Which afterwards he found untoward
And stubborn to be kept, or too hard,
Any three other Jews o' th' nation

Might free him from the obligation.] Dr. Grey, in his note upon this passage, says, "in the third part of Maimonides, there is a Treatise on Oaths, where he writes to this purpose: He who swears a rash or trifling oath, if he repents, and perceives his grief, will be very great should he keep his oath, and changes his former opinion; or any thing should happen which he did not think of when he swore, which will occasion his repentance of it; behold, let him consult one wise man, or three of the vulgar, and they shall free him from his oath."

V. 306. · of pye-powder.] More properly pie-powder; a court held in fairs for doing justice to buyers and sellers, and redressing disorders there committed. It is so called, as being most usually held in the summer, when the suitors to the court have dusty feet: and the promptitude with which justice was administered occasioned the saying, you shall have justice as quickly as you can shake the dust from your feet.

V. 310. at Vis. Franc. Pledge.] Franc. Pledge, in the common law, signifies a pledge or surety for the behaviour of freemen. According to the ancient custom of England, for the preservation of the public peace, every free born man, at the age of fourteen, except religious persons, clerks, knights, and their eldest sons, was obliged to give security for his truth and behaviour towards the king and his subjects, or else be imprisoned. Accordingly, a certain number of neighbours became interchangeably bound for each other, to see each person of their pledge forthcoming at all times, and to answer for the offence of any one gone away; so that whenever any person offended, it was presently inquired into what pledge he was; and then the persons bound, either produced the offender in thirty-one days, or made satisfaction for his offence.

V. 325. Is not th' high court of justice sworn.] The high court of justice which was erected for the trying Charles I. and which afterwards continued sitting for the trial of inferior offenders. Butler, in his poem of Dunstable Downs, speaking of this court, says,

"This court is independent on

All forms and methods, but its own,

And will not be directed by

The person they intend to try;
And I must tell you you're mistaken,
If you propose to save your bacon,
By pleading to your jurisdiction,
Which will admit of no restriction.
Here's no appeal, nor no demurrer,
Nor after judgment writ of error:
If you persist to quirk and quibble,
And on our terms of law to nibble,
The court's determin'd to proceed,
Whether you do or do not plead !"

V. 331. Mould'em as witches do their clay.] According to the vulgar superstition, witches made images of wax or clay of the persons they wanted to destroy, and repeating certain ceremonies over them, the person so designed fell sick and wasted away, until they died. Dr. Heywood, in his Hierarchy of Angels, alludes to this kind of incantation:

"The school of Paris doth that art thus tax,

Whose images of metal or of wax,

Or other matter wheresoever sought,
Whether by certain constellations wrought,
Or whether they are figures that infer
Sculpture, or form of certain character;
Or whether that effigies be baptis'd,
Or else by incantation exercis'd,
Or consecrate (or rather execrate)
Observing punctually to imitate

Books of that nature; all we held to be
Errors in faith, and true astrology."

V. 335. Rack 'em until they do confess.] The rack was made use of in Ireland, in many instances, by the rebel party against the king's friends. Carte, in his life of the Duke of Ormond, says, "The lords' justices, wanting evidence, had recourse to the rack, a detestable expedient, forbidden by the laws of England. Sir John Read, a sworn servant of his Majesty, and a gentleman of

the privy chamber, was put to the torture. He had been licutenantcolonel against the Scots. His crime was for undertaking to carry over the remonstrance from the gentlemen of the pale to the King: he made no secret of it, and had Sir William Parson's pass; but upon his going to Dublin, to the lords' justices, he was imprisoned, and racked at their instance, who were under the influence and direction of the rebel parliament in England." The merit or infamy of reviving the use of torture belongs also to the Irish government in 1798.

V. 337-8. And most perfidiously condemn

Those that engage their lives for them.] This the Puritans did in many instances. The most remarkable ones were those of Sir John Hotham and his son, 1644, who had shut the gates of Hull against the King, and were afterwards imprisoned by the parliament. The following lines occur in the Elegy of King Charles I.

"What strange dilemmas doth rebellion make!

'Tis mortal to deny, or to partake;

Some hang, who would not aid your trait'rous act,
Others engag'd, are hang'd if they retract:

So witches, who their contracts have foresworn,

By their own devils are in pieces torn."

V. 344 As Lapland witches' bottled air.] The pretences of the Laplanders in this respect are thus described by Dr. Heywood: "The Finns and Laplands are acquainted well

With such like spirits, and winds to merchants sell ;
Making their cov’nant, when and how they please,
They may with prosp'rous weather cross the seas.
As thus they in handkerchief fast tie

Three knots, and loose the first, and by and by,
You find a gentle gale blow from the shore:
Open the second, it increaseth more.

To fill the sails when you the third untie,

Th' intemp❜rate gusts grow vehement and high."

And Cleveland thus humorously alludes to the same subject:
"The Laplanders, when they would sell a wind,
Wafting to hell, bag up the phrase, and bind
It to the bark, which, at the voyage end
Shifts poop, and breeds the cholic in the fiend."

V. 357-8. Does not in Chanc'ry every man swear

What makes best for him in his answer?] This is probably an allusion to the fable of the Gentleman and his Lawyer, in Sir Roger L'Estrange. "A gentleman that had a suit in chancery was called upon by his counsel to put in his answer, for fear of incurring a contempt. 'Well,' says the cavalier, and why is not my answer put in then? How should I draw your answer,' saith the lawyer, without knowing what you can swear?, 'Pox on your scruples,'

says the client again, pray do you the part of a lawyer, and let me alone to do the part of a gentleman,

and swear it.''

V. 369-70. Nature has made man's breast no windores,

To publish what he doth within dores.] Neptune, Vulcan, and Minerva (so the ancient fabulists relate) once contended which of them was the most skilful artificer; upon which Neptune made a bull, Minerva a house, and Vulcan a man. They appointed Momus judge between them, and he censured them all three. He accused Neptune of imprudence, because he had not placed the bull's horns in his forehead before his eyes; for then the bull might give a stronger and surer blow. He blamed Minerva, because her house was immoveable, so that it could not be carried away, if by chance it was placed among ill neighbours. But he said, that Vulcan was the most imprudent of them all, because he did not make a window in the man's breast, that he might see what his thoughts were, whether he designed some trick, or whether he intended what he spoke.

V. 377-8. He that imposes an oath makes it,

Not he that for convenience takes it.] The Knight is so fond of this false conceit, that he forgets he had asserted the same before, v. 275-6. The same observation may perhaps be applied to our present custom-house, excise, and other revenue oaths, which in nine cases out of ten cannot but be considered as so many provocatives to perjury, for which in a moral sense those that take them are less blameable than those that force them to be administered.

V. 385-6. Honour is like that glassy bubble

That finds philosophers such trouble.] A small glass tube, or globe, tapering at one end; they are commonly sold at the glass manufactories as a sort of toy, and being broken at the

point, crumble into a small powder with a pretty sharp explosion. To find out the cause of this gave the philosophers of Butler's day some trouble, and one or more papers appeared in the Philosophical Transactions on the subject. It is now known that their explosion is occasioned by the rarified air within them.

V. 409-10. Our brethren of New England use

Choice malefactors to excuse.] Butler probably borrowed the story which he relates, from Morton's English Canaan (i. e. the province of Massachusetts :) "An Englishman having stolen a small parcel of corn from the savage owner; upon complaint, the chief commander of the company called a parliament of his people, where it was determined, that, by the laws of England, it was felony, and for an example the person ought to be executed, to appease the savage: when straightways one arose, moved, as it were, with some compassion, and said, he could not well gainsay the former sentence, yet he had conceived within the compass of his brain an embryo, that was of special consequence to be delivered and cherished. He said it would most aptly serve to pacify the savage complainant, and save the life of one that might (if need should be) stand them in good stead, being young and strong, fit for resistance against an enemy, which might come unexpectedly for any thing they knew. The oration made was liked of every one, and he entreated to proceed, to show the means how this might be performed. Says he, "You all agree that one must die; and one shall die: this young man's clothes we will take off, and put upon one that is old and impotent, a sickly person, that cannot escape death-such is the disease confirmed on him, that die he must put the young man's clothes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's stead. Amen, says one, and so many more. And the sentence had in this manner been executed, had it not been dissented from by one person, who exclaimed against it; and so they hanged up the real offender."

Dr. Grey quotes a letter from the committee of Stafford, to Lenthall, the Speaker, desiring" that Mr. Henry Steward, a soldier under the Governor of Hartleburgh castle, might be respited from execution, with an offer of two Irishmen to be executed in his stead." Sir Roger l'Estrange's case had like to have been of