The incident of Miranda's surprise at the first sight of Ferdinand, and of her falling in love with him, might have been suggested by some lost translation of the 13th tale in the _Cento novelle antiche_, and which is in fact the subject of _father Philip's geese_, so admirably told by Boccaccio and Lafontaine. It seems to have been originally taken from the life of Saint Barlaam in _The golden legend_. ACT II. SCENE 1. Page 54. GON. How _lush_ and lusty the grass looks! _Lush_, as Mr. Malone observes, has not yet been rightly interpreted. It is, after all, an old word synonymous with _loose_. In the _Promptuarium parvulorum_ 1516, 4to, we find "_lushe or slacke, laxus_." The quotation from Golding, who renders _turget_ by this word, confirms the foregoing definition, and demonstrates that as applied to grass, it means _loose or swollen_, thereby expressing the state of that vegetable when, the fibres being relaxed, it expands to its fullest growth. SCENE 2. Page 76. CAL. Sometime like _apes_, that moe and chatter at me And after bite me; then like _hedge-hogs_, which Lie _tumbling_ in my barefoot way---- Shakspeare, who seems to have been well acquainted with Bishop Harsnet's _Declaration of Popish impostures_, has here recollected that part of the work where the author, speaking of the supposed possession of young girls, says, "they make anticke faces, _girn, mow and mop like an ape, tumble like a hedge-hogge_, &c." Another reason for the introduction of urchins or hedge-hogs into this speech is, that on the first discovery of the Bermudas, which, as has been already stated, gave rise in part to this play, they were supposed to be "haunted as all men know with _hogs_ and hobgoblings." See Dekkar's _Strange horserace_, &c. sign. f. 3. b. and Mr. Steevens's note in p. 28. SCENE 2. Page 77. TRIN. A strange fish! Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. This speech happily ridicules the mania that appears to have always existed among our countrymen for beholding strange sights, however trifling. A contemporary writer and professor of divinity has been no less severe. Speaking of the crocodile, he says, "Of late years there hath been brought into England, the cases or skinnes of such crocodiles to be seene, and much money given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers laugh at our folly, either that we are too wealthy, or else that we know not how to bestow our money." Batman _uppon Bartholome_, fo. 359 b. SCENE 2. Page 82. STE. This _mooncalf_.