LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 253 



Birds that long have lived free, 

 Caught and cag d but pine and die. 



Here evidently free is intended to rhyme with die* 



1 Evidently ! An instance of the unsafeness of rhyme as 

 a guide to pronunciation. It was die that had the sound of dee, 

 as everybody (but Mr. Hazlitt) knows. Lovelace himself rhymes 

 die and she on p. 269. But what shall we say to our editor s not 

 knowing that fry was used formerly where we should say burn ? 

 Lovers used to fry with love, whereas now they have got out of 

 the frying-pan into the fire. In this case a martyr is repre 

 sented as burning (i. e. longing) to be fried (i. e. burned). 



Her beams ne er shed or change like th hair of day. (p. 224.) 



Mr. Hazlitt s note is 



Hair is here used in what has become quite an obsolete 

 sense. The meaning is outward form, nature, or character. 

 The word used to be by no means uncommon ; but it is now, as 

 as was before remarked, out of fashion ; and indeed I do not 

 think that it is found even in any old writer used exactly in the 

 way in which Lovelace has employed it. 



We should think not, as Mr. Hazlitt understands it ! Did he 

 never hear of the golden hair of Apollo of the intonsum Cyn- 

 thium? Don Quixote was a better scholar where he speaks of 

 las doradas hebras de sus hermosos cabellos. But hair never 

 meant what Mr. Hazlitt says it does, even when used as he sup 

 poses it to be here. It had nothing to do with outward form, 

 nature, or character/ but had a meaning much nearer what we 

 express by temperament, which its colour was and is thought to 

 indicate. 



On p. 232 wild ink is explained to mean unrefined? It is 

 a mere misprint for mid. 



Page 237, Mr. Hazlitt, explaining an allusion of Lovelace to 

 the * east and west, in speaking of George Sandys, mentions 

 Sandys Oriental travels, but seems not to know that he trans 

 lated Ovid in Virginia. 



Pages 251, 252: 



And as that soldier conquest doubted not, 



Who but one splinter had of Castriot, 



But would assault ev n death, so strongly charmed, 



And naked oppose rocks, with this bone armed. 



Mr. Hazlitt reads his for this in the last verse, and his note on 

 bone is : 



And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand 

 and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. (Judges, xv. 15). 



Could the farce of editing go further ? To make a * splinter 



