The old copies read provincial, which led Mr. Warton to ask, why provincial roses? and to conclude that roses of Provence were meant, on which conclusion the text has been most unnecessarily changed; because the old reading was certainly correct. There is no evidence to show that Provence was ever remarkable for its roses; but it is well known that Provins, in La Basse Brie, about forty miles from Paris, was formerly very celebrated for the growth of this flower, of which the best cataplasms are said to have been made. It was, according to tradition, imported into that country from Syria, by a count De Brie. See Guillemeau Histoire naturelle de la rose. It is probable that this kind of rose, which in our old herbals is called the Great Holland or Province rose, was imported into this country both from Holland and France, from which latter country the Dutch might have first procured it. There is an elegant cut of the Provins rose, with a good account of it, in the first edition of Pomet Hist. des drogues, 1694, folio, p. 174.
Scene 2. Page 200.
Ham. A very, very,—peacock.
The word that was in the original of Hamlet's quotation would have been too coarse to be applied to royalty; and therefore he substitutes another, which there is good reason to suppose was peacock. Dr. Farmer has given proof that this term was proverbial for a fool. Reginald Scot, speaking of Pope Julius the Third, says that he blasphemed Christ, and cursed his mother for a peacock. Disc. of witchcraft, b. 2, ch. viii. The bird in question is at once proud and silly.
Scene 2. Page 205.
Enter the players with recorders.
"i. e." says Mr. Steevens, "a kind of large flute." Yet the former note, to which he refers, vol. v. p. 149, describes this instrument as a small flute. Sir J. Hawkins, in vol. iv. p. 479, of his valuable History of music, has offered very good proofs that the recorder was a flagelet, and he maintains that the flute was improperly termed a recorder, and that the expressions have been confounded: yet his opinion that the books of instructions entitled 'for the recorder' belong in reality to the flute, seems rather doubtful. The confusion is in having blended the genus with the species. In the Promptuarium parvulorum, 1516, 4to, a recorder is defined to be a "lytell pype." In Udall's flowres for Latine spekyng selected oute of Terence, 1532, 12mo, the line from Virgil's Bucolics,
"Nec te pæniteat calamo trivisse labellum,"
is rendered, "and thynke it not a smalle thynge to have lerned to playe on the pype or the recorder:" and it is not a little curious that in modern cant language the recorders of corporations are termed flutes. The following story in Wits fits and fancies, 1595, 4to, shows that the pipe and recorder were different; such is the uncertainty of definition among old writers: "A merrie recorder of London mistaking the name of one Pepper, call'd him Piper: whereunto the partie excepting, and saying: Sir, you mistake, my name is Pepper, not Piper: hee answered: Why, what difference is there (I pray thee) between Piper in Latin, and Pepper in English; is it not all one? No, sir (reply'd the other) there is even as much difference betweene them, as is between a Pipe and a Recorder."
Scene 2. Page 207.