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I can not quit this subject without again adverting to Zephyrinus. He was a perfect martinet in ecclesiastical ceremonies, and busied himself not a little in adding to the external pomp and show of his Church, matters in which he appears to have taken a singular delight. Before his time the sacramental cup had been of wood, but he ordained that it should be made of glass, and subsequent popes improved upon his arrangement, forbidding the use of either material; it was not to be of wood, on account of the rarity of the sacrament; nor of glass, because of its fragility; nor of any common metal, because of the bad flavour thus communicated; but of gold, or silver, or of tin, as appears from the canons promulgated by the Councils of Rheims and Tribur.*

Kichel Cake." Kichell, a cake, which Horace calleth libum, and with us is called a God's Kichell, because godfathers and godmothers used commonly to give one of them to their god-children when they asked blessing. This word is in the Sompnour's Tale."‡

and that the pamphlet was really printed in London. If any reader is at all curious to learn how mild and decent a bishop can be, he should turn to some of this writer's pamphlets; Billingsgate may match, but it cannot surpass, the rabid coarseness of the prelate.

* "Statuit item ut consecratio divini sanguinis in vitreo vase, non autem in ligneo ut antea fuit. Hæc quoque institutio sequentibus temporibus immutata est. Vetitum enim est ut neque in ligneo fieret propter raritatem quâ sacramentum imbibitur; neque in vitreo, propter fragilitatem; neque ex metallo ob tetrum saporem quem inde concipit; sed fieri voluere ex auro, argentove, aut ex stanno, ut in Triburiensi (i. e. Tribur between Menz and Oppenheim) et Remensi Concilio scriptum apparet." PLATINA DE VITIS PONTIFICUMZephyrinus, p. 20. 4to. Venetiis; 1562.

folio.

"Utque sacerdotis fugitivus liba recuso."

Q. Horatii Flacci Epist. Lib. i. Epist. x. v. 10. AUBREY'S REMAINS OF GENTILISME AND JUDAISME, p. 103. MS. Bibl. Lansdowniana. Num. 231-77, c.-Brit. Museum. The following is, I suppose, the passage alluded to by Aubrey, though in his usual careless way he has given no reference;

I must confess myself however, unable to perceive the resemblance of the libum to the kichell-cake of our ancestors, unless it is that Aubrey means to say they are alike in composition, no very probable assertion. Their purposes are totally different, the liba being cakes offered to Bacchus, Ceres, Pan, &c., and devoured by the priests and their servants. They were made, according to the best authorities of flour, oil, and honey, which I should hardly think was the case with the kichell-cakes, and were offered up in such abundance that the servants of the priests grew as tired of them as the Scotch Highlanders are said to be of salmon. Hence the simile of Horace, and his crying out for bread instead of honey-cakes.*

The Nine Worthies.-The Nine Worthies belong to poetry, and to that class of history, which without exactly ceasing to be fabulous yet verges on the real. Our old dramatists are frequent in their allusions to them.

and Fletcher a boaster says,

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Thus in Beaumont

That you have dealt with me, they'll give you out
For one of the Nine Worthies." +

"Yeve us a bushel whete, or malt, or reye,

A Goddes kichel, or a trippe of chese."

v. 7328.

i.e."Give us a bushel of wheat, or malt, or rye, a God's kichel, or a small bit of cheese." The explanation of the word, given by Aubrey, is also in Speght's edition of Chaucer. It is however denied,—and I think with great justice, by Tyrwhitt, who says that the phrase is French. The addition of God would indeed seem to have been common among the pious rustics, when speaking of many other things; as, un bel ecu de Dieu," Ice pouvre enfant de Dieu," une benite aumone de Dieu," all of which phrases are in fact Hebraisms.

66

99.66

93 66

As

to the derivation of kichell, of which neither Aubrey nor Tyrwhitt have said a word, it is from the German diminutive KüCHELCHEN, (pronounced kichelchen) i.e. "a little cake.

"Pane egeo, jam mellitis potiore placentis."

Q. Horatii Flacci Epist. Lib. i. Epist. x. v. 10. THIERRY AND THEODORET. Act ii. sc. iv.

VOL. II,

Q

These Worthies were in general, but not always, considered to be prefigured by Joshua, Judas Maccabæus, and David, for the Jews-Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Cæsar, for the classic times-Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon, and King Arthur, for the days of chivalry. We find them all mentioned in Middleton's Masque of The World Tost at Tennis.

"Leave awhile your Thespian springs,
And usher in those more than kings;
We call them Worthies, 'tis their due;

Though long time dead, they live by you.

Enter at three several doors the NINE WORTHIES, three after three, whom, as they enter, Pallas describes.

These three were Hebrews;

This noble duke* was he at whose command

Hyperion rein'd his fiery coursers in
And fixed stood o'er Mount Gilboa;
This Mattathias' son,† the Maccabee,

Under whose arm no less than worthies fell;
This the most sweet and sacred psalmograph
This§ of another sort, of much less knowledge,
Little less valour, a Macedonian born,

Whom afterward the world could scarcely bear

For his great weight in conquest;|| this, Troy's best

soldier;

The noble Duke is Joshua, and the allusion, I need hardly say, is to his having caused the sun to stand still upon Gibeon. The word Duke is here used in its old meaning of Dux, a leader, from which it is derived.

i. e. Judas Maccabeus.

i. e. David.

§ In Dyce's edition it is, these. Wherever it is possible for him to blunder, he is sure to do so, and yet there are people mean enough, or ignorant enough, to bedaub him with their worthless praise, and almost put him on a level with Gifford. Well and wisely says the old proverb, "asinus asinum fricat."

i. e. Alexander the Great.

i. e. Hector.

This, Rome's first Cæsar; these three of latter times
And to the present more familiar;

Great Charles of France it and the brave Bulloin
Duke ;

And this is Britain's glory,§ king'd thirteen times."||

I have already observed that this, though the usual, was not the invariable, way of nominating the worthies. Flattery would sometimes turn out a hero from his niche, and exalt into his place an individual of much inferior reputation. Perhaps the worst instance of the kind is the elevation of the bloated and heartless tyrant, Henry the Eighth, into a worthy. Sometimes too the caprice of poets or romancers would displace one of these legitimates for the sake of a favourite knight, though on such occasions the change was the less objectionable, as the substitutes were generally proper men enough. In a manuscript in the British Museum, we find "Sir Guy of Warwickk," superseding Godfrey of Boulogne, the said manuscript giving us the armorial bearings of the worthies, a great improvement upon our previous knowledge of heraldry.**

The ladies also had their worthies, and we find them recorded by Chaucer. According to him they wereQuene Sinope; Ladie Hippolyte; Ladie Deiphile; Ladie Teuca; Quene Penthesilea; Quene Thamyries; Ladie Lampede; Quene Semiramis; and Ladie Menalippe. As this goodly troop is for the most part made up of strangers, it may not be amiss to hear what the old poet himself has to say for his Lady-Worthies, and the rather as, with

* i. e. Julius Cæsar.

i. e. Charlemagne.

i. e. Godfrey of Boulogne.

§ i. e. King Arthur.

The WORKS OF THOMAS MIDDLETON. Vol. v. p. 177.-The World Tost at Tennis.

See the Introduction to STRUTT'S SPORTS AND PASTIMES, p. 27. ** MS. p. 7, No. 2220. Harleian Catalogue.

the exception of his CANTERBURY TALES, his works are too much neglected now-a-days.

Quene Sinope.*

Profulgent in preciousnes, O Sinope the quene,

Of all feminine berynge the sceptir and regalie,

Subduyng the large countrie of Armenie as it was sene,
For maugre their mightis thou ybrought them for to applie
Thin honor to encresin, and thy power to magnifie.

O most renoumid Hercules, with al thy pompous boste
This princes toke the prisonir and put to flighter thine hoste

Ladie Hippolyte.‡

Yet Hercules wexed red for shame when I spake of Hippolyt,
Chief patrones and captain of the peple of Sinope,

Which with her amorous chere and with coragious might
She smote the unto the ground for all thy cruiltie;
Wherefore the Dukeship of Diamedes and dignitie
Unto her grete laude and glorie perpetuall

Attributid by all is with triumphe laureall.

Ladie Deiphile.§

The most noble triumphe of this Ladie Deiphile
In releve and succor of the gret Duke of Athenis;
She chastisid and brought into perpetual exile

The aureat citizeinis of the mightie Thebis;

The stronge brasin pilliris there had no reles,

But she with her sister, Argife, them doune did cast
And with furious fire the cite ybrent at last.

Ladie Teuca.

O pulchrior sole|| in beautie and full ylucident,

Of all feminine creturis the most formous¶ flour

* A mythological daughter of the Esopus, by Methone.

† Urry reads in his edition, fighte, evidently a typographical blunder. HIPFOLITE is only another name for ANTIOPE, the queen of the

Amazons.

§ Deipyle, rather-the wife of Tydeus and mother of Diomedes ; she was also the daughter of Adrastus.

| i. e. "O brighter than the sun." Chaucer here drags in, with no very good taste, a phrase from the Latin.

Ti.e. FORMOSE, beautiful, an obsolete word from the Latin, formoOf the lady herself I never heard before.

sus.

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