M. D., C., p. 198, lines 22, 23. True Hearts.
“I’ll drink to thee a brace of quarts || Whose Anagram is called True Hearts.” The Anagram of True Hearts gives us “Stuart here!” which, like drinking “to the King—over the water!” in later days by the Jacobites, would be well understood by suspected cavaliers.
In March 1659-60 appeared the anagram “Charles Stuart: Arts Chast Rule.” Later: Awld fool, Rob the Jews’ Shop.
Pages 255, 287. When I do travel in the night.
Like “How happy’s the prisoner,” Ibid. p. 107, we trace this so early as 1656. It is in Sportive Wit, p. 12, as “When I go to revel in the night,” The Drunkard’s Song.
Pages 153 (and Introduction, ix). The best of Poets, &c.
The Bow Goose. We have found this, (15 verses of our 18,) five years earlier, in Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 35. It there begins, “The best of Poets write of Hogs, And of Ulysses barking Dogs; Others of Sparrows, Flies, and Hogs.” Our text, though later, seems to be the better, and has three more verses: “Frogs,” in connection with “the Best of Poets,” referring to Homer and to Batrachomyomachia; supposed to be his, and translated by George Chapman, about 1623 (of whom A. C. Swinburne has recently written so glowing a eulogium, coupling with it the noblest praise of Marlowe).
M. D., C., pp. 166, 376. Now, thanks to, &c.
Of course, the words displayed by dashes are Crown, Bishop, King. To this same tune are later songs (1659-60) in the Rump, ii. 193-200, “What a reprobate crew is here,” &c. Wilkins prints an inferior version of 7th line in 3rd verse, as “Take Prynne and his clubs, or Say and his tubs,” referring to William, Viscount “Say and Seal.” Ours reads “club, or Smec and his tub,” the allusion being to Smectymnuus, a name compounded, like the word Cabal in Charles II.’s time, of the initials of five personal names: Ste. Marshall, Edm. Calamy, Thos. Young, Matth. Newcomen, and Willm. Spurstow; all preachers, who united in a book against Episcopacy and the Liturgy. Milton, in 1641 published his Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; and in 1642, An Apology for Smectymnuus. John Cleveland devotes a poem to “The Club Divines,” beginning “Smectymnuus! the Goblin makes me start.” (Poems, p. 38, 1661; also in the Rump Coll., i. 57.)