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her swifsness, but the mind sees the length of the wench, in the length of the arrow as it flies.

V. 103-4. But not so light as to be borne

Upon the ears of standing corn.] This is a satirical stroke upon the character of Camilla, one of Virgil's heroines, who assisted Turnus in his war against Æneas, and who is thus described in Dryden's translation of the Æneid.

"Last from the Volscians fair Camilla came,

And led her warlike troops, a warrior dame;
Unbred to spinning, in the loom unskill'd,
She chose the noble Pallas of the field.

Mix'd with the first, the fierce virago fought,
Sustain'd the toil of arms, the danger sought;
Out-stripp'd the winds in speed upon the plain,
Flew o'er the fields, nor hurt the bearded grain:
She swept the seas, and as she skipp'd along,
Her flying feet unbath'a, on billows hung.
Men, boys, and women, stupid with surprise,
Wheree'er she passes, fix their wond'ring eyes:
Longing they look, and gaping at the sight,
Devour her o'er and o'er with vast delight:
Her purple habit sits with such a grace
On her smooth shoulders, and so suits her face;
Her head with ringlets of her hair is crown'd,
And in a golden caul the curls are bound :

She shakes her myrtle javʼlin, and behind ·
Her Lycian quiver dances in the wind.”

Butler has justly avoided all such monstrous improbabilities; nor will he attribute an incredible swiftness to Trulla, though there was an absolute call for extraordinary celerity under the present circumstances; no less occasion than to save the bear, who was to be the object of all the rabble's diversion.

V. 134. First Trulla stav'd, &c.] Staving and tailing are terms of art used in the bear-garden, and signify there only the parting of dogs, and bears.

V. 137-8. The worsted bear came off with store ›

Of bloody wounds, but all before.]

Wounds before

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were always deemed honorable, and with great propriety, because they could only be received while facing the enemy. In the tragedy of Macbeth, old Siward, inquiring of his son's death, asks, "If Siward had all his wounds before?"

Roses. Ay, in the front.

Siward. Why then, God's soldier be he:

Had I as many sons as I have hairs,

I would not wish them to a fairer death;
And so his knell is knoll'd."

V. 142. All over but the Pagan heel.] An allusion to the fable of Achilles, who being dipped by his mother Thetis in the river Styx, had the whole of his body rendered invulnerable, except his heel, by which Thetis held him when she immersed him in the Styx. After having slain Hector before the walls of Troy, he was at length slain by Paris, being shot by him with a poisoned arrow in his heel.

V. 147. For as an Austrian archduke once, &c.] The story alluded to is of Albert, Archduke of Austria; brother to the Emperor Rodolph II. who was defeated by Prince Maurice of Nassau, in the year 1598. Endeavouring to encourage his soldiers in battle, he pulled off his murrion, or head-piece, upon which he received a wound by the point of a spear.

V. 152. Like scriv’ner newly crucify'd.] The crime of forgery was formerly punished with standing in the pillory, and loss of Ben Johnson banters the scriveners upon this account in the following lines:

ears.

A crop-ear'd scrivener this

Who, when he heard but the whis

Per of monies to come down,

Fright got him out of town,
With all his bills and bonds
Of other men's in his hands;
It was not he that broke
Two i' th' hundred spoke;

Nor car'd he for the curse,

He could not hear much worse,

He had his ears in his purse."

In Pinkethman and Joe Miller's Jests, there is a story of a car

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man who had much ado to pass with a load of cheese at Temple Bar, where a stop was occasioned by a man's standing in the pillory. He, riding up close, asked "what it was that was written over the person's head?" They told him it was a paper to signify his crime, that he stood for forgery. 'Ay," said he, "what is forgery?" They answered him, that it was counterfeiting another's hand with an intent to cheat people. To which the carman replied, looking at the offender; "Ah! pox, this comes of your writing and reading, you silly dog."

V. 153-4. Or like the late corrected leathern

Ears of the circumcised brethren.] Our poet here alludes to Pryn, Bastwick, and Burton, who had their ears cut off for their seditious writings. A merry satirist, in the reign of King James I. having composed some severe lines against the court, the work was brought to the King; and, as the passages were reading before him, he often said, "that if there were no more men in England, the rogue should hang for it:" at last, being come to the conclusion, which was, (after all his railing,)

66

Now, God preserve the king, the queen, and peers,
And grant the author long may wear his ears ;"

this pleased his majesty so well, that he broke out into a laughter, and said, "by my soul so thou shalt for me; thou art a bitter, but thou art a witty knave."

In the collection of loyal songs, reprinted 1731, there are the following lines:

"When your Smectymnus surplice wears,

Or tippet on his shoulders bears,

Rags of the whore;

When Burton, Pryn, and Bastwick dares,

With your good leave but show their ears,

They'll ask no more."

V. 184. Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas.] A beautiful youth, the servant of Hercules, who was drowned in the river Ascanius, and whose loss was exceedingly lamented by Hercules.

V. 192 Than in small poets splay-foot rhymes.] Warburton, in a note upon this passage, says, "that our poet, in this place, seems to sneer at Sir Philip Sidney, who, in his Arcadia, has a long poem between the speaker and Echo." Why he calls the verses splay

foot, may be seen from the following example, taken from the poem:

"Fair rocks, goodly rivers, sweet woods, when shall I see peace?—Peace, peace!—What barrs my tongue? who is it that comes me so nigh?-I-Oh! I do know what guest I have met; it is Echo-'tis Echo.

"Well met, Echo; approach, then tell me thy will too-I will 100."

Euripides, in his Andromeda, a tragedy now lost, had a foolish scene of the same kind, which Aristophanes makes sport with in his Feast of Ceres.

V. 255-6. For my part, it shall ne'er be said,

I for the washing gave my head.] This phrase is used by Beaumont and Fletcher, Cupid's Revenge, act iv. where the citizens are talking that Lencippus was to be put to death. "1st Cit. It holds, he dies this morning,

2d Cit. Then happy man be his fortune.

1st Cit. And so am I and forty more good fellows, that will not give their heads for the washing, I take it." It is imitated by the writer of the second part, that was spurious.

"On Agnes' eve they'd strictly fast,

And dream of those that kiss'd them last;

Or on Saint Quintin's watch all night

With smock hung up for lover's sight;

Some of the laundry were (no flashing)

That would not give their heads for washing."

"A

V. 270. To pull the devil by the beard.] The being pulled by the beard in Spain is deemed as dishonorable as being kicked on the seat of honor in England. Don Sebastian de Cobarruvias, in his Treasury of the Italian Tongue, observes, that no man can do the Spaniards a greater disgrace than by pulling them by the beard; and in proof gives the following romantic account. noble gentleman of that nation dying, (his name Cid Rai Dios,) a Jew, who hated him much in his life time, stole privately into the room where his body was newly laid out, and thinking to do what he never durst while he was living, stooped down to pluck him by the beard; at which the body started up, and drawing his

sword, which lay by him half way out, put the Jew into such a fright, that he run out of the room as if a thousand devils had been left behind him. This being done, the body lay down as before unto rest, and the Jew after that turned Christian."

V. 311-2. By Cupid made, who took his stand

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Upon a widow's jointure-land.] We are here introduced to the Knight's mistress. The Spectator (No. 812) observes, that Cupid aimed well for the Knight's circumstances: for, in Walker's History of Independency, it is observed that the Knight's father, Sir Oliver Luke, was decayed in his estate, and so made colonel of horse; but we are still ignorant how much his hopeful son (the hero of this poem) advanced it by his beneficial places of colonel, committee-man, justice, scout-master, and governor of Newport-pagnel. He sighs for his widow's jointure, which was two hundred pounds a year: but very unluckily met with fatal obstacles in the course of his amours; for she was a mere coquet, and, what was worse for one of the Knight's principles, a royalist. -Sir Roger L'Estrange says, that she was the widow of one Wilmot, an independent; but this must be a mistake, for Butler, who certainly knew her, observes, that her name was Tomson, and, in his poem entitled Hudibras Elegy, thus humorously expatiates upon our Knight's unsuccessful amour:

“Ill has he read, that never heard

How he with widow Tomson far'd;

And what hard conflict was between

Our Knight and that insulting queen:

Sure captive Knight ne'er took more pains

For rhymes for his melodious strains;

Nor bet his brains, nor made more faces,

To get into a jilt's good graces,

Than did Sir Hudibras to get

Into this subtle gipsey's net."

All which is agreeable to her behaviour in this poem; and it is further hinted in the Elegy, that she was of a loose and common character, and yet continued inexorable to the Knight, and, in short, was the cause of his death.

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Had almost brought him off his legs.] It was a vulgar

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