383.  Trained abroad.  That is, in France.  See on i. 163 above.  Scott says here:  “The use of defensive armor, and particularly of the buckler, or target, was general in Queen Elizabeth’s time, although that of the single rapier seems to have been occasionally practised much earlier (see Douce’s Illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. ii. p. 61).  Rowland Yorke, however, who betrayed the fort of Zutphen to the Spaniards, for which good service he was afterwards poisoned by them, is said to have been the first who brought the rapier-fight into general use.  Fuller, speaking of the swash-bucklers, or bullies, of Queen Elizabeth’s time, says, ’West Smithfield was formerly called Ruffian’s Hall, where such men usually met, casually or otherwise, to try masteries with sword or buckler.  More were frightened than hurt, more hurt than killed therewith, it being accounted unmanly to strike beneath the knee.  But since that desperate traitor Rowland Yorke first introduced thrusting with rapiers, sword and buckler are disused.’  In The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, a comedy, printed in 1599, we have a pathetic complaint:  ’Sword and buckler fight begins to grow out of use.  I am sorry for it; I shall never see good manhood again.  If it be once gone, this poking fight of rapier and dagger will come up; then a tall man and a good sword and buckler man will be spitted like a cat or rabbit.’  But the rapier had upon the Continent long superseded, in private duel, the use of sword and shield.  The masters of the noble science of defence were chiefly Italians.  They made great mystery of their art and mode of instruction, never suffered any person to be present but the scholar who was to be taught, and even examined closets, beds, and other places of possible concealment.  Their lessons often gave the most treacherous advantages; for the challenged, having the right to choose his weapons, frequently selected some strange, unusual, and inconvenient kind of arms, the use of which he practised under these instructors, and thus killed at his ease his antagonist, to whom it was presented for the first time on the field of battle.  See Brantome’s Discourse on Duels, and the work on the same subject, ‘si gentement ecrit,’ by the venerable Dr. Paris de Puteo.  The Highlanders continued to use broadsword and target until disarmed after the affair of 1745-6.”

385.  Ward.  Posture of defence; a technical term in fencing.  Cf.  Falstaff’s “Thou knowest my old ward” (1 Hen.  IV. ii. 4. 215), etc.

387.  While less expert, etc.  The Ms. reads: 

    “Not Roderick thus, though stronger far,
     More tall, and more inured to war.”

401, 402.  And backward, etc.  This couplet is not in the Ms.; and the same is true of 405, 406.