XI. 2. Henry Prince of Wales. 1. See above, note 2. After his father's rebuke, Prince Henry resolved to "be more himself," and to redeem his character by defeating Percy or dying in the attempt. This passage (from the same play) describes his appearance just before the battle of Shrewsbury. 2. daffed: i.e. doffed. To doff is to do off, that is to put off or away; just as to don is to do on. 3. estridges: ostriches. 4. his beaver: his helmet. Properly speaking the beaver is the front part of the helmet, from the French bavière, a child's bib. XI. 3. The Duke of York. 1. This is the Duke of Aumerle who, in the play of Richard II., acts in a treasonable manner towards his king. He has now succeeded to the title of Duke of York, and dying in the battle of Agincourt nobly redeems his character. 2. well-foughten field: the battle of Agincourt, Oct. 25th, 1415. foughten, an archaic form: the past participles of strong verbs formerly ended in en. 3. raught: reached. XI. 4. Brutus. 1. Marcus Brutus is represented in the play of Julius Cæsar as a noble patriotic Roman who joined the conspiracy against his friend Cæsar, and helped to murder him, because he feared that his ambition would destroy the liberties of Rome. XI. 5. Coriolanus. 1. Caius Marcius, surnamed Coriolanus from the valour he displayed in the siege of the Volscian town, Corioli, is the hero of a beautiful legend assigned to the year, B.C. 490. Having won the hearts of his fellow-citizens at Rome by his extraordinary courage and success in arms, he lost all his popularity by his exclusive pride and imperious temper. Exiled from Rome he took refuge with the Volscians, a neighbouring people, and led their army against his native city. In vain were ambassadors sent out to meet him and beg for terms. His anger was proof against all entreaty, till at length his mother and his wife and child succeeded in winning on their knees, and by their tears, the safety of their threatened homes. In this extract the deeds of his early life are described. 2. disbenched: i.e. made you leave your seat to depart. 3. alarum: the call to arms. It is really the word alarm with the trilled, and alarm is the contracted form of the Italian exclamation all' arme, to arms! 4. That's thousand to one good one: Menenius, a friend of Coriolanus, asks "How can a man who is unwilling to hear his own good deeds praised, be expected to flatter a mob that has a thousand worthless members to one good one?" 5. be singly counterpoised: cannot be equalled in weight, i.e., in value, by any one person. French, contrepois, a counterpoise. 6. his Amazonian chin : i.e., his beardless chin. That is, the beardless boy drove full-grown men before him. The Amazons were a race of female warriors in Greek mythology. 7. his pupil age man-entered thus: being thus initiated into manhood at a time when he was still a boy. 8. he lurched all swords of the garland: he gained from all other warriors the wreath of victory. To lurch is to win easily at a game, where a lurch is the term used when one player makes every point before his opponent makes one. Bacon says that proximity to great cities lurcheth all provisions, that is, absorbs or devours all provisions.-Essay of Building. 9. alone he enter'd the mortal gate, etc. Dr. W. Aldis Wright says of this passage: "The figure of his sword being death's stamp and marking his victims, is here carried on. Coriolanus set his bloody mark upon the gate, or upon the city, indicating that it was his by an inevitable fate, as plague-stricken houses were painted with a red cross. Painted,' however, is suspected to be a corruption, and 'gained,' 'parted' and 'haunted' have been proposed instead." The mortal gate is either the gate at which it was death to enter, or the gate which was made the scene of death. 10. struck Corioli like a planet: the planets were supposed to exercise an influence for good or bad on the fortunes and characters of men. It was especially of great importance that a child should be born at a time when the relative situation of the planets in the heavens was favourable according to the interpretation of the astrologists. At the present time the Chinese never carry out an important engagement, such as a royal marriage, until a lucky conjunction of the stars has been ascertained. The references to this belief are numerous in our older writers, as It is the stars, King Lear, iv. 3 And again, The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike. Hamlet i. I. And lunatic is only another word for moonstruck, as in The moonstruck prophet felt the madding hour.-Pope. A subtle force was supposed to flow in upon (influence) or strike men, and the study of this force was called Astrology. XII. Horsemanship of the Gauchos. 1. The Gauchos the wild inhabitants of the Pampas, in the Argentine Confederation, descended from the first Spanish adventurers and the Indian women they married. XIV. The Haunted House. 1. ban: properly a proclamation, as in the banns of marriage. Then a proclamation of outlawry, as in bandit and banish; and then a curse, as here. It is generally applied only to persons, not to things. 2. coping-stone : i.e. a capping-stone, for the words cape, cope, and cap were the same originally. 3. parasitic living on other plants, as the mistletoe lives on apple-trees and oaks. A parasite is literally one who feeds at another's expense, from the Greek para, beside, and sitos, corn or food. 4. the mantled pool: the verb to mantle is used to describe the gathering of a scum on the surface of standing water. The green mantle of the standing pool. King Lear, iii. 4. 5. The very yew Formality had trained: old-fashioned gardens often have yew-trees cut into a stiff formal pattern of a peacock, a pyramid, etc. Some good examples may be seen at the entrance to Haddon Hall, in Derbyshire. Formality: the quality of attending only to rigid form is here personified or treated as a living person. In prose this figure of speech would not be used. We should say 'the yew that had been artificially trained,' or 'that formal people had trained into a fantastic shape,' etc. XV. The Piz Languard. 1. The Engadine, or valley of the Inn, is a long narrow valley, some 5000 ft. above sea level, in the Canton of the Grisons, East Switzerland. 2. Piz: a mountain-top: allied to the words peak, pike, beak, etc. 3. Pontresina: a village in a lateral valley of the upper Engadine. Its name is a corruption of Ponte Saracina, the Saracens' Bridge, so named from an ancient stone bridge in the neighbourhood. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Arabs, or Saracens or Moors overran Persia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, and the south of France. In A.D. 732, they were defeated by Charles Martel, in the great battle of Toursone of the decisive battles that have changed the course of the world's history. In the 10th century they were found among the Alps, and wherever they established themselves, traces of their occupation survived in many local names, as Pontresina. 4. a glacier is a great river of ice, entirely filling and very slowly moving down a valley. 5. Konnen Sie es sehen? i.e. "Can you see it? and the guide answered Nein, no." XVI. From Endymion. The 1. a pyre: a pile of wood for burning a corpse. meaning of the passage is that the upward beams of the rising sun ("Apollo's fire") made the clouds seem on fire. 2. eglantine: sweet-briar. One of the meanings of 3. unmew: to set at liberty. the verb to mew was to enclose or shut up. As a noun mew meant a cage for hawks. The word mews, which now means stables for horses, was formerly the name of a place for keeping the falcons that were trained to chase herons and other birds. 4. Whiter still than Leda's love: a swan-a form taken by Zeus when visiting Leda. 5. Ganymede: a beautiful boy who was carried off to become the cup-bearer of the gods. XVII. The Coronation Stone. 1. the three festivals: Christmas Day, Easter and Whitsuntide, "when the Anglo-Saxon kings had appeared in state, re-enacting, as it were, their original coronations." Dean Stanley. 2. The ceremonies of unction: i.e. of anointing with oil. This was a form of solemn consecration derived from the Jewish church. "It was believed to convey to the sovereign a spiritual jurisdiction and inalienable sanctity: Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from an anointed king. A white coif was left on his head seven days, to allow the sacred oil to settle into its place. The king was sometimes stripped from his waist upward that the oil might flow freely over his person."-Dean Stanley. 1. 'Mid the mountains Euganean. The Euganean Hills are a low range of volcanic origin and covered with woods, in Lombardy, near Padua. From the top of these Venice is visible to the east. 2. Paean: a hymn in honour of Apollo. (See Extract XVI., line 7, and note 1.) 3. Ocean's child, and then his queen: Venice is built on a number of islands in the midst of extensive lagoons which are divided from the Adriatic by a strip of firm sand. Many of its houses are actually built on piles: its chief streets are canals, and men travel through them in black boats called gondolas. It grew into a splendid and famous city, the centre of commerce and the ruler of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. 4. Now is come a darker day: The Venetian Republic was finally destroyed by the first Napoleon. XIX. Of Gardens. 1. civility: civilization. 2. rosemary: a plant used as a symbol of remembrance, as the forget-me-not is now. Pansies, the French pensées, thoughts, were similiarly used. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance.-Hamlet, iv. 5. See also Extract XXIV. I. line 5. The word literally means sea-dew, from Latin ros, dew, and marinus, from mare, the sea. 3. the damascene: a longer form of the name damson; literally, the Damascus plum, just as damask is Damascus cloth. 4. ginniting, or jenneting: a kind of early apple. Sometimes said to be a corruption of June-eating apples. But, as Bacon says, they ripen in July. 5. quadlins: codlins, another kind of apples. 6. apricocks: apricots. It is generally spelt with a ck by our earlier writers, being a corruption of the Portuguese albricoque. It means literally the early-ripe: Latin praecox, from prae, beforehand, and coquere, to ripen or cook : from which it has come to us, after travelling through Greek, |