663 b So he that keeps the Gate of Hell, &c.] The poets feign the dog Cerberus, that is the porter of hell, to have three heads.

685 c The GIBELLINES, &c.] Two great factions in Italy, distinguished by those names, miserably distracted and wasted it about the year 1130.

841 d When three Saints Ears, &c.] Burton, Prynn, and Bastwick, three notorious ringleaders of the factious, just at the beginning of the late horrid rebellion.

894 e But Fisher’s Folly, &c.] Fisher’s Folly, was where Devonshire-Square now stands, and was a great place of consultation in those days.

907 f Cut out more Work, &c.] Plato’s year, or the grand revolution of the intire machine of the world, was accounted 4000 years.

1200 g T’ your great Croysado General, &c.] General Fairfax, who was soon laid aside after he had done some of their drudgery for them.

1241 h To pass for deep and learned Scholars, &c.] Two ridiculous scribblers, that were often pestering the world with nonsense.

1250 i Like Sir Pride, &c.] The one a brewer, the other a shoemaker, and both colonels in the rebels’ army.

1505 k The beastly Rabble that came down, &c.] This is an accurate description of the mob’s burning rumps upon the admission of the secluded Members, on contempt of the Rump-Parliament.

1534 l Be ready listed under Don] The hangman’s name at that time was Don.

1550 m They’ve roasted Cook already and pride in.] Cook acted as solicitor-general against King Charles the First at his trial; and afterwards received his just reward for the same.  Pride, a colonel in the Parliament’s army.

1564 n Their Founder was a blown up Soldier.] Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the society of the Jesuits, was a gentleman of Biscay, in Spain, and bred a soldier; was at Pampelune when it was besieged by the French in the year 1521, and was so very lame in both feet, by the damage he sustained there, that he was forced to keep his bed.

1585 o And from their Coptick Priests, Kircherus.] Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit, hath wrote largely on the AEgyptian mystical learning.

1587 p For, as the AEgyptians us’d by Bees, &c.] The AEgyptians represented their kings, (many of whose names were Ptolemy) under the hieroglyphick of a bee, dispensing honey to the good and virtuous, and having a sting for the wicked and dissolute.

PART III

CANTO III

THE ARGUMENT.

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The Knight and squire’s prodigious Flight
To quit th’ inchanted Bow’r by Night. 
He plods to turn his amorous Suit
T’ a Plea in Law, and prosecute
Repairs to Counsel, to advise
’Bout managing the Enterprise;
But first resolves to try by Letter,
And one more fair Address, to get her.
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