The accent of his tongue affecteth him:
Do you not read fome tokens of my fon
In the large compofition of this man?

K. JOHN. Mine eye hath well examined his parts, And finds them perfect Richard.--Sirrah, speak, What doth move you to claim your brother's land? BAST. Because he hath a half-face, like my father; With that half-face would he have all my land: A half-faced groat five hundred pound a year!

રે 'Twas pretty, though a plague,
"To fee him every hour; to fit and draw

"His arched brows, &c.

"In our heart's table; heart too capable

"Of every line and trick of his fweet favour."

And Glofter, in K. Lear fays,

"The trick of that voice I do well remember."

M. MASON.

Our author often ufes this phrafe, and generally in the fenfe of a peculiar air or caft of countenance or feature. So, in K. Henry IV. Part I: "That thou art my fon, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye,

MALONE.

4 With that half-face. ] The old copy—with half that face. But why with half that face? There is no queftion but the poet wrote, as I have reftored the text: With that half-face Mr. Pope, perhaps, will be angry with me for difcovering an anachronism of our poet's in the next line, where he alludes to a coin not ftruck till the year 1504, in the reign of King Henry' VII. viz. a groat, which, as well as the half groat, bore but half faces impreffed. Vide Stowe's Survey of London, p. 47. Holinfhed, Camden's Remains, &c. The poet fneers at the meagre sharp vifage of the elder brother, by comparing him to a filver groat, that bore the King's face in profile, fo fhowed but half the face: the groats of all our Kings of England, and indeed all their other coins of filver, one or two only excepted, had a full face crowned; till Henry VII. at the time above mentioned, coined groats and half-groats, as alfo fome fhillings, with half faces, i. e. faces in profile, as all our coin has now. The firft groats of King Henry VIII. were like thofe of his father; though afterwards he returned to the broad faces again. Thefe groats, with the impreffion in profile, are undoubtedly here alluded to: though, as I faid, the poet is knowingly guilty of an anachronism in it for in the time of King John there were no groats at all;

ROB. My gracious liege, when that my father liv'd, Your brother did employ my father much;

BAST. Well, fir, by this you cannot get my land; Your tale must be, how he employ'd my mother. ROB. And once defpatch'd him in an embaffy To Germany, there, with the emperor, To treat of high affairs touching that time: The advantage of his abfence took the king, And in the mean time fojourn'd at my father's; Where how he did prevail, I fhame to fpeak: But truth is truth; large lengths of feas and fhores Between my father and my mother lay, (As I Have heard my father speak himself,) When this fame lufty gentlemen was got. Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath'd His lands to me; and took it, on his death, That this, my mother's fon, was none of his; And, if he were, he came into the world Full fourteen weeks before the course of time. Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine, My father's land, as was my father's will,

K. JOHN. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate; Your father's wife did after wedlock bear him: And, if fhe did play falfe, the fault was hers; Which fault lies on the hazards of all hufbands That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother, Who, as you fay, took pains to get this fon,

they being firft, as far as appears, coined in the reign of King Edward III. THEOBALD.

The fame contemptuous allufion occurs in The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, 1601:

"You half-fac'd groat, you thick-cheek'd chitty-face. Again, in Hiftriomaftix, 1610:

"Whilft behold yon half-fac'd minion." STEEVENS. took it, on his death,] i. e. entertained it as his fixed pinion, when he was dying. So, in Hamlet's

STEEVENS.

Had of your father claim'd this fon for his?
In footh, good friend, your father might have kept
This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world:
In footh, he might: then, if he were my brother's,
My brother might not claim him; nor your father,
Being none of his, refufe him: This concludes,
My mother's fon did get your father's heir;
Your father's heir must have your father's land.
ROB. Shall then my father's will be of no force,
To difpoffefs that child which is not his?

BAST. Of no more force to dispossess me, sir,
Than was his will to get me, as I think.
ELI. Whether hadft thou rather,

bridge,

5

be a Faulcon

And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land;
Or the reputed fon of Coeur-de-lion,
Lord of thy prefence, and no land befide?6
BAST. Madam, an if my brother had my fhape,
And I had his, fir Robert his, like him;"

This concludes, ] This is a decifive argument. As your father, if he liked him, could not have been forced to refign him, fo not liking him, he is not at liberty to reject him. JOHNSON.

Lord of thy prefence, and no land befide?] Lord of thy prefence means, mafter of that dignity and grandeur of appearance that may fufficiently diftinguish thee from the vulgar, without the help of fortune.

Lord of his prefence apparently fignifies, great in his own person, and is used in this fenfe by King John in one of the following scenes. JOHNSON.

And I had his, fir Robert his, like him; ] This is obfcure and ill expreffed. The meaning is- If I had his fhape, fir Robert's — as he has.

Sir Robert his, for Sir Robert's, is agreeable to the practice of that time, when the 's added to the nominative was believed, I think erroneoufly, to be a contraction of his. So, Donue:

แ

- Who now lives to age,

"Fit to be call'd Methufalem his page?" JOHNSON.

This ought to be printed:

Sir Robert his, like him.

And if my legs were two fuch riding-rods,
My arms fuch eelskins ftuff'd; my face so thin,
That in mine ear I durft not ftick a rofe,
Left men fhould fay, Look, where three-farthings
goes! 8

His according to a mistaken notion formerly received, being the fign of the genitive cafe. As the text before ftood there was a

double genitive. MALONE.

8 - my face fo thin,

That in mine ear I durft not flick a role,

Left men fhould fay, Look, where three-farthings goes!] In this very obfcure paffage our poet is anticipating the date of another coin; humorously to rally a thin face, eclipfed, as it were, by a full blown rose. We must obferve, to explain this allufion, that Queen Elizabeth was the firft, and indeed the only prince, who coined in England three-half-pence, and three-farthing pieces. She coined fhillings, fix-pences, groats, three-pences, two-pences, threehalf-pence, pence, three-farthings, and half-pence. And these pieces all had her head, and were alternately with the rose behind, and without the rofe. THEOBALD.

Mr. Theobald has not mentioned a material circumftance relative to these three-farthing pieces, on which the propriety of the allufion in some measure dépends; viz. that they were made of filver, and confequently extremely thin. From their thinness they were very liable to be cracked. Hence Ben Jonfon, in bis Every Man in his Humour, fays, He values me at a crack'd threefarthings." MALONE.

So, in The Shoemaker's Holiday, &c. 1610:

"

Here's a three-penny piece for thy tidings. "Firk. 'Tis but three-half-pence I think: yes, 'tis three-pence: I fmell the rofe." STEEVENS.

"

The flicking rofes about them was then all the court-fafhion, as appears from this paffage of the Confeffion Catholique du S. de Sancy, L. II. c. i: Co Je luy ay appris à mettre des rofes par tous les coins,' i. c. in every place about him, fays the fpeaker, of one to whom he had taught all the court-fashions. WARBURTON.

The rofes fuck in the ear, were, I believe, only rofes composed of ribbands. In Marton's What you will, is the following paffage: "Dupatzo the elder brother, the fool, he that bought the halfpenny ribband, wearing it in his ear," &c. Again, in Every Man out of his Humour: in my ear, or fo." Again, in Love and Honour, by Sir W. D'Avenant, 1649:

This ribband

And, to his fhape, were heir to all this land, o
'Would I might never ftir from off this place,
I'd give it every foot to have this face;
I would not be fir Nob in any cafe.

2

ELI. I like thee well; Wilt thou forfake thy fortune,

Bequeath thy land to him, and follow me?

I am a foldier, and now bound to France.
BAST. Brother, take you my land, I'll take my

chance:

"A lock on the left fide, fo rarely hung
"With ribbanding," &c.

I think I remember, among Vandyck's pictures in the Duke of Queensbury's colle&ion at Ambrofbury, to have seen one, with the lock neareft the ear ornamented with ribbands which terminate in rofes; and Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, fays, "that it was once the fashion to flick real flowers in the ear.

At Kitling, in Cambridgeshire, the magnificent refidence of the firft Lord North, there is a juvenile portrait (supposed to be of Queen Elizabeth) with a red rofe fticking in her ear. STEEVENS. Marton in his Satires, 1598, alludes to this fashion as fantastical: "Ribbanded eares, Grenada nether. flocks."

And from the epigrams of Sir John Davies, printed at Middleburgh, about 1598, it appears that fome men of gallantry in our author's time fuffered their ears to be bored, and wore their mistress's filken fhoe-ftrings in them. MALONE.

9 And, to his fhape, were heir to all this land,] There is no noun to which were can belong, unless the perfonal pronoun in the line laft but one be underflood here. I fufpect that our author wrote And though his shape were heir to all this land,

Thus the sentence proceeds in one uniform tenour. Madam, an if
my brother had my shape, and I had his-and if my legs were, &c.—
and though his fhape were heir, &c. I would give-. MALONE.
The old reading is the true one. "To his fhape" means in ad-
dition to it. So, in Troilus and Crefida:

"The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their ftrength,
"Fierce to their fkill, and to their fiercenefs valiant.

I would not be fir Nob-] Sir Nob is ufed contemptuously for Sir Robert. The old copy reads. It would not be. The correction was made by the editor of the fecond folio. I am not fure that it is necellary. MALONE.