[322] Quy. “Them, and yourself too”?
[323] Not marked in old eds.
[324] Often mentioned in company with Mahomet and regarded as a Saracen deity. In the miracle-plays he was introduced as a noisy ranter, like Herod.
[325] In the closing chapter of Vulgar Errors, Sir Thomas Browne writes:—“I hope it is not true, and some indeed have probably denied, what is recorded of the monk who poisoned Henry the emperor in a draught of the Holy Eucharist. ’Twas a scandalous wound unto the Christian religion, and I hope all Pagans will forgive it, when they shall read that a Christian was poisoned in a cup of Christ and received his bane in a draught of his salvation.”
[326] An allusion to lues venerea.
[327] Old eds. “That.”
[328] The waggish old printers read “The pox is unto panders given!” The line (which was properly restored by the editor of 1820) must have been purposely misprinted.
[329] “Night ... the way.”—These lines are found in Barkstead’s Myrrha, 1607. See Introduction to vol. i.
[330] Old eds. “Like Missermis cheating of the brack.” The editor of 1820 reads “Like Missermis cheating of the brach,” and to the word brach appends a note, “i.e., the bitch;” but who was Missermis and what the bitch? Every reader of Herodotus (and every reader of Matthew Arnold) will remember how Mycerinus cheated the oracle by turning the day into the night. Six thousand years ago the torches flared in Mycerinus’ palace; and I saw his bones this afternoon at Bloomsbury!