NOTES. Stanzas on Oliver Cromwell. 1. The death of Cromwell was on September 3, 1658; the funeral was celebrated on November 23. The meaning of this stanza is, that 'now 'tis time,' after the funeral, to write in honour of Cromwell's memory, and that those who wrote before were too hasty. The comparison with the Romans refers to the custom of letting fly an eagle at the close of the funeral ceremonies of a Roman emperor, which were his consecration or apotheosis. The eagle flying upwards symbolized the ascent of the soul of the deceased emperor to take its place among the gods. These funeral ceremonies are minutely described by Herodianus in the case of the Emperor Severus (Hist. Roman. lib. iv.) Dryden makes reference to this custom again in his play, Tyrannic Love, Act iv. Sc. 2: 'A God indeed after the Roman style, An eagle mounting from a kindled pile.' Stanza 1, line 1. officious baste. officious means 'friendly,' 'obliging.' Poem on the Coronation, 42: 'Officious slumbers haste your eyes to close.' And Threnodia Augustalis, 370: The officious Muses came along.' Compare also officious flood' in Annus Mirabilis, stanza 184. 'Officious' has the same meaning in Milton: Yet not to Earth are those bright luminaries 2. 4. authentic, stamped with authority, authoritative. This is the usual meaning with Dryden and his contemporaries. Compare The Hind and the Panther, Part iii. 838. One of Dryden's Prologues to the University of Oxford (1673) ends with this couplet: 6 Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit, But 'tis your suffrage makes authentic wit.' In his Dedication of Aurengzebe, Dryden, speaking of the King, says, 'he has made authentic my private opinion.' 4. 3. prevent, anticipate; the ordinary meaning with Dryden. Compare Astræa Redux, 67 and 282; Absalom and Achitophel, 344; The Hind and the Panther, Part ii. 641. In stanza 11 of this poem, prevent may mean either anticipate' or 'hinder,' but the former is probably the meaning. Q 5. 2. circular, perfect, completely symmetrical. A man so absolute and circular.' Massinger, Maid of Honour, Act i. Sc. 2. In this, sister, your wisdom is not circular.' Massinger, The Emperor of the East, Act iii. Sc. 2. Any attaint might disproportion her, Or make her graces less than circular.' G. Chapman, Mons d'Olive. The idea is the same in the Latin rotundus, as applied by Horace to a perfect man, teres atque rotundus' (Sat. ii. 7. 86), and by Cicero to a perfect style, apta et quasi rotunda constructio' (Brutus, c. 78). Dryden, in his poem Eleanora, compares the Countess of Abingdon's perfection to an orb 'truly round' (line 273); and 'round eternity' in The Hind and the Panther (Part ii. 19), is explained as Dryden here explains the circular fame of Cromwell. For in a round what order can be shewed?' Eternity has neither beginning nor end. Cleaveland has 'Eternity's round womb' (Rupertismus, p. 58 of ed. 1659). 'But in his circle wit no end is found.' Elegy on Cleaveland, before Poems, &c., 1660. 3. shewed. Both spellings shew and show occur in Dryden's original editions; and the spelling is adapted to the rhyme. Here shewed rhymes with conclude. In stanzas 32 and 37 show rhymes with go, and in stanzas 14 and 24 shown with sown and own. In the last couplet of Astræa Redux foreshew rhymes with you. 8. 1. of is wrongly replaced by to in the edition in the State Poems; and to is in Scott's edition. Pompey reached the highest point of his prosperity and glory on the occasion of his splendid triumph, on his forty-fifth birthday, after his return to Rome from his great Eastern conquests, B.C. 61. After that, his rule at Rome was attended with many troubles, till at last, vanquished by Cæsar, and a fugitive, he was assassinated in Egypt, B.C. 48, September 25, the day before that which would have completed his fortyeighth year. Cromwell, on the other hand, first came permanently into notice in the Civil War when he was forty-five; his greatness grew from that hour, and he died at the age of fifty-nine, in great fame and power. 11. 1. sticklers were sidesmen in a fight, who acted as umpires, and separated the combatants, when they judged right. The dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act v. Sc. 8. They were called sticklers from their carrying sticks or staves, with which they interfered between the combatants. The verb stickle is used in this sense of interfering to separate combatants in Dryden's Assignation, Act i. Sc. I: 'Nay then 'tis time to stickle.' It occurs also in Dryden's Prologue to Southerne's Disappointment, 'roar and stickle,' rhyming with 'conventicle,' which would be either pronounced conventickle or with the final e making a distinct syllable, as occurs in Dryden with chronicles, miracles, oracles. See note on Astræa Redux, 106. Compare also, 'He used to lay about and stickle, Like ram or bull at conventicle.' Hudibras, i. 2. 435. 'Faith, cry St. George, let them go to 't and stickle Cleaveland, Smectymnus, p. 39 of Poems, 1659. The former chiefs,' who are compared to 'sticklers,' are the Presbyterian Parliamentary generals of the beginning of the Civil War, Essex, Manchester, Waller, and others, who were thought unwilling to prosecute to the utmost advantages gained against the king, and whom the Independents got rid of through the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Model, making Fairfax commander-in-chief, and Cromwell lieutenant-general. 12. 3. He fought to end our fighting. end our wrongly changed to binder in the edition in the State Poems, followed in a few editions. Assayed. Dryden spells this verb in the same way in The Hind and the Panther, Part iii. 796. But he spells it essay in an earlier work, Threnodia Augustalis, 162, and in his latest volume, The Fables. The substantive he uniformly spells essay. 4. Breathing (sc. opening) of the vein, is a peculiar and favourite phrase of Dryden. He uses it in Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii. 775: Nor breathing veins nor cupping will prevail.' Also in The Spanish Friar, Act v. Sc. 2; and in translating Virgil's 'ferire venam (Georgics, iii. 460), and Juvenal's 'mediam pertundite venam' (Sat. vi. 46). Dryden's 'Stanch the blood by breathing of the vein,' is illustrated by a passage of Bacon: There is a fifth way also in use, to let blood in an adverse part for a revulsion' (Nat. Hist. cent. 1). Stanch is spelt Stench in the separate edition of this poem of 1659. When Dryden had become prominent as a court-poet in the reign of Charles II, his adversaries frequently taunted him with this 'breathing of the vein,' interpreting it as meaning the execution of Charles I. But the line does not necessarily mean so much. It may mean no more than a vigorous and thorough policy. 13. 2. That bold Greek who did the East subdue. Alexander the Great. 14. The meaning of the last three lines is, Till the Island might by new maps be shown thick of conquests, &c. as the galaxy is sown with stars.' Thick of is one of Dryden's frequent Gallicisms. It occurs again in his Palamon and Arcite, Bk. i. 230: 'He through a little window cast his sight, Though thick of bars, that gave a scanty light.' This stanza has puzzled some editors, who have made changes. A semicolon or colon is placed at the end of the first line, and Till' at the beginning of the second is changed into Still,' in the edition in the State Poems, in Broughton's, the Wartons', and Aldine editions. Scott, first edition (1808), also has a stop at the end of the first line. 15. Aulus Gellius, in the Noctes Atticae (lib. iii. c. 6), describes this quality of the palm of thriving under oppressive weights; and, quoting Plutarch, he says that this is why the palm has been chosen as the emblem of victory, 'quoniam ingenium eiusmodi ligni est, ut ingentibus opprimentibusque non cedat.' The palm is the date-palm of the East, and the palm of Scripture, Phoenix dactylifera. The righteous shall flourish like the palmtree (Psalm xcii. 120). Well did he know how palms by oppression speed Cowley, Davideis, Bk. i. 16. 3. Bologna's walls. Guicciardini relates that, when the French were besieged in Bologna in 1512 by the Papal, Spanish, and Venetian forces, a mine laid by the besiegers blew up a part of the walls on which stood a chapel dedicated to the Holy Virgin, and that this, after being carried up so high in air that the besiegers saw through the breach into the town, fell down again exactly into its old place, and that there was no sign of injury. (Storia d'Italia, lib. x.) See Roscoe's Life of Leo X, ii. 101. 17. 2. treacherous Scotland. Treacherous' on account of the rising of 1648, under the Duke of Hamilton, for Charles I, and the war afterwards carried on by the Scots for Charles II, which ended, after the defeat of Charles at Worcester, in the complete subjugation of Scotland. Eighteen months later, when Dryden suddenly transferred all his enthusiasm to Charles, Scottish treachery' would be regarded by him as virtue. 18. 3. mien, pronounced mine to rhyme with shine. Spelt mine in the edition of 1659 with Waller's and Sprat's poems, and in the other spelt mien. It is spelt and pronounced mine in the following couplet of Marvell, And everything so wished and fine Starts forth withal to its bonne mine.' Appleton House (Works, iii. 220). The word, introduced from the French mine, is elsewhere spelt meen in Dryden, in accordance with the French pronunciation. See The Hind and the Panther, Part i. 33, where it is spelt 'meen' in the original edition, and rhymes with seen.' In a song in Covent Garden Drollery, 'bonne mine' is Anglicized, P. 32, Second Edition, 1672. 19. 4. sovereign, all-powerful. 'A sovereign remedy,' in The Flower and the Leaf, 422. To me thy tears are sovereign.' Rival Ladies, Act iii. Sc. 1. Suckling, Brennoralt, p. 20, 1638. The most sovereign prescription in Galen.' Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act ii. Sc. I. 20. There was a temple of Jupiter Feretrius in Rome, said to have been |