83. 2, and Dryden's note. 'Ille autem' is Dryden's reference in a note to the passage in Virgil (Aen. viii. 251) describing Cacus, the son of Vulcan, pursued and attacked by Hercules, whose cattle he had stolen, and vomiting forth smoke to conceal himself.

86. 4. flies at check.

whether game or not.

To'fly at check' is to fly wildly at any bird, 'A young woman is a hawk upon her wings, and, if she be handsome, she is the more subject to go out at check.' (Sir John Suckling's Letters, p. 93; Works, ed. 1696.)

clips it, cuts it, flies fast.

91. 4. In the first edition this line stood,

'Remote from guns as sick men are from noise.'

It was changed in the edition of 1688 to what appears in the text, which seems an improvement.

94. 2. See I Chron. xiii. 7-10: And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab: and Uzza and Ahio drave the cart. And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark: for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark; and there he died before God.'

96. 4. Unknowing to give place. An imitation of the Latin 'cedere nescius.' (Hor. Od. i. 6. 5.) Compare And knows not to retire,' in stanza 152.

'I dared the death, unknowing how to yield.'

Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii. 309. The verb unknow is used in Dryden and Lee's Duke of Guise, as meaning to be ignorant of.' 'Can I unknow it?' (Act v. Sc. 1.) 99. 4, and Dryden's note. The two former victories of the 3rd of June were in 1653 and 1665, both over the Dutch. The latter was the Duke of York's victory celebrated in Dryden's Verses to the Duchess, p. 33.

102. 1. Remnants of the night. Remnants was incorrectly changed by Broughton into remnant, which appears also in Scott's and other editions. Remnants occurs again in stanza 258: and compare 'remnants of precarious power' (The Hind and Panther, i. 510), and remnants of long-suffering grace.' (Id. iii. 276.) The word remainders also occurs in The Hind and Panther, iii. 602, and in the Dedication of Eleanora, where Dryden says, addressing the Earl of Abingdon, ' You may stand aside with the small remainders of the English nobility.'

104. 1. Broughton, Derrick, and others, have changed here forced to stay into he forced to stay, which is clearly wrong.

109. 3. Compare Virgil's description of the fears of Aeneas:

'Et me, quem dudum non ulla injecta movebant

Tela, neque adverso glomerati ex agmine Graii

Nunc omnes terrent aurae, sonus excitat omnis.' Aen. ii. 726.

110. 3. martlet, a swift or swallow. Dryden, in a note on a line in The Hind and Panther (Part iii. line 547),

'Some swifts, the giants of the swallow-kind,' says that these giant swallows are otherwise called martlets.

115. 4. does is the word in the first edition: it was changed to doth in the edition of 1688.

118. 4. See Joshua x. 13: And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.' 120. 2. speak thick, speak quick. Compare Shakespeare, 2 Henry

IV, Act ii. Sc. 3:

'And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;

For those that could speak low and tardily
Would turn their own perfection to abuse,

To seem like him.'

123, and Dryden's note. There is another passage in Virgil (Aen. v. 276) comparing the motion of a ship to that of a wounded snake, which Dryden might also have referred to, and which was doubtless in his mind : 'Nequidquam longos fugiens dat corpore tortus ; Parte ferox, ardensque oculis, et sibila colla Arduus attollens, pars vulnere clauda retentat Nexantem nodis, seque in sua membra plicantem : Tali remigio navis se tarda movebat.'

124. 3. passion. The two early editions have passion, which is very intelligible. Broughton printed passions, which has been copied by subsequent editors, making double a verb instead of an adjective.

129. 2. let in to: changed by Broughton to let into, which is followed by other editors, including Scott, and which is certainly a deterioration. Dryden doubtless had in his mind the words in Virgil's comparison of the bursting open of the cave of Cacus by Hercules with the opening to view of the shades below:

Trepidentque immisso lumine Manes.' Aen. viii. 246. 132. 2. flix, the fur or soft hair of a hare or other animal. Dyer, in The Fleece (Bk. i.), speaks of sheep with flix like deer, and not woolly: 'No locks Cormandel's nor Malacca's tribe

Adorn, but sleek of flix and brown like deer.' Browning uses the word of a lady's hair, 'flix and flax.' These two words have probably the same origin. Mr. Halliwell mentions flix as a Kentish provincialism in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words.

137. 1. See St. Mark iii. 11, 12: And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God, And he straitly charged them that they should not make him known.'

139. Compare stanza 3 and the note on the belief then in vogue of the origin of precious metals.

141. 3. This and the following line have been spoilt by editors by changing And at the beginning of the fourth line into A. The change makes nonsense of the passage; it first appeared in Broughton's edition, and was copied by succeeding editors, including Scott.

143. imps. To imp a wing is properly, and technically in falconry, to repair it by grafting new pieces on broken feathers. Shakespeare says metaphorically in Richard II, Act ii. Sc. I,

'Imp out our drooping country's broken wing.'

Milton, in his Sonnet to Fairfax, has 'imp their serpent-wings.' Elsewhere Dryden uses the word imp loosely. 'Imped with wings' he says of young bees, in his Translation of the Fourth Georgic; and in the play of Oedipus, Act iv. Sc. 1:

'With all the wings with which revenge
Could imp my flight.'

144. 1, and Dryden's note. Dryden, in his note, gives only the words 'fervet opus' from Virgil's description of the labours of the bees, part of which he closely imitates :

'Pars intra septa domorum

Narcissi lacrymam et lentum de cortice gluten
Prima favis ponunt fundamina, deinde tenaces
Suspendunt ceras: aliae spem gentis, adultos
Educunt foetus: aliae purissima mella
Stipant, et liquido distendunt nectare cellas.'
Georg. iv. 159.

145. 1. foundation, the word in the first edition: foundations in edition of 1688 and subsequent editions.

146. 1. sides is printed in the two early editions. I have altered it to side, to rhyme with guide, but sides may still be the right word.

147. 4. shake. shakes is printed in both the early editions, but the grammar requires shake, to which waves is nominative.

148. 1. marling, a small line smeared with tar, used for winding round ropes and cables to prevent their being fretted by the blocks.

2. sear-cloth is here a verb, meaning to cover with sear-cloth, cerecloth, or cloth prepared with wax. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotaphia, speaks of a dead body 'sound and handsomely cereclothed, that after seventy-eight years was found uncorrupted.' See Richardson's Dictionary, Sear-cloth and Cere-cloth.

151. The old ship the 'London,' one of the many of the Commonwealth, had been destroyed by fire, and the city of London now presented the king with a new ship, called 'The Loyal London.' This second

'London' was burnt before the end of the war, when the Dutch surprised Chatham, in 1667.

147. Irish kern.

Irish peasant or soldier. Compare Dryden's Dedication of Palamon and Arcite to the Duchess of Ormond, where he speaks of the reverence of the Irish for her husband's family:

'Awed by that house accustomed to command,

The sturdy kerns in due subjection stand,
Nor bear the reins in any foreign hand.'

The word occurs in Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 2, 'kerns and gallowglasses,' and again, 2 Henry VI, Act i. Sc. 9 :

'A puissant and a mighty power

Of gallowglasses and stout kerns.'

Kerns are light-armed soldiers, having only darts and daggers, or knives; the gallowglasses had helmet, coat of mail, long sword and axe.

4. fin-like oars. The same idea is in Denham's Cooper's Hill, 'oarfinned galleys;' and Herrick has 'finny oar' in the Hesperides.

158. Saturn, driven from his throne by his son Jupiter, is said to have fled to Italy, and to have been welcomed there by Janus, king of Latium, and becoming a partner in Janus's throne, it was further fabled that he civilised the Italians, who under his reign enjoyed a golden age.

4. Derrick unjustifiably made a change in this line, in ignorance of the pronunciation of commerce with the accent on the last syllable, and printed the line,

'Where coin and commerce first he did invent.' Derrick was followed by other editors, including Scott. It is strange that the editors did not attend to the accentuation of commerce in stanza 163, where it rhymes with universe, and where there was no possibility of changing the line. Commerce is invariably so pronounced in Dryden's works, and it was the pronunciation of his time as of Shakespeare's:

'Peaceful commerce from dividable shores.'

Troilus and Cressida, Act i. Sc. 3.

Hudibras, Part iii. cant. 2, 1. 1383.

To join in marriage and commerce
And only 'mong themselves converse.'

160. 3. out of Heaven's high way. Dryden refers in his note to Virgil's extra anni solisque vias.' It is a favourite idea with Dryden.

Threnodia Augustalis, line 353,

'Out of the solar walk and Heaven's high way.'

Again, in Britannia Rediviva, 1306,

'Beyond the sunny walks and circling year.'

See the

* 164. Lowell makes the following comment on this stanza: 'I confess it interests me as an Americanism. We have hitherto been credited as

the inventors of the "jumping-off place" at the extreme western verge of the world. But Dryden was beforehand with us. Though he doubtless knew that the earth was a sphere (and perhaps that it was flattened at the poles), it was always a flat surface in his fancy. In his " Amphitryon " he makes Alcmena say:

"No, I would fly thee to the ridge of earth,

And leap the precipice to scape thy sight."

And in his "Spanish Friar " Lorenzo says to Elvira that they "will travel together to the ridge of the world, and then drop together into the

next.

165. Dryden was an early member of the Royal Society, founded immediately after the Restoration he was elected November 19, 1662.

168. 1. After the engagement of the first three days of June, which ended without decisive result, the Dutch fleet was ready and again off the English coast, a fortnight before the English had completed their repairs and preparations.

171. 1. new is the word in the first edition; now in that of 1688, which has been generally followed. Now is no improvement, and was very likely a misprint.

172. 1. Old expert Allen. Sir Thomas Allen had, at the beginning of the war, attacked in the Bay of Cadiz a large Dutch merchant squadron homeward bound from Smyrna under convoy, about forty vessels altogether, while he had only seven ships; and he had routed them and made rich prizes. Sir Thomas Allen was Vice-Admiral of the White in the fleet.

173. 1. Holmes, the Achates, &c. Sir Robert Holmes had had a fight with the Dutch off the coast of Africa, before the war began. This may be why he is called Achates. generals' is here printed instead of general's, the usual reading, as there were two generals, Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle. Holmes was Rear-Admiral of the White.

3. Cato the Censor, when he was urging the Romans, in the year before his death, to enter on the third Punic war, having lately returned from an embassy to Carthage, drew out from under his robe, one day in the senate, some Carthaginian figs, saying that they had been gathered only three days before in Carthage, so near was the enemy to Rome. Compare, in Dryden's Prologue to Amboyna, written in 1673, during the second Dutch war :

'As Cato did his Afric fruits display,

So we before your eyes their Indies lay.'

174. 1. Sir Edmund Spragge had been knighted by Charles for his bravery in the action off Lowestoft of June 3, 1665, at the beginning of the war. Spragge was killed in battle in the next Dutch war, August 11, 1672.