——pious Julia, angel-wise,
Moves the Bethesda of her trickling eyes,
To cure the spittal world of maladies.
Cleveland's Vindiciæ, 1677, p. 10.
[112] This was an absurd and cruel doctrine of the English lawyers of the time, who had begun to disbelieve in witchcraft, and were yet willing to justify the execution of witches. One of them says, that if a man firmly believes that, by whirling his hat round his head, and crying bo, he could occasion the death of an enemy, he becomes, by performing that ceremony, guilty of murder. Observe that, unless in virtue of special statute, he could not be capitally punished, if, instead of this whimsical device, he had actually fired a gun, and missed the person he aimed at.
[113] A voluminous author of the reign of Charles I.
[114] The Iter Boreale.
[115] One mode of sale by auction.
[116] If Crites be really Sir Robert Howard, as there is every reason to believe, Dryden here represents him as supporting a point which he gives up in his preface; for he censures both the plots and diction of the ancients, and concludes, that upon Horace's rules, "our English plays may justly challenge the pre-eminence." See Preface to his Plays in folio, 1665.
[117] "Now, that it should be one, and entire. One is considerable two ways; either, as it is only separate, and by itself; or as being composed of many parts, it begins to be one, as those parts grow, or are wrought together. That it should be one the first way alone, and by itself, no man that hath tasted letters ever would say, especially having required, before, a just magnitude, and equal proportion of the parts in themselves. Neither of which can possibly be, if the action be single and separate, nor composed of parts, which laid together in themselves, with an equal and fitting proportion, tend to the same end, which thing, out of antiquity itself, hath deceived many; and more this day it doth deceive."—Jonson's Discoveries.