“You are pretty peats, and your great portions
    Add much unto your handsomeness.”

[222] Shirley, in his “Sisters,” ridicules these hyperbolical compliments in a similar but a better strain—­

    “Were it not fine
    If you should see your mistress without hair,
    Drest only with those glittering beams you talk of? 
    Two suns instead of eyes, and they not melt
    The forehead made of snow!  No cheeks, but two
    Roses inoculated on a lily,
    Between a pendant alabaster nose: 
    Her lips cut out of coral, and no teeth
    But strings of pearl:  her tongue a nightingale’s! 
    Would not this strange chimera fright yourself?”

—­Collier.

[223] [i.e., Doff it in salutation.]

[224] Alluding to the office of sheriff.

[225] “Cassock,” says Mr Steevens, “signifies a horseman’s loose coat, and is used in that sense by the writers of the age of Shakespeare.  It likewise appears to have been part of the dress of rusticks.”  See note to “All’s Well that Ends Well,” act iv. sc. 3.

[226] “A gimmal or gimbal ring, Fr. gemeau, utr. a Lat.  Gemellus, q.d.  Annulus Gemellus, quoniam, sc. duobus aut pluribus orbibus constat.”—­Skinner.

Gimmal rings are often mentioned in ancient writers.

[227] “Quis nescit primam esse Historiae legem, ne quid falsi dicere audeat; deinde, ne quid veri non audeat.”—­Cicero “De Orat.” lib. ii. 15.

[228] This was called “The Clouds,” in which piece Socrates was represented hanging up in a basket in the air, uttering numberless chimerical absurdities, and blaspheming, as it was then reputed, the gods of his country.  At the performance of this piece Socrates was present himself; and “notwithstanding,” says his biographer, “the gross abuse that was offered to his character, he did not show the least signs of resentment or anger; nay, such was the unparalleled good nature of this godlike man, that some strangers there, being desirous to see the original of this scenic picture, he rose up in the middle of the performance, stood all the rest of the time, and showed himself to the people; by which well-placed confidence in his own merit and innocence, reminding them of those virtues and wisdom so opposite to the sophist in the play, his pretended likeness, he detected the false circumstances, which were obtruded into his character, and obviated the malicious designs of the poet who, having brought his play a second time upon the stage, met with the contempt he justly merited for such a composition.”  —­Cooper’s “Life of Socrates,” p. 55.

[229] [Old copies, page’s tongue; but Mendacio, Lingua’s page, is intended.  Perhaps we should read Tongueship’s page.]

[230] [This is marked in the editions as the opening of a new scene, but wrongly, as it should seem, as the same persons remain on the stage, and the conversation is a sequel to what has gone before.]