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, 11. 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 'cursing' the king are totally unfounded.

Stillingfleet of reviling' and
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,

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.

1. 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. Xelidar (Chelidon) is the Greek for a swallow.

1. 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 Edipus, 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.

1. 749. sterve. Sterve is retained here as printed by Dryden. But starve is more commonly printed in Dryden's original editions, and starve is printed in line 975, where it rhymes with serve. Serve and deserve were, however, pronounced at that time sarve and desarve. The word is printed sterve in one of Dryden's Prologues to the University of Oxford, 1681 (Globe Edition, P. 451):

'How ill soe'er our action may deserve,

Oxford's a place where wit can never sterve.'

11. 754, 755. Tobias drove away the evil spirit which haunted his bride Raguel by fumigation (Tobit viii. 1–3). And when they had supped, they brought Tobias in unto her. And as he went, he remembered the words of Raphael, and took the ashes of the perfumes, and put the heart and the liver of the fish thereupon, and made a smoke therewith. The which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him.'

1. 759. A misprint in this line of but for butt was in the original edition, and has been perpetuated by editors, who have one after the other printed it without any attempt to explain or correct it. The but and peace' is perfectly unintelligible. The butt and peace' is a reference to Dryden's Tempest, where the butt plays a great part in a contention of Trinculo with Stephano and Ventoso. Stephano desires permission to drink from the butt before he returns to deliberate on the terms offered by Trinculo. That,' says Trinculo, I refuse, till acts of hostility be ceased. Then rogues are rather spies than ambassadors. I must take heed of my butt.' Stephano returns with his friends Ventoso and Mustacho, and the following conversation takes place :

6

'Vent. Duke Trinculo, we have considered.
Trin. Peace or war?
Must.

Peace and the butt.'

Act iv. Sc. 3.

I am not aware of any other writer using this phrase, but Dryden treats it as if it were well known. He uses it again in his Prologues to The Mistakes (p. 473 of the Globe Edition):

'Peace and the butt is all our business here.'

1. 767. This refers to Aeneas and Latinus in Book vii. of the Aeneid. 1. 818. O Proteus Conscience, never to be tied! Compare

Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo?'

Horace, Epist. i. I. 90. 11. 823, 824. Immortal powers the term of Conscience know. But Interest is her name with men below.

An imitation of Homer:

Ὃν Βριάρεων καλέουσι θεοὶ, ἄνδρες δέ τε πάντες
Αἰγαίων.

Iliad, i. 403.
U

1. 862. reprise, for 'reprisal'; so used elsewhere by Dryden. But Dryden also uses reprise as the French reprise :

Disease, despair, and death as three reprises bold.'
Britannia Rediviva, 231.

II. 876-880. These lines refer to James II's open support and aid given to the French Protestant refugees. Bishop Burnet thus speaks of James's decided measures and language about the persecution of the Huguenots by Louis XIV. Though all endeavours were used to lessen the clamour this had raised, yet the King did not stick openly to condemn it as both unchristian and unpolitic. He took pains to clear the Jesuits of it, and laid the blame of it chiefly on the King, on Madame de Maintenon, and the Archbishop of Paris. He spoke often of it with such vehemence, that there seemed to be an affectation in it. He did more. He was very kind to the refugees. He was liberal to many of them. He ordered a brief for a charitable collection over the nation for them all; upon which great sums were sent in. They were deposited in good hands, and well distributed. The King also ordered them to be denised without paying fees, and gave them great immunities. So that in all there came over, first to last, between forty and fifty thousand of that nation.' (Hist. of Own Times, i. 664.)

1. 906. Here begins the fable of the Pigeons and the Buzzard, the second episode of the poem. The Buzzard is Dr. Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, whom the pigeons or doves, the clergy of the Church of England, choose for their king. The 'plain good man, whose name is understood,' is James II.

1. 941. the fabric where he prayed is James II's Roman Catholic chapel at Whitehall.

1. 946. A sort of Doves. sort means 'number.'

'As when a sort of wolves infect the night

With their wild howlings at fair Cynthia's light.'

Waller's Poems, p. 314, ed. 1705.

1. 975. Here starved is printed in the original and early editions, though rhyming with served. See note on line 749, where it is sterved, rhyming with deserved.

1. 991. crops impure: crops, which is the word of the original editions, was changed by Broughton into corps, and this has been copied by succeeding editors, who print corpse, as Scott. Corpse, singular, is clearly inappropriate. Crops is evidently the right word.

1. 995. his poor domestic poultry. James II's Roman Catholic priests. 1. 1006. The bird that warned St. Peter of his fall. The cock,' says Scott, is made an emblem of the regular clergy of Rome, on account of their nocturnal devotions and matins.'

1. 1024. And sister Partlett, with her hooded head: this is the nun.