of the fourth act there is a curious passage which has no point unless we suppose that it is directed against some particular courtier: "_1st Gent._ I ken the man weel; he's one of my thirty pound knights. "_2d Gent._ No, no, this is he that stole his knighthood o' the grand day for four pound given to a page; all the money in's purse, I wot well." Satirical references to King James' knights, the men who purchased knighthood from the king, are as common as blackberries; but in the present passage there must be a covert allusion to some person who procured the honour by an unworthy artifice, and I suspect that the allusion is to Sir James Murray. It is surprising that, when the reflections on the Scots were expunged, the passage in iv. 1 was allowed to stand; for, whether Sir James Murray was or was not personally ridiculed, the mimicry of James' Scotch accent is unmistakeable. Perhaps the king joined in the laugh against himself, when the play was acted before him by the Lady Elizabeth's Servants at Whitehall on 25th January 1613-4 (Cunningham's _Extracts from the Account of the Revels_, p. xliv.). Of the merits of _Eastward Ho_ it would be difficult to speak too highly. To any who are in need of a pill to purge melancholy this racy old comedy may be safely commended. Few readers, after once making his acquaintance, will forget Master Touchstone, the honest shrewd old goldsmith, rough of speech at times but ever gentle at heart, thrifty to outward show but bountiful as the sun in May: he lives in our affections with Orlando Friscobaldo and Simon Eyre. Quicksilver, the rowdy prentice, dazed from last night's debauch, reciting in a thick voice stale scraps of Jeronymo as he reels about Master Touchstone's shop, heedless of the maxims of temperance which frown in print from the walls; Golding, the well-conducted prentice, the apple of his master's eye, armed at all points with virtue and sobriety; Gertrude, the goldsmith's extravagant daughter, with her magnificent visions of coaches, and castles, and cherries at an angel a pound; Mildred, her sister, simple and dutiful; Mistress Touchstone, who has been infected with Gertrude's vanity, but quickly learns penitence in the school of necessity; Sir Petronel Flash, the shifty knight, eager to escape from creditors and serjeants to the new-found land of Virginia; Security, the blood-sucker and egregious gull:--all these characters, and the list is not exhausted, stand limned in all the warmth of life. Mr. Swinburne, in his masterly essay on Chapman, says with truth that "in no play of the time do we get such a true taste of the old city life so often turned to mere ridicule by playwrights of less good humour, or feel about us such a familiar air of ancient London as blows through every scene."