Part 34

3. [JUVENAL. SATIRE III.]

How oft have we beheld wild beasts appear From broken gulfs of earth, upon some part Of sand that did not sink! How often there And thence, did golden boughs o'er-saffron'd start! Nor only saw we monsters of the wood, But I have seen sea-calves whom bears withstood; And such a kind of beast as might be named A horse, but in most foul proportion framed.

4. [MARTIAL. EPIGR. I. 105.]

That the fierce pard doth at a beck Yield to the yoke his spotted neck, And the untoward tiger bear The whip with a submissive fear; That stags do foam with golden bits. And the rough Libyc bear submits Unto the ring; that a wild boar Like that which Calydon of yore Brought forth, doth mildly put his head In purple muzzles to be led; That the vast, strong-limb'd buffles draw The British chariots with taught awe, And the elephant with courtship falls To any dance the negro calls: Would not you think such sports as those Were shows which the gods did expose? But these are nothing, when we see That hares by lions hunted be, etc.

NOTES TO VOL. II.

POEMS WITH THE TENTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL ENGLISHED.

Most of the poems in this volume of 1646 appear to belong to Vaughan's sojourn as a law-student in London: that, however, on the Priory Grove must have been written after he had retired to Wales on the outbreak of the Civil War.

P. 5. To my Ingenious Friend, R. W.

It is probable that this is the R. W. of the Elegy in Olor Iscanus (p. 79). On the attempts to identify him, see the note to that poem. The Poems of 1646 must have been published while his fate was still unknown.

Pints i' th' Moon or Star. These are names of rooms, rather than of inns. Cf. Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., ii. 4, 30, "Anon, anon, sir! Score a pint of bastard in the Half-moon."

P. 6. Randolph.

The works of Randolph here referred to are his comedy The Jealous Lovers, his pastoral Amyntas; or, The Impossible Dowry, and the following verses On the Death of a Nightingale:--

"Go, solitary wood, and henceforth be Acquainted with no other harmony Than the pie's chattering, or the shrieking note Of boding owls, and fatal raven's throat. Thy sweetest chanter's dead, that warbled forth Lays that might tempests calm, and still the north, And call down angels from their glorious sphere, To hear her songs, and learn new anthems there. That soul is fled, and to Elysium gone, Thou a poor desert left; go then and run. Beg there to want a grove, and if she please To sing again beneath thy shadowy trees, The souls of happy lovers crowned with blisses Shall flock about thee, and keep time with kisses."

P. 8. Les Amours.

Lines 22-24 are misprinted in the original; they there run:--

"O'er all the tomb a sudden spring: If crimson flowers, whose drooping heads Shall curtain o'er their mournful heads:"

P. 10. To Amoret.

The Amoret of these Poems may or may not be the Etesia of Thalia Rediviva; and she may or may not have been the poet's first wife. Cf. Introduction (vol. i, p. xxxiii).

To her white bosom. Cf. Hamlet, ii. 2, 113, where Hamlet addresses a letter to Ophelia, "in her excellent white bosom, these."

P. 12. Song.

The MS. variant readings to this and to two of the following poems are written in pencil on a copy of the Poems in the British Museum, having the press-mark 12304, a 24. There is no indication of their author, or of the source from which they are taken.

P. 13. To Amoret.

The vast ring. Cf. Silex Scintillans (vol. i., pp. 150, 284).

P. 18. A Rhapsodis.

The Globe Tavern. This appears to have been near, or even a part of, the famous theatre. There exists a forged letter of George Peele's, in which it is mentioned as a resort of Shakespeare's, but there is no authentic allusion to it by name earlier than an entry in the registers of St. Saviour's, Southwark, for 1637. An "alehouse" is, however, alluded to in a ballad on the burning of the old Globe in 1613. (Rendle and Norman, Inns of Old Southwark, p. 326.)

Tower-Wharf to Cymbeline and Lud; that is, from the extreme east to the extreme west of the City. Statues of the mythical kings of Britain were set up in 1260 in niches on Ludgate. They were renewed when the gate was rebuilt in 1586. It stood near the Church of St. Martin's, Ludgate.

That made his horse a senator; i.e. Caligula. Cf. Suetonius Vit. Caligulae, 55: "Incitato equo, cuius causa pridie circenses, ne inquietaretur, viciniae silentium per milites indicere solebat, praeter equile marmoreum et praesepe eburneum praeterque purpurea tegumenta ac monilia e gemmis, domum etiam et familiam et suppellectilem dedit, quo lautius nomine eius invitati acciperentur; consulatum quoque traditur destinasse."

he that ... crossed Rubicon, i.e. Julius Cæsar.