Garbling men’s manners you did well divide,
To take the Spaniards’ wisdom, not their pride;
With French activity you stored your mind,
Leaving to them their fickleness behind;
And soon did learn, your temperance was such,
A sober industry even from the Dutch.
Id., Worthies of England. A Panegyric on Charles II.
To garble, to cleanse from dross and dirt, as grocers do their spices, to pick or cull out.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Garland. At present we know no other ‘garlands’ but of flowers; but ‘garland’ was at one time a technical name for the royal crown or diadem, and not a poetical one, as might at first sight appear; as witness these words of Matthew of Paris in his Life of Henry III.: Rex veste deauratâ, et coronulâ aureâ, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur, redimitus.
In the adoption and obtaining of the garland, I being seduced and provoked by sinister counsel did commit a naughty and abominable act.—Grafton, Chronicle of King Richard III.