379. 67. Jack Pudding. A popular nickname for a clown or mountebank's assistant.

68. Toffs, doffs, draws off. There is an old popular amusement called draw the glove.' See Brand's Popular Antiquities.

69. raree-shows, peep-shows.

71. 'the children in the wood.' This famous old ballad is in Percy's Reliques.

74. fauchion, falchion. See 404. 62, note. 79-80. For buxom Joan the maid a wife. The words and music of this song are in D'Urfrey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. III, pp. 220-221. 82. Chevy-Chace. For this ballad, see p. 42. 91. He sung of Taffy Welch, and Sawney Scot. Taffy (Davy) is the regular nickname for a Welshman, Sawney (Sandy) for a Scotchman. The reference may be to The National Quarrel, D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. II, p. 76.

was

92. Lilly-bullero. A political ballad which popular during the Protestant Revolution of 1688. The refrain is drawn from an old Irish song.

The Irish Trot. Possibly the ribald old song, called The Irish Jigg, which is given in D'Urfey's collection, v, 108.

93. Bateman. The reference is to Bateman's Tragedy, preserved in Ritson's Ancient Songs, etc. (ed. Hazlitt), p. 231.

Shore. Jane Shore, the mistress of King Edward IV, was a celebrated character in ballad and drama. See Percy, Reliques, and D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, iv, 273.

.

94. Wantley's Dragon Moore. The air and words are in D'Urfrey's collection, Vol. III, p.

10.

95. the bower of Rosamond. Rosamond Clifford, the mistress of King Henry II, was the subject of many popular legends, among which was that of the subterranean labyrinth known as Rosamond's bower. Fair Rosamond is the title of a ballad in Percy's Reliques.

Robin Hood. For examples of the Robin Hood ballads, see pp. 38-42.

96. And how the grass, etc. The ballad of Troy town is in Percy's Reliques. In D'Urfrey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, iv, 266, we meet with a ballad called The Wandering Prince of Troy, which contains the line,And corn now grows where Troy

16-18. By her nightingale for which Sophocles seems to have en tertained a peculiar fondness.' (Collins.)

19. Cephisus. A river of Attica.

35. One' distinguished throne. Augustus Casar. The symbol of pastoral poetry. 52. reed.

388. 75. their chaste-ey'd queen.

Diana.

86. Tempe. A valley adjacent to Olympus in Thessaly. See, also, 636. 11, note.

389. 104. Devote, devoted.

114. Cecilia's mingled world of sound. Compare Dryden, Alexander's Feast, 276. 138.

THOMAS WARTON: THE GRAVE OF KING

ARTHUR

4. Cilgarran's castle hall. There are ruins of a thirteenth century castle at Kilgerran, in Southern Wales.

6. Henry. King Henry II, on his expedition for the conquest of Wales and Ireland.

8. Shannon's lakes. Shannon, the principal river of Ireland, flows through a chain of lakes.

12. metheglin, mead, liquor. A Celtic beverage. 20. Mona, Anglesea, an island and county of North Wales.

21. Teivi, the river Teifi, which flows westward into Cardigan Bay.

22. Elvy's vale. Valley of the river Elwy, in Northwestern Wales.

Cader's crown. Cader Idris, a mountain in Northwestern Wales.

24. Ierne's hoarse abyss. The Irish Sea. 26. Radnor's mountains. Radnor is a county in the interior of Wales.

33. Tintagell. A village on the coast of Cornwall, the reputed birthplace of King Arthur. 40. Camlan's crimson'd banks. According legend Arthur perished in the battle of Camlan (c. 542).

19 ff.

to

41. Mordred. See Malory's Morte d'Arthur, p 50. Merlin's agate-axled car. An invention of the magician Merlin.

SONNETS: DUGDALE'S MONASTICON

A huge compilation of English monastic history by Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686) is ordinarily known as Dugdale's Monasticon.

390. 5. Henry's fiercer rage. Henry VIII's disrup tion of the monasteries.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY

400. 1. Eolian lyre. The lyre of Pindar who belonged to the Eolian division of the Greek race. See, also, p. 163, A Pindaric Ode, note.

3. Helicon. See 244. 15, note.

9. Ceres' golden reign. Fields ruled by Ceres, goddess of grain and harvest.

17. On Thracia's hills, etc. Thrace was thought to be a favorite haunt of Mars.

21. the feathered king. Jove's eagle, symbolical of the thunderbolt.

27. Idalia. An ancient town in Cyprus consecrated to Venus.

29. Cytherea's Day. The day for the worship of Venus.

401. 53. Hyperion's march. The sunrise.

66. Delphi's steep. The seat of the Greek oracle. See 450. 517, note.

68. Ilissus. A small stream flowing through Athens.

69. Maander. The river Mæander in Asia Minor. 83-94. Shakspere.

an agonizing King. Edward II was murdered in Berkeley castle in September, 1327.

57. She-Wolf of France, etc. Isabel of France, Edward the Second's adulterous queen.

59-66. King Edward III.

67. the sable Warrior. The Black Prince. 71-82. Reign of Richard II.

403. 85. Long years of havoc. Wars of the Roses. 87. Towers of Julius. The Tower of London, according to tradition, built by Julius Cæsar. See Shakspere's Richard III, iii, i. There is no authority to confirm the tradition. (Wheatley and Cunningham: London Past and Present.)

89. his Consort's faith. Margaret of Anjou. his father's fame. The military glory of Henry V. 90. the meek Usurper's holy head. Henry VI was noted for his piety.

93. The bristled Boar. The insignia of Richard

III.

infant gore. Of the murdered princes.

110. ye genuine Kings. The Tudor line, beginning with Henry VII.

111-124. The reign of Queen Elizabeth.

121. Taliessin. Cymric bard of the sixth century.

125-27. Spenser.

128-30. Shakspere.

13. Mrs. Porter. the part of Lucia. 414. a. 54. Milton against King Charles II. De fense of England against Salmasius, Chap. viii.

An excellent actress who playe

b. 1. Oldmixon, John (1653-1742), has a prominent place in Pope's Dunciad.

417. a. 38. Chesterfield. Philip Stanhope, Earl Chesterfield (1694-1773). For Johnson's relatives with him, see p. 420 and note.

b. 13. Terence. Publius Terentius Afer, Reman comic poet of the second century B. C. Catullus, Caius Valerius. Brilliant Roman poet. contemporary with Julius Cæsar.

418. b. 23. Mandeville, Bernard (1670-1733), thor of Fable of the Bees. 419. a. 35. above all Greek To Augustus, 26.

fame.' Pope.

44-5. "turned many to righteousness.” Dan

131-34. Milton and succeeding poets.

THE FATAL SISTERS

Written in 1761. The text of the poem from which Gray derived these stanzas may be found, with a prose translation, in Corpus Poeticum Boreale, Vol. I, pp. 281-83. It is an Icelandic poem of the eleventh century celebrating an invasion of Ireland by a Norse hero, Sictrygg, who was assisted by Sigurd, Earl of the Orkneys. Sigurd and Brian, the Irish king, fall in the battle. The Valkries are imagined weaving the web of battle. The title of the original is Darradar-Liod Lay of The Darts].

404. 8. Orkney's woe. The woe of Sigurd, Earl of Orkney.

Randver's bane. Direct from the original. Randver's destruction.

14.

LETTERS

To the... Earl of Chesterfield. Of the ot casion of this famous letter Johnson said to Boswell: 'Sir, after making great professions, he had, for many years, taken no notice of me; but when my Dictionary was coming out, he fell a scribbling in The World about it. Upon which, I wrote him a letter expressed in civil terms, but such as might shew him that I did not mind what he said or wrote, and that I had done with him.' (Hill's Boswell, I, 301.)

420. a. 8. the proprietor of The World. Edward Moore, an old acquaintance of Johnson's.

46. The shepherd in Virgil. Eclogue viii, 43. ff. 58. till I am solitary. Johnson's wife had died three years before.

b. 22. Mr. James Macpherson. Johnson had publicly declared that the poems of Ossian which Macpherson claimed to have translated from the Gaelic were forgeries. Macpherson threatened phys ical vengeance and this celebrated letter, Johnson said, put an end to our correspondence.'

THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 421. 37. Wolsey. This passage is largely based on the picture of Cardinal Wolsey in Shakspere and Fletcher's Henry VIII.

422. 68. Swedish Charles. Charles XII (16821718), defeated by Peter the Great, at Pultowa, July 8, 1709. Killed at Frederikshald, Norway.

JAMES BOSWELL: THE LIFE OF JOHNSON 423. a. 3. The accession of George the Third. October 25, 1760.

b. 56. Mr. Thomas Sheridan. The father of the dramatist, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 425. a. 39. Collins. See p. 386.

428. a. 7-8. Messieurs Thornton, Wilkes, Churchill, and Lloyd. Wits of the time all of whom except Wilkes had been members, with William Cowper, of the Nonsense Club.

430. a. 57. Colley Cibber. Poet laureate, 1730-57. b. 24. Whitehead, William (1715-85). He succeeded Cibber as poet laureate.

41-2. His Ode which begins, etc. The Bard. See

p. 402.

432. a. 33. Dr. Goldsmith. See below, p. 463.

b. 51. Mr. Burke. See below, p. 443.

54. Mr. Malone. Edmond Malone (1741-1812), the great Shakspere scholar, assisted Boswell in preparing the Life of Johnson for the press.

433. a. 35. Nihil quod tetigit, etc. Inaccurate and often quoted in this form. Johnson wrote Qui nullum ferè scribendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. [Who left hardly any species of writing untouched and touched none that he did not adorn it.]

54. un étourdi, a rattle-head.

b. 15. Fantoccini, puppets.

434. a. 3. Mrs. Piozzi. Formerly the wife of Henry Thrale (d. 1781), one of Johnson's most intimate friends. She published Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson (1786), Letters to and from Dr. Johnson (1788).

Sir John Hawkins. A member of Johnson's Club, published a Life in 1787.

b. 24. Miss Williams. One of the many recipients of Johnson's eccentric charity. 436. b. 42. Dr. Adam Smith (1723-1790). Author of The Wealth of Nations.

438. b. 5. The Old Swan, Swan Stairs. The landing here and the walk to Billingsgate beyond London Bridge were made in order to avoid the risk of shooting the bridge.'

439. b. 27. Turk's Head coffee-house. In the Strand. Johnson said, on an earlier occasion, I encourage this house, for the mistress of it is a good civil woman and has not much business.' See below, p. 440.

442. b. 18. Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry. In his Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).

BURKE: SPEECH FOR CONCILIATION 444. a. 14. Sensible, concrete, such as the senses can perceive.

445. b. 7. Gothic. We should say Teutonic.

34. Blackstone's Commentaries. The great law William treatise published (1765-1769) by Sir Blackstone.

35. General Gage. Governor of Massachusetts,

1774.

446. a. 1. Abeunt studia, etc. Compare Bacon, 199. b. 36, and note.

with all its imperfections on its head. Hamlet I, New

v. 79.

447. a. 25. Lord
of
Dunmore. Governor
York, and later of Virginia.

448. b. 10-11. Increase and multiply.' Inaccurate. See Gen. 1, 22 and 28.

449. a. 11. Spoliatis arma supersunt. Juvenal, Sat. viii, 124.

55. advocates and panegyrists. For example, Dr. Johnson in Taxation no Tyranny.

b. 39-41. ye gods annihilate, etc. This piece of bombast has never been traced beyond The Art of Sinking Poetry, by Arbuthnot, Swift, and Pope, where it is ostensibly quoted.

450. a. 18. Sir Edward Coke. Public prosecutor in 1603, when Raleigh was tried. See, also, 326, b. 26, note. the very same title. Popular election. 451. a. 19. juridical, abstractly legal.

b. 37-39. Serbonian bog, etc. Milton, Paradise Lost II, 592-4.

41. such respectable company. Ironical equivoke, in allusion to Milton's Satan.

452. b. 12. the repeal of a Revenue Act. The Stamp Act, repealed 1766.

GIBBON: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The extract is from Chapter lxviii of the Decline and Fall. It presents the first grand culmination of Gibbon's massive study, the fall of the eastern empire. The remaining three chapters of the last volume deal with the disintegration of the empire in Italy from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Other striking passages are the accounts of Petrarch and of Rienzi, Chapter 1xx, and the Prospect of the Ruins of Rome in the Fifteenth Century,' Chapter 1xxi.

453. b. 3. Phransa. The minister and friend of the Emperor Constantine.

454. a. 57. seven times in one day. Near an hundred years after the siege of Constantinople, the French and English fleets in the Channel were proud of firing 300 shot in an engagement of two hours. (Gibbon.)

b. 18. fascines, bundles of sticks.

455. a. 14. Justiniani. John Justiniani, a noble Genoese,' was in command of 2,000 strangers.'

barkations on the lakes of Canada, in the years 1776 and 1777, so great in the labor, so fruitless in the event. (Gibbon.)

457. b. 18. Gabours. Unbelievers.

51. bashaws, dignitaries, here probably generals. 52. Janizaries. Members of the central standing army of the Sultan.

57. oda, the unit of janizary organization. 459. a. 22. sanjaks were, formerly, bashaws of the rank entitled to wear one horse-tail.

47. attaballs, oriental tambours. 460. a. 20. Cantacuzene. Byzantine

the fourteenth century.

emperors of

50. Chosroes. Khusrau I, a powerful Persian king of the sixth century.

the Chagan, the Khan. The Tartar regal title. The reference here is to Jenghiz Khan, who conquered central Asia and threatened Europe early in the thirteenth century.

the caliphs. Successors of Mohammed.

b. 48. Ducas. A Byzantine historian who was an eye witness of the first siege of Constantinople. His history was first printed at Paris in 1649. 461. b. 40. ducats. The ducat, as a money of account, was about two dollars and thirty cents. 462. b. 35. imam. The officiating priest in Mohammedan worship.

36. namaz. The canonical prayer of the Moslems.

42. the great Constantine. Constantine I (272337) transferred the seat of the Roman Empire in the year 330 to Byzantium, which was thereafter known as Constantinople.

GEORGE CRABBE: THE VILLAGE 480. 12. Corydons. Conventional shepherds of pas toral poetry, from a character of this name in Virgil's Eclogues.

15. Mincio's banks. See below, 18. Casar's bounteous reign. The reign of Augustus.

16. If Tityrus found the Golden Age again. Virgil, in his Eclogues, particularly Eclogue IV.

18. Mantuan song. Mantua, situated on an island in the river Mincio, was the home of Virgil. 481. 27. honest Duck. Possibly Stephen Duck, a poor thresher who was patronized by Queen Care line, wife of George II. He is mentioned by John son in his Life of Savage (Lives, London, 1821, Vol. II, p. 149).

97. Ajax. Homer's strong man.' 484. 303.passing rich with forty pounds a year. Goldsmith's Deserted Village, 142. See p. 463. 330. the moping owl. Compare Gray's Elegy, 10, p. 398.