174. 3. Sir John Harman was captain of the 'Henry' in the battle of the first four days of June. His ship was disabled, and he refused an offer of quarter. Then three fire-ships were successively sent against his ship. She was disengaged successfully from two, each of which had set fire to her, and both fires were put out. The third fire-ship was disabled by the Henry's' guns. Harman carried his ship off, and took her into Harwich badly damaged. A yard of one of the masts fell on him and broke his leg.

175. 1. Captain, afterwards Sir Frescheville Hollis, son of Gervase Hollis, an antiquary: and this literary character of the father probably explains the singular description of Hollis's parentage. Hollis had lost an arm in the battle of June 3, 1665. He was killed fighting against the Dutch in the next Dutch war, May 28, 1672. The phrase 'on a Muse by Mars begot,' is not happy. Buckingham parodied it against Dryden in his reply to Absalom and Achitophel:

'Or more to intrigue the metaphor of man,

Got on a muse by father Publican.'

Another satirist applied the phrase to the French musical composer, Grabut, who made the music for Dryden's opera, Albion and Albanius, and whose employment by Dryden displeased the public.

'Grabut his yokemate ne'er shall be forgot

Whom the god of tunes upon a Muse begot.'

176. 1. This line is an imitation of Virgil,

'Multi praeterea quos fama obscura recondit.'

Aen. v. 302.

184. 2. host of waters. This is the reading of the first edition. In the second edition of 1688, it is hosts of waters, which is not an improvement, but which has been generally followed.

* 185. 4.

'E'en such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe begone,

Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night

And would have told him half his Troy was burned.' Shakespeare, Henry IV, Pt. ii. Act i. Sc. 1. 188. 2. linstock, a pointed stick with a fork at the end to hold a lighted match, used by gunners in firing cannon.

194. Admiral de Ruyter was the leader of the Dutch fleet. He is here compared to Terentius Varro, who commanded the Romans in the battle of Cannae, and was after defeat thanked by the Senate because he had engaged the enemy and had not despaired for the State, 'quia de republica non desperasset.'

195. 4. As larks lie dared. dared means 'thoroughly frightened,' 'scared,' and is specially applied to larks frightened by a hawk or by any object.

'Dared like a lark that, on the open plain,
Pursued and cuffed, seeks shelter now in vain.'

Conquest of Granada, Part ii. Act v. Sc. 2. 'Who leads you now then coursed like a dared lark.' Oedipus, Act i. Sc. I.

'Let his grace go forward

And dare us with his cap like larks.'

Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Act iii. Sc. 2. A hobby is a species of hawk. Andrew Marvel, in his treatise on the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, compares the English yacht firing into a Dutch fleet, when the English flag was not saluted, to a lark daring a hobby: which must sure,' he says, 'have appeared as ridiculous and unnatural as for a lark to dare the hobby.' (Marvel's Works, i. 474.)

197. 4, and Dryden's note. This battle was fought on July 25, St. James's Day.

201. This stanza is an extraordinary flight of imagination in Dryden, who represents the souls of Henry IV of France, and of William, the first Prince of Orange, repenting rebellion; Henry' disowning' hostility to Henry III, against whom he had fought to vindicate his right of succession to the throne, and William' detesting' the Dutch navy, the strength of the nation, and the means by which the Dutch independence had been achieved.

204. Immediately after the battle of the 25th of July, the English fleet sailed for the Dutch coast, and a squadron was detached, under Sir Robert Holmes, with five ships, to attack the islands of Uly and Schelling. Holmes destroyed a very large Dutch merchant fleet off Uly, only eight or nine out of one hundred and seventy escaping destruction : and he also destroyed with fire the chief town of Schelling. It was estimated that property to the value of upwards of a million sterling was destroyed.

*207. I. Some English wool. The Dutch were England's great rivals in the cloth trade, and undersold the English merchants by making slighter, cheaper, lighter cloths, more suited to foreign markets. English wool was smuggled abroad to Holland, in spite of all prohibitions of its export, and, according to English merchants, mixed there with cheap foreign wool to produce these coarse cloths.

207. 3. doom, a peculiar use of the verb. doom here means send.' The word 'destine' connects the use in this passage with the usual meaning.

209. I. unsincere. The use of sincere in the sense of pure,'' unmixed,' the meaning of the Latin sincerus, is common with Dryden and his contemporaries. See Absalom and Achitophel, 43.

'And none can boast sincere felicity.'

Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii. 897.

'Nulla est sincera voluptas

Solicitumque aliquid laetis intervenit.' Ovid, Metam. vii. 453. 215. The fire broke out on the early morning of Sunday, September 2, 1666, and raged for six days.

216. 3. All was the Night's. Probably an imitation of 'Omnia noctis erant' in a fragment of Varro, quoted by the elder Seneca in the Controversies (iii. 16):

'Omnia noctis erant, placida composta quiete.'

Dr. Johnson has made the mistake of attributing this line to Seneca himself.

*217. 1. Pepys was called up at three in the morning of Sept. 2, to see the fire, and was told by the Lieutenant of the Tower that it began that morning, in the King's baker's house in Pudding Lane. (Diary, September 6, 1666.)

223. 1. the Bridge. London Bridge; where, by old custom, the heads of those executed for treason were exhibited. There is a reference to this custom in Shakespeare's Richard III, Act iii. Sc. 2:

The princes both make high account of you; (Aside) For they account his head upon the bridge.'

The heads of Hugh Peters and others executed after the Restoration were exhibited on London Bridge

*230. An east wind had prevailed for some weeks. Evelyn describes on September 4, 'The eastern wind still more impetuously driving the flames forward,' and writes on September 5, 'It pleased God to abate the wind.' 231. A key of fire. Key, the old spelling of quay, and pronounced as we pronounce quay. Compare Cymon and Iphigenia, 612; and see note at foot of p. 240.

232. 2. The river Simois flowed into the Scamander or Xanthus, which is described by Homer as burnt up by Vulcan, defending Achilles. Scamander called Simois to his aid. (Il. xxi. 307.)

238. 3. cracks of falling houses. Crack means the loud noise of anything falling or breaking, and is the same as crash.

'The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack.'

Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act v. Sc. 1. And Shakespeare has 'the crack of doom' (Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 1). Addison's couplet, criticised by Pope, has brought the old poetical word crack into disrepute :

'Should the whole frame of nature round him break,

He unconcerned would hear the mighty crack.'

'A mighty flaw' is used by Dryden in his Threnodia Augustalis, with reference to the end of the world.

243. Dryden's account of the King's conduct on the occasion of the fire is free from flattery. Evelyn says, 'It is not indeed imaginable, how extraordinary the vigilance and activity of the King and the Duke was, even labouring in person, and being present to command, order, reward, or encourage workmen, by which he showed his affection to his people and gained theirs.' (Diary, September 6, 1666.)

* 245. ‘Now begins the practice of blowing up of houses in Tower Street, those next the Tower, which at first did frighten people more than anything; but it stopped the fire where it was done, it bringing the houses down to the ground in the same places where they stood, and then it was easy to quench what little fire was in it, though it kindled nothing almost.' (Pepys, September 4. Compare Evelyn, September 5.) 247. 1. Part stays. So in the original edition. Broughton changed stays into stay, which is preserved in most following editions, including Scott's.

250. 3. ignoble crowd.

Probably from Virgil, 'saevitque animis

ignobile vulgus' (Aen. i. 153).

251. 4. tempest. So in the original edition. tempests in edition of 1688, and in subsequent editions.

256. 2. require, used in the strict sense of the Latin requirere, 'to seek again.'

257. 4. repeat, used exactly in the meaning of the Latin repetere, 'to reseek.' So in Dryden's play of Tyrannic Love,

'I'll lead you thence to melancholy groves,

And there repeat the scenes of our past loves.' (Act iii.)
The pious Trojan so,

Neglecting for Creusa's life his own,

Repeats the danger of the burning town.'

Waller, Battle of the Summer Islands, Cant. iii. *258. The poor inhabitants were dispersed about St. George's Fields and Moorfields, as far as Highgate, and several miles in circle, some under tents, some under miserable huts and hovels, many without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or hoard, who from delicateness, riches, and easy accommodations in stately and well furnished houses, were now reduced to extreme misery and poverty.'... 'I went towards Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen 200,000 people of all ranks and degrees dispersed and lying along by their heaps of what they could save from the fire.' (Evelyn's Diary, September 5 and September 7.) 267. The Great Plague had destroyed a hundred thousand souls: it had begun in the summer of 1665, and was not quite extinct when the Great Fire desolated London in September 1666.

S

270. 1. threatnings is the word of the first edition, and the spelling of the time. In the editions of 1688 threatings is substituted, and this occurs in most editions. The modern spelling threatenings is substituted for threatnings in the text.

* 273. 2. A plan showing the part of London burnt by the fire is reproduced in Loftie's History of London, i. 359. 'The result of the five days' fire was summarily as follows:-396 acres of houses were destroyed, composing fifteen wards wholly ruined, eight others half burnt; 400 streets, 13,200 dwellings, eighty-nine churches, besides chapels, and four of the city gates.'

3. affect, seek, desire. So in Absalom and Achitophel, 178, 'affecting fame.'

'The name of great let other kings affect.'

Epilogue to Albion and Albanius. 'Viamque affectat Olympo' (Virg. Georg. iv. 562) is probably imitated. 274. 2. in dust, changed in edition of 1688 into in the dust, a decided deterioration.

275. 3. The poet's song here referred to is Waller's poem 'Upon His Majesty's repairing of St. Paul's.' Denham, in Cooper's Hill, celebrated the same poem of Waller on the repairs made by Charles I. :

'Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse, whose flight
Has bravely reached and soared above thy height,
Now shalt thou stand, though sword or time or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they thy fall conspire;
Secure whilst thee the best of poets sings,

Preserved from ruin by the best of kings.'

280. 4. give on. The words of the original editions; changed to drive on in the edition of 1688, which has been followed by subsequent editors. But give on is much better, and is a phrase of Dryden's. 'The enemy gives on, by fury led,' occurs in the Indian Emperor, Act ii. Sc. 3. Waller uses the phrase in describing the Duke of York in the naval battle of June 3, 1665:

'Where he gives on, disposing of their fates,

Terror and death on his loud cannon waits.'

281. 4. strove. Derrick changed this word to drove, and this corruption of Dryden's text has been adopted by following editors, including Scott.

284. 2. mild rain, the reading of the first and second editions, was changed to cold rain in the republication of this poem in the Miscellany Poems, 1716, and it has been so printed always since. Mild is obviously the proper epithet; cold is inconsistent with 'kindly rain.' Scott's edition has cold, the wrong word.

290. See Ezra i.-iii. for the return of the Jewish tribes from Babylon