University of Virginia Library

NOTES.

Is this assumption by Thalestris of a Polish nationality, a covert satire on the followers of Lord Shaftesbury? It will be enough to refer here to Dryden's poem, “The Medal.”

Sir Thomas Browne's words are, “Nor is it [the Lamprey] only singular in this formation, but also in many other; as in defect of bones, whereof it hath not one, and for the spine or backbone, a cartilaginous substance, &c.” (Works, ed. 1852, vol. I., p. 317.)

See Erskine's “Institutes of the Law of Scotland” (Edin., 1838, vol. II., p. 1095.) It is there stated that the party guilty of forestalling and regrating was liable to a penalty of £40 Scots for the first offence; 100 merks for the second; and for the third, to suffer “escheat of his moveables, &c.”

Samuel Rowlands, in his “Hvmors Looking Glasse,” 1608 (Hunterian Club reprint, p. 21) alludes to a like custom—
They drinke to healthes deuoutly on their knees. Also in Dekker's “Honest Whore” (Dodsley's O. P., ed. 1825, vol. III., p. 402); and in Nash's “Summer's Last Will and Testament” (Dodsley's O. P., ed. 1825, vol. IX., p. 50.)

This allusion to The Woollen Act, which came into operation on the 1st August, 1678, to some extent fixes the date of the play.

“See,” Mr. Collier says, “‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ A. III., Sc. 2, on the words, ‘She shall be buried with her face upwards.’ The passage in this play shews that suicides were buried with the face downwards.”

A Shakespearian word, used several times by Sir Thomas Browne (Works, ed. 1852, vol. I., pp. 336 & 351; vol. III., p. 137.)

In Samuel Rowlands' “Looke to it: For, Ile Stabbe ye,” 1604 (Hunterian Club reprint, p. 26) we have

You that an Almanacke still beare about,
To search and finde the rainy weather out.

And in Massinger's “Guardian” (Act I., Sc. I)—

I do not carry
An Almanack in my bones to pre-declare
What weather we shall have.

Evidently the allusion is to Richard Brome's play, “A Jovial Crew; or the Merry Beggars,” acted in 1641, and first published in 1652. (Dodsley's O. P., ed. 1825, vol. X., p. 269.)

In Thomas Killegrew's “The Parson's Wedding” (Dodsley's O. P., ed. 1825, vol. XI., p. 471) we have

I was advising her to be divorc'd, and marry the man in the almanack: 'twould be fine pastime for her to lick him whole.

No doubt the Trimmers, so vigorously described by Dryden:—

Damned neuters, in their middle way of steering,
Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red-herring.

An unmistakable allusion to the fire of London in 1666.

Hume, under date 1681, writes in regard to Fitz-Harris's case, “This was no less than the fifteenth false plot, or sham-plot, as they were then called, with which the court, it was imagined, had endeavoured to load their adversaries.”

Sir Thomas Browne, in an undated letter to Mr. Elias Ashmole (Works, ed. 1852, vol. III., p. 530) relating a conversation he had with Dr. Arthur Dee, goes on to say:— “I have heard the Dr. saye that hee lived in Bohemia with his father, both at Prague and other parts of Bohemia. The Prince or Count Rosenberg was their great patron, who delighted much in alchymie; I have often heard him affirme, and sometimes with oaths, that hee had seen projection made and trasmutation of pewter dishes and flaggons into sylver, which the goldsmiths at Prague bought of them. And that Count Rosenberg playd at quaits with silver quaits made by projection as before; that this transmutation was made by a powder they had, which was found in some old place, &c.”

Sir Thomas Browne makes a similar remark (Works, ed. 1852, vol. I., p. 314) “And because darkness was before light, the Egyptians worshipped the same.”

See Sir Thomas Browne's Works (ed. 1852, vol. I., p. 305.)

Sir Thomas Browne says (Works, ed. 1852, vol. III., p. 30) “To be gnawed out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations, escaped in burning burials.”

See Sir Thomas Browne's Works (ed. 1852, vol. I., p. 240.)

There can be little doubt that this allusion is to the Jury which ignored the bill against Shaftesbury in 1681. Mr. Christie, in his “Life of Lord Shaftesbury” (vol. II., p. 425) relates that “the grand jury retired to consider the evidence, and rejected the indictment. The foreman wrote Ignoramus on the back of the bill.”

Hume records “that in the invectives of that age [Cromwell] is often stigmatized with the name of the brewer.” In Mr. Huth's volume of “Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, 1584–1700” (8vo., 1870) there is a poem entitled “The Parliament, 1657,” in which the following lines occur:—

And in Mr. Collier's reprint of “An Antidote to Purge Melancholy,” 1661, we have “The Brewer. A ballad made in the year 1657,” in which the allusions to Cromwell are most marked.

Compare a passage by Sir Thomas Browne (Works, ed. 1852, vol. III., p. 143.) “Think not thy time short in this world, since the world itself is not long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it and may be after it.”

Mr. Collier, in a note to Thomas Heywood's “The Royal King, and the Loyal Subject” (Shakes. Soc., p. 89) remarks, “The placing of a cross upon the doors of houses, the inhabitants of which were infected with the plague, is alluded to by various old writers: it was often accompanied with the words, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us.’”

The new digester was invented by a Frenchman named Papin, who exhibited his method before the Royal Society on 22d May, 1679, and published a work on the subject in 1681. Sir Thomas Browne refers to it (Works, ed. 1852, vol. III., p. 458)—“According to such a kind of way as in that which is called, the philosophicall calcination of hartshorne, made by the steeme of water, which makes the hartshorne white and soft, and easily pulverisable; and it is to bee had at some apothecaries and chymists; and whether a fish boyled in the steeme of water will not have the bones soft, I have not tried, &c.”

See Sir Thomas Browne's Works (ed. 1852, vol. I., p. 294)

Hume informs us that the Quakers derided the holiness of churches, “and they would give to these sacred edifices no other appellation than that of shops or steeple-houses.” In a ballad entitled, “A Psalm of Mercy,” [Jan. 26, 1660,] (Pol. Bal. Percy Soc.) occur the following lines:—

The steeple-house lands are ours,
Kings, queens, delinquents too, &c., &c.

In addition to Dr. Bliss' note to Bishop Earle's character of a “meer dull physician,” we have a curious illustration of the text in Mr. Christie's “Life of Lord Shaftesbury” (vol. I., p. 81.)

“August 11 [1646.] Sir John Danvers came and sat with us. Seven condemned to die; four for horse-stealing, two for robbery, one for killing his wife, he broke her neck with his hands; it was proved that, he touching her body the day after, her nose bled fresh; four burnt in the hand, one for felony, three for manslaughter; the same sign followed one of them of the corpse bleeding.”

Sir Thomas Browne, in his “Garden of Cyrus” (Works, ed. 1852, vol. II., p. 513) says:—“But the old sepulchral bed, or Amazonian tomb in the market place of Megara, was in the form of a lozenge, readily made out by the composure of the body, &c.”

The following amusing quotation from John Taylor's “a full and compleat Answer, &c.,” 1642 (Spenser Society reprint, p. 4) would seem to indicate that the allusion in the text is to the Roundheads:—

“Morgan Llewellin (that grave Greek Author) saith in the ninth Chapter of his Litigious Aphorismes, That Bias the Philosopher was borne in our Haven Towne of Ionia, called Priene: This Bias had a Round Running head, and hee devised (from the mold of his head) the first Round Bowles, in memorie whereof they are called Bias Bowles to this day; but the world is too full of rubs now, and most heads run like Bowles, contrary to the Bias, that an honest man can hardly win a good game all his life time.”

Lord Shaftesbury, immediately after his liberation, raised actions of Scandalum Magnatum. (See Mr. Christie's “Life,” vol. II., p. 441.)