"I'll entertain him here, meanwhile steal you
Closely into the room."
Again, in "The Spanish Tragedy"—
"Boy, go, convoy this purse to Pedringano;
Thou knowest the prison, closely give it him."
And again, ibid.—
"Wise men will take their opportunity
Closely and safely, fitting things to time."
—Pegge.
[239] [Blushing.]
[240] Alluding to the custom of the harbingers, who in the royal progresses were wont to mark the lodgings of the several officers of the Court. For Flavia should therefore be in italics. We now commonly write harbinger with the first vowel; but the ancients applied the second, which is more agreeable to the etymology. See Junius v. Harbour.—Pegge.
To this explanation I shall only add that the office of harbinger remains to this day, and that the part of his duty above alluded to was performed in the latter part of the 17th century. Serjeant Hawkins, in his life of Bishop Ken, observes that when, on the removal of the Court to pass the summer at Winchester, that prelate's house, which he held in the right of his prebend, was marked by the harbinger for the use of Mrs Eleanor Gwyn, he refused to grant her admittance; and she was forced to seek for lodgings in another place.—Reed.
[241] The 4o of 1615 reads—