1130. castle. This elevation of the village stocks and whipping-post into an enchanted castle is one of Butler's happiest efforts. Generations of critics have exhausted their praise upon it, yet it remains as enjoyable as ever.

1163. spoils, of the chase, usually the skin. The case, as the outer covering, would be regarded as the 'spoils' of the fiddle. Nash quite needlessly proposes to read 'His spoils, the fiddle and the case.'

1168. like hermit poor in pensive place. This is the first line of a love song. It goes:

'Like hermite poor in pensive place obscure,

I meane to spend my dayes of endles doubt,
To wail such woes as time cannot recure

Where nought but Love shall ever finde me out.

'My foode shall be of care and sorrow made,

My drinke nought else but tears falne from mine eies ; And for my light in such obscured shade

The flames may serve that from my hart arise.

'A gowne of grief my bodie shall attire,

And broken hope shall be my strength and stay ;

And late repentance linckt with long desire
Shall be the couch whereon my limbs Ile lay;
And at my gate Despair shall linger still

1171.

To let in Death when Love and Fortune will.'

the other, the wooden leg.

1174. a stranger. Alluding probably to the case of Sir Bernard Gascoign, who was taken prisoner at Colchester and ordered out for execution, but reprieved at the last moment owing to his being a foreigner. Cf. Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, Ed. 1826, vol. vi. p. 100.

PART I.-CANTO III.

1.

ay me, &c. Cf. Spenser :

Ay me! how many perils do enfold

The virtuous man to make him daily fall.'

Faerie Queene, Bk. I. c. 8.

10. what if a day. Grey quotes this ballad from Vol I., No. 52, of the Old Ballads,' in Mr. Pepys's Library in Madgalene College, Cambridge :

'What if a day or a month or a year

Crown thy delights,

With a thousand wish't contentings!

Cannot the chance of a night or an hour

Cross thy delights

With as many sad tormentings?'

14. cock-a-hoop. Fr. coq à huppe. Like a cock with his houpe or crest erect; hence boastfully defiant.

20. diurnal. Cf. I. ii. 268.

31. sought. So in the first editions, whose long 's's' have caused a variation 'fought.'

35. took heart again.

heart of grace.'

The first edition reads 'took

37. First edition reads, "For by this time the routed

bear.'

95.

102.

Widdrington.

'For Withrington needs must I wail

As one in doleful dumps;

For when his legs were smitten off,
He fought upon the stumps.'

The More Modern Ballad of Chevy Chase.

long-field Parthians. A vast amount of learning and ingenuity has been spent over interpreting and emending this line, by scholars whose speculations (and spectacles) seem never to have brought them within sight of a cricket-bat. 103. as to be borne. Cf.

'Hos super advenit, Volsca de gente, Camilla

Agmen agens equitum, et florentes aere catervas,
Bellatrix: non illa colo calathisve Minervae

Femineas adsueta manus, sed proelia virgo
Dura pati, cursuque pedum praevertere ventos.
Illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret
Gramina, nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas;
Vel mare per medium fluctu suspensa tumenti
Ferret iter, celeres nec tingueret aequore plantas.'

VIRGIL, Aeneid vii. 802.

106. liquor. Witches rode on broomsticks and greased them that they might go faster. 'Cart-wheels squeak not when they are liquored.'-BACON, Natural History, § 117.

'Needs must when the devil drives,' is an old

130.

139.

before. Cf.

Rosse. Ay, on the front.

Siward.

Had I as many sons as I have hairs

I would not wish them to a fairer death."

Macbeth, Act V. Sc. vii.

Achilles. His mother, Thetis, dipped him when an infant in the river Styx, thus rendering him invulnerable in every part except the heel she held him by. Through this undipt or 'pagan' heel he received his death at the hand of Paris.

141. dead-doing. Cf. I. ii. 20, and note.

147. Austrian archduke. This is the Archduke Albert, who was defeated by Prince Maurice of Nassau in 1598. Grey quotes, Dux Albertus, dum spes superfuit, totam per aciem obequitans, ferebatur cum Diestanis, et in hostem processerat intecto vultu quo notius exemplum foret, atque ita factum, ut haste cuspide a Germano milite auris perstringeretur.' (HUGONIS GROTII, Historias de Rob. Belgic. lib. 9, p. 568, ed. Amstelædami, 12°, 1659.)

149. half the coin. It seems now almost impossible to explain fully the allusion here. No coin is known in the British Museum by the name of ducatoon. It seems most probable from the formation of the word (-oon meaning something big, as in balloon, &c.) that the coin alluded to is the large gold piece of the Emperor Ferdinand II., 1619-1637, of five ducats. On this coin the ruff round the neck is very conspicuous and the ear large, but hardly large enough to warrant Butler's satire that it covers half the coin,' Such a coin would have been worth between two and three pounds English, containing twenty florins each valued at about two English shillings, but probably worth more now. But against this probability there is the testimony of Locke, who says in his Considerations of

the Lowering of Interest, "A ducatoon formerly passed at 3 guilders and 3 stivers, or 63 stivers.' Now as the guilder was rated at 2 shillings and 4 pence English, the ducatoon would be thus about seven shillings. This coincides neither with the coin mentioned aboye nor with 'the half ducat' which most of the commentat rs give as the meaning of the word ducatoon. There is also an Italian gold ducatoon mentioned as valued at 4 shillings and 8 pence, and a rare Swiss coin of the same name, which last, however, has no head at all, and à fortiori no ear. In Cleveland's Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbyter, is a similar allusion

'Those church dragoons

Made up of ears and ruffs like ducatoons.'

152. scriv'ner. Lawyers were called scriveners. For dishonesty or forgery they were condemned to the loss of their cars in the pillory. Cf. A crop-eared scrivener this.'-BEN JONSON, Masque of Owls, sub. fin.

153. late corrected. It is said that Prynne, the first time his ears were cut off, had them stitched on again, and that they grew.

154. brethren. Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton all suffered the same sentence at the same time, 1637. Prynne was summoned by Laud before the Star Chamber for writing his Historiomastix, and even in prison he continued to denounce the bishops as Lords of Lucifer.' Bastwick was a fellow prisoner with Prynne, and declared from his prison that hell had broke loose and the Devils were come in surplices. Burton was a clergyman who had been silenced by the High Commission, and who described the bishops as Limbs of the Beast and Factors of Antichrist. It must not be supposed, however, that the better class of the Puritans in England sympathized with violences of this sort. Milton wrote his Masque of Comus the year after the publication of Prynne's folio of declamation against stage plays.

155. the ring. Butler seems to have forgotten that the bear broke loose from the ring in I. ii 900. The two lines were probably written at widely different times. Cf. Introduction, p. xvii.

159. in a cool shade. These lines will suffice to prove that the roughness of Butler's verse was a matter of deliberate choice, and that had he been so minded, he could have produced as polished numbers as any of his contemporaries.

160.

Eglantine, Cf.

Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine.'

MILTON, L'Allegro, 1. 45.

166. Theorbo. A kind of musical instrument somewhat akin to the guitar.

'I am not worth this coil that's made for me,' SHAKS. King John, Act. II. Sc. i. 165.

and

'Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil
Would not infect his reason?

184.

Tempest, Act. I. Sc. ii. 207. Hylas, the favourite of Herakles, whom he accompanied on the Argonautic expedition. Going to draw water from a fountain, the nymphs cf the fountain seized him. Cf.'His adjungit, Hylan nautae quo fonte relictum Clamassent, ut littus, Hyla! Hyla! omne sonaret.' VIRGIL, Ecl. vi. 43.

192. small poet's splay-foot rhymes. Many poets had availed themselves of the device of introducing an Echo which should repeat words or syllables with more or less appositeness. Erasmus contrived an Echo to answer in Greek or Latin or Hebrew, wherein occurs the famous reply of Echo: Juvenis, Decem jam annos ætatem trivi in Cicerone. Echo "Ove. (Colloquia Familiaria, under title Echo, Ed. 1774, p. 599.) Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia has a long poem on the same plan.

202. marry guep. 'Marry' is of course 'By Mary.' 'Guep,' if it ever had a meaning, has quite lost it.

208. mum budget. Cf.

Slender. 'I went to her in white and cried "Mum," and she cried "budget," as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it was not Anne, but a post-master's boy.'-Merry Wives of Windsor, Act. V. Sc. v.

209. laid i' th' dish. accusation against you. Cf.

213.

Laid at thy door, brought as an

'Last night you lay it, madam, in our dish,
How that a maid of ours (whom we must check)
Had broke your bitches leg: I straight did wish
The baggage rather broken had her neck.'

SIR JOHN HARRINGTON, Epigrams, I. 27.

a-vengeance. In the name of vengeance. stomach. In tragic verse this organ was long the seat of anger. Cf.

222.

252.

'High stomached are they both and full of ire,
In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.'

Richard II. Act. I. Sc. i.

huffing. 'Huff' is a piece of arrogance. Cf. II. ii. 389, and see also the quotation from Crowne in Johnson's Life