Ces grands cannons ou, comme en des entraves,
On met tous les matins ses deux jambes esclaves.
—­Ecole des Maris, i, I.

cf.  Pepys, 24 May, 1660:  ’Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the linen stockings on and wide canons that I bought the other day at Hague.’

p. 403 The Count of Gabalis.  The Abbe Montfaucon de Villars (1635-73) had wittily satirized the philosophy of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians and their belief in sylphs and elemental spirits in his Le Comte de Gabalis ou Entretiens sur les sciences secretes (Paris, 1670), which was ‘done into English by P.A. Gent.’ (P.  Ayres), as Count Gabalis, or the Extravagant Mysteries of the Cabalists, exposed in five pleasant discourses (1680), and thus included in Vol.  II of Bentley and Magnes, Modern Novels (1681-93), twelve volumes.  It will be remembered that Pope was indebted to a hint from Gabalis for his aerial machinery in The Rape of the Lock.

p. 406 Iredonozar.  This name is from Gonsales’ (Bishop Godwin) The Man in the Moone:  ’The first ancestor of this great monarch [the Emperor of the Moon] came out of the earth ... and his name being Irdonozur, his heirs, unto this day, do all assume unto themselves that name.’

p. 407 Harlequin comes out on the Stage.  This comic scene, Du Desespoir, which affords such opportunity for the mime, although not given in the first edition of Le Theatre Italien, finds a place in the best edition (1721).  The editor has appended the following note:  ’Ceux qui ont vu cette Scene, conviendront que c’est une des plus plaisantes qu’on ait jamais jouee sur le Theatre Italien.’

p. 408 a Man that laugh’d to death.  This is the traditional end of l’unico Aretino.  On hearing some ribald jest he is said to have flung himself back in a chair and expired of sheer merriment.  Later days elucidate his fate by declaring that overbalancing himself he broke his neck on the marble pavement.  Sir Thomas Urquhart, the glorious translator of Rabelais, is reported to have died of laughter on hearing of the Restoration of Charles II.

p. 410 Boremes.  A corrupt form (perhaps only in these passages) of bouts-rimes.  ’They were a List of Words that rhyme to one another drawn up by another Hand and given to a Poet, who was to make a Poem to the Rhymes in the same Order that they were placed on the List.’  —­Addison, Spectator, No. 60 (1711).

p. 413 Flute Doux.  Should be flute-douce.  ’The highest pitched variety of the old flute with a mouthpiece.’—­Murray, N.E.D. cf.  Etheredge, The Man of Mode (1676), ii, II:  ’Nothing but flute doux and French hoyboys.’

p. 420 a Curtain or Hangings.  When several scenes had to be set one behind another the device of using a curtain or tapestries was common. cf.  Dryden and Lee’s The Duke of Guise (1682), Act v, where after four or five sets ‘the scene draws, behind it a traverse’.  We then have the Duke’s assassination—­he shrieks out some four lines and dies, whereon ‘the traverse is drawn’.  The traverse was merely a pair of curtains on a rod.  All the grooves were in use for the scenes already set.