Epigram 7.

Women, as some men say, unconstant be;
'Tis like enough, and so no doubt are men :
Nay, if their scapes we could so plainly see,
I fear that scarce there will be one for ten.
Men have but their own lusts that tempt to ill:
Women have lusts and men's allurements too :
Alas, if their strengths cannot curb their will,
What should poor women, that are weaker, do?

O, they had need be chaste and look about them, That strive 'gainst lust within and knaves without them.

NOTES TO VOL. I

Comments followed by "[A. C. S.]" are extracted from Mr. A. C. Swinburne's essay, "George Wither and Charles Lamb," in Miscellanies, 1886.

NOTES

THE SHEPHERD'S HUNTING

ECLOGUE I.

WITHER'S pastoral name 'Roget,' given him by Browne in the Shepherd's Pipe, and used in the early editions of this poem, was changed in the Juvenilia (1622 and 1633) to 'Philarete.'

1. 17. " starling" = sterling. spelling for the sake of the rhyme.

1. 22.

I have retained the

"a wilding," a crab-apple. See Fair Virtue, 1. 63, a fair wilding-tree.' Cp. Jonson, Sad Shepherd (ii. 2), 'A choice dish of wildings.'

1. 35. "maken melody." Cp. Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales, 1. 9, "And smale fowles maken melodye." See also Eclogue III., 1. 162; IV., l. 121. 1. 46. "prease"=press, or crowd.

1. 146. "kit," a small fiddle. Cp. Jonson, Sad Shepherd (i. 2), 'Each did dance, some to the kit.'

1. 216. "arede." A Chaucerian verb, meaning to explain, counsel, or interpret. Here it is equivalent to "disclose." Cp. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, Book II., L. 1504, 5:

'But wel wot I, thou art now in a drede,
And what it is, I leye [wager] I can arede.'

1.233.

1.244.

"that sweet shepherd" is David.
"Cuddy" is Christopher Brooke.

He was

the son of Robert Brooke, twice Lord Mayor of York, and brother of Samuel Brooke who was elected Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1629. He went to Lincoln's Inn. In 1609 he was put in prison with his brother, for having witnessed John Donne's secret marriage to the daughter of Sir George More, lieutenant of the Tower. In 1613 he collaborated with William Browne in an elegy on the death of Prince Henry; and one of the Eclogues at the end of the Shepherd's Pipe is by him.

ECLOGUE II.

1. 55. "the noblest nymph of Thame" is the young princess, Elizabeth.

1. 60 ff. The poet here gives an account of his satires, Abuses Stript and Whipt, and their reception by the public.

1. 73. "brach," a bitch-hound.

1. 114.

"near-hand," almost. Cp. the use of this word in Wither's Satire to the King, 1. 580.

1. 125. That is, "fully as greedy.'

1. 166. "loud-loud." Wither is somewhat fond of these reduplicated adjectives. This one is used again in his pamphlet Salt upon Salt (1658), l. 1438::

'The loud-loud cries of those who are opprest.'

Cp. also 1. 801 of Prince Henry's Obsequies :—
'The wide-wide mouth of the blasphemer.'

1. 182. "Satyrs." There is a play on the word here and in Eclogue V., 11. 38 and 47, and in Epithalamia, 1. 4.

1. 188. "a Scourge." This is the name of a supplementary satire to the Abuses.

"

1. 202. "ewes. Wither notes in the margin that by this word he means his hopes.

1. 5.

ECLOGUE III.

"Alexis" is William Ferrar, to whom the fifth

Eclogue is dedicated. See note there.