Mr. Hazlitt reads his for this in the last verse, and his note on “bone” is:—
“And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. (Judges xv. 15.)”
Could the farce of “editing” go further? To make a “splinter of Castriot” an ass’s jawbone is a little too bad. We refer Mr. Hazlitt to “The Life of George Castriot, King of Epirus and Albania,” &c., &c., (Edinburgh, 1753,) p. 32, for an explanation of this profound difficulty. He will there find that the Turkish soldiers wore relics of Scanderbeg as charms.
Perhaps Mr. Hazlitt’s most astounding note is on the word pickear. (p. 203.)
“So within shot she doth pickear,
Now gall’s [galls] the flank and now the rear.”
“In the sense in which it is here used this word seems to be peculiar to Lovelace. To pickear, or pickeer, means to skirmish.” And, pray, what other possible meaning can it have here?
Of his corrections of the press we will correct a few samples.
Page 34, for “Love nee’re his standard,” read “neere.” Page 82, for “fall too,” read “fall to” (or, as we ought to print such words, “fall-to”). Page 83, for “star-made firmament,” read “star, made firmament.” Page 161, for “To look their enemies in their hearse,” read, both for sense and metre, into. Page 176, for “the gods have kneeled,” read had. Page 182, for “In beds they tumbled off their own,” read of. Page 184, for “in mine one monument I lie,” read owne. Page 212, for “Deucalion’s blackflung stone,” read “backflung.” Of the punctuation we shall give but one specimen, and that a fair average one:—
“Naso to his Tibullus flung the wreath,
He to Catullus thus did each bequeath.
This glorious circle, to another round,
At last the temples of a god it bound.”
Our readers over ten years of age will easily correct this for themselves.