Chapter CXXI: Act II: Page 438

GOW. ... what shall be next,
Pardon old Gower; this _longs_ the text.

Which Mr. Steevens thus explains: "Excuse old Gower from telling you what follows. The very text to it has proved of too considerable a length already." But has he not missed the meaning of this elliptical mode of expression, which seems to be, "Excuse old Gower from relating what follows; this _belongs_ to the text, i. e. the play itself, not to me the commentator?" In the third Act he uses a similar speech,

"I will relate; action may
Conveniently the rest convey."

_Longs_ should be printed _'longs_, as we have _'lated_ for _belated_ in _Macbeth_, Act. III. Scene 3.

SCENE 1. Page 450.

PER. ... I yet am unprovided
Of a pair of _bases_.

These were a sort of petticoat that hung down to the knees, and were suggested by the Roman military dress, in which they seem to have been separate and parallel slips of cloth or leather. Gayton in his _Festivous notes on Don Quixote_, p. 218, says, that "all heroick persons are _pictured_ in _bases_ and buskins." In the celebrated story of _Friar John and Friar Richard_, as related in Heywood's _History of women_, p. 253, the skirts of the _armed_ friar's gown are made to serve as _bases_. At the justs that were held in honour of Queen Catherine in the second year of Henry VIII., some of the knights had "their _basses_ and trappers of cloth of golde, every of them his name embroudered on his _basse_ and trapper."--Halle's _Chronicle_. But here the term seems applied to the furniture of the horses. The bases appear to have been made of various materials. If in tilting they fell to the ground, the heralds claimed them as a fee, unless redeemed by money; this indeed was the case with respect to any piece of armour that happened to be detached from the owner. Sometimes _bases_ denoted the hose merely; as in the comedy of _Lingua_, 1607, where _Auditus_, one of the characters, is dressed in "a cloth of silver mantle upon a pair of sattin _bases_." In Rider's Latin Dictionary, 1659, _bases_ are rendered _palliolum curtum_. The term seems to have been borrowed from the French, who at a very early period used _bache_ for a woman's petticoat.--See Carpentier _Glossar. medii ævi_.

SCENE 2. Page 454.

THAISA. And his device, a _wreath_ of chivalry
The word, _Me pompæ provexit apex_.

_Pompæ_, and not _Pompei_, is undoubtedly the true word; and the whole of Mr. Steevens's reasoning in favour of the latter is at once disposed of by referring to the work which appears to have furnished the author of the play with this and the two subsequent devices of the knights. It is a scarce little volume entitled, _The heroicall devises of M. Claudius Paradin canon of Beaujeu, whereunto are added the lord Gabriel Symeon's and others. Translated out of Latin into English, by P. S._ 1591, 24mo. The _sixth_ device, from its peculiar reference to the situation of Pericles, may perhaps have been altered from one in the same collection used by Diana of Poictiers. It is a green branch issuing from a tomb with the motto SOLA VIVIT IN ILLO. The following are what have been immediately borrowed from Paradin; but it is also proper to state that the torch and the hand issuing from a cloud are to be found in Whitney's _Emblems_, 1586, 4to. As they are all more elegantly engraved in the original editions of Paradin and Symeon than in the English book above mentioned, the copies here given have been made from the former.