Page 37. The tune of the old ballad of Green sleeves may be seen in Sir John Hawkins's Hist. of musick, vol. v. Append., and is still used in The beggar's opera, in the song of "Since laws were made for every degree."

Page 53. Cupid's golden shaft is again mentioned in the Midsummer night's dream, Act I. Scene 1:

Page 96. To the list of imitations, &c. of the story of Measure for measure, add the novel of Waldburgh and Belanca, in Reynolds's God's revenge against adultery. This is the substance of it: In the reign of Gustavus Adolphus king of Sweden, Moruffi, a Danish general, in attacking the castle of Colmar, was taken prisoner by the governor count Waldbourg. Belanca, the wife of Moruffi, obtained a promise from the count to liberate her husband on the terms of her submitting to his unlawful desires. The unfortunate woman was afterwards inhumanly presented with the head of her husband. When Gustavus heard of the fact, he compelled the count to marry the injured lady, and then condemned him to death. Reynolds pretended that all his stories in this and his other once celebrated work, God's revenge against murder, were originals, and that he had collected the materials for them in the course of his travels.

Page 119. The recipe here given for making men seem like horses or asses, from Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft, where Shakspeare might have seen it, is the real property of Baptista Porta, in the serious refutation of whom the Jesuit Kircher has wasted too much time. See his treatise De luce et umbra.

In the Prodromo apologetico alii studi Chircheriani of Petrucci, there are similar receipts, and especially one in which an oil is directed to be made from the semen of a horse, which being used in a lamp, the company present will appear to have horses' heads. It is accompanied with a curious engraving of a Houyhnhnm party engaged in conversation, among whom there is the figure of an equus togatus, that will not fail to make a due impression on such readers as are acquainted with the trick put by Mr. Spence, the author of Polymetis; on Dr. Cooke, the provost of King's College Cambridge, a sour pedant who had offended him. See the tail-piece to the 17th dialogue in the first edition of the above work.

Page 123. The blessing of the bridal bed had doubtless, during the dark ages that preceded the promulgation of the gospel in many parts of Europe, been deemed the immediate office of fairies and other supernatural beings. The object of it was to make the issue of the marriage happy, and to avert deformity. In this, as in numerous other instances, the priests felt themselves obliged, in their attempt to do away a Pagan superstition, which, as we see, continued notwithstanding to maintain its influence, to substitute some congenial ceremony that should console the deluded people; but their particular enmity to fairies on the present occasion seems manifest in the passage cited from the Salisbury manual, in the words "ab omnibus fantasmaticis demonum illusionibus;" unless they should be thought rather to allude to the subject which is particularly noticed in the subsequent remarks on the night-spells.

The above ceremony is thus mentioned by Chaucer in his description of the marriage of January and May:

On the evidence relating to the consummation of the marriage between prince Arthur and the Lady Catharine, Robert Viscount Fitzwater deposed that "the prince was then about fifteen, and queen Katherine elder, and that the next day after being in bed together (which he remembred after they entered to have been solemnly bless'd), he waited at breakfast on prince Arthur, &c."—Lord Herbert's Life of Henry the Eighth, p. 243. It is said that some vestiges of this custom still remain among the Presbyterians in Scotland.

Page 169. There is a story of two caskets, &c., in Morlini novellÆ, nov. 5.

QuÆre if the general construction of all these stories have not been borrowed from the trick related to have been put by Prometheus on Jupiter with the two bull-skins filled with flesh and bones?

Page 178 (note). Dr. Taylor, in his treatise De inope debitore in partes dissecando, has offered some strong arguments against the supposed mutilation of the debtor's body, and endeavoured to show that the law in question demanded nothing more than that the produce of his servitude should be divided among the creditors. Yet Aulus Gellius was of a different opinion. At a very early period, among the Jews, the creditor had a right to make a slave of the debtor. See 2 Kings, chap. iv. ver. 1.

Page 185. To the explanation of sans, add that in the early editions of the dictionaries of Coles and Littelton the word is printed sance.

Page 214. Morgan the herald must be acquitted of having conveyed to us the original information that "Jesus Christ was a gentleman and bore arms." He was indebted for it to Dame Julian Berners, who, in her treatise on coat armour, speaks of "the gentyl Jesus," and states that "Cryst [was] a gentylman of his mother's behalf and bare cote armure." She also tells us that "Cain became a churl from the curse of God, and Seth a gentleman through his father and mother's blessing." So that we find J. C. was not the first gentleman.

Page 317. In further confirmation of the opinion here expressed, the curious reader is referred to Wlson de Colombiere's Vray theatre d'honneur, vol. ii. p. 313, for the account of a duel on appeal for murder which was fought at Valenciennes in the year 1454, where the dead body of the vanquished party was adjudged to be hanged on a gallows as a convicted murderer.

The frequent use which has been made in the course of these remarks of a work cited under the title of BartholomÆus de proprietatibus rerum, may require that a more particular description of it should be given. It is a general history of nature, composed in Latin by Bartholomew Glanvile, an English Minorite or Franciscan, of the family of the earls of Suffolk. He flourished about the year 1360, and appears to have been the Pliny of his time. It was several times printed abroad in the infancy of the typographic art, and translated into the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish languages. The English version was made by John Trevisa, a Cornish man, and vicar of Barkley in Gloucestershire, at the request of his patron Thomas Lord Barkley, in the year 1398, and originally printed by Wynkyn de Worde; for there is no evidence that it came from Caxton's press in English, though it has been so asserted. Neither is the date of Wynkyn de Worde's edition, if it ever had any, been ascertained. The next edition was printed in 1535, by Thomas Berthelette, in folio. The last was published under the title of Batman uppon Bartholome, his Booke de proprietatibus rerum, &c. Printed by Thomas East, 1582, in folio. Stephen Batman appears to have been a worthy and pious character, and was chaplain to Lord Hunsdon. His additions were compiled from Gesner and other writers of his own time. In a manuscript diary of expenses in the reign of Elizabeth, the price of this book is stated to have been eight shillings.