_Green sour_, if the genuine reading, should be given, as in the first folio, without a hyphen; for such a _compound_ epithet will not elsewhere be easily discovered. Though a real or supposed acidity in this kind of grass will certainly warrant the use of _sour_, it is not improbable that Shakspeare might have written _greensward_, i. e. the green surface of the ground, from the Saxon ꞅƿeaꞃꝺ, skin. SCENE 1. Page 158. PRO. His mother was a witch; and one so strong _That could control the moon_. So in a former scene, Gonzalo had said, "You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would _lift the moon out of her sphere_, &c." In Adlington's translation of _Apuleius_ 1596, 4to, a book well known to Shakspeare, a marginal note says, "Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could pul downe _the moone by their inchauntment_." In Fleminge's _Virgil's Bucolics_ is this line, "Charms able are from heaven high to fetch the moone adowne;" and see Scot's _Discoverie of witchcraft_ 1584, 4to, pp. 174, 226, 227, 250. But all the above authorities are from the ancients, the system of modern witchcraft not affording any similar instances of its power. The Jesuit Delrio is willing to put up with any notice of this superstition among heathen writers, but is extremely indignant to find it mentioned by a Christian; contending that it exclusively belongs to the ancients. _Disquis. magic._ lib. ii. quæst. xi. The following classical references may not be unacceptable. The earliest on the list will be that in Aristophanes's _Clouds_, where Strepsiades proposes the hiring of a Thessalian witch to bring down the moon and shut her in a box that he might thus evade paying his debts by the month. "Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessalâ _Lunamque cœlo deripit_." Horat. _epod._ v. "_Deripere lunam_ vocibus possum meis." Horat. _epod._ xvii. "Et jam _luna negat toties descendere cœlo_." Propert. II. _el._ 28. "Cantus et _é curru lunam deducere_ tentat Et faceret, si non ære repuisa sonent." Tibull. I. _el._ 8. and see _el._ 2. ... "_Phœbeque serena_ Non aliter diris verborum obsessa venenis Palluit, et nigris, terrenisque ignibus arsit, Et patitur tantos _cantu depressa_ labores Donec suppositas propior despumet in herbas."[2] Lucan vi. "Mater erat Mycale; quam _deduxisse canendo_ Sæpe reluctanti constabat _cornua lunæ_." Ovid. _Metam._ I. xii. "Illa reluctantem _curru deducere lunam_ Nititur" Ovid. _epist._ vi.