The word literally means a graff, slip, scion, or sucker: and by metonymy comes to be used for a boy or child. The imp, his son, is no more than his infant son. It is now set apart to signify young fiends; as the devil and his imps.

Dr. Johnson was mistaken in supposing this a word of dignity It occurs in The History of Celestina the Faire, 1596:,, the gentleman has three sonnes, very ungracious impes, and of a

wicked nature."

RITSON.

P. 12, 1. 27. Juvenal is youth. STEEVENS. P. 13, 1. 4-6. Old and tough, young and tender, is one of the proverbial phrases collected by Ray. STEEVENS.

P. 13, 1. 23. By crosses he means money.

JOHNSON. P. 13, 1. 30. I am ill at reckoning, it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.] Again, in Troilus and Cressida:,, A tapster's arithmetick may soon bring his particulars therein to a total.“

STEEVENS.

P. 14, 1 8. the dancing horse will tell you.] Bankes's horse, which play'd many remar kable pranks. Sir Walter Raleigh (History of the 'World, first Part, p. 178.) says,,,If Banks had lived in older times, he would have shamed all the inchanters in the world: for whosoever was famous among them, could never master," or instruct any beast as he did his horse." And Sir Kenelm Digby (A Treatise on Bodies, ch. xxxviii. P. 595) observes:,,That his horse would restore a glove to the due owner, after the master had whispered the man's name in his er; would tell the just number of pence in any piece of silver coin, newly showed him by his master; and even

obey presently his command, in discharging himself of his excrements, whensoever he had bade him," DR, GREY.

Bankes's horse is alluded to by many writers 'contemporary with Shakspeare; among the rest, by Ben Jonson, in Every Man out of his Hu mour:,,He keeps more ado with this monster, than ever Bankes did with his horse.“ Again, in Ben Jonson's 134th Epigram:

„Old Banks the jugler, our Pythagoras, ,,Grave tutor to the learned horse." etc., The fate of this man and his very docile animal, is not exactly known, and, perhaps, deserves not to be remembered. From the next lines, however, to those last quoted, it should seem as if they had died abroad:

Both which

,,Being, beyond sea,

burned for one witch,

,,Their spirits transmigrated to a cat."

Among the entries at Stationers Hall is the following; Nov. 14, 1595. „A ballad shewing the strange qualities of a young nagg called Morocco.

Among other exploits of this celebrated beast, it is said that he went up to the top of St. Paul's; and the same circumstance is likewise mentioned in The Guls Horn-booke, a satirical pamphlet by Decker, 1609: From hence you may descend to talk about the horse that went up, and strive, if you can, to know his keeper; take the day of the month, and the number of the steppes, and suffer yourself to believe verily that it was not a horse, but something else in the likeness of one."

Again, in Chrestoloros, or Seven Bookes of Epi grames, written by`T. B. [Thomas Bastard] 1598, Lib. III. ep. 17:

,,Of Bankes's Horse.

,,Bankes hath a horse of wondrous qua

litie,

,,For he can fight, and pisse, and dance, and

lie,

And finde your purse,

and tell what coyne ye have:

,,But Bankes who taught your horse to smell a knave?"

STEEVENS

In 1595, was published a pamphlet intitled, Maroccus Extaticus, or Banks's bay Horse in a Trance. discourse set downe in a merry dialogue between Bankes and his beast: anatomizing some abuses and bad trickes of this age, 4to; prefixed to which, was a print of the horse standing on on his hind legs with a stick in his mouth, his master with a stick in his hand and a pair of dice on the ground. Ben Jonson hints at the unfortunate catastrophe of both man and horse, which I find happened at Rome, where to the disgrace of the age, of the country, and of humanity, they were burnt by order of the Pope, for magicians. See Don Zara del Fogo, 2mo. 1666.

P. 114. REED.

The following representation of Bankes and his Horse, is a facsimile from a rude wooden frontispiece to the pamphlet mentioned by Mr. Reed.

1...

P. 15, 1.6. Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers: I do not know whether our author allu des to the rare green eye," which in his time seems to have been thought a beauty, or to that frequent attendant on love, jealousy, to which in The Merchant of Venice, and in Othello, he has applied the epithet green-ey'd. MALONE.

Perhaps Armado neither alludes to green eyes, nor to jealousy; but to the willow, the supposed ornament of unsucessful lovers:

,,Sing, all a green willow shall be my gar

land,"

is the burden of an ancient ditty preserved in The Gallery of Gorgious Inventions, etc. 4to. 1578. STEEVENS.

P. 15, 1. 14. Most maculate thoughts,] So the first quarto, 1598. The folio has immaculate. To avoid such notes for the future, it may be proper to apprize the reader that where the reading of the text does not correspond with the folio, without any reason being assigned for the deviation, it is always warranted by the authority of the first quarto. MALONE.

To owe

P. 15, 1. 28. Which native she doth owe.] i. e. of which she is naturally possessed. is to possess. So, in Macbeth:

, the disposition that I owe "

STEEVENS.

P. 16, 1. 2. Digression on this occasion signi fies the act of going out of the right way, transgression. STEEVENS.

P. 16, 1. 4. the rational hind Costard;] Per haps, we should read the irrational hind, etc.

TYRWHITT.

The rational hind, perhaps, means only the reasoning brute, the animal with some share of reason. STEEVENS.