p. 251 Song.  Oh!  Love.  Mr. Bullen, who includes this ’impassioned song’ in his Musa Proterva:  Love-Poems of the Restoration (1889), has the following note:  ’Did Mrs. Behn write these fine verses?...  Henry Playford, a well-known publisher of music, issued in the same year [1687] the Fourth Book of The Theatre of Music, where “O Love, that stronger art” appeared with the heading “The Song in Madam Bhen’s last New Play, sung by Mr. Bowman, set by Dr. John Blow.”  At the end of the song Playford adds, “These words by Mr. Ousley.” ...  Mrs. Behn usually acknowledged her obligations; but she may have been neglectful on the present occasion.  Ousley’s claim cannot be lightly set aside.’  There is nothing to add to this, and we can only say that Aphra Behn had such true lyric genius that ‘Oh!  Love that stronger art’ is in no way beyond her.  A statement which neither disposes of nor invalidates Ousley’s claim based, as this is, upon such strong and definite evidence.

John Bowman (or Boman) who acted Bredwel had ‘as a boy’ joined the Duke’s Company about 1673.  He was, says Cibber, in the days of Charles II ‘a Youth fam’d for his Voice’, and he often sang before the King, no indifferent judge of music.  Bowman’s name appears as Peter Santlow in The Counterfeit Bridegroom; or, the Defeated Widow (1677).  He soon became an actor of considerable merit, and created Tattle in Love for Love (1695).  He is said to have remained on the stage for the extraordinary period of sixty-five years, and to have played within a few months of his death.  Davies speaks highly of his acting, even in extreme old age.  Oldys (MS. note on Langbaine) refers to him as ’old Mr. John Bowman’.  Cibber, in his Apology (1740), speaks of ’Boman the late Actor of venerable Memory’.

p. 234 half Pike.  ’Now Hist.  A small pike having a shaft of one half the length of the full-sized one.  There were two kinds; one, also called a spontoon, formerly carried by infantry officers; the other, used on ships for repelling boarders, a boarding-pike,’—­N.E.D. which quotes (inter alia) Massinger, &c., Old Law (4to, 1656), Act iii, II:  ‘Here’s a half-pike’; and Froger, Voyages (1698):  ’Their ordinary Arms are the Hanger, the Sagary (assagai), which is a very light Half-Pike.’

p. 245 Geometry.  A colloquial term for magic.

p. 247 a Sirreverence under your Girdle.  ’To have an M under (or by) the Girdle’ was a proverbial expression = to have a courteous address by using the titles Mr., Mrs., Miss, &c. cf.  Halliwell, Dictionary Archaic and Proverhial Words; ’M. ... to keep the term “Master” out of sight, to be wanting in proper respect.’ cf. Eastward Hoe (1605), Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, iv, I:  ‘You might carry an M under your Girdle’; and not infrequently.  Sir- (or Save-) Reverence is an old and very common colloquialism.  It was the most usual form of apology when mentioning anything likely to offend, or naming a word for which excuse was thought proper or necessary.  Wherefore it came to stand in place of various words of obscene sound or meaning.  There are innumerable instances from Mandeville (1356); down to recent times, and even Devonshire dialect to-day.