The whilft at him so dreadfully did drive That seem'd a marble rocke asunder could have rive.

Spenser, although guilty in too many places of the elleipsis, undoubtedly wrote,

The whilst at him so dreadfully be did drive.

The y in dreadfully being slurred, or cut off. So,

Saint George of merry' England the signe of victory.

1. 10. 61. There are many other instances of the cesura of this letter, in our author, as likewise in Milton. In the following verse e in idle is funk.

What idl’errand haft thou earth's mansions to forsake:

6. 6. 25

In this verse,

That seem'd a marble rock asunder could have RIVE,

there is an elleipsis of it before seem'd, and of He before could; and rive should have been roy'd, unless he wrote it rive for riven. As thus :

That stony hart could RIVEN have in twaine.

B. iv. f. iv. INTROD.

To please the eye of them that pass
Which see not perfect things, but in a glass.

I have observed above t, that an old song is printed in Morte Arthur, on which this fiction was partly founded. But this is a mistake, arising from my finding that song written upon an inserted leaf, before the twenty-fourth chapter of the first book of the Bodleian copy of that romance.

This I looked upon as a manuscript supplement of a leaf torn out. It is there entitled, In Imitation of old Rhyme. At the end is this note.' " This was found pasted on the in“ side of the cover of a great bible, in the earl of “ Shrewsbury's study, some years fince. But it is

“ likewise printed in P. Enderbie's (Enderbury's] Brie 6 tish and Welch Antiquities; though not well.”

B. vi. c. ii. f. iv.

Ah forry boy
Is this the hope that to my hoary heare

Thou bringft? aye me is this the timely joy
Which I expected long? now turn'd to sad annoy!

Aladine is brought home dead upon a bier to his father Aldus, who bursts out into these exclamations over his son's body: In like manner Evander mourns over his son Pallas;

But these exclamations are somewhat similar to those which Æneas, in the same book, utters over Pallas,

Hi noftri reditus, expectatique triumphi,
Hæc mea magna fides, &ct.

B. vi. c. iii. f. xxviii.

With carefull hands
Did her sustaine, fofting foot her beside.

Softing-foot is a typographical blunder, which, I think runs through all the old editions, for soft.

FOOTING; William Ponsonby's edition in quarto, 1596, not excepted.

B. vi. c. vi. f. iv.

For whylome he had been a doughty knight.

That is the hermit had been, &c. Many of the hermits in romance are represented to have been very valorous knights in their youth. Hence it is that Don Quixote is introduced gravely debating with Sancho, whether he shall turn faint or archbishop.

B. vi. c. vi. f. xxx.

The tempred fteele did not into his braine-pan bite.

Brain-pan was a common phrase for head. Thus

Skelton

With a whim wham,
Knit with a trim tram,
Upon her brayne-panne,
Like an egypian*

And in the bible of Henry VIII. “ And a certain “ woman cast a piece of milftone on Abimeleck, and « all to brake his BRAYNE-PANNE +."

* E. Ruming. pag. 125. edit. 1736.

+ Judges, 9. 53.

VOL. II.

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B. vi, B. vi. c. vii, f. i.

A vile dunghill mind. So,

The dearest to his dunghill mind.

3. 10. 15

So in an Hymne of Love ;

His dunghill thoughts which do themselves enure
To durtie drosse.

And in Tears of the Mufes ;

Ne ever dare their dunghill thoughts aspire.
And Chaucer,

Now fie churle (quoth the gentle Tercelet)
Out of the dung-hill came that word aright*.

B. vi. c. vii. s. xlvii.

The whiles the carle did fret,
And fume in his disdainfull mind the

more,
And oftentimes by Termagant and 'Mahound swore.

These saracen oaths are likewise to be met with in Taffo and Ariofto. Hall perhaps points out our author in the following verses.

Nor fright the reader with the pagan vaunt
O mightie Mahound, and great Termagaunt t.