[214] Now complete. The passage requires this explanation, or poor Moth's argument seems to want force, his present hopes being founded on a supposition that all possible discoveries to be made by beating have been already made.
[215] Moth here seems to allude to the following circumstance in the English History: "But uppon the morne followynge, both hostes joyned agayne, and fought egerly: contynuyng whych fyghte, Edrycus espying Edmunde to be at advauntage of wynnyng of the feld, sodaynly pyght a dead mannes hed upon a speare head, and cryed to the host of Englyshmen, fle, fle, ye Englyshmen, and save youre selfes, lo here is the heade of Edmunde your kinge."—Fabyan's "Chronicle."
[216] Verstegan, in his "Restitution of Decayed Intelligence," 1634, p. 130, gives the following account of this transaction:—"King Hingistus prepared them a feast; and after the Brittains were well whitled with wine, he fell to taunting and girning at them; whereupon blowes ensued; and the Brittish nobility there present, being in all three hundreth, were all of them slaine; as William of Malmesbury reporteth: though others make the number more, and say that the Saxons had each of them a seax (a kind of crooked knife) closely in his pocket, and that at the watch-word, Nem cowr seaxes, which is, take your seaxes, they suddainely, and at unwares, slew the Brittaines."
[217] Care not.
[218] Gift.
[219] In spite of.
[220] Always.
[221] A lively spark.
[222] [Old copy, syren.] So in "Timon of Athens," act iv. sc. 3—
"The tub-fast and the diet."