Volume Iii Part 147 (1/2)

Que les plumets seraient aimables Si leurs feux etaient plus constants!

p. 401 _Cannons_. Canons were the immense and exaggerated breeches, adorned with ribbons and richest lace, which were worn by the fops of the court of Louis XIV. There is more than one reference to them in Moliere. Ozell, in his translation of Moliere (1714), writes 'cannions'.

cf. _School for Husbands_, Vol. II, p. 32: 'those great cannions wherein the legs look as tho' they were in the stocks.'

Ces grands cannons ou, comme en des entraves, On met tous les matins ses deux jambes esclaves.

--_Ecole des Maris_, i, I.

cf. Pepys, 24 May, 1660: 'Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the linen stockings on and wide canons that I bought the other day at Hague.'

p. 403 _The Count of Gabalis_. The Abbe Montfaucon de Villars (1635-73) had wittily satirized the philosophy of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians and their belief in sylphs and elemental spirits in his _Le Comte de Gabalis ou Entretiens sur les sciences secretes_ (Paris, 1670), which was 'done into English by P.A. _Gent_.' (P. Ayres), as _Count Gabalis, or the Extravagant Mysteries of the Cabalists, exposed in five pleasant discourses_ (1680), and thus included in Vol. II of Bentley and Magnes, _Modern Novels_ (1681-93), twelve volumes. It will be remembered that Pope was indebted to a hint from _Gabalis_ for his aerial machinery in _The Rape of the Lock_.

p. 406 _Iredonozar_. This name is from Gonsales' (Bishop G.o.dwin) _The Man in the Moone_: 'The first ancestor of this great monarch [the Emperor of the Moon] came out of the earth ... and his name being Irdonozur, his heirs, unto this day, do all a.s.sume unto themselves that name.'

p. 407 _Harlequin comes out on the Stage_. This comic scene, _Du Desespoir_, which affords such opportunity for the mime, although not given in the first edition of Le _Theatre Italien_, finds a place in the best edition (1721). The editor has appended the following note: 'Ceux qui ont vu cette Scene, conviendront que c'est une des plus plaisantes qu'on ait jamais jouee sur le _Theatre Italien_.'

p. 408 _a Man that laugh'd to death_. This is the traditional end of l'unico Aretino. On hearing some ribald jest he is said to have flung himself back in a chair and expired of sheer merriment. Later days elucidate his fate by declaring that overbalancing himself he broke his neck on the marble pavement. Sir Thomas Urquhart, the glorious translator of Rabelais, is reported to have died of laughter on hearing of the Restoration of Charles II.

p. 410 _Boremes_. A corrupt form (perhaps only in these pa.s.sages) of bouts-rimes. 'They were a List of Words that rhyme to one another drawn up by another Hand and given to a Poet, who was to make a Poem to the Rhymes in the same Order that they were placed on the List.'

--Addison, _Spectator_, No. 60 (1711).

p. 413 _Flute Doux_. Should be flute-douce. 'The highest pitched variety of the old flute with a mouthpiece.'--Murray, _N.E.D_. cf. Etheredge, _The Man of Mode_ (1676), ii, II: 'Nothing but flute doux and French hoyboys.'