1 [For early instances and uses of the verb actuate
see N.E.D.]
2 Deabus artificibus similes, as S. Walker
(Criticisms on Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 96) gives it well.
3 [The word is a derivative of O. Fr. artillier =
Late Lat. articularius, a form of doubtful origin. Dr. Murray
hesitates between articulum, dimin. of ars, artem,
and articulus, joint, see N.E.D.]
5 [Astonish represents an O. Fr. *estonnir,
estonniss-, used for estoner, Late Lat.
*ex-tonare, to stupefy as with a thunderbolt.]
6 [Of course the words authentic and author
(authority) are entirely unrelated: αὐθεντικός is from αὐθέντης
(= αὐτο- self + ἑντης), whereas author is O. Fr. autor,
Lat. auctorem, cp. augēre, to make, to grow.]
9 ‘Rough Clifford’ he is called a few lines before.
10 ‘Concealers be such as find out concealed lands, that is
such lands as privily are kept from the king by common persons, having
nothing to shew for them.’—Cowell, The Interpreter, s.
v.
11 [This story rests on the sole authority of Gifford, the
editor of Ben Jonson. For further information see N.E.D.]
12 [This is a gloss on Spenser’s line, ‘Nor in all Kent nor
in Christendome,’ which repeats a very common proverbial saying.]
13 [It has been revived; for examples see N. E. D.]
14 [The words deal and dole probably owe
their difference of form to an original slight variation of suffix
(-li, -lo), see Kluge (s.v. teil).]
16 ‘Qui se harlotos appellant’ are the important
words in Henry the Third’s letter to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire,
requiring their dispersion.
17 For the cognates of ‘loiter’ see Franck’s Dutch Etym.
Dict. (s. v. leuteren).
18 One would willingly know a little more of this phrase
‘lucid interval,’ which had evidently about the time of the first of
my quotations recently come into the language, but from what quarter,
whether from the writings of physicians or naturalists, or from
what other source, I am unable to say. Of its recent introduction
I find evidence in the following passage:—‘The saints have their
turbida intervalla, their ebbing and flowing, their full and
their wane; but yet all their cloudings do but obscure their graces,
not extinguish them. All the goodness of other men that seem to
live, are but lucida intervalla, they are good but by fits.’
(Preston, Description of Spiritual Death and Life,
1636, p. 73.) No one would have used this Latin phrase in a sermon had
‘lucid interval’ been already familiar in English, or had ‘lucidum
intervallum’ not already somewhere existed. The word ‘interval,’ it
may be here remarked, was only coming into use at the beginning of
the seventeenth century. Holland in his Pliny uses, but using
explains it; while Chillingworth still regards it as Latin, and writes
‘intervalla.’
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Variations in spelling and punctuation from the various sources
cited have been left unchanged.