BEN JONSON: TO THE MEMORY OF MY BE

LOVED MASTER, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 87. Prefaced to the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works, 1623.

All

20. Chaucer, Spenser, Beaumont. buried in Westminster Abbey. Beaumont, Sir Francis Beaumont, the dramatist, who died a few weeks before Shakespeare.

29, 30. Lyly, Kyd, Marlowe. Immediate predecessors of Shakespeare in the English drama.

32. Seek for names. Search critically for the names of dramatists with whom to compare Shakespeare; only the greatest names will do.

33, 34. Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Greek writers of tragedy, of the fifth century B. C.

35. Pacuvius, Accius. Latin writers of
tragedy of the second century, B. C.

Him of Cordova. Seneca, the Stoic
philosopher and, supposedly, tragic writer.
36. Buskin. The cothurnus, or thick-
soled boot, worn by actors in classical
tragedy to secure the dignity lent by
greater stature; hence, the word stands for
tragedy itself.
37. Socks.

Likewise representative of comedy, since the thin-soled soccus was worn in comedy.

88. 51. Tart Aristophanes. Most famous of Greek satirical dramatists; he wrote in the fifth century B. C.

52. Terence, Plautus. The best writers of Latin comedy, of the second century B. C. 71. Swan of Avon. Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon.

77, 78. Rage or influence. A reference to the astrological belief that each planet exerted either a good or an evil power over the lives of men.

CARE-CHARMING SLEEP

91. Cf. Daniel's sonnet, p. 72.

5. Sweet. So read the early editions; it should perhaps be light.

SONG TO BACCHUS

1. Lyæus. A name for Bacchus.

WEBSTER: A DIRGE

"I never saw anything like this funeral dirge except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in The Tempest [cf. p. 83]. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself into the element which it contemplates." (Charles Lamb.)

HARK, NOW EVERYTHING IS STILL From The Duchess of Malfi, where it is sung, with great dramatic effect, just before the heroine of the play is strangled. 17. Full tide. There may be a reference here to the popular belief that sick people usually died at the turning of the tide. So Falstaff " parted. . . even at the turning of the tide," Henry V, II. iii.

BROWNE: ON THE COUNTESS DOWAGER OF PEMBROKE

3. Sidney's sister. It was to this lady, Mary Sidney, later Countess of Pembroke, that Sir Philip Sidney dedicated his Arcadia. Pembroke's mother. The third Earl of Pembroke, a minor poet, to whom, with his brother, the first folio of Shakespeare was dedicated, was the Countess's son.

This epitaph, delicate and chastely beautiful, has been erroneously ascribed to Ben Jonson. There is a second and inferior stanza, which may not be by the same hand.

67. As she hath lived forty years. tually, 47.. The following words allude to the projected Anjou match, which in the autumn of 1579 she was known to favor; and reflect the general anxiety for an heir to the crown.' (Bond, II. 534.)

78. Tickle. Uncertain.

66

79. Twist. Small thread or piece of silk. 88. Like the bird Ibis. Reference to the so-called unnatural natural history," most of which goes back to Pliny, is characteristic of Lyly and his Euphuistic imitators.

98. 117. Escapes. Mistakes.

133. Twice directed her progress unto
the Universities. "She spent four days at
Cambridge in Aug. 1564, and five or six
at Oxford in Aug. 1566.
At both she
attended the disputations in the schools
and made speeches in Greek and Latin."
(Bond, II. 534.)

157. Admiration. Wonder. 99. 202. The curses of the Pope.

"Pius V.'s

bull of excommunication and deposition, issued Feb. 25, 1570, was found nailed on the Bishop of London's door, May 15." (Bond, II. 535.)

251. Bound the crocodile to the palm tree. "A way of saying 'made Egypt a field for his victories.'" (Bond, II. 535.)

SIDNEY

THE DEFENCE OF POESY

100. 9. Mirror of Magistrates. A collection of tales published first in 1559, and with Sackville's famous Induction, in 1563. 34. Gorboduc. A play by Sackville and Norton, acted 1561, the first English blank verse tragedy. It was modelled on the Latin tragedies of Seneca.

101. 109. Pacolet's horse. An enchanted steed in the romance of Valentine and Orson. 115. Ab ovo. From the egg; i. e., from the beginning.

119. Polydorus. In Euripides' tragedy Hecuba.

208. Pounded. Impounded, put in a pound, like a stray animal.

103. 337. Libertino patre natus. ex-slave.

Son of an

338. Herculea proles. Descendant of Hercules.

339. Si quid, etc. If my verse can do aught.

343. Dull-making, etc. People living near the cataracts of the Nile were said by Cicero to be deafened by the sound. 344. Planet-like music. The "music of the spheres."

349. Mome. Blockhead.

110. Sprang their luff, etc. Allowed the Revenge to get to windward of them. This action on the part of some Spanish vessels put the Revenge in the middle of the hostile fleet.

113. Answered. Justified.

Took

122. High carged. Towering.
125. Laid the Revenge aboard.
position alongside the Revenge, the two
ships touching each other.

127. Luffing up. Turning towards the
wind.

134. Out of her chase. The guns in the bows of a ship would be the first used in a pursuit; the noun chase here means the bows.

105. 177. Admiral of the Hulks. Flagship of the transports.

185. Ship of Lime. So the original text;
possibly a misprint for "Ship of the
line," a warship of the first class.
191. A-dressing.

dressed.

Having his wounds

211. Composition. Terms of agreement. 245. But. Nothing but.

106. 356. Approved. Experienced.

372. Fly-boats. Small, swiftly sailing ships.

107. 384. Road. Roadstead; harbor.

BACON

OF TRUTH

107. 1. See John, xviii: 38.

3. There be that. There are those who. 17. One of the later school, etc. Probably a reference to the "New Academy."

HERBERT: VIRTUE

120. 15. Coal. I. e., on the Day of Judgment.

THE COLLAR

6. In suit. Suing for the favor of a superior.

8. Me. For me; an example of the socalled ethical dative.

22. The attempt to weave a rope of sand was a typical example of folly.

CRASHAW: IN THE HOLY NATIVITY OF OUR
LORD GOD

122. 91 f. She sings Thy tears asleep, etc.
The stanza offers a typical example of a
"conceit." It is thus explained by
Schelling (Seventeenth Century Lyrics):
"The Virgin sings to her babe until,
falling asleep, his tears cease to flow.
And dips her kisses in Thy weeping eye,'
she kisses lightly his eyes, suffused with
tears. Here the lightness of the kiss and
the over-brimming fullness of the eyes
suggest the hyperbole and the implied
metaphor, which likens the kiss to some-
thing lightly dipped into a stream.
spreads the red leaves of thy lips,' i. e.,
kisses the child's lips, which lie lightly
apart in infantile sleep, and which are
like rosebuds in their color and in their
childish undevelopment.
" Mother-dia-

She

monds' are the eyes of the Virgin, bright as diamonds and resembling those of the child. 'Points' are the rays or beams of the eye, which, according to the old physics, passed, in vision, from one eye to another. Lastly, the eyes of the child are likened to those of a young eagle, and the Virgin tests them against her own as the mother eagle is supposed to test her nestling's eyes against the sun."

VAUGHAN: THE RETREAT

123. The idea of this poem suggests Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality, and it is probable that Wordsworth was influenced by Vaughan.

MARVELL: HORATIAN ODE

124. Written in 1650 after Cromwell had returned from putting down a rising in Ireland. 125. 15. His own side. In 1647 the Puritan party was split between Independents and Presbyterians, the latter advocating the immediate disbanding of the army which was largely made up of Independents; Cromwell led the army to London, and forced the Presbyterians to yield.

17-20. An ambitious man makes no distinction between enemies (of an opposing party) and rivals (in his own party), and in the case of such a man ("with such ") it is more difficult to restrain him than to oppose him.

125. 23. Cæsar's. Charles the First's. 24. Through his laurels. In spite of his royal crown.

29. His private gardens. Until the outbreak of the Civil War Cromwell had lived in retirement.

41. Nature, that hateth emptiness. A variant of the well known phrase Nature abhors a vacuum."

42. Allows of penetration less. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space. 47. Hampton. It was long believed that Cromwell connived at the flight of Charles from Hampton Court to Carisbrooke Castle in 1647.

57. He. The King. This fine passage has done much to keep the poem alive. 66. Assured the forced power. Made the Commonwealth secure.

69. A bleeding head. Pliny tells, in his Natural History (xxviii. 4), an anecdote of the finding of a head while workmen were digging on the Tarpeian hill for the foundation of a temple to Jupiter; the omen was interpreted as indicating a prosperous future for Rome. 82. In the republic's hand. to the Commonwealth's wishes. 86. A Kingdom. Ireland.

Submissive

war.

127. "Written in 1665, when the author, at the age of twenty-eight, had volunteered under the Duke of York in the first Dutch It was composed at sea the night before the critical engagement in which the Dutch admiral Opdam was blown up, and thirty ships destroyed or taken. It may be considered as inaugurating the epoch of vers-de-societé." (E. Gosse, in Ward's English Poets.)

128. 27. Whitehall stairs. The royal palace of Whitehall was situated on the bank of the Thames.

44. A merry main. To throw a main was to cast dice in a game of chance.

BROWNE HYDRIOTAPHIA

The Urn-Burial sets out to be an historical account of the methods of dealing with the dead, but turns into a meditation upon the brevity and vanity of the life

of man. It was suggested by the digging up of some Roman burial urns in Norfolk. 128. 10. Sic ego, etc. Thus I should wish to be laid at rest when I am become bones. 20. Considerable. Worthy of consideration.

24. To retain a stronger propension unto them. I. e., such souls clung more strongly to the bodies.

129. 36. Archimedes. The famous Syracusan mathematician and physicist of the third century B. C.

37. The life of Moses his man. The life of man as described by Moses, in the socalled Prayer of Moses, the ninetieth Psalm.

42. One little finger. "According to the ancient arithmetic of the hand, wherein the little finger of the right hand contracted, signified an hundred." (Browne's note).

54. Alcmena's nights. Jupiter, in love with Alcmena, mother of Hercules, made one night as long as three.

65. What name Achilles assumed. Thetis,
mother of Achilles, to prevent him from
going on the expedition against Troy,
had him disguised as a girl; Ulysses pene-
trated the stratagem.

69. Ossuaries. Receptacles for bones.
77. Provincial guardians, or tutelary ob-
servators. Guardian spirits of the lo-

the Fifth ... Hector.

Hector's fame lasting above two lives of Methusaleh, before that famous prince (i. e., Charles) was extant." (Browne's note.)

115. One face of Janus The past and the future. 126. Setting. Declining.

...

the other.

130. 136. The mortal right-lined circle. e, the character of death.

147. Gruter. Jan Gruter (1560-1627), a continental scholar; author of Inscriptiones Antiquæ (1603).

157. Cardan. Italian philosopher of the sixteenth century.

160. Hippocrates. Greek physician (460377 B. C.).

164. Entelechia. A word coined by Aristotle to denote the actual being of a thing in distinction to its capacity for being.

167. Canaanitish woman. See Genesis, xlvi: 10.

178. Adrian. Hadrian, Emperor of Rome. 182. Thersites. A foul-mouthed coward in the Iliad, where Agamemnon is leader of the Greek host.

130. 205. Lucina. Goddess of childbirth; here equivalent to midwife.

211. Our light in ashes. According to the custom of the Jews, who place a lighted wax-candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse.' (Browne's note.)

212. Brother of death. Sleep.

224. To weep into stones. A reference to the fable of Niobe.

131. 257. Mummy is become merchandise. A medicinal preparation made, or supposed to be made, from mummies, was highly regarded in the old medicine. 258. Mizraim. The Biblical name for Egypt; Browne seems to use it as symbolic of Egypt's great men.

268. Nimrod. The Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Orion.

269. The dog-star. Sirius.

274. Perspectives. Telescopes.
298. Scape. Oversight.

309. Sardanapalus. Last king of As-
syria, who, when his besieged city of
Nineveh was about to be captured, gath-
ered together his household and treasure
and burned all, with himself, in his palace.
316. Gordianus. An emperor of Rome in
the third century. Man of God. Moses,
buried by the hand of God; cf. Deu-
teronomy, xxxiv: 6.
321. Enoch.
"And Enoch was not, for
God took him." Genesis, v: 24. Elias.
Elijah was taken up to heaven in a chariot
of fire; 2 Kings, ii: 1-12.

327. Decretory. Established by decree.
346. Alaricus. King of the Visigoths,
who captured and sacked Rome in 410;
he was buried, with vast treasure, in the
bed of a river.

348. Sylla. Roman general and dictator (138-78 B. C.)

132. 357. That poetical taunt of Isaiah. See Isaiah, xiv: 16-17.

367. St. Innocent's churchyard. In Paris. 371. Moles of Adrianus. Hadrian's Mole, or tomb, now known as the Castle of St. Angelo.

FULLER

THE GOOD SCHOOLMASTER

133. 1. Cockering. Coddling.

113. Peculiar. A parish exempted from the jurisdiction of the bishop within whose diocese it lies; here applied to a condition of exemption from the usual regulations.

132. De insolenti carnificina. Of the excessive torture. Conscindebatur . singulos. He was lashed with whips seven or eight times a day.

136. Tusser. Thomas Tusser, an English poetaster of the sixteenth century.

143. Udall. Nicholas Udall, headmaster of Eton 1534-1541; best known as author of the first regular English comedy, Ralph Roister Doister.