p. [125] her Pen Can be instructed. An obvious allusion to the rumour that Mrs. Behn was assisted in her work by Hoyle.
p. [127] the learned Daphnis. Thomas Creech.
p. [128] barbarous Getans. Ovid in exile cries:—
Nec te mirari, si sint vitiosa, decebit
Carmina, quae faciam paene poeta Getes.
—Ep. ex Ponto, IV, xiii, 17-8.
p. [129] Achitophels. Achitophel==the Earl of Shaftesbury.
p. [129] murmuring Shimei's. Shimei, Slingsby Bethel, by poll chosen one of the sheriffs for the City of London on Midsummer day, 1680, was a factious fanatic, who had formerly been one of the committee of safety. Burnet says that his miserable way of living and extreme miserliness rendered him disagreeable to everybody, even his own party. Dryden very justly lashes him, Absalom and Achitophel, I, 585-629.
p. [133] In an Azure Mantle. This phrase is very nearly equivalent to Ovid's 'purpureus Amor' (Amorum, ii, I, 38); and Hieronymus Angerianus in his Erotopaignion, repeats the same expressive adjective: 'purpureus lumina pandit Amor.'
p. [137] H. Watson. Henry Watson was a member of Christ's College, Cambridge.
p. [138] Groves appear'd. Martinus Scriblerus (Pope) ΠΕΡΙ ΒΑΘΟΥΣ· or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry: written in the Year MDCCXXVII, chap. xii, has: '1. The Florid Style than which none is more proper to the Bathos, as flowers, which are the lowest of vegetables, are most gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of ponds and ditches.