-Pluck'd down the king, the church and the laws,

To set up an idol they nick-nam'd The Cause,

Like Bell and the Dragon, to gorge their own maws.”

V. 739. This feud by Jesuits invented] The Puritans affected an extraordinary horror of popery, and construed every thing that differed from their own discipline to be papistical. As Don Quixote took every occurrence for a romantic adventure, so our knight took every thing he saw to relate to the differences of state then contested.

V. 741-2. There is a Machiavilian plot,

Tho' ev'ry nare olfact it not.] Machiavil was secretary to the Duke of Florence, and accounted the most profound politician of his age. He wrote several treatises on government, the object of which was, to teach a prince to govern by the rules of policy rather than of justice; and, among other things, he instructed princes how to plot against their own subjects. This has made the name of Machiavil famous, or rather infamous; and hence it has become a familiar mode of expression with us, and indeed all over Europe, to designate any treacherous or unfair procedure of state, as a piece of Machiavilian policy.

-Tho' ev'ry nare olfact it not,—though every nose does not smell it, that is, though every one is not capable of perceiving it. V. 745-6. Have we not enemies plus satis,

That cane et angue pejus hate us.] Have we not enemies more than enough, that hate us worse than dogs or serpents? V. 752. In bloody cynarctomachy. Cynarctomachy signifies a fight between dogs and bears; and probably was a word coined by our poet expressly for the occasion.

V. 758. We averruncate it.] This is another crabbed word of the same kind, and means nothing else than the weeding of corn.

V. 761. They fight for no espoused cause.] Alluding to the clamours of the rebels, who falsely pretended, that their liberty, property, and privileges were in danger. For this the Puritans were justly bantered in a loyal song of the times:

"For liberty and privilege,

Religion and the king,

We fought, but oh, the golden wedge!

That is the only thing:

There lies the cream of all the cause,

Religion is but whig;

Pure privilege eats up the laws,

And cries, for king--a fig."

V. 762. Frail privilege, &c.] Warburton is of opinion, that frail'd privilege, that is, broken, violated, would have been better, since it alludes to the impeachment of the five members, which was then thought to be the highest breach of privilege, and was one of the professed causes for taking arms.

V. 766. Nor Lords nor Commons ordinances.] When Charles I. was driven from the parliament, no legal acts of parliament could be made, acts of parliament requiring the assent of the three estates of the realm: therefore, whenever the Lords and Commons, who remained assembled at Westminster, had agreed to any bill, they published it, and required obedience to it, under the title of an Ordinance of Lords and Commons, and sometimes an Ordinance of Parliament.

V. 767-8. Nor for the church, nor for church-lands,

To get them in their own no-hands.] The abuse of sequestering, and invading church livings, by a committee for that purpose, was extremely flagitious. It was so notoriously unjust and tyrannical, that even Lilly, the Sidrophel of this poem, could not forbear giving the following remarkable instance: About this time (1646) says he, "the most famous mathematician of all Europe, Mr. William Oughtred, parson of Aldbury, in Surry, was in danger of sequestration by the committee of or for plundered ministers (ambodexters as they were); several considerable articles were deposed and sworn against him, material enough to have sequestered him; but that, upon his day of hearing, I applied myself to Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, and all my own friends, who in such numbers appeared in his behalf, that though the chairman, and many other Presbyterian members, were stiff against him, yet he was cleared by the major number. The truth is, he had a considerable parsonage, and that only was enough to sequester any moderate judgment. He was also well known to affect his majesty. In these times many worthy ministers lost

their livings or benefices for not complying with the three-penny directory. Had you seen, O noble squire, what pitiful ideots were preferred into sequestered church benefices, you would have been grieved in your soul; but, when they came before the classes of divines, could these simpletons only say, they were converted by hearing such a sermon, such a lecture of that godly man Hugh Peters, Stephen Marshal, or any of that gang, he was presently admitted."

V. 669-70. Nor evil counsellors to bring

To justice, that seduce the king.] At the commencement of the rebellion, the Puritans observed some measure of decency towards the king: they did not venture openly to accuse his majesty, but blamed his servants, who were usually denominated by them "evil counsellors."

V. 773. Th' Egyptians worshipp'd dogs.] Anubis, one of the gods of the Egyptians, was worshipped under the form of a man with a dog's head. The superstition of the Egyptians is we exposed in Dryden's translation of the XV. Satire of Juvenal; "Now Egypt, mad with superstition grown, Makes gods of monsters, but too well is known: One sect devotion to Nile's serpent pays, Others to Ibis, that on serpents preys:

Where Thebes thy hundred gates lie unrepair'd,
And where maim'd Memmon's magic harp is heard;
Where these are mould'ring, let the sots combine
With pious care a monkey to enshrine:

Fish gods you'll meet, with fins and scales o'ergrown,

Diana's dogs ador'd in every town,

Her dogs have temples, but the goddess none.

"Tis mortal sin an onion to devour,

Each clove of garlic is a sacred pow'r.
Religious nation, sure and bless'd abodes,
Where ev'ry orchard is o'errun with gods.
To kill is murder, sacrilege to cat

A kid or lamb, man's flesh is lawful meat."

A superstition somewhat similar to that of the ancient Egyp tians, prevails to the present day among the modern Turks. In Constantinople, dogs are held in such high veneration, that it

is accounted unlawful to kill them; and in some quarters of the city there are actually hospitals for the reception of maimed and diseased dogs. Some writers are of opinion, that the number of dogs kept in Constantinople, is one great reason why that city is so often exposed to the ravages of the plague; and it is worthy of remark, that a sickly season among the canine race, is usually followed by a great mortality among the human species. Physiologists can best determine what degree of constitutional analogy there is between a man and dog; and perhaps the honour is reserved for some future Jenner to show, that a mild preservative against the plague may exist in some canine virus now as unknown to us as the vaccine virus was to our forefathers.

V. 775. Others ador'd a rat, &c.] The inchneumon, or water rat of the Nile. It was with some reason that the Egyptians raised the inchneumon to the rank of a deity, in as much as that animal is the most formidable enemy of the crocodiles, and prevents the increase of those ferocious monsters, by destroying their eggs. This probably was the geuine origin of the inchneumon's divinity, ship; but Dubartus, in his Divine Weeks, accounts for it otherwise.

"Thou makʼst the inchneumon, whom the Memphs adore,
To rid of poisons, Nile'e manured shore:
Altho' indeed he doth not conquer them
So much by strength, as subtle stratagem.—
So Pharaoh's rat, 'ere he begins the fray
'Gainst the blind aspic, with a cleaving clay
Upon his coat he wraps an earthen cake,
Which afterwards the sun's hot beams do bake;
Arm'd with this plaister, th' aspic he approacheth,
And in his throat his crooked tooth he broacheth;
While the other bootless strives to pierce and prick
Through the hard temper of his armour thick.
Yet knowing himself too weak, with all his wile,
Alone to match the scaly crocodile,

He with the wren his ruin doth conspire;

The wren, who seeing him press'd with sleep's desire,
Nile's pois'ny pirate, press the slimy shore,

Suddenly comes, and hopping him before,

Into his mouth he skips, his teeth he pickles,

Cleanseth his palate, and his throat so tickles,
That, charm'd with pleasure, the dull serpent gapes
Wider and wider with his ugly chaps:

Then, like a shaft, the inchneumon instantly
Into the tyrants greedy gorge doth fly,

And feeds upon that glutton, for whose riot

All Nile's fat margent could scarce furnish diet."

V. 777-8. The Indians fought for the truth

Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth.] The Indians in the island of Ceylon worshipped a monkey's tooth, which they believed belonged to a monkey named Hanumat, or with high cheek bones, who, being endowed with a portion of the divine power, could transform himself into various shapes, and of whom many surprising and ridiculous adventures are related; among others, that he commanded a numerous and intrepid army of those large monkeys which our naturalists, or some of them, have denominated Indian Satyrs. Sir William Jones very plausibly conjectures, "Might not this army of satyrs have been only a race of mountaineers, whom Hanumat, if such a person existed, had civilized. However that may be," continues hc, "the large breed of Indian apes, is at this moment held in high veneration by the Hindoos, and fed with devotion by the Brahmins, who seem, in two or three places on the banks of the Ganges, to have regular endowments for the support of them: they live in tribes of three or four hundred, are wonderfully gentle, (I speak as an eye witness), and appear to have some kind of order and surbordination in their little sylvan policy."

V. 780. Fought it out mordicus to death.] With tooth, that is, they fought as it were with tooth and nail to the last gasp.

V.786.

like boute feus.] Fire works. V. 795-6-7. We read in Nero's time the Heathen,

When they destroy'd the Christian brethren,

They sew'd them in the skins of beurs.] During the persecution of the Christians in the reign of the Emperor Nero, many Christians who would not consent to renounce their religion, were sewn in the skins of wild beasts, and baited like wild beasts, by dogs, in the ampitheatres. Balilowitz, Czar of Muscovy, used