LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 371 



' The glosse of gorgeous Courtes by thee did please mine eye, 

 A stately sight me thought it was to see the braue go by, 

 To see their feathers flaunte, to make [marke!] their straunge deuise, 

 To lie along in ladies lappes, to lispe, and make it nice.' " 



To make it nice means nothing more nor less than to 

 play the fool, or rather, to make a fool of yourself , faire le 

 niais. In old English the French niais and nice, from 

 similarity of form and analogy of meaning, naturally 

 fused together in the word nice, which, by an unusual 

 luck, has been promoted from a derogatory to a respect 

 ful sense. Gascoigne's lispe might have put Mr. Hazlitt 

 on his guard, if he ever considered the sense of what he 

 quotes. But he never does, nor of what he edits either. 

 For example, in the " Smyth and his Dame " we find 

 the following note : " Prowe, or proffe, is not at all un 

 common as a form of profit. In the ' Seven Names of 

 a Prison,' a poem printed in Reliquiae Antiquce, we 

 have, 



* Quintum nomen istius fovese ita probatum, 

 A place of proff for man to know bothe frend and foo.' " 



Now proff and prow are radically different words. Proff 

 here means proof, and if Mr. Hazlitt had read the stanza 

 which he quotes, he would have found (as in all the 

 others of the same poem) the meaning repeated in Latin 

 in the last line, probacio amicorum. 



But we wish to leave our readers (if not Mr. Hazlitt) 

 in good humor, and accordingly we have reserved two 

 of his notes as bonnes bouches. In " Adam Bel," when 

 the outlaws ask pardon of the king, 



" They kneled downe without lettyng 

 And each helde vp his hande." 



To this passage (tolerably plain to those not too familiar 

 with "our early literature") Mr. Hazlitt appends this 

 solemn note : ' To hold up the hand was formerly a sign 

 of respect or concurrence, or a mode of taking an oath ; 



