[10] See his “Verses to Mr. George Herbert, sent him with one of my seals of the anchor and Christ.  A sheaf of snakes used heretofore to be my seal, which is the crest of our poor family.”  Upon the subject of this change of device he thus quibbles: 

  “Adopted in God’s family, and so
  My old coat lost, into new arms I go;
  The cross my seal, in baptism spread below,
  Does by that form into an anchor grow: 
  Crosses grow anchors; bear as thou shouldst do
  Thy cross, and that cross grows an anchor too,” etc.

[11] See his Life, prefixed to his Poems, 12mo, 1677.

[12] It is pleasing to see the natural good taste of honest old Isaac Walton struggling against that of his age.  He introduces the beautiful lines,

  “Come live with me, and be my love,”

as “that smooth song made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago.”  “The milkmaid’s mother,” he adds, “sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.  They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.  I think much better than the strong lines that are in fashion in this critical age.”—­The Complete Angler, Edit. vi. p. 65.

[13] “A Poem on the Danger Charles I., being Prince, escaped in the Road at St. Andero.”

[14] [The Jacobean and Caroline poets, especially Donne and Cowley, require considerable allowance to be made on Scott’s judgment by those who are not familiar with them.—­ED.]

[15] Fasti Oxon. vol. i. p. 115.  Considering John Dryden’s marriage with the heiress of a man of knightly rank, it seems unlikely that he followed the profession of a schoolmaster.  But Wood could hardly be mistaken in the second circumstance some of the family having gloried in it in his hearing.

[16] See Collins’ Baronetage, vol. ii.  The testator bequeaths his soul to his Creator, with this singular expression of confidence, “the Holy Ghost assuring my spirit, that I am the elect of God.”

[17] Robert Keies, executed 31st January 1606, of whom Fuller, in his Church History, tells the following anecdote:—­“A few days before the fatal blow should have been given, Keies, being at Tichmarsh, in Northamptonshire, at his brother-in-law’s house, Mr. Gilbert Pickering, a Protestant, he suddenly whipped out his sword, and in merriment made many offers therewith at the heads, necks, and sides, of several gentlemen and ladies then in his company.  It was then taken for a mere frolic, and so passed accordingly; but afterwards, when the treason was discovered, such as remembered his gestures thought he practised what he intended to do when the plot should take effect; that is, to hack and hew, kill and destroy, all eminent persons of a different religion from himself.”—­CAULFIELD’s History of the Gunpowder Plot.

[18] The following curious story is told to that effect, in Caulfield’s “History of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 67:—­