[521] Omitted in ed. 1599.
[522] i.e., whose garments are ornamented with gards or fringes.
[523] Lamb’s fur.
[524] Thunder is supposed to rouse eels from the mud. So Shakespeare—“Thunder shall not so awake the beds of eels.” I suppose that Mr. Browning was giving us a piece of Italian folk-lore when he wrote (in Old Pictures in Florence):—
“The morn when first it thunders in March,
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say.”
[525] A corruption of black sanctus, which seems to have been a burlesque hymn set to a harsh tune, “in ridicule of the Sanctus or Holy, Holy, Holy, of the Romish Missal” (Nares); hence used to express any discordant noise,—as the rude speech of the Scythians.
[526] So ed. 1598; and I have kept the form “reverent” (though ed. 1599 reads “reverend”), as it was constantly used for “reverend.”
[527] “The great man’s head”—evidently the name of a tavern. Quy. the Saracen’s Head?
[528] One of the cautionary towns pledged to the English crown by the States of Holland.
[529] Sink of lechery.
[530] His face, I suppose, is stuck with plaster, to lead people to imagine that he has been scarred in the wars.