eminence in his own age placed him in a low and contemptible position in another age. See Trench's Study of Words. 28. 33. Norwich drugget. He wrote first " rusty drugget." (Todd.) Norwich was known for its woollen manufactures from the time of Henry I., when a colony of Flemings settled in the neighbourhood of Worstead. 'Others, settlers from the same country, joined their brethren in the reign of Henry VI. and Elizabeth." (Pop. Encycl.) Worsted," "Lindsey Wolsey," and "Kerseymere" are said to be so called from East Anglian villages noted for their woollen productions: see Taylor's Words and Places. For the term drugget, "it is said that drugget or droget was first made at Drogheda in Ireland.' 35. warbling. See Hymn Nat. 96. lute. See Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, 36. whilom. Scotch "quhylum." This is an old dat. case; so "seldom." With the help of a prep. was formed from the same stem the adverb "umwhile," Scotch "umquhile: " see Piers Ploughman, Ed. Skeat, v. 345. 36. See Introd. 38. silver Thames. See Spenser's Prothal. 1. 11. 39. [What other meaning has well-tim'd?] barge = pleasure boat. In a "barge" Cleopatra sailed down the Cydnus; see Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 196. 40. [What is the force of of here ?] 42. That is, "such a scene was never depicted even in one of your own nonsensical plays." Shadwell had written a play called Epsom Wells. The virtue of the springs at Epsom was discovered in 1618. 43. Methinks. See note, Prothal. 60. 45. well-sharpned thumb. As if his thumb was a sword inflicting cruel cuts on the trebles and the basses. Comp. Juvenal's "stricto pane" (Sat. v. 169). Shadwell is the leader of the band. [Why do nail and thumb make the description ludicrous?] 49. As they might be supposed to have thronged around Arion; but in fact fishes, except seals, are said to be insensible to the charms of music. Comp. with this passage an old ballad on the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth (quoted here from memory): "The Queen was brought by water to Whitehall, At every stroke the oars did tears let fall; Some clung about the boat; the fishes under water Wept out their eyes of pearl, and swam blind after." No doubt one great amusement of leisurely voyagers up and down the Thames in the days of pleasure barges would be throwing over pieces of bread and toast and watching the eager contentious pursuit of the little fishes. Or, more probably, this passage refers to fragments of the morning toast which, thrown out for the benefit of the swans (a great number of these were kept on the river in the old days), became objects of desire and pursuit to the fishes. 50. thy threshing hand, i.e. the hand which you move as if you were threshing = with which you beat time. His roll of " papers" served him as a bâton. 51. St. André was a well-known French dancing-master of the day. 52. Psyche. See Introd Pepys 54. [What is meant by they? and what by saying they fell like tautology?] 55. Singleton is said to have been the leader of the King's private band. mentions how once, in 1660, the king "did put a great affront upon his music, bidding them stop and make the French music play." He was also an actor, as the present passage shows. Villerius is a persona in Sir W. D'Avenant's Siege of Rhodes. With regard to the lute ana sword, see the Fifth Act of The Rehearsal, where that play is parodied. The stage direction "Enter at several doors the General and Lieutenant-General, arm'd Cap-a-pea, with. runs: T each of them a lute in his hand and his sword drawn, and hung with a scarlet ribbon at his wrist." Villerius' part required both military valour and musical skill; hence his double equipment. 28. 59. [What is the force of of here?] 62. Augusta. As it was the fashion to speak of Charles the Second as Cæsar (see Dryden's lines To his Sacred Majesty) and as Augustus (see e.g. his Threnodia Augustalis), the capital city of his kingdom came to be called by the affected name of Augusta. It was, in fact, an old name revived. Augusta was a common title in the Roman Empire for cities founded or specially patronized by the first of the Emperors; thus there were Augusta Rauracorum (the modern Aust), Augusta Trevirorum (now Trèves), Augusta Eminta (now Merida), Augusta Prætoria (Aosta), Augusta Taurinorum (Turin), &c. Ammianus Marcellinus informs us that London enjoyed this title. He speaks of " Lundinium, an old town to which posterity gave the title of Augusta." In the Notitia Dignitatum mention is made of a Præpositus Thesaurorum Augustensium in Britanniis;" "in the Chorography of Ravenna the complete form Londinium Augusta is given." (Smith's Dict. Greek and Rom. Geography, s. v. "Londinium.") See Gay's Trivia, III. "Happy Augusta! law-defended town," &c. Swift, On Poetry, a Rhapsody:— "For poets (you can never want them) Amount to just nine thousand souls." 66 the walls which, &c. The old line of the walls may be traced by the gates, whose position is still recorded in certain street names, as Lud-gate, New-gate, Cripple-gate, &c. Just south of the church of St. Giles', Crippiegate, near the street called London Wall, a considerable piece of them yet stands. 63. The strange vicissitudes of the Civil War time, the Plague, the Fire, the suspected instability of the Government, had made London nervous-hysterical, so to speak. Hence its wild readiness to believe in Popish plots, &c. See history of Charles II.'s reign 65. Barbican. 'Propugnaculum exterius quo oppidum aut castrum, præsertim vero eorum portæ aut muri muniuntur." (Du Cange.) "It was generally a small round tower for the station of an advanced guard placed just before the outward gate of the castle-yard or ballium." (Halliwell and Wright's Nares' Gloss.) It frequently stood on the other, i.e. the outer, side of the foss. (See Ivanhoe.) It served especially as a watch-tower. Comp. "raised to inform the sight," &c. in our text Spenser's Faerie Queene, II. ix. 25: "Within the barbican a porter sate Day and night duly keeping watch and ward." Where see Mr. Kitchin's note. "Chaucer useth the word for a watch-tower, which in our Saxon tongue was called a burgh-kenning." (Cotgrave.) For the derivation and first meaning of the word, see Wedgwood's Dict. Eng. Etym., according to which barbican and balcony are both but various forms of a combination of two Persian words, meaning an upper chamber. The particular barbican here referred to was the advanced post of Cripplegate. (Ludgate too had its barbican.) Stowe says that from it "a man might behold and view the whole city towards the south, and also into Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, and likewise every other way east, north, or west." See Timbs' Curiosities of London. In the street still named after it Milton at one time lived. hight was called. Sometimes it has a present sense, sometimes it is a participle. Spenser uses it frequently in all these ways. See Halliwell and Wright's Nares' Gloss. It is a later form from the A.-S. hatan (pret. hatte), which has both an active and passive ⚫ sense; so German heissen, which is of the same root: hence the double use of hight in later English both as a passive participle and as a verb of active form and passive meaning. With it in this latter usage comp. apparently Lat. veneo, fio, cluo, vapulo; A.-S. weorthan, to be made, &c. "Properly it was a passive form of the verb, as shown by Moso-Goth. haitith, he calls; haitada, he is called; as in 'Thomas saei haitada Didimus,' Thomas who is called Didymus." (See Skeat's Piers Ploughman, Clar. Press Ed. Gloss.) See Piers Ploughman, Canterbury Tales, Faerie Queene, passim. See Midsummer Night's Dream, V. i. 140; Love's Labour Lost, I. i. 171; Pericles, IV. Gower, l. 17. Milton does not use it, at least in his poems. The form highteth occurs in an old play called Ordinary: How highteth she, say you?" There was another A.-S. verb hatan, to command; the preterite of which (het) is often confounded with that of hatan, to call: see Morris' Chaucer's Prologue, Clar. Press Ed. Hence the various senses of hight as used by Spenser. See Halliwell and Wright's Nares' Gloss. 28. 68. a Nursery: a place where youthful would-be actors, and perhaps would-be playwrights, made their first attempts, and so the head-quarters of inferior theatrical art. See The Rehearsal, II. iii.: “Igad,” says Mr. Bayes of his actors, "these fellows are able to spoil the best things in Christendom. I'll tell you, Mr. Johnson, I vow to gad I have been so highly disoblig'd by the peremptoriness of these fellows that I am resolv'd hereafter to bend all my thoughts for the service of the Nursery, and mump your proud players, Igad." It received letters patent from the King in 1662; its object was to train boys and girls in the art of acting. 71. Maximins. Maximin was the god-defiant hero of Dryden's Tyrannic Love. 29. 72. Fletcher seems to have been in Charles II.'s reign more popular than Shakspere. In his own day he was placed very near him. His name may be said to stand as for Beaumont and Fletcher. In the plays written during Beaumont's life it appears almost impossible to separate his work from that of his colleague, and in those which came out after Beaumont's death (Beaumont died in 1616, Fletcher in 1625) there are probably posthumous parts. Certainly the strength of these dramatists lay in comedy, in spite of Dryden's buskins in our text; and their strength was great. buskins. See Il Penseroso, l. 102. 73. See L'Allegro, l. 132. 74. gentle Simkin was a cobbler in an interlude of the day. Shoemaking was especially styled "the gentle craft." Compare this title of a book published in 1758: "The Delightful, Princely, and entertaining History of the Gentle Craft, very pleasant to read, shewing what famous men have been Shoemakers, shewing why it was called the Gentle Craft, and how a Shoemaker's Son is a prince born, with the Merry Pranks of the Green King, the Shoemaker's Glory," &c. 75. vanished minds of intellects departed, of idiotcy. Comp. Tennyson's an and "a vanished life," in In Mem. 76. clinches. In Taylor's Wit and Mirth "clinch" is used for a clencher, unanswerable reply." (Halliwell and Wright's Nares' Gloss.) It was used also for a witty saying, a repartee. (Halliwell's Dict.) Johnson defines it "a word used in a double meaning, a pun, an ambiguity," &c., and quotes, besides Mac Flecknoe, Boyle: "Such as they are, I hope they will prove without a clinch, luciferous searching after the nature of light." Dryden says of Shakspere: "He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast.' Comp. Dunciad, i. 63: II. xii. 85. 66 Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes." suburbian. So" robustious" in Sams. Agon. 569; "monstruous," Faerie Queene, 77. Panton is said to have been a noted punster of the day. 29. 80. Decker. Thomas Dekker was one of the great Elizabethan dramatists. Jonson is supposed to have satirised him in his Poetaster, a compliment which he returned in his Satiromastix. Dryden introduces him here because he was a City poet." Dryden seems scarcely to have estimated him at his proper worth. There is a singularly musical and otherwise exquisite song by him, "Art thou poor, but hast thou golden slumbers," quoted in the Golden Treasury. 83. Psyche The Miser-The Humorists, are plays by Shadwell. 86. Raymond is one of the characters in the Humorists, "a gentleman of wit and honour." Bruce is a character in The Virtuoso, "a gentleman of wit and sense." 90. Bunhill-Watling-street. See map of London. 91. Comp. Æsch. Agam. 881-2 (Ed. Paley). 92. Comp. Horace's "disjectaque membra poetæ." 93. Ogleby, at first a dancing-master, translated the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Eneid, besides producing some original poetry and writing a History of China. See Dunciad, i. 141 and 328. 95. Bilkt: who had been defrauded of their due payments. stationers booksellers. This was the original force of the word, and was still its force in Dryden's time. See Trench's Sel. Gloss.; Dunciad, ii. 30. yeomen. "He instituted for the security of his person a band of fifty archers under a captain to attend him, by the name of yeomen of his guard." (Bacon's Henry VII.) This word is variously connected with Fris. gaeman, a village; A.-S. gemæne, common; A.-S. yeonge, young ; A.-S. geongra, a vassal; fancifully with yer. 96. Herringman was a well-known publisher of Charles II.'s reign. Dryden, in the earlier part of his career, had been connected with him. He was the "bookseller" meant by Shadwell in his Medal of John Bayes: " "He turned a journeyman to a bookseller, Writ prefaces to books for meat and drink, And as he paid he would both write and think." 98. throne: state" in the first edition. "The state was a raised platform, on which was placed a chair with a canopy over it." See Glossary to Cunningham's Massinger. [What is meant by of his own labours?] 99. Ascanius. See Eneid, passim. Dryden did not produce his translation of Virgil's great poem till some fifteen years after the coming out of Mac Flecknoe, but he was already thoroughly familiar with it, as indeed all his age was. 100. Rome's other hope = spes altera Romæ (Æn. xii. 168). 101. glories. See Keats' Eve of St. Agnes. 102. Comp. En. ii. 680, and old Romance of Havelok. 103. See Class. Dict. and Hist. Rome; Livy's Hist. xxi. 1. 104. [What does sworn mean here ?] 107. [What is meant by his father's right?] 108. [What is the government of to have, &c.?] 109. made performed. 111. ball. "Hear the tragedy of a young man that by right ought to hold the ball of a kingdom; but by fortune is made himself a ball, tossed from misery to misery, from place to place." (Bacon apud Johnson.) 113. Love's Kingdom: a play by Flecknoe. Derrick says he wrote four plays, but "could get only one of them acted, and that was damned." convey is used here in its technical sense. "The Earl of Desmond, before his breaking forth into rebellion, conveyed secretly all his lands to feoffees in trust." (Spenser.) Comp. The Medal, of Shaftesbury's political doctrine : 30. 116. recorded Fairfax: above mentioned; or rather sung, for Psyche was an opera. Comp. "They long'd to see the day, to hear the lark Record her hymns and chaunt her carols blest." "Record, to sing; applied particularly to the singing of birds." (Darley's Beaumont and Fletcher, Gloss.) A recorder was a flageolet. 121. See Ovid's Fast. iv. 817. 125. the honours of his head. Comp. Valerius Flaccus' Argonautics, vi. 296: Populeus cui frontis honor, conspectaque glauco Tempora nectuntur ramo.” 126. [What is meant by damps of oblivion ?] 127. [What is the force of full here ?] 128. the filial dulness. Comp. Horace's "mitis sapientia Læli," &c. Comp. Æneid, vi. 79. 134. [What are the ludicrous points of this line?] 136. Comp. En. vi. 95. 138. He is parodying Æn. xii. 435. 140. "While Dryden accuses Shadwell of slowness in composition, Rochester attributes his faults to haste." See Allusion to Tenth Satire of First Book of Horace. (Note in the forthcoming Globe Edition of Dryden's works.) 142. George Sir George Etheredge, a man of fashion, a diplomatist, a poet, a comedy writer. He died at Ratisbon, where he was Minister Resident, in 1694. See Dryden's Poetical Epistle addressed to him at Ratisbon, and also the Epilogue which Dryden wrote for his most popular play, The Man of the Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter. See below, l. 144. 143. Dorimant, Loveit, &c., are characters in Etheridge's plays, The Man of the Mode, and Love in a Tub. 154. Sedley. Sir Charles Sedley was one of the wits and the poets and the dramatists that sparkled in the court of Charles II. See his songs, Ah! Chloris, could I now but sit," and "Not, Celia, that I juster am" (given in the Golden Treasury). He wrote the prologue for Shadwell's Epsom Wells (1672). 155. hungry = lean, scrannel." See Lycidas, 125. Epsom prose refers to Shadwell's Epsom Wells. 31. 158. top. Comp. The Rehearsal, III. i.: "he does not top his part," where the Key of 1704 notes that "it was a great word with Mr. Edward Howard." 159. Sir Formal Trifle is a verbose oratorical person in Shadwell's Virtuoso. 161. "By the northern dedications are meant Shadwell's frequent dedications to the Duke of Newcastle; he dedicated also to the Duchess and to their son the Earl of Ogle." (Note in the Globe Edition of Dryden's Works.) 163. See Introd. 170. Nicander is a character in Psyche. 174. Observe the rhyme between purloin and thine. So join was sounded jine, &c. Noise rhymes with cries in Dunciad, ii. 221-2. 178. byas. See Shakspere, Richard II. III. iv. 5; Hamlet, II. i. 65, So The Medal: "To his first bias longingly he leans." |