1. 181. Calvin, having been expelled from France for preaching the doctrines of the Reformation, went to Geneva, where he was appointed Professor of Divinity in 1536. He afterwards left Geneva and taught a French congregation at Strasburg.

1. 183. Sanhedrim; spelt Sanhedrin by Dryden in Absalom and Achitophel. The latter spelling connects the name with the Greek ovvédpiov. Dryden has a note on this line 183, Vide Preface to Heylyn's History of Presbyterians.' The passage of Heylyn which he refers to is the following: 'I know that some out of pure zeal with the cause would fain entitle them [the Presbyterians] to a descent from the Jewish Sanhedrim ordained by God himself in the time of Moses. And that it might comply the better with these ends and purposes, they have endeavoured to make that famous consistory of the seventy elders not only a co-ordinate power with that of Moses, and after his decease with the kings and princes of that state in the public government, but a power paramount and supreme, from which lay no appeal to any but to God himself; a power by which they were enabled not only to control the actions of their kings and princes, but also to correct their persons.' Heylyn proceeds: 'And yet I shall not yield them an antiquity as great as that which they desire, as great as that of Moses or the Jewish Sanhedrim, from which they would so willingly derive themselves.' 1. 187. devest, the spelling of the time for the word divest now in use, which is clearly a corruption of language. The literal meaning is 'to take clothes off,' and de is the proper prefix.

1. 189. Korah and the sons of Levi, who rebelled and were all swallowed up in a pit which opened in the earth, are here compared to a Presbyterian 'class'; classis, order.

1. 190. The Fox, the Arian, already spoken of as 'false Reynard.'

1. 204. The native kennel small' and 'bounded betwixt a puddle and a wall,' is Dryden's contemptuous description of Geneva, the puddle being the great and beautiful lake Leman.

1. 211. This line occurs in Absalom and Achitophel, 227, where see the note. 1. 235. The wolfish crew' chased from 'Celtic woods' are the French Protestants driven from France by the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685. The contemptuous tone of this passage is in marked contrast with the allusion to the persecution of the French Huguenots in the Preface.

1. 284. the blessed Pan, Jesus Christ. In Part ii. line 711, Christ is again spoken of as mighty Pan.' Compare Milton's Hymn on Christ's Nativity: The shepherds on the lawn

Or ere the point of dawn,

Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they then

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below.'

1. 288. This and the two following lines were probably added by Dryden after the publication of the Declaration of Indulgence.

1. 290. for their foes. Broughton substituted from for for, thus making the line nonsense, but his mistake has been adopted by succeeding editors, including Scott.

1. 319. divisible, material; divisibility being a criterion of matter.

1. 322. Such souls as shards produce. The probable meaning of shard here is dung or ordure. The word does not occur again in this sense in Dryden. In his translation of the Second Epode of Horace, he uses shard for an edible plant:

'Not heathpout or the rarer bird
Which Phasis or Ionia yields,
More pleasing morsels would afford
Than the fat olives of my fields;
Than shards or mallows for the pot
That keep the loosened body sound.'

Some are of opinion that shard has the meaning 'dung' in the passage in
Macbeth, Act iii. Sc. 2.

'The shard-borne beetle with her drowsy hums.'

This word would mean in that case 'born of dung'; the spelling born or borne is immaterial. There is a beetle called the 'turd-bug' (Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words) or 'dung-beetle.' Most commentators interpret shard-borne as meaning borne or carried by shards, the hard wing-cases of the beetle. Shard or sherd means in old writers the hard scale of an animal; and it might mean the mail of a beetle, but there is a gap between the mailcovering of a wing and the wing itself. Gower says of a dragon that his 'scherdes shyne as the sonne' (Confessio Amantis, 1. vi.), and describes a serpent,

These passages do not explain shard-borne; but they may explain 'sharded beetle' in Cymbeline, Act iii. Sc. 2:

Sharded may here mean mail-clad,' but it may also mean 'dunged' or 'dunging,' sharded being sharding (a not uncommon use in Shakespeare of the past participle termination). In Antony and Cleopatra (Act iii. Sc. 2), Lepidus is described by Ænobarbus as hovering and gloating with praise equally over Caesar and Antony.

·

They are his shards and he their beetle.'

The meaning of 'dung' for shard would be very appropriate here. The commentators generally explain shards as the beetle's two wing-cases, but

how can they be separated from the beetle? There is a fourth passage in Shakespeare where shard occurs, where the meaning may be different. In Hamlet (Act v. Sc. 1) the priest says that Ophelia deserved that

Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.' Shards here means broken pieces or fragments of pottery: it is the word sherd of the translation of the Bible. And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters' vessel that is broken to pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth.' (Isaiah xxx. 14.) And again in Ezekiel xxiii. 34: Thou shalt break the sherds' of the cup. This sherd is preserved in potsherd, fragment of a pot, which occurs, so spelt, in Dryden. Here again, however, in the passage of Hamlet, shards might mean ‘pieces of dung.' Mr. Browning has lately written in The Ring and the Book, probably following the passage of Hamlet,

'By the roadside, mid ordure, shards, and weeds.' 1. 327. The Panther, the Church of England.

11. 339, 340. Compare with this couplet Juvenal, Sat. xiii. 209:
'Nam scelus intra se tacitum qui cogitat ullum,
Facti crimen habet.'

1. 354. Conjugium vocat, hoc praetexit nomine culpam.'

Virg. Aen. iv. 172.

Henry VIII's divorce from Catharine and marriage with Anne Boleyn are here referred to, as leading to the abolition of the papal authority in England. 1. 369. Here Dryden refers to the removal of the restriction of celibacy for priests.

1. 371. hattered out, wearied out. The word occurs in Ogilby's translation of the Iliad, p. 500, 1669. Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, quotes from Gavan and Gob, iii. 5, ‘Helmys of hard steill their hatterit and heuch.'

1. 385. I have preserved here the spelling of the original edition, travailing. This was the common spelling for the two meanings, ‘journey' (now spelt travel) and labour.' See Part iii. line 411.

1. 388. presumed of praise. A common Gallicism with Dryden: it occurs again in Part iii. line 511.

1. 391. This line has been spoilt by Derrick and most subsequent editors, including Scott, by changing The into Their. herds here means 'shepherds.'

399. phylacteries. The accent is on the third syllable, the e being long in Greek, φυλακτήριον.

1. 409. Derrick and a few other editors have spoilt this line by changing reformed into deformed:

'And least deformed, because deformed the least,' which is simple nonsense.

11. 417–430. Dryden here criticises the Article of the Church of England on the Eucharist, Art. xxviii. The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign

of the love that Christians ought to have amongst themselves one to another, but rather it is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death; insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ...... The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper only, after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith.'

1. 446. Resolved here means 'dissolved.' It is similarly used in Dryden's Eleanora, 229:

'Goodness resolved into necessity.'

1. 449. Isgrim's. Dryden has a note on this word, 'The Wolf.' It is the name given to the wolf in the old German fable of Reynard the Fox. This is ridiculed in Montague and Prior's parody. Bayes says: 'Take it from me, Mr. Smith, there is as good morality, and as sound precepts in the delectable History of Reynard the Fox, as in any book I know, except Seneca; pray tell me where, in any other author, could I have found so pretty a name for a wolf as Isgrim?' But Dryden had Beaumont and Fletcher's example:

Isgrim himself in all his bloody anger

I can beat from the bay.' Beggar's Bush, Act iii. Sc. 4. 1.552. There was an old superstition that the wolf's seeing the man before he saw it, or the sight of a wolf, or the wolf's look, deprived a man of the power of speech:

'Vox quoque Moerin

Jam fugit ipsa lupi Moerin videre priores,'

Virg. Eclogue ix. 53.

In Theocritus (Idyl xiv. 22) the mere sight of a wolf is said to take away speech. Pliny says that when a wolf sees a man before the man sees him, it is believed to have the effect of taking away the man's power of speech for the time. There is no classical authority, however, for the power which Dryden here, gives the Hind of making the wolf speechless. Shirley, in the Royal Master (Act iv. Sc. 6), states it correctly: The fright she was in late, like a wolf that sees a man first, hath taken away her voice.' 1. 554. suffised, so spelt in the original edition, and the spelling is here retained; from the French suffiser.

The Hind and the Panther. Part II.

ll. I-II. This refers to the agitation consequence of the so-called Popish Plot.

against the Roman Catholics in 'The younger Lion' is James II,

then Duke of York. The Hind replies (17-27) that the prosecution was against the Church of England as well as the Roman Catholics.

1. 21. quarry here stands for game as distinguished from vermin.

1. 30. The Test Acts of 1673 and 1678 prescribed a declaration denying Transubstantiation; the words of both these Acts were, 'I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever.'

1. 63. cannon is in the early editions, and it is here preserved. The word is changed to canon in Scott's and the Wartons' editions.

cannon seems

the best sense, and Dryden may have meant a play on the word. In Part iii. line 466 canon is misprinted cannon in the first edition, and it is corrected in the second to canon. But in this passage cannon remains.

1. 67. subterranean Rome, 'Roma Sotteranea,' an extensive cavern near Rome, formerly inhabited, described in a work of that name published at Rome, circa 1632. Evelyn describes his visit to this cavern in his Diary, April 11, 1645.

1. 79. For fallacies in universals live. Dolus versatur in generalibus.' Compare As those who in a logical dispute keep in general terms would hide a fallacy.' (Preface to Annus Mirabilis, p. 27.)

1. 142. Luther's doctrine of Consubstantiation. 1. 161. An imitation of Lucan:

'Infestisque obvia signis

Signa, pares aquilas, et pila minantia pilis.'

Pharsalia, i. 7.

1. 227. The omen of the ladder is, it is to be presumed, the gallows. 1. 228. The sweetness of the panther's breath is an old belief. mentioned by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxi. 7).

Thy baths shall be the juice of July flowers,

Spirit of roses and of violets,

The milk of unicorns and panthers' breath,

Gathered in bags and mixt with Cretan wines.'

Ben Jonson, The Fox, Act iii. Sc. 5.

And yet your grace is bound

To have his accusation confirmed,

Or hunt this spotted panther to his ruin,

Whose breath is only sweet to poison virtue.'

It is

Shirley, The Royal Master, Act iii. Sc. I.

1. 230. the blatant beast. blatant, howling,' 'barking.' Dryden here means probably the Presbyterian, the Wolf. Derrick thought it referred to the Blatant Beast of Spenser's Faery Queen, Slander; and Scott and other editors have adopted Derrick's interpretation, printing the two words with initial capitals; but they are not so printed in the original editions.

1. 268. These statutes were suspended by James's Declaration of Indulgence, issued shortly before the publication of the poem.