of them all, when the court lay at Windsor, could never have brought her to such a canary. Yet there has been knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches; I warrant you, coach after coach, letter after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly, (all musk,) and so rushling, I warrant you, in silk and gold; and in such alligant terms; and in such wine and sugar of the best, and the fairest, that would have won any woman's heart; and, I warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her.-I had myself twenty angels given me this morning: but I defy all angels, (in any such sort, as they say,) but in the way of honesty :—and, I warrant you, they could never get her so much as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all: and yet there has been earls,

7 canaries,] This is the name of a brisk light dance, and therefore is properly enough used in low language for any hurry or perturbation. JOHNSON.

So, Nash, in Pierce Pennyless his Supplication, 1595, says: A merchant's wife jets it as gingerly, as if she were dancing the canaries." It is highly probable, however, that canaries is only a mistake of Mrs. Quickly's for quandaries; and yet the Clown, in As you like it, says, 66 we that are true lovers, run into strange capers." STEEVENS.

lay at Windsor,] i. e. resided there. MALONE.

9

nay, which is more, pensioners; but, I warrant you, all is one with her.

FAL. But what says she to me? be brief, my good she Mercury.

QUICK. Marry, she hath received your letter; for the which she thanks you a thousand times: and she gives you to notify, that her husband will be absence from his house between ten and eleven. FAL. Ten and eleven?

QUICK. Ay, forsooth; and then you may come and see the picture, she says, that you wot of;'master Ford, her husband, will be from home.

earls, nay, which is more, pensioners;] This may be illustrated by a passage in Gervase Holles's Life of the First Earl of Clare, Biog. Brit. Art. HOLLES: "I have heard the Earl of Clare say, that when he was pensioner to the queen, he did not know a worse man of the whole band than himself; and that all the world knew he had then an inheritance of 40001. a year." TYRWHITT.

Barrett, in his Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionary, 1580, says, that a pensioner was " a gentleman about his prince, alwaie redie, with his speare." STEEVENS.

Pensioners were Gentlemen of the band of Pensioners.-" In the month of December," [1539] says Stowe, Annals, p. 973, edit. 1605, "were appointed to waite on the king's person fifty Gentlemen, called Pensioners, or Speares, like as they were in the first yeare of the king; unto whom was assigned the summe of fiftie pounds, yerely, for the maintenance of themselves, and everie man two horses, or one horse and a gelding of service." Their dress was remarkably splendid, and therefore likely to attract the notice of Mrs. Quickly. Hence, [as both Mr. Steevens and Mr. T. Warton have observed,] in A Midsummer Night's Dream, our author has selected from all the tribes of flowers the golden-coated cowslips to be pensioners to the Fairy Queen:

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"The cowslips tall her pensioners be,

"In their gold coats spots you see;" &c. MALONE.

-you wot of;] To wot is to know. Obsolete. So, in King Henry VIII: "wot you what I found?" STEEVENS.