[16]
  “The longest tyranny that ever swayed,
  Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed
  Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,
  And made his torch their universal light. 
  So truth, while only one supplied the state,
  Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate. 
  Still it was bought, like emp’ric wares, or charms,
  Hard words sealed up with Aristotle’s arms.”

[17] These I found quaintly summed up in an old rhyme: 
  “With a red man read thy rede,
  With a brown man break thy bread,
  On a pale man draw thy knife,
  From a black man keep thy wife.”

[18] See the introduction to Britannia Rediviva, vol. x.

[19] Vol. x.

[20] It is twice stated in these volumes (p. 246, and vol. x.), on the authority of the “Life of Southerne,” that Dryden had originally five guineas for each prologue, and raised the sum to ten guineas on occasion of Southerne’s requiring such a favour for his first play.  But I am convinced the sum is exaggerated; and incline now to believe, with Dr. Johnson, that the advance was from two to three guineas only. [See note supra, l.c.—­ED.]

[21] Life of Lucian, vol. xviii.

[22] [Is it possible that in this famous passage “Veer” is a clerical error or a misprint for “Ware”?  This would at once make sense and a literal version.—­ED.]

[23] Poems from the Bannatyne Manuscript, p. 228.

[24] Shakespeare has capricious, conversation, fatigate (if not fatigue), figure, gallant, good graces; incendiary is in Minshew’s “Guide to the Tongues,” ed. 1627. Tender often occurs in Shakespeare both as a substantive and verb.  And many other of the above words may be detected by those who have time and inclination to search for them, in authors prior to Dryden’s time. [See, for a discussion of Dryden’s Gallicisms, vol. xviii. of the present edition.—­ED.]

[24] The remarkable phrase, “to possess the soul in patience,” occurs in “The Hind and Panther;” and in the Essay on Satire, vol. xiii., we have nearly the same expression.  The image of a bird’s wing flagging in a damp atmosphere occurs in Don Sebastian, and in prose elsewhere, though I have lost the reference.  The same thought is found in “The Hind and Panther,” but is not there used metaphorically:—­

  “Nor need they fear the dampness of the sky
  Should flag their wings, and hinder them to fly.”

Dryden is ridiculed by an imitator of Rabelais, for the recurrence of the phrase by which he usually prefaces his own defensive criticism:  “If it be allowed me to speak so much in my own commendation;—­ see Dryden’s preface to his Fables, or to any other of his works that you please.”  The full title of this whimsical tract, from which Sterne borrowed several hints, is “An Essay towards the theory of the intelligible world intuitively considered.  Designed for forty-nine parts.  Part Third, consisting