The apostrophe decides the plural of epoche, from the Greek Toxý.
'Howe'er, since we're delivered, let there be
From this flood too another epochee.'

Cleaveland, Poems, &c., 1660, p. 20. 1. III. too too. This double too, very common in old writers, is rare in Charles the Second's reign. It does not occur again in Dryden, but it is in Lord Mulgrave's Essay on Satire, which has been often erroneously ascribed to Dryden, said to be written in 1675:

Till the shrewd fool by thriving too too fast.'

It is to be found in Hudibras :

'But Mart was too too politic.' Part ii. cant. 3. 158.

It occurs in Shakespeare:

'What, must I hold a candle to my shames?

They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light.'

Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 6.

1. 115. who is wrongly replaced by which in modern editions, including Scott's.

1. 119. strows; printed strowes in the edition of 1661, strows in that of 1668. Strew is a common spelling in Dryden; but strows rhymes with owes. Scott has wrongly printed strews. In the translation of the Sixth Aeneid strew rhymes with yew:

The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew,

And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew.

There are similar variations of spelling for rhyme in Dryden, with show and shew, choose and chuse. See notes on Poem on Cromwell, stanza 57, and on Absalom and Achitophel, line 527.

1. 121. Portunus was the protector of harbours in Roman mythology, and was invoked always for a happy return from a voyage. Dryden introduces him also in his address to the Duchess of Ormond prefixed to Palamon and Arcite, as helping to speed the passage of the Duchess across the Channel to Ireland:

'Portunus took his turn, whose ample hand

Heaved up the lightened keel and sunk the sand.'

This is an obvious imitation of Virgil:

'Et pater ipse manu magna Portunus euntem

Impulit.'

Aen. v. 241.

1. 122. the is wrongly replaced by ye, with a comma before it, in modern editions, including Scott's.

1. 144. As Heaven it self is took by violence. This idea is probably from St. Matthew xi. 12: 'And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' Compare Pope, Imitation of Horace, ii. 1. 240:

And Heaven is won by violence of song.'

In the preceding line,

'Which stormed the skies and ravished Charles from thence,' Dryden probably had in his mind also the expulsion of Jupiter and the gods from heaven by the Titans, referred to in line 36, and again in Threnodia Augustalis, on the subject of prayers for Charles the Second's recovery: 'So great a throng not Heaven itself could bar,

'Twas almost borne by force, as in the giant's war.'

1. 148. travellour, so spelt in first edition, rhyming with hour; in second edition of 1688 spelt travellor. Elsewhere spelt traveller, as in Religio Laici, where traveller rhymes with star. travellour is printed in the early editions of Oedipus, Act iii. Sc. 1.

11. 148-150. The construction here is ungrammatical. There is a similar wrong construction with like in Palamon and Arcite, Bk. i. 339. Palamon, speaking of himself and Arcite hopelessly striving for Emily:

And both are mad alike, since neither can possess:
Both hopeless to be ransomed, never more

To see the sun but as he passes o'er;

Like sop's hounds contending for the bone,
Each pleaded right and would be lord alone;
The fruitless fight continued all the day,

A cur came by and snatched the prize away.'

·

This passage was misunderstood by John Warton, who thinks that Palamon ceases to speak with the line ending with o'er, and that then Dryden begins to speak in his own person, Like Æsop's hounds' &c.; and this line is wrongly made to begin a new paragraph in the Wartons' edition, as well as in Scott. 1. 154. This idea of leaning from the stars is a favourite with Dryden : The gods came downward to behold the wars,

Sharpening their sights and leaning from their stars.'

1. 162. Like gold that chymists make.

Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii. 442.

'I'm tired of waiting for this chymic gold

Which fools us young and beggars us when old.'

Aurengzebe, Act iv. Sc. I.

1. 164. In most editions there is a stop at the end of this line; in Scott's, for instance, a note of exclamation. But this is wrong. The meaning is that Monk's task was to be what God ordained as the charge of muscles, &c., to dispense spirits through viewless conduits.

1. 173. This simile of the stomach and the food is used again by Dryden in his Dedication of The Rival Ladies, printed in 1664: As the stomach makes the best concoction when it strictly embraces the nourishment, and takes account of every little particle as it passes through.'

1. 180. scape. It is always scape in the original editions from first to last, never 'scape or escape.

1. 182. The two occasions referred to in this line are Cromwell's ejection of the remnant of the Long Parliament in April 1659, and Lambert's violent interruption of its sitting in October, 1659, after it had been restored by the republicans and military chiefs acting together on Richard Cromwell's deposition.

11. 195-198. These lines contain a reference to the story of Salmoneus, king of Elis, son of Aeolus, who excited the wrath of Jupiter by driving his chariot over a brazen bridge and flinging burning torches around him, to make it seem that he could make thunder and lightning, and so to induce his subjects to regard and treat him as a god. See Virgil, Aen. vi. 585: Vidi et crudeles dantem Salmonea poenas,

Dum flammas Jovis et sonitus imitatur Olympi.'

1. 201. Lodovico Sforza, who murdered his nephew Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, and usurped his dukedom, and after a course of very successful intrigues, was in 1499 driven from Italy by Louis XII of France, and ultimately died a prisoner in France in 1508.

1. 203. fogue, from the French fougue, fury; the word thus Anglicised. The editors have all printed fougue. Dr. Johnson has said of Dryden, ‘He had a vanity, unworthy of his abilities, to show, as may be suspected, the rank of the company with whom he lived, by the use of French words, which had then crept into conversation; such as fraicheur for "coolness,” fougue for "turbulence," and a few more, none of which the language has incorporated or retained.' Fraischeur occurs in Dryden's Poem on the Coronation, line 102. But Johnson is probably wrong in assigning vanity as Dryden's motive: these French words which have not been retained in our language were not more strange then than others used by him, which have remained in use and do not sound strange to us.

Scott has

1. 208. And glass-like clearness mixed with frailty bore. printed glass-like between two commas. Glass-like may be understood, as Scott understood it, as agreeing with we of the preceding line, or as agreeing with clearness. Shakespeare has expressed that glass is fragile as well as reflective:

'Angelo.

Nay, women are frail too.

Isabel. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves,

Which are as easy broke as they make forms.'

Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 4.

The sense is better if glass-like is understood as applying to both clearness and frailty.

1. 224. lowered, pronounced as of one syllable; lowr'd in original editions. 1. 225. Standard. Standart in original editions. The royal standard is meant. Most editors have wrongly printed Standards.' Scott prints 'Standart,' following here the old spelling.

1. 230. The ship 'Naseby,' in which Charles embarked from Dover,

received from him, as he was on the point of starting, the name 'Royal Charles.'

11. 234, 235. The Duke of York, afterwards James II, came over in the 'London,' and the Duke of Gloucester in the 'Swiftsure.' The Duke of Gloucester died in September, 1660.

'The Swiftsure groans beneath great Gloucester's weight'

is an imitation of Virgil's description of the great Aeneas, ingens Aeneas,' in Charon's bark, Aen. vi. 412:

'Simul accipit alveo

'Ingentem Aenean. Gemuit sub pondere cymba.'

1. 249. submitted fasces. From Livy, 'submissis fascibus.' Publius Valerius, consul, called the Roman people together to vindicate himself from false accusations, and he made the lictors who preceded him with the fasces, the emblems of his consular rank, lower them in recognition of the people's superior power. Submissis fascibus in concionem escendit' (Livy, ii. 7). 11. 261-265. See Exodus xxxiii. and xxxiv.

1. 288. A star appeared at noon on the day of Charles the Second's birth, May 29, 1630, as the king his father was proceeding to St. Paul's to give thanks to God for the event. Charles II entered London, when restored to his throne, on his birthday; and Dryden here ascribes renewed force to the star which had been observed on the day of his birth thirty years before. There is nothing to support Scott's unnecessary conjecture that the same star was again visible on May 29, 1660. Cowley and Waller both refer to the star in such a manner as to show that it is only from its appearance on the actual day of Charles's birth that good effect is inferred:

'No star amongst ye all did, I believe,

Such vigorous assistance give

As that which, thirty years ago,
At Charles his birth, did, in despite
Of the proud sun's meridian light,
His future glories and this year foreshow
No less effects than these we may

Be assured of from that powerful ray

Which could outface the sun and overcome the day.'

Cowley's Ode on the Restoration.

'His thoughts rise higher when he does reflect
Of what the world may from that star expect,
Which at his birth appeared to let us see
Day for his sake would with the night agree.'

Waller's Poeni on St. James's Park. Dryden refers again to this star presiding over Charles's birth in Annus Mirabilis, stanza 18. It is mentioned by Herrick in his Pastoral upon the Birth of King Charles :

And that his birth should be more singular,

At noon of day was seen a silver star,

Bright as the wise men's torch, which guided them

To God's sweet babe, when born at Bethlehem.'

Lilly the astrologer declared the star to be the planet Venus; and he was doubtless right. Derrick mentions that Venus was similarly seen by day in 1757. It was lately so seen in May 1868.

1. 292. Time's whiter series. 'White' used to mean 'fortunate,' is a Latinism. The line probably is an imitation of Silius Italicus (xv. 53): 'Sed current albusque dies horaeque serenae.'

Herrick uses 'white' in this sense frequently in the Hesperides; as,

and again,

'Adversity trusts none, but only such

Whom whitest Fortune dandled has too much.'

'They were discreetly made with white success.'

1. 310. The allusion to France's fear of an exile is either to the ready acquiescence of France in Charles's departure from Paris to take up his residence at Cologne in 1656, or more probably perhaps to the dislike more recently shown by Cardinal Mazarin to Charles's visit to Fuentarabia in the autumn of 1659, when the treaty of the Pyrenees was being negotiated. 1. 317. your life and blest example wins. The verb is singular, following the singular number of the noun immediately before it, a common construction of the time. In Threnodia Augustalis, 189, Dryden wrote

'Death and despair was in their looks.'

Scott, following Derrick, has changed wins, and sins of the preceding line, which makes the rhyme, into win and sin; an unnecessary and improper change. See also The Hind and the Panther, Part ii. 92,

'Obliged to laws which Prince and Senate gives.'

Annus Mirabilis.

Dedication.

P. 23, 1. 6. so is it, unnecessarily changed by most editors, including Scott,

into so it is.

P. 24, 1. 18. so is, changed by the editors unnecessarily into so it is.

Account of the Poem.

P. 25, 1. 10. The play which Dryden asked Sir R. Howard to read for him was probably The Maiden Queen, which was brought out on the stage early in 1667, on the re-opening of the theatres after the Plague and Fire.