Proface_, my Masters, if your
Stomacks serve."

But the Editors are not contented without coining Italian. "_Rivo, says
the Drunkard_," is an Expression of the _madcap_ Prince of Wales; which
Sir Thomas Hanmer corrects to _Ribi, Drink away_, or _again_, as it should
rather be translated. Dr. Warburton accedes to this; and Mr. Johnson hath
admitted it into his Text; but with an observation, that _Rivo_ might
possibly be the cant of English Taverns. And so indeed it was: it occurs
frequently in Marston. Take a quotation from his Comedy of _What you
will_, 1607:

Musicke, Tobacco, Sacke, and Sleepe,
The Tide of Sorrow backward keep:
If thou art sad at others fate,
_Rivo_ drink deep, give care the mate.

In _Love's Labour Lost_, Boyet calls Don Armado,

----A Spaniard that keeps here in Court,
A Phantasme, a _Monarcho_.----

Here too Sir Thomas is willing to palm Italian upon us. We should read, it
seems, _Mammuccio_, a Mammet, or Puppet: Ital. _Mammuccia_. But the
allusion is to a fantastical _Character_ of the time.--"Popular applause,"
says Meres, "dooth nourish some, neither do they gape after any other
thing, but vaine praise and glorie,--as in our age Peter Shakerlye of
Paules, and MONARCHO that liued about the Court." p. 178.

I fancy you will be satisfied with one more instance.

"_Baccare_, You are marvellous forward," quoth Gremio to Petruchio in the
_Taming of the Shrew_.

"But not so _forward_," says Mr. Theobald, "as our Editors are _indolent_.
This is a stupid corruption of the press, that none of them have dived
into. We must read _Baccalare_, as Mr. Warburton acutely observed to me,
by which the Italians mean, Thou ignorant, presumptuous Man."--"Properly
indeed," adds Mr. Heath, "a _graduated_ Scholar, but ironically and
sarcastically a _pretender_ to Scholarship."

This is admitted by the Editors and Criticks of every Denomination. Yet
the word is neither wrong, nor Italian: it was an old proverbial one, used
frequently by John Heywood; who hath made, what he pleases to call,
_Epigrams_ upon it.

Take two of them, such as they are,

_Backare_, quoth Mortimer to his Sow:
Went that Sow _backe_ at that biddyng trowe you?

_Backare_, quoth Mortimer to his sow: se
Mortimers sow speakth as good _latin_ as he.

Howel takes this from Heywood, in his _Old Sawes and Adages_: and Philpot
introduces it into the Proverbs collected by Camden.

We hav