Golding, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, b. 1.
But when
‘his scornful muse could ne’er abide
With tragic shoes her ancles for to hide,’
the pace of the verse told me that her maukin knuckles were never shapen to that royal buskin.—Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus, p. 186.
Lace. That which now commonly bears this name has it on the score of its curiously woven threads; but ‘lace,’ Old French ‘las,’ ‘laqs,’ identical with the Latin ‘laqueus,’ is commonly used by our earlier writers in the more original sense of a noose.
And in my Mynde I measure pace by pace,
To seeke the place where I myself had lost,
That day that I was tangled in the lace
In seemyng slacke that knitted ever most.