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very quick death of the herring when taken out of the water;
but there does not seem to be any necessary connection_between
the rapidity of the death and the degree of deadness.
It is pro-
bably a reference to the curing and packing in barrels or boxes,
which seems to make the herring appear peculiarly dead to the
public eye.
The same impression is conveyed by any process to
which meat is subjected before it comes into the hands of the
cook. Thus we also say, 'Dead as pickled pork.' Cf.-' By gar,
de herring is no dead so as I vill kill him.'-SHAKSPEARE,
Merry Wives of Windsor, II. iii. 12.

1158. high places. Places of pagan sacrifice, from pagan altars being frequently on hills or high places.

1171. read his lesson. Alluding to the practice of 'Benefit of Clergy,' by which is meant the exemption of the clerical order from civil punishment. It applied not only to the actual clergy, but to all who were able to read and write and had thus learning enough to be clergymen. Hence any one convicted of a capital crime could 'pray his clergy,' that is could call for a Latin Bible and read a passage, generally taken from the Psalms. Failing in this test he was hanged; and as a verse of a Psalm was sung under the gallows before hanging a culprit thereon, a saying arose of one manifestly guilty of a hanging offence, He must either read a verse or sing it.' This was called 'reading the neck-verse.' Cf. III. i. 55. The privilege was finally abolished under George IV.

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HEROICAL EPISTLE OF HUDIBRAS TO SIDROPHEL.

THIS Epistle is really no part of the poem of Hudibras. The Sidrophel to whom it is addressed is not the same as the Sidrophel of the poem. The latter is probably intended for Lilly; here one Sir Paul Neal is the original. The epistle was not published until ten years after the second part of Hudibras, and the occasion of it was that the Sir Paul Neal aforesaid had strenuously maintained that Butler was not the author of Hudibras. It was included in the edition of 1674 of the Hudibras, and was probably meant not only to satisfy Butler's natural revenge on one who had tried to deprive him of his honours of authorship, but also to force a sale for the new edition of the poem itself.

Ecce iterum Crispinus. This now familiar quotation is the commencement of Juvenal's lines :

Ecce iterum Crispinus, et est mihi saepe vocandus
Ad partes; monstrum, nulla virtute redemptum.
Satire IV, ad init.

10. Issachar's. 'Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens.'-Gen. xlix. 14.

13. William Prynne. Cf. I. i. 646, and note.

21. new nick-named old invention. This is the engine' of the next line and is the speaking-trumpet which Sir Samuel Worland, who published an account of it under the name of Tuba Stentorophonica, then claimed to have newly invented. The claim was disputed, and as the dispute was rather a grotesque one, Butler ascribes the pretended invention to his Sidrophel.

22. green-hastings. Early peas. Whether their name is derived from their having originally been principally supplied to the London market from Hastings, or whether the name is a corruption of green-hastenings, in allusion to their forced growth, may well now be doubted. The latter is the more probable explanation.

27. persuade yourself. The subject of this verb is a long way back, in line 9. The sense runs: 'Is it possible that you persuade yourself?'

35. brayed, &c. Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.'-Prov. xxvii. 22.

39. transfusion of the blood. Butler here begins to ridicule the scientific theories under investigation in his day.

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46. trying distinguishing. Cf.-'The wylde corne, beinge in shape and greatnesse lyke to the good, if they be mengled, with great difficultie wyll be tryed out."—SIR T. ELYOT, The Governour, B. II. c. 14.

58. without law. Without the fair start given to the quarry in coursing.

66. B's and A's of a mathematical problem. 'Chasing the wily x.'

80. find woodcocks by their eyes. The gleam of the eye betrays the bird to the fowler. Cf.

'Then as I careless on the bed

Of gelid strawberries do tread,
And through the hazels thick espy
The hatching throstle's shining eye.'

MARVEL.

ass and

But in addition to this plain interpretation of the line, there is probably a double allusion, as in the case of the widgeon' of I. i. 232. Woodcock certainly means a fool in the Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 160 :—

Gremio. O this learning, what a thing it is!
Grumio. O this woodcock, what an ass it is!

81. the college.

Gresham College, the first meeting-place of the Royal Society. Cf. III. i. 1564. Sir Paul Neal was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society.

86. Sir Poll. A kind of punning double allusion, probably, both to Sir Paul Neal and Sir Politic Would Be'; a wellknown character in Ben Jonson's Volpone.

The

96. your German scale. Your exaggerations. German mile being about four times as long as an English one. 113. tried. Found by experience.

124. natural character. Cf. 1. 76. It is with depraved man in his impure naturalls that we must maintaine this quarell.'-Bp. HALL, St. Paul's Combat.

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16. Caligula, born A.D. 12 and reigned as Emperor 37-41. After eight months of beneficent rule he seems to have gone mad in consequence of an illness. He claimed for himself a place amongst the gods, and boasted to have been a lover of the moon. He was murdered after three years of unspeakable horrors, which a complete overthrow of his intellect can alone account for or

excuse.

20. those they made her kindred. Their mistresses, whom they have flattered by comparing them to goddesses, till they have as it were made them kindred to the moon.

55. read one verse. Cf. II. iii. 1171 and note.

85. fitters. This is undeniably the correct reading, though some editions have 'fritters.' The word is identical with the Italian fetta, fragment,' and an allied word appears in fyt,' a division of a poem.

108. jiggumbobs. The root of this word is gig or gag; hence something 'jiggled' to attract a child's attention, a baby's rattle; hence any fancy knick-knack.

109. hook or crook. This phrase probably means 'by foul or fair means,' but its origin is not now certainly known. It may allude to hook as an instrument of footpads, and crook, the bishop's crozier.

115. he thought it. It is remarked in Grey's edition that Butler here sets the squire reflecting on matters of which he could have no knowledge, as the encounter and rifling of the pockets did not take place till after Ralpho's departure. Cf. II. iii. 1047.

137. pawn his inward ears. Pledge his conscience.

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The stale of horses and the gilded puddle

Which beasts would cough at.'

SHAKSPEARE, Antony & Cleopatra, I. iv. 61.

154. of love.

board her. A nautical term transferred to the affairs It is somewhat common in the dramatists. Cf."For I will board her though she chide as loud As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.'

SHAKSPEARE, Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 95.

'You mistake, knight, "accost" is front her, board her, woo her, resail her.'-Id. Twelfth Night, I. iii. 60.

159. longees, the 'lunges' of a fencer.

164. shoe-tie. This rhyme had been used before by Crashaw in his Wishes ('Delights of the Muses') :

190.

'I wish her beauty

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire or glistering shoe-tye.'

to th' good. Var. lec. 'to 'ts good.'

238. not true nor false. 'A proposition must be either true or false, provided that the predicate be one which can in any intelligible sense be attributed to the subject (and as this is always assumed to be the case in treatises on logic, the axiom is always laid down there as of absolute truth). Abracadabra is a second intention" is neither true nor false. Between the true and the false there is a third possibility, the Unmeaning.'J. S. MILL, System of Logic, vol. I. p. 321.

252. Stentrophonic. Cf. note on Sidrophel, 1. 21. 264. time is, time was. The saying of the Brazen Head. Cf. I. ii. 346, and note.

278. bardashing. Boys before their beards are grown are called by the Turks bardasses.

282. Caliban. The Caliban of Shakspeare's Tempest.

310.

caprich. Fix. Ital. capriccio.

319. cow itch, or cowage, is a plant bearing a pod covered with very fine hairs, resembling the 'sting' of the nettle, only on a larger scale. If rubbed on the skin they cause intense irritation.

323. hermetic-men. Alchymists. Cf. I. ii. 225.

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324. manicon. Supposed to have been the name of some species of nightshade. It is the insane root' of Shakspeare, and was supposed to cause madness.

Cf.

'Were such things here as we do speak about?

Or have we eaten on the insane root

That takes the reason prisoner?'

Macbeth, I. iii. 83.

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