"The Senate house of planets all did sit
To knit in her their best perfections."
An opportunity here presents itself of remarking how injudiciously we have discarded the more expressive and legitimate term consort, as a company of musicians playing together, for the new-fangled Italian concert. The other would be vulgar to a modern ear, and is now marked in our dictionaries as a corrupt spelling.
ACT III.
Scene 1. Page 584.
May. The bishop's and the duke of Gloster's men,
Forbidden late to carry any weapon,
Have fill'd their pockets full of pebble stones, &c.
This fact is borrowed, with some variation, from Stowe or Fabian. "Men being forbidden to bring swords or other weapons, brought great battes and staves on their neckes; and when those weapons were inhibited them, they took stones and plomets of lead, &c."
Scene 1. Page 587.
War. Sweet king!—the bishop hath a kindly gird.
Mr. Steevens has on this occasion, for the sake of the last word, introduced two notes which might very well have been spared. There is no doubt that Warwick means to say that the young king has given Winchester a gentle reproof. This is the plain and obvious meaning of gird. Dr. Johnson is wide, very wide, of the mark.