SOLITUDE.

Muse, meditate or think silently | Denizen, inhabitant. From O. Fr.

and quietly. The original
meaning is to stand with open
mouth. From Fr. muser, to
loiter; from Low Lat.
musum, a mouth. Cognate:
Muzzle.

Fell, a mountain plateau. From
Norwegian field (a dissyl-
lable).

Solitude, loneliness. From Lat.
solus, alone. Cognate: Soli-
tary.
Converse, conversation. From
Lat. con, with, and versor, I
keep turning. Cognates:
Conversable, conversation.

deinzein, connected with Fr. dans, in; from Lat. de intus, from within. Cognate: Denizenship. Minions, darlings, favourites. From Fr. mignon, a darling; from Ger. Minne, love. Endued, endowed or gifted with. From Lat. induo, I put on. Sued, begged from. From. Fr. suivre, to follow; from Low Lat. sequère; from Lat. sequi. Cognates: Suit, suite, suitable; ensue; pursue, pursuit; sequel; persecute, persecution, etc.

1. To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean:
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

2. But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tired denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; Minions of splendour shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued,

If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all that flattered, followed, sought, and sued:
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

'Childe Harold'—Byron (1788-1824).

EXERCISES.-1. Parse the last three lines of the first verse.

SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE.

Armada, (a Spanish word for) a fleet, a large fleet; from Lat. armare, to arm.

From Gr. Composition, arrangement or agree

1. In August 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with six English line-of-battle ships, six victuallers, and two or three pinnaces, was lying at anchor under the island of

Florez. With his ships short of water, and with half his men disabled by sickness, Howard was unable to pursue the aggressive purpose on which he had been sent out. Several of the ships' crews were on shore: the ships themselves all pestered and rommaging,' with everything out of order. In this condition they were surprised by a Spanish fleet consisting of fifty-three men-of-war. 2. Eleven out of the twelve English ships obeyed the signal of the admiral, to cut or weigh their anchors and escape as they might. The twelfth, the Revenge, was unable for the moment to follow. Of her crew of one hundred and ninety, ninety were sick on shore, and, from the position of the ship, there was some delay and difficulty in getting them on board. 3. The Revenge was commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, of Bideford, a man well known in the Spanish seas, and the terror of the Spanish sailors; so fierce he was said to be, that mythic stories passed from lip to lip about him, and, like Earl Talbot or Coeur-de-Lion, the nurses at the Azores frightened children with the sound of his name. But he was a goodly and gallant gentleman, who had never turned his back upon an enemy, and was remarkable in that remarkable time for his constancy and daring. 4. In this surprise at Florez he was in no haste to fly. He first saw all his sick on board and stowed away on the ballast; and then, with no more than a hundred men left him to fight and work the ship, he deliberately weighed, uncertain, as it seemed at first, what he intended to do. 5. The Spanish fleet were by this time on his weather-bow, and he was persuaded (we here take his cousin Raleigh's beautiful narrative, and follow it in Raleigh's words) 'to cut his mainsail and cast about, and trust to the sailing of the ship: '

'But Sir Richard utterly refused to turn from the enemy. The wind was light; the San Philip, "a huge

high-carged ship" of fifteen hundred tons, came up to wind

ward of him, and taking the wind out of his sails, ran aboard him. 6. After the Revenge was entangled with the

San Philip, four others boarded her, two on her larboard and two on her starboard. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock in the afternoon continued very terrible all that evening. But the great San Philip, having received the lower tier of the Revenge, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment. The Spanish ships were filled with soldiers, in some two hundred besides the mariners, in some five hundred, in others eight hundred. In ours there were none at all, besides the mariners, but the servants of the commander and some few voluntary gentlemen only. 7. After many interchanged volleys of great ordnance and small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to enter the Revenge, and made divers attempts, hoping to force her by the multitude of their armed soldiers and musketeers; but they were still repulsed again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own ship or into the sea.'

8. All that August night the fight continued, the stars rolling over in their sad majesty, but unseen through the sulphurous clouds which hung over the scene. Ship after ship of the Spaniards came on upon the Revenge, 'so that never less than two mighty galleons were at her side and aboard her,' washing up like waves upon a rock, and falling foiled and shattered back amidst the roar of the artillery. Before morning, fifteen several armadas had assailed her, and all in vain; some had been sunk at her side; and the rest, so ill approving of their entertainment, that at break of day they were far more willing to hearken to a composition, than hastily to make more assaults or entries.' 'But as the day increased,' says Raleigh, 'so our men decreased.' 9. All the powder in the Revenge was now spent, all her pikes were broken, forty out of her hundred men killed, and a great number of the rest wounded. Sir Richard, though badly hurt early in the battle, never