Pygmalion, king of Tyre, was the son of Margenus, or Mechres, whom he succeeded, and lived 56 years, whereof he reigned 47. Dido, his sister, was to have governed with him, but it was pretended the subjects thought it not convenient. She married Sichæus, who was the king’s uncle, and very rich; wherefore he put him to death; and Dido soon after departed the kingdom. Poets say, Pygmalion was punished for the hatred he bore to women with the love he had to a statue. ↩
Pantaloons and port-cannons were some of the fantastic fashions wherein we aped the French.
At quisquis Insula satus Britannica
Sic patria insolens fastidiet suam,
Ut more simiæ laboret fingere,
Et æmulari Gallicas ineptias,
Et omni Gallo ego hunc opinor ebrium;
Ergo ex Britanno, ut Gallus esse nititur,
Sic Dii jubete, fiat ex Gallo Capus.
—Thomas More.
Gallus is a river in Phrygia; rising out of the mountains of Celenae, and discharging itself into the river Sanger, the water of which is of that admirable quality, that, being moderately drank, it purges the brain, and cures madness; but largely drank, it makes men frantic. Pliny, Horatius. ↩
A learned divine in King James’s time wrote a polemic work against the Pope, and gave it that unlucky nickname of The Pope’s Bull Baited. ↩
Smectymnuus was a club of five parlimentary holders-forth; the characters of whose names and talents were by themselves expressed in that senseless and insignificant word. They wore handkerchiefs about their necks for a mark of distinction (as the Officers of the Parliament Army then did) which afterwards degenerated into carnal cravats. About the beginning of the long Parliament, in the year 1641, these five wrote a book against Episcopacy and the Common Prayer, to which they all subscribed their names; being Stephen Marshal, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow, and from thence they and their followers were called Smectymnians. They are remarkable for another pious book, which they wrote some time after that, entitled, The King’s Cabinet Unlocked, wherein all the chaste and endearing expressions, in the letters that passed betwixt his Majesty King Charles I and his Royal Consort are by these painful labourers in the devil’s vineyard turned into burlesque and ridicule. Their books were answered with as much calmness and genteelness of expression, and as much learning and honesty, by the Rev. Mr. Symonds, then a deprived clergyman, as theirs was stuffed with malice, spleen, and rascally invectives. ↩
This relates to the story of Pope Joan, who was called John VIII. Platina saith she was of English extraction, but born at Mentz; who, having disguised herself like a man, travelled with her paramour to Athens, where she made such progress in learning, that coming to Rome, she met with few that could equal her; so that, on the death of Pope Leo IV she was chosen to succeed him; but being got with child by one of her domestics, her travail came upon her between the Colossian Theatre and St. Clement’s, as she was going to the Lateran Church, and died upon the place, having sat two years, one month, and four days, and was buried there without any pomp. He owns that, for the shame of this, the Popes decline going through this street to the Lateran; and that, to avoid the like error, when any Pope is placed in the Porphyry Chair, his genitals are felt by the youngest deacon, through a hole made for that purpose; but he supposes the reason of that to be, to put him in mind that he is a man, and obnoxious to the necessities of nature, whence he will have the seat to be called Sedes Stercoraria. ↩
Vitilitigation is a word the Knight was passionately in love with, and never failed to use it upon all occasions; and therefore to omit it, when it fell in the way, bad argued too great a neglect of his learning and parts; though it means no more than a perverse humour of wrangling. ↩
Disparata are things separate and unlike, from the Latin word dispare. ↩
The beginning of this Second Part may perhaps seem strange and abrupt to those who do not know that it was written on purpose in imitation of Virgil, who begins the IV Book of his Aeneids in the very same manner, “At Regina gravi,” etc. And this is enough to satisfy the curiosity of those who believe that invention and fancy ought to be measured (like cases in law) by precedents, or else they are in the power of the critic. ↩
The history of the Duke of Saxony is not so strange as that of a bishop, his countryman, who was quite eaten up with rats and mice. ↩
Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, as Pliny says, had this occult quality in his toe, Pollicis in dextro pede tactu lienosis medebatur
, l. 7. c. 11. ↩
Catasta is but a pair of stocks in English. But heroical poetry must not admit of any vulgar word (especially of paltry signification,) and therefore some of our modem authors are fain to import foreign words from abroad, that were never before heard of in our language. ↩
Madam Bennet’s. ↩
The ancient writers of the lives of saints were of the same sort of people who first writ of knight-errantry; and as in the one they rendered the brave actions of some great persons ridiculous, by their prodigious lies, and sottish way of describing them, so they have
