'Like mighty missioner you come

Ad partes infidelium.'

1. 571. Industrious of the needle and the chart. A Latinism, Industrious of the common good.' (Dryden's Address to his cousin John Driden, 153.)

1. 575. This passage is levelled at the Dutch, whom Dryden accuses of denying their Christianity in order to trade in Japan, where Christians were forbidden to land.

1. 576. Dryden has been describing the marks of the Catholic Church from the Nicene Creed: And I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church.' See his marginal note at line 526. Three marks were indicated in lines 526–531. Now he gives the fourth mark, the apostolic origin.

1. 590. In St. Matthew vii. 24, 27: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,' &c.

1. 630. In the first edition the word was nine instead of seven.

1. 646. That pious Joseph in the Church beheld, &c. Dryden's marginal note explains this passage as referring to a formal renunciation recently made by the English Benedictine monks of the abbey lands which had belonged to their order before the Reformation. This was done in order to quiet the fears of proprietors and aid in restoring the Roman Catholic Religion in England.

1. 658. From Dryden's marginal note Poeta loquitur, it is to be inferred that he here describes a phenomenon seen by himself. James's 'late nocturnal victory,' must be the battle of Sedgmoor, which began on the afternoon of July 6, 1685, and was not finished till the break of day, July 7. Dryden appears to refer to an Aurora Borealis, or a display of shooting stars seen by himself on that night, but there is no other known mention of this circumstance. Mr. Hallam has erroneously explained the passage as referring to the night of the conception of James's heir, and he supposes that Dryden means that this event was announced by a stream of light from Heaven which he saw. But this explanation is impossible. James's son was born on June 10, 1688, and The Hind and the Panther was published fourteen months before, in April 1687. With line 659 compare

'A beam of comfort, like the moon through clouds,
Gilds the brown horror and directs my way.'

Love Triumphant, Act iv. Sc. I.

1. 721. Cates, provisions; contracted from an old word achates or acates,

the French achats.

The Hind and the Panther. Part III.

11. 8-11. Spenser, in his Mother Hubbard's Tale, represented Queen Elizabeth as a Lion asleep, while the Ape and the Fox, ministers of government, usurped the functions and did mischief.

The Lion sleeping lay in secret shade,

His crown and sceptre lying down beside.

And having doft for heat his dreadful hide.'

The anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's succession, November 17, was an annual festival at this time of great Protestant excitement, the Pope being always burned in effigy in the evening. Dryden describes the anti-Papist demonstrations of Queen Bess's night in his Prologue to Southerne's Loyal Brother (p. 453 of Globe Edition).

1. 19. round eternity. See note on circular, Poem on Cromwell, stanza 5. Cleaveland has 'eternity's round womb' (Poems 1659, p. 58).

'As round and full as the great circle of eternity.'

Sprat's Pindaric Ode on Cowley.

1. 21. The lion's peace proclaimed,' is James II's Declaration of Indulgence.

1. 25. frequent senate, full, well-attended senate. Frequens senatus,' is a phrase of Cicero (Epist. Fam. x. 12). Compare Milton:

The great seraphic lords and cherubim

In close recess and secret conclave sat

A thousand demi-gods on golden seats,
Frequent and full.' Paradise Lost, i. 794.

1. 42. The Panther's 'faith unshaken to an exiled heir,' is the support given by the Church of England to James when Duke of York, and forced to live away from London and threatened with exclusion from succession to the throne.

1. 85. It shows a rest of kindness to complain. Dryden uses the same sentiment in a letter to Dr. Busby in 1682, complaining of his treatment of his song at Westminster: None complain but they desire to be reconciled at the same time; there is no mild expostulation at least which does not intimate a kindness and respect in him who makes it.'

1. 96. spooms. To spoom is a nautical term applied to a ship under sail going before the wind.

1. 114. I am but few. Compare a numerous exile,' Part i. line 20.

1. 121. A German quarrel, from the French une querelle Allemande,' which means a quarrel picked without cause.

1. 143. renounces to my blood. Compare, in Dryden's marginal note, Part ii. line 648, renunciation to the abbey-lands.' This is one of Dryden's frequent Gallicisms.

1. 152. doted, foolish from age.

1. 160. The sons of latitude,' are the divines of the Church of England who were for widening its basis and for endeavouring to comprehend a large portion of the Nonconformists. Tillotson, Stillingfleet and Burnet were leaders among these. In line 187 these divines are sons of breadth,' and in line 229 broad-way sons.'

1. 194. The three steeples argent in a sable field,' is supposed to mean plurality of preferments, and Stillingfleet, who was in controversy with Dryden about the Duchess of York's paper, is supposed to be specially aimed at by Dryden.

1. 199. Bare lies with bold assertions they can face. This line means 'they can cover bare lies with a facing of bold assertions.'

1. 201. The grim logician is a retort on Stillingfleet, who had frequently applied this phrase to Dryden in his 'Vindication of the Answer to some late Papers.' The whole of this passage, ll. 198-217, is a paraphrase of sentences and arguments in Stillingfleet's Vindication.' Stillingfleet had argued strongly against the imputation on the Reformation, founded on Henry VIII's divorce and marriage, and had hotly contradicted Dryden's assertion that there was no Protestant treatise on Humility. See note on Preface, 1. 35 (p. 274).

1. 217. The Sermon in the Mount. Dryden's in has been changed by modern editors, including Scott, into on.

1. 227. Tax those of interest. To tax of is one of Dryden's many Gallicisms.

11. 247-250. This is not the only occasion on which Dryden has denounced the neglect which the author of Hudibras experienced. In a letter written by him in 1683 to Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, then First Commissioner of the Treasury, Dryden had said, in pleading for himself, ‘'Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler.' Sir Walter Scott justly observes in his note on this passage, that King Charles II and his government were much more to blame than the Church. 1. 256. But Imprimatur with a chaplain's name. Stillingfleet's pamphlets were licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury's chaplain.

11. 307-309. Dryden's charges against Stillingfleet of

reviling' and

cursing' the king are totally unfounded. Stillingfleet's two tracts contain nothing disrespectful to Charles, James, or the Duchess of York.

1. 333. Rodriguez' work. Alonzo Rodriguez, a Jesuit, wrote a work called Exerjicio de Perfection y Virtudes Cristianas,' published at Seville, 1609. This is the work which Dryden in the Preface to this poem referred to as the original of a treatise which Stillingfleet had treated as an English work on Humility: and Dryden speaks of Duncomb as the translator. The authors of the parody on The Hind and the Panther twit Dryden with inaccuracy, and say that he has mistaken Duncombe for Allen: There are

few mistakes but one may imagine how a man fell into them, and at least what he aimed at; but what likeness is there between Duncomb and Allen? Do they as much as rhyme?' (Preface to The Hind and the Panther Transversed, &c.) Scott rather strangely thinks that a sort of similarity of sound may have led to Dryden's mistake. The English translator or adapter of the work of Rodriguez is supposed to have been the Rev. Thomas Allen, rector of Kettering, Northamptonshire.

1. 427. The tale of the Swallows is a fable of the temporary prosperity of the Roman Catholics and their ultimate discomfiture here, strangely predicted by Dryden. The Swallows hold a consultation and vote a flight in view of the coming winter. The Martin joins with the young swallows in counselling the postponement of the flight, and they then resolve to stay. Scott sees in the fable a special reference to a meeting of the leading Roman Catholics in the Savoy in 1686, to consider the prospects of their religion in England, Father Petre in the chair. At this meeting the majority were for moderation, and content with security for their estates, exemption from employments, and permission for their worship in private houses. Others were for petitioning the king for leave to sell their estates and retire with their property to France. Father Petre was againt all compromise. Petre is the Martin in the fable. The gleam of sunshine which gives the Swallows hope and new life is doubtless James's Declaration of Indulgence, and the Swifts who first see the coming of spring are probably the Irish Roman Catholics. 1. 437. cheer, face, look. Dryden uses cheer in this sense twice in Palamon and Arcite.

And asked him why he looked so deadly wan,
And whence and how his change of cheer began.'

Book i. line 240.

'For Venus, like her day, will change her cheer.'

Book ii. line 83.

1. 438. And time turned up the wrong side of the year. Dryden probably had in his mind Horace's phrase,

'Simul inversum contristat Aquarius annum.'

Sat. i. I. 36.

In one of Dryden's smaller poems, A Song to a Fair Young Lady going out of Town in the Spring,' he uses a similar expression :

'And winter storms invert the year.'

1. 456. mackrel gale. Mackerel are best caught during a fresh gale of wind, which is therefore called a mackerel gale.

1. 468. But little learning needs in noble blood. Father Edward Petre, who is here contemptuously described as the Martin, was of the noble family of Petre. This account of him, put into the mouth of the Panther, yet speaks Dryden's feeling. The English Roman Catholics were divided into two parties, moderate Papists and followers of the Jesuits.

475. A raven on the left was regarded by the Romans as a sure prophet, and Dryden probably has Virgil in memory:

'Quod nisi me quacumque novas incidere lites
Ante sinistra cava monuisset ab ilice cornix,

Nec tuus hic Moeris nec viveret ipse Menalcas.'

Ecl. ix. 14.

1. 490. mad divineress. The insana vates' of Virgil, who so describes the Sibyl of Cumae, committing her prophecies to leaves.

'Insanam vatem adspicies: quae rupe sub ima

Fata canit, folisque notas et nomina mandat.' Aen. iii. 443.

1. 494. Xeλidav (Chelidon) is the Greek for a swallow.

520. Nostradamus. This general name for a prophet is derived from Michel Notre Dame, a famous French physician and prophet, who was born 1503, and died 1566.

1. 538. Of Ahaz' dial and of Joshua's day. For the former see 2 Kings xx., and for the latter Joshua x.

1. 547. Dryden says in a note that swifts are otherwise called martlets.' 1. 604. Compare with this line

'But gods meet gods, and justle in the dark.'

Dryden and Lee's Œdipus, Act iv.

are is in the

1. 611. dorp, a village; a word of Dutch origin: the English form is thorpe. 1. 637. And there his corps, unblessed, is hanging still. early editions instead of is, but this must have been a mistake.

1. 638. To show the change of winds with his prophetic bill. Scott says, It is a vulgar idea that a dead swallow, suspended in the air, intimates a change of wind by turning its bill to the point from which it is to blow.'

1. 655. The old fanatic author' who 'summed up the scandals' of the Panther's Church by centuries,' was John White, a Puritan member of the Long Parliament, who published in 1643 a work entitled 'The First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests made and admitted into Benefices by the Prelates.' No second part of the work appeared. White died in 1645. He acquired from this work the name of Century White.

1. 667. Pardalis, the Greek and Latin name for a panther, mispelt Pardelis in all the editions from the original one.

11. 690, 691. Here Dryden borrows the language which the young men advised Rehoboam to use in answer to Jeroboam, and to those who asked him to lighten his father's yoke. Thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins. And now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke; my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.' (1 Kings xii. 10, II.)

1. 733. Yet David's bench is bare. This is supposed to mean the exclusion of the Roman Catholic peers from the House of Lords, effected by the Test Act of 1678.