1. 213. The Egyptian Bishop, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria.

1. 228. The Critical History of the Old Testament, by the Father Richard Simon, a French divine, translated by Mr. Henry Dickinson: see note to p. 129, 1. 29.

1. 241. Junius and Tremellius are two Calvinist divines who translated the Scriptures, and whom Simon criticises.

1. 283. This is a clumsy line, to be read thus

"Twere worth both Testaments and cast in th' Creed.'

The accent is on the second syllable of testament as of testator. The editors have generally followed Derrick in omitting and to make the line accord with the modern pronunciation of testament.

1. 291. like Esdras. For Esdras had very great skill, so that he omitted nothing of the law and commandments of the Lord, but taught all Israel the ordinances and judgments.' (1 Esdras vii. 7.)

1. 335. This line has been spoilt by editors, including Scott, by printing disinterested, instead of Dryden's word disinteressed. See note on p. 123, l. I. 1. 389. A similar line occurs in The Medal (166):

'The text inspires not them, but they the text inspire.'

1. 420. Compare Hudibras, iii. 2. 7:

• So ere the storm of war broke out,

Religion spawned a various rout
Of petulant capricious sects,

The maggots of corrupted texts.'

1. 456. Tom Sternhold is the versifier of the Psalms with Hopkins. Dryden refers contemptuously to this version of the Psalms in his portion of the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel:

'Poor slaves in metre, dull and addle-pated,

Who rhyme below even David's psalms translated.'

Shadwell, whom Dryden here couples with Sternhold, was greatly Sternhold's superior in talent; his comedies have much cleverness and merit. But he was not a good poet. Dryden's Mac Flecnoe is a severe satire exclusively devoted to Shadwell, in reprisal for Shadwell's poem, The Medal of John Bayes, a reply to Dryden's Medal; and he severely attacked Shadwell again, calling him Og, in the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel, where he couples Shadwell with Settle, who is called Doeg:

And hasten Og and Doeg to rehearse,

Two fools that crutch their feeble sense on verse,

Who by my Muse to all succeeding times
Shall live in spite of their own dogrel rhymes.'

And Dryden thus concludes an apostrophe to Shadwell:
'And for my foes may this their blessing be,
To talk like Doeg and to write like thee.'

T

The Hind and the Panther.

Preface.

P. 147, 1. 26. James II had issued his famous Declaration of Indulgence, suspending all penal laws against Dissenters from the Church of England and abrogating all acts which imposed a religious test for secular office, only a few days before the appearance of this poem. The Declaration is dated April 4, 1687. The Hind and the Panther was licensed April 11, and was published shortly afterwards. The tone of this Preface, conciliatory to Protestant Dissenters, is not in accord with the tone of the poem as regards them. The spirit of the poem is for union of the Church of England with the Roman Catholics in opposition to the Protestant Nonconformists: and it is to be inferred that the Declaration of Indulgence, embracing Protestant Nonconformists and Roman Catholics alike, came by surprise on Dryden when this poem was nearly concluded, and that he endeavoured to reconcile himself in the Preface with the Protestant Dissenters, whom in the poem he had treated roughly. The tactics of James at the outset of his reign were those of Dryden's poem; he found himself compelled to change them, and, in order to benefit the Roman Catholics, to grant equal indulgence to Protestants Dissenters as well.

P. 148, 1. 10. This refers to the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 by Louis XIV, and the persecution of the French Protestants.

P. 149, 1. 22. Dryden here publishes that he had had a part in a defence of the Duchess of York's statement of her reasons for becoming a Roman Catholic in reply to Stillingfleet. James II had published the statement of the duchess, his first wife, and daughter of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, together with papers found in Charles II's strong box in favour of the Roman Catholic faith. Stillingfleet, then Dean of St. Paul's, replied to this publication. A 'Defence' was published by the King's command, in which Dryden bore a part. Stillingfleet rejoined, and treated Dryden with contemptuous asperity.

1. 35. Dryden had asserted, in his defence of the Duchess of York's paper, that he had seen or heard of no treatise on the virtue of humility written by a Protestant. Stillingfleet called this 'a barefaced assertion of a thing known to be false,' and stated that within a few years, besides what has been printed formerly, such a book hath been printed in London.' Dryden now asserts that the publication of Duncomb, which he presumes to be the work alluded to by Stillingfleet, was translated from the Spanish of Rodriguez.

P. 150, 1. 11. Mrs. James. Eleanor James, the wife of a printer, had lately published 'A Vindication of the Church of England,' in answer to a pamphlet entitled 'A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty.'

1. 23. The two Episodes or Fables are the tales of the Swallows (Roman Catholics) persuaded to defer flight, and of the Pigeons (Church clergy) who chose a Buzzard (Dr. Burnet) to be their king.

The Poem.

1. 1. Hind. The Hind represents the Roman Catholic Church.

arrows.

1. 6. Scythian shafts. The Scythians were great archers, and used poisoned It is doubtful whether Dryden here uses Scythian merely to denote poisoned arrows, or means actually Scythian shafts, as a part of his fable. See note below on Caledonian, 1. 14.

1. 8. The distinction between doomed and fated is that doom is a sentence which may remain unexecuted, while fate is irreversible and irresistible. The witty parodists of The Hind and the Panther overlooked this difference when they ridiculed Dryden for this line. Faith, Mr. Bayes, if you were doomed to be hanged, whatever you were fated to, 'twould give you but small comfort.' (The Country and the City Mouse.) In Annus Mirabilis, stanza 207, merchandise sent to a foreign country is said to be doomed to it.

1. 14. Caledonian wood. This has been generally interpreted as meaning the old Caledonian wood of Britain in the time of the Romans, and the 'slaughtered army' of the Hind's progeny, 'extended o'er the Caledonian wood,' is explained to be the Roman Catholic priests executed in Great Britain since the Reformation. The explanation is not satisfactory, and the passage is by no means clear. In Palamon and Arcite, Book ii, where the Calydonian boar is introduced, Calydonian is spelt Caledonian in the original edition; and editors down to Scott and later have continued to print Caledonian. I do not feel sure that it should not be Calydonian here, though we do not know specially of a Calydonian wood in connexion with the long hunt of the Calydonian boar. Calydonian would suit better with the 'Scythian shafts' of line 6. Calydon would do for Caledon in line 3 of Part iii. of the poem: indeed the sense would be better.

'Because the Muse has peopled Calydon

With Panthers, Bears, and Wolves, and beasts unknown,

As if we were not stocked with monsters of our own.'

The reading Calydon gives point to 'our own' monsters, comparing them with those the poet places in Calydon. Calydon was a city of Aetolia, the mountains round which were the haunt of the famous boar, killed by Meleager. Dryden was very careless in correcting his poems for the press, and classical words are frequently misspelt in the early editions; as Pardalis, spelt Pardelis in this poem, eupηkа spelt evрekа in Religio Laici, 43; and these misspellings have been continued by editors to the last.

1. 23. corps, the spelling in Dryden, is used both for singular and plural; it is the same with Cyclops. See note on Astræa Redux, line 45.

1. 34. Compare with this couplet on virtue Pope's on vice: 'Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen.'

1. 35. The bloody Bear, the Independent.

1. 37. The quaking Hare, the Quaker.

1. 39. The buffoon Ape, the Free-thinker.

1. 41. The Lion, the King of England. Some scoffer who had conformed to the Church of England or embraced the Roman Catholic religion for royal favour is probably here struck at. It has been suggested that Sunderland, who was a sudden Roman Catholic convert, is intended; but Dryden would hardly wish to offend any Roman Catholic convert, and he was not at all likely at this time to run a risk of offending Sunderland, who was in power. He had flatteringly dedicated Troilus and Cressida' to Sunderland in 1679. Dryden's parodists, however, think that there is a personal allusion in this passage, for Bayes is there made to say of it, ‘That galls somewhere; I' gad I can't leave it out, though I were cudgelled every day for it.'

1. 43. The bristled baptist Boar, the Anabaptist. This sect arose in Germany soon after the rise of Luther, about the year 1521. They invaded Saxony under the leadership of Muncer and Pfeifer; and some years afterwards John of Leyden, with a numerous following, seized Munster and held it for some time. These Anabaptists committed great cruelties, and they were in the end conquered. John of Leyden was torn to pieces with hot pincers when Munster was retaken. The name of Anabaptist was long after in great disrepute.

1. 53. False Reynard, the Arian.

11. 54, 55. The doctrine of Arius, that God the Son was not coexistent, and consequently not coequal, with God the Father, was contested by Athanasius in the Council of Nice, and condemned by that council. The Arian doctrine was embraced by Laelius Socinus, a nobleman of Sienna, towards the end of the sixteenth century: this is the origin of the Socinians. The Protestants of Poland adopted the Socinian doctrine; wherefore Dryden bids the Arian fox to range unkennelled in her Polonian plains (line 152). 1.95. Impassible, incapable of suffering, impassibilis (Latin): impassible is the derived French word. In most editions, including Scott's, Impassable is wrongly substituted.

Penetrating parts means penetrating the parts of matter, instead of separating them. This power of penetrating is a criterion of spirit as distinct from matter. Matter cannot penetrate matter.

1. 99. This passage refers to Christ's appearance among his disciples after the crucifixion, as described in St. John xx. 19, 26. Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood

in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.' And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.' 1. 104. quarry, an object aimed at. The game which a hawk flies at is its quarry. In Annus Mirabilis, stanza 281, the buildings to which the fire was directing itself in the great conflagration of 1666 are called their quarry: The flames that to their quarry strove.'

·

1. 128. bilanders, coasting vessels used in Holland and there so called. The French adopted the word bilandre, also from the Dutch.

11. 134, 135. Could He his Godhead veil with flesh and blood And not veil these again to be` our food?

This pleading of Dryden in 1687 for the doctrine of Transubstantiation may be compared with his ridicule of the same doctrine in 1681, in Absalom and Achitophel, 120.

'Such savoury deities must needs be good,

As served at once for worship and for food.'

1. 153. the insatiate Wolf, the Presbyterian. Dryden here turns suddenly to the Presbyterian, in bidding good-bye to the Arians and Socinians, both comprehended under Reynard the Fox, now denounced by him as 'first apostate to divinity.'

1. 165. The Presbyterians in the time of the Commonwealth wore black skull-caps, which left their ears uncovered; and their hair being close cropped all round, the ears were prominent. The ragged tail betwixt his legs,' was the Presbyterian's Geneva cloak.

1. 166. haggered, a way of spelling the word haggard, and Dryden's usual spelling. But in Part iii. line 1166 of this poem, it is spelt haggared.

1. 170. Nothing can be more ribald and offensive than the account of the Presbyterians and their genealogy which follows. Scott interprets the reference to Cambria as pointing to the refusal of the ancient British Church in the seventh century, the monks of Bangor being prominently zealous, to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, and admit St. Augustin as metropolitan of Britain by Pope Gregory's appointment. Ethelred, the Saxon king of Northumberland, defeated the British at Chester, and cut to pieces twelve hundred of the monks of Bangor, who had come to assist their countrymen with their prayers. It is however more probable that Dryden in his vituperative vein mixes up the extinction of wolves in Wales by the tribute of wolves' heads imposed on the kings, with the history of British Presbyterians, to whom he has given the name of wolves, and then he suggests that the Presbyterians of his day are of an inferior race to 'Wickliff's brood' the Lollards, cruelly persecuted in the reign of Henry V.

1. 180. Zuinglius began to preach the Reformation in Zurich about 1518. He was killed in battle in a war between the canton of Zurich and four Roman Catholic cantons.