Dr. Johnson has very well explained why _wenches suitors_ were _burned_; but Mr. Steevens's quotation from Isaiah iii. 24, "--and _burning_ instead of beauty," has not been applied on this occasion with his usual discernment. Not to mention the improbability that the _burning_ in question should have existed in the time of Isaiah, the expression itself is involved in the deepest obscurity. Saint Jerome has entirely omitted it; and if the Hebrew word, which in some translations has been rendered _adustio_, be susceptible of any fair meaning, it is that of _shrivelled_ or _dried up by heat_. It is, therefore, in the bishop's bible and some foreign translations paraphrastically given, "and for their bewty witherednesse and _sunne burning_." The manuscript regulations for the stews in Southwark, printed but abridged in Stowe's Annals, would have furnished the learned commentator with a far more apposite illustration. In these it is said, "no stewholder shall keep any woman that hath the perilous infirmity of _burning_." SCENE 4. Page 160. EDG. _Pillicock_ sat on pillicock's hill. In the metrical romance of _Sir Gawain and Sir Galaron_, there is this line, "His polemous with _pelicocus_ were poudred to pay." Pinkerton's _Scotish poems_, vol. iii. 214. In the comedy of _Ignoramus_ by Ruggles, Act III. Scene 6, Cupes talks of "quimbiblos, indenturas, _pilicoccos_, calimancas;" where it is perhaps a new-fangled term for any kind of stuff or cloth. There is an attempt to explain the word in Warner's _Letter to Garrick_, p. 30; but whoever would be certain of finding the exact meaning, may consult, besides the article in Minsheu, 9299, the following books: Durfey's _Pills to purge melancholy_, iv. 311.--The _Nightingale_, (a collection of songs) 1738, p. 380.--Lyndsay's _Works_, as edited by Mr. Chalmers, ii. 145, and the excellent glossary.--Florio's _Italian dictionary_, 1611, under the articles _piviolo_, and _rozzone_. SCENE 4. Page 162. EDG. Keep thy pen from _lenders books_. When spendthrifts and distressed persons resorted to usurers or tradesmen for the purpose of raising money by means of shop-goods or _brown paper commodities_, they usually entered their promissory notes or other similar obligations in books kept for that purpose. It is to this practice that Edgar alludes. In Lodge's _Looking-glasse for London and Englande_, 1598, 4to, a usurer says to a gentleman, "I have thy hand set to my book that thou received'st fortie pounds of me in money." To which the other answers, "It was your device, to colour the statute, but your conscience knowes what I had." Parke, in his _Curtaine-drawer of the world_, speaking of a country gentleman, alludes to the extravagance of his back, which had got him into _the mercer's book_. SCENE 4. Page 163. EDG. ... ha, no nonny.