S44 LIBKAEY OF OLD AUTHOES. 



' Birds that long have lived free, 

 Caught and cag'd, but pine and die.' 



Here evidently free is intended to rhyme with die." 



" 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 

 represented 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 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 Cynthium ? Don Quixote was a better scholar 

 where he speaks of las doradas hebras de sus kermosos 

 cabellos. But hair never meant what Mr. Hazlitt says it 

 does, even when used as he supposes 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 color was and is 

 thought to indicate. 



On p. 232 " wild ink " is explained to mean " unre- 

 fined.' 1 '' It is a mere misprint for " vild." 



Page 237, Mr. Hazlitt, explaining an illusion of Love- 

 lace to the "east and west" in speaking of George 



