]

[Footnote 119:  There can be little doubt now, after a due consideration of evidence, that the proper way of spelling our great dramatist’s name is Shakespeare, in accordance with its signification; but there is good proof that the pronunciation of the first syllable was short and sharp, and the Warwickshire patois gave it the sound of Shaxpere.  In the earliest entries of the name in legal records, it is written Schakespere; the name of the great dramatist’s father is entered in the Stratford corporation books in 1665 as John Shacksper.  There are many varieties of spelling the name, but that is strictly in accordance with other instances of the looseness of spelling usual with writers of that era; as a general rule, the printed form of an author’s name seldom varied, and may be accepted as the correct one.]

[Footnote 120:  The term seems to have been applied to the article from the pointed or peaked edges of the lace which surrounded the stiff pleated ruffs, and may be constantly seen in portraits of the era of Elizabeth and James.]

[Footnote 121:  Nat.  Hist. lib. ix. 56.  Snails are still a common dish in Vienna, and are eaten with eggs.]

[Footnote 122:  Dr. Lister published in the early part of the last century an amusing poem, “The Art of Cookery, in imitation of ’Horace’s Art of Poetry.’”]

[Footnote 123:  Genial.  Dierum, II. 283, Lug. 1673.  The writer has collected in this chapter a variety of curious particulars on this subject.]

[Footnote 124:  The commentators have not been able always to assign known names to the great variety of fish, particularly sea-fish, the ancients used, many of which we should revolt at.  One of their dainties was a shell-fish, prickly like a hedgehog, called Echinus.  They ate the dog-fish, the star-fish, porpoises or sea-hogs, and even seals.  In Dr. Moffet’s “Regiment of Diet,” an exceeding curious writer of the reign of Elizabeth, republished by Oldys, may be found an ample account of the “sea-fish” used by the ancients.—­Whatever the Glociscus was, it seems to have been of great size, and a shell-fish, as we may infer from the following curious passage in Athenaeus.  A father, informed that his son is leading a dissolute life, enraged, remonstrates with his pedagogue:—­“Knave! thou art the fault! hast thou ever known a philosopher yield himself so entirely to the pleasures thou tellest me of?” The pedagogue replies by a Yes! and that the sages of the Portico are great drunkards, and none know better than they how to attack a Glociscus.]

[Footnote 125:  Ben Jonson, in his “Staple of News,” seems to have had these passages in view when he wrote:—­

    A master cook!  Why, he’s the man of men
    For a professor, he designes, he drawes. 
    He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies;
    Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish.