[16] "Similes habent labra lactucas. A thistle is a sallet fit for an ass's mouth. We use when we would signify that things happen to people which are suitable to them, or which they deserve; as when a dull scholar happens to a stupid or ignorant master, a froward wife to a peevish husband, &c. Dignum patella operculum. Like priest, like people, and on the contrary. These proverbs are always taken in the worst sense. Tal carne, tal cultello, Ital. Like flesh, like knife." [See Hazlitt's "Proverbs," &c., 1869, pp. 33, 263.]
[17] [i.e., Quodest thou, or saidest thou.]
[18] [Old copy and Dodsley, mowle. A hairy nowl is a member of the reformed faith, as distinguished from the shaven crowns of the priests.]
[19] Sometimes written portas, or portos, i.e., breviary—Du Cange, in Portiforium. "Portuasses, Mr Tyrwhitt observes (Notes on Chaucer, ver. 13061), are mentioned among other prohibited books in the Stat. 3 and 4 Edw. VI. c. 10. And in the Parliament Roll of 7, Edw. IV. n. 40, there is a petition, that the robbing of Porteous, Grayell, Manuell, &c., should be made felonie without clergy; to which the King answered, La Roy s'avisera."
The portuse is mentioned in Greene's "History of Fryer Bacon and Fryer Bungay." [Works by Dyce, 1861, p. 162—]
"I'll hamper up the match,
I'll take my portace forth, and wed you here."
[20] Make is used for mate throughout the works of Gower. Shakspeare likewise, if I am not mistaken, employs it in one of his sonnets.—S.
[21] [See Hazlitt's "Handbook," 1867, p. 129, v. costume, No. 3. The phrase seems to be used here to signify expensive foreign fashions generally.]
[22] The 4to reads grace. The alteration by Mr Dodsley.