SLY. Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I'll anfwer him by law: I'll not budge an inch, boy; let him come, and kindly.

[Lies down on the ground, and falls afleep.

and none of the editors pretended to guess at the poet's conceit. What an infipid unmeaning reply does Sly make to his Hoftefs? How do third, or fourth, or fifth borough relate to Headborough? The author intended but a poor witticism, and even that is loft. The Hoftefs would say, that she'd fetch a conftable: and this officer fhe calls by his other name, a Third-borough and upon this term Sly founds the conundrum in his answer to her. Who does not perceive at a fingle glance, fome conceit started by this certain correction? There is an attempt at wit, tolerable enough for a tinker, and one drunk too. Third-borough is a Saxon term fufficiently explained by the gloffaries and in our ftatute-books, no further back than the 28th year of Henry VIII, we find it ufed to fignify a conftable. THEOBALD.

In the Perfonæ Dramatis to Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub, the high-conftable, the petty-conftable, the head-borough, and the third-borough, are enumerated as diftinct characters. It is difficult to fay precisely what the office of a third-borough was. STEEVENS.

The office of thirdborough is known to all acquainted with the civil conftitution of this country, to be co-extensive with that of the conftable. SIR J. HAWKINS.

The office of Thirdborough is the fame with that of Constable, except in places where there are both, in which cafe the former is little more than the conftable's affiftant. The headborough, petty conftable, and thirdborough, introduced by Ben Jonfon in The Tale of a Tub, being all of different places, are but one and the fame officer under fo many different names. In a book intitled, The Constable's Guide, &c. 1771, it is faid that “there are in feveral counties of this realm other officers; that is, by other titles, but not much inferior to our conftables; as in Warwickshire a thirdborough." The etymology of the word is uncertain. RITSON.

8

་་

-falls afleep.]. The fpurious play, already mentioned,

begins thus:

"Enter a Tapfter, beating out of his doores Slie drunken. Tapf. You whorefon drunken flave, you had best be gone, "And empty your drunken panch fomewhere else,

"For in this houfe thou shalt not reft to night. [Exit Tapfter.

Wind Horns. Enter a Lord from hunting, with Huntfmen and Servants.

LORD. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds:

Brach Merriman,-the poor cur is embofs'd,'

"Slie. Tilly vally; by crifee Tapfter Ile fefe you anone : "Fills the t'other pot, and all's paid for: looke you, "I doe drink it of mine own inftigation. "Heere Ile lie awhile: why Tapfter, I fay, "Fill's a fresh cufhen heere :

Heigh ho, here's good warme lying.

Omne bene.

[He falls afleepe.

"Enter a noble man and his men from hunting."

STEEVENS.

• Brach Merriman,-the poor cur is embofs'd,] Here, fays Pope, brach fignifies a degenerate hound: but Edwards explains it a hound in general.

That the latter of these criticks is right, will appear from the ufe of the word brach, in Sir T. More's Comfort against Tribulation, Book III. ch. xxiv :-" Here it must be known of fome men that can skill of hunting, whether that we mistake not our terms, for then are we utterly afhamed as ye wott well.-And I am fo cunning, that I cannot tell, whether among them a bitche be a bitche or no; but as I remember she is no bitch but a brache." The meaning of the latter part of the paragraph feems to be, "I am fo little fkilled in hunting, that I can hardly tell whether a bitch be a bitch or not; my judgment goes no further, than just to direct me to call either dog or bitch by their general name-Hound." I am aware that Spelman acquaints his reader, that brache was used in his days for a lurcher, and that Shakspeare himself has made it a dog of a particular species: "Mastiff, greyhound, mungrill grim, "Hound or spaniel, brach or lym.”

King Lear, A& III. fc. v. But it is manifeft from the paffage of More just cited, that it was fometimes applied in a general fenfe, and may therefore be fo understood in the paffage before us; and it may be added, that brache appears to be used in the fame fenfe by Beaumont and Fletcher:

"A. Is that your brother?

"E. Yes, have you loft your memory ?

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd brach.

"A. As I live he is a pretty fellow.
"Y. O this is a fweet brach."

Scornful Lady, A&t I. fc. i. T WARTON. I believe brach Merriman means only Merriman the brach. So in the old fong:

"Cow Crumbock is a very good cow."

Brach, however, appears to have been a particular fort of hound. In an old metrical charter, granted by Edward the Confeffor to the hundred of Cholmer and Dancing, in Effex, there are the two following lines:

"Four greyhounds & fix Bratches,

"For hare, fox, and wild cattes."

Merriman furely could not be defigned for the name of a fe male of the canine fpecies. STEEVENS.

It seems from the commentary of Ulitius upon Gratius, from Caius de Canibus Britannicis, from bracco, in Spelman's Gloffary, and from Markham's Country Contentments, that brache originally meant a bitch. Ulitius, p. 163, observes, that bitches have a fuperior fagacity of nofe:-" fœminis [canibus] fagacitatis plurimum ineffe, ufus docuit ;" and hence, perhaps, any hound with eminent quickness of scent, whether dog or bitch, was called brache, for the term brache is fometimes applied to males. Our ancestors hunted much with the large fouthern hounds, and had in every pack a couple of dogs peculiarly good and cunning to find game, or recover the scent, as Markham informs us. To this cuftom Shakspeare seems here to allude, by naming two braches, which, in my opinion, are beagles; and this difcriminates brach, from the lym, a bloodhound mentioned together with it, in the tragedy of King Lear. In the following quotation offered by Mr. Steevens on another occafion, the brache hunts truly by the fcent, behind the doe, while the hounds are on every fide:

fide;

"For as the dogs purfue the filly doe,
"The brache behind, the hounds on every
"So trac'd they me among the mountains wide."

Phaer's Legend of Owen Glendower. TOLLET. The word is certainly used by Chapman in his Gentleman Usher, a comedy, 1606, as fynonymous to bitch: "Venus, your brach there, runs fo proud," &c. So, alfo, our author in King Henry IV. P. I: "I'd rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish." The ftructure of the paffage before us, and the manner in which the next line is connected with this, [And

Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good'

couple &c.] added to the circumftance of the word brach occurring in the end of that line, incline me to think that Brach is here a corruption, and that the line before us began with a verb, not a noun. MALONE.

Sir Thomas Hanmer reads-Leech Merriman; that is, apply Some remedies to Merriman, the poor cur has his joints fwelled. -Perhaps we might read-bathe Merriman, which is, I believe, the common practice of huntsmen; but the prefent reading may ftand. JOHNSON.

Emboss'd is a hunting term. When a deer is hard run, and foams at the mouth, he is faid to be emboss'd. A dog alfo when he is strained with hard running (especially upon hard ground,) will have his knees fwelled, and then he is faid to be emboss'd: from the French word bosse, which fignifies a tumour. This explanation of the word will receive illuftration from the following paffage in the old comedy, intitled, The Shoemakers Holiday, or the Gentle Craft, acted at court, and printed in the year 1600,

fignat. C:

66

Beate every brake, the game's not farre,
"This way with winged feet he fled from death :
"Befides, the miller's boy told me even now,
"He faw him take foyle, and he hallowed him,
"Affirming him fo embofs'd." T. WARTON.

Mr. T. Warton's first explanation may be juft. Lyly, in his Midas, 1592, has not only given us the term, but the explanation of it:

"Pet. There was a boy leathed on the fingle, because when he was imboffed he took foyle.

"Li. What's that?

"Pet. Why a boy was beaten on the tayle with a leathern thong, because, when he fom'de at the mouth with running, he went into the water."

Again, in Chapman's verfion of the fourth Iliad:

66.

like hinds that have no hearts,

"Who, wearied with a long-run field, are inftantly emboft,

"Stand ftill," &c. STEEVENS.

From the Spanish, des embocar, to caft out of the mouth. We have again the fame expreflion in Antony and Cleopatra: the boar of Theffaly

"Was never fo emboss'd." MALONE.

Can any thing be more evident than that imbofs'd means

At the hedge corner, in the coldeft fault?
I would not lofe the dog for twenty pound.

1 HUN. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord; He cried upon it at the mereft lofs,

And twice to-day pick'd out the dulleft fcent:
Trust me, I take him for the better dog.

LORD. Thou art a fool; if Echo were as fleet,
I would efteem him worth a dozen fuch.
But fup them well, and look unto them all;
To-morrow I intend to hunt again.

1 HUN. I will, my lord.

LORD. What's here? one dead, or drunk? See, doth he breathe?

2 HUN. He breathes, my lord: Were he not warm'd with ale,

This were a bed but cold to fleep fo foundly.

LORD. O monftrous beaft! how like a fwine he

lies!

Grim death, how foul and loathfome is thine image! Sirs, I will practife on this drunken man.

What think you, if he were convey'd to bed,
Wrapp'd in fweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,
A moft delicious banquet by his bed,

And brave attendants near him when he wakes,
Would not the beggar then forget himself ?

fwelled in the knees, and that we ought to read bathe? What has the imbofing of a deer to do with that of a hound?" Imboffed fores" occur in As you like it; and in The First Part of King Henry IV. the Prince calls Falftaff f imbofs'd rafcal."

I

RITSON:

how Silver made it good-] This, I fuppofe, is a technical term. It occurs likewife in the 23d fong of Drayton's Polyolbion:

"What's offer'd by the first, the other good doth make.” STEEVENS,