Lord Verulam says, "Great eyes with a green circle between the white and the white of the eye, signify long life."—Hist. of life and death, p. 124. Villa Real, a Portuguese, has written a treatise in praise of them, and they are even said to exist now among his countrymen. See Pinkerton's Geography, vol. i. p. 556, and Steevens's Shakspeare, vol. v. 164, 203.
ACT IV.
Scene 2. Page 508.
Cap. Where have you been gadding?
Mr. Steevens remarks that "the primitive sense of this word was to straggle from house to house and collect money under pretence of singing carols to the blessed Virgin;" and he quotes a note on Milton's Lycidas by Mr. Warton: but this derivation seems too refined. Mr. Warton's authority is an old register at Gadderston, in these words: "Receyvid at the gadyng with Saynte Mary songe at Crismas." If the original were attentively examined, it would perhaps turn out that the word in question has some mark of contraction over it, which would convert it into gaderyng, i. e. gathering or collecting money, and not simply going about from house to house according to Mr. Warton's explanation.
Scene 5. Page 525.
Fri. ... and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse——
This plant was used in various ways at funerals. Being an evergreen, it was regarded as an emblem of the soul's immortality. Thus in Cartwright's Ordinary, Act V. Scene 1:
"... If there be
Any so kind as to accompany
My body to the earth, let them not want
For entertainment; pr'ythee see they have
A sprig of rosemary dip'd in common water
To smell to as they walk along the streets."
In an obituary kept by Mr. Smith, secondary of one of the Compters, and preserved among the Sloanian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 886, is the following entry: "Jany. 2. 1671. Mr. Cornelius Bee bookseller in Little Britain died; buried Jan. 4. at Great St. Bartholomew's without a sermon, without wine or wafers, only gloves and rosmary."