Cel. This is not fortune's work neither, but nature's, who perceiving
our natural wits too dull to reason of such Goddesses,
hath sent this natural for our whetstone.
It must be observed that Touchstone is here called a natural merely for the sake of alliteration and a punning jingle of words; for he is undoubtedly an artificial fool.
Scene 2. Page 29.
Le Beau. More suits you to conceive, than me to speak of.
The old copy had, than I. These grammatical errors in the use of the personal pronoun should either be uniformly corrected or left entirely to themselves. Mr. Steevens in p. [9], note 7, seems to regard them as the anomalies of the play-house editors; but Mr. Malone, probably with more reason, is inclined to place them to the author's own account. If the present correction by Mr. Rowe be retained in future editions, we ought not to find such expressions as "hates nothing more than he," p. 14; "no child but I," p. 15, and who for whom perpetually.
ACT II.
Scene 1. Page 37.
Duke S. Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
What that stone which many people suppose to come from the head of a toad really was, would be no easy task at present to determine. Various conjectures have made it the bsatrachites, chelonites, brontia, ceraunia, glossopetra, &c. Neither is it certain that the text alludes to a stone; for Gesner informs us that in his time, and in England more particularly, the common people made superstitious uses of a real jewel that always could be found in a toad's head, viz., its forehead bone. To obtain this they severed the animal in two parts, and exposed it to be devoured by ants; by which means it presently became a skeleton. The above author carefully distinguishes this bone from the toadstone, and from Pliny's bone mentioned in Mr. Steevens's note. He has likewise with great industry, as on all occasions, collected much that relates to the subject of the toadstone. See his work De quadrup. ovipar. p. 65. It must be owned that better naturalists than Shakspeare believed in the common accounts of the toadstone. Batman in his edition to the article relating to the botrax or rubeta in Bartholomæus De propr. rerum, informs us that "some toads that breed in Italy and about Naples, have in their heads a stone called a crapo, of bignes like a big peach, but flat, of colour gray, with a browne spot in the midst said to be of vertue. In times past they were much worne, and used in ringes, as the forewarning against venime." Another learned divine who is often very witty, but on this occasion perfectly grave, has told us that "some report that the toad before her death sucks up (if not prevented with sudden surprisal) the precious stone (as yet but a jelly) in her head, grudging mankind the good thereof."—Fuller's Church history, p. 151. In a medical work too we are informed that "in the head of a greate tode there is a stone, which stone being stampt and geven to the pacyent to drinke in warme wine, maketh him to pise the stone out incontinent," &c.—Lloyd's Treasure of helth, pr. by Copland, n. d. 12mo. The notion of jewels in the heads of animals is very widely spread. Mr. Wilkins has informed us that it is a vulgar notion in India that some species of serpents have precious stones in their heads. Hectopades, p. 302. The best account of the different sorts of toadstones, so far as regards the illustration of the above superstitious notions, is in Topsell's History of serpents, 1608, folio, p. 188.
Scene 1. Page 39.