[(5)] I have been an inmate in this castle for many months—it is still inhabited by the venerable descendant of that ancient family. His son is now High-Sheriff of the King’s county. Half the castle was battered down by Oliver Cromwell’s forces, and rebuilt in the reign of Charles the Second. The remains of the castle are a tower of about forty feet square, and five stories high, with a single spacious apartment on each floor, and a narrow staircase communicating with each, and reaching to the bartizan. A beautiful ash-plant, which I have often admired, is now displaying its foliage between the stones of the bartizan,—and how it got or grew there, heaven only knows. There it is, however; and it is better to see it there than to feel the discharge of hot water or molten lead from the apertures.
[(6)] See a comedy of Wycherly’s, entitled, “Love in a Wood, or St James’s Park,” where the company are represented going there at night in masks, and with torches.
[(7)] Taylor’s Book of Martyrs.
[(8)] Anachronism—n’importe.
[(9)] In Cowley’s “Cutter of Coleman Street,” Mrs Tabitha, a rigid Puritan, tells her husband she had danced the Canaries in her youth. And in Rushworth’s Collections, if I remember right, Prynne vindicates himself from the charge of a general denunciation against dancing, and even speaks of the “Measures,” a stately, solemn dance, with some approbation.
[(10)] As this whole scene is taken from fact, I subjoin the notes whose modulation is so simple, and whose effect was so profound.
[(11)] Ireland,—forsan.
[(12)] Vide Dillon’s travels through Spain.