dissolute; that is, one who has melted away.' L.

But query

tight hold' of reason, not circumstances? Dr. Lowe says, as 'ice in a thaw,' which makes man and his circumstances one. Herbert's idea is, he becomes slack and rots, as extraneous things preserved in ice rot when it thaws. The thought, like that in 107. The Size, l. 40, may have been suggested by the great frost of 1614.

St. xxiv. 1. 4, under-writes a law: 'Man is made up of a series of qualities, a variety of faculties, each to be used for its own end under its own rule; as in a shop each parcel of goods might have the name of its contents written under a rule directing their use. Underwriting is when one name is written under another, and so is applied to the form of insuring ships at Lloyd's. In this passage it is used only in its precise etymological sense.' L. Dr. Lowe errs by going back on a thought already past, that of the shop. Herbert is now thinking of qualities, living parcels. Underwriting in insurance is not the writing of one name under another, but subscribing to a bond. The words 'rules' and 'law,' and the mode of expression, sufficiently show that under-write' is used by Herbert in a legal-literal sense= subscribes to a law, which law each parcel or quality of man is thus bound not to vary from or exceed.

St. xxiv. 1. 5, loose.' I have adopted this instead of the printed text (1632-3 and usually) 'lose,' from the Williams мs., which is also confirmed by the Bodleian. There is, perhaps, here a reference to the loose,' i.e. the loosing of the arrow, the word being a technical term. See Note on st. vii. 1. 5.

St. xxv. 1. 1, 'he alone.' 'Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen-as Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. Bacon's Essays, xxviii.' L.

St. xxv. 1. 2, doth wear.' The graces and the virtues are the garments of the soul, the wedding-garments of the parable. As folks take so much care of their wardrobes, so let them look

as carefully to the repairs and good order of their spiritual attire.' L. But in our Lord's Parable it is 'the wedding-garment' -not plural (St. Matt. xxii. 11), and the meaning is infinitely deeper than the graces and virtues.'

St. xxv. 1. 5, 'good fellows'=boon companions.

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xxvi. 1. 2, honour.' "Spend on thine honour. . ." as did Araunah and David also: 2 Samuel xxiv. 23, 24. Lord Bacon says, "Riches are for spending; and spending for honour and good actions." Essays, xxviii.' L. (shortened). Herbert was the friend and associate of Bacon. See our MemorialIntroduction.

St. xxvi. 1. 3, 'scraper' gatherer of money-still money and money, at all hazards and with all meannesses.

St. xxvi. 1. 4, 'use it :' ‘i.e. turn it to account by good deeds —not hide it in a napkin, nor necessarily spend it at will.' L.

St. xxvii. 1. 6, ‘journey :' ‘i.e. the last journey, "from whence no traveller returns" [Hamlet, iii. 1]: "before they go hence, and be no more seen.' L. [Job xvi. 22; Psalm xxxix. 13.]

St. xxviii. 1. 1, ‘yet.' There being nothing in the preceding stanza about not thriving, 'yet' is not used disjunctively, but 88= continually, ever, still. The same sense of continuance is implied in as yet' and in while they were yet heathen,' and the like; in fact, various of the usages of still' branch out so parallel with those of yet,' that one may frequently be used to illustrate or gloss the other.

St. xxviii. 1. 4, the devil hath him.' 'There have been many legends, besides those of Simon Magus and Dr. Faustus, of conjurors pretending to supernatural powers being carried away by the evil spirit they conjured with. Something such was the fate of the sons of Sceva (Acts xix. 14).' L.

St. xxviii. 1. 6, 'quick'sensitive or living parts.

xxix. 1. 1, skills it:' 'i.e. what difference does it make? To skill was originally to distinguish, and so the skill of discrimination came to be the word for excellent practice in any art. The artist or the artificer who can best discriminate between perfection and imperfection is likely to be the most skilful in his art or craft.' L. 'Distinguish' is used so loosely in modern English, that it might be well to read above originally to [separate] distinguish [between].' Suggested by St. Luke xvii. 1, 2.

St. xxix. 1. 3, 'stars for money:'i.e. count the stars, not

your coins. The righteous are "to shine as stars," and though they may be more numerous than we can count or "tell," yet can we purchase them, in obedience to the Gospel, by a right use of earthly goods. "Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not" (St. Luke xii. 33).' L. Not count... coins,' but take,'' obtain' the coin or treasures of heaven in exchange for your goods, instead of obtaining and accumulating gold.' See Note on 16. Affliction, ll. 11, 12.

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St. xxx. 1. 1, 'measure:''i.e. determine at what rate you will live within your income.' L. Doubtless, though the sense is not the same, and though it is not in the Jacula Prudentum, Herbert had in remembrance the proverb, Cut your coat according to your cloth.' In sparing or stinting himself, for the sake of ostentatious finery and changing fashions (faults of that day in especial and of our own), he probably thought of the man's stinting his nobler self in his curiousness of spending.'

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St. xxx. 1. 3, cannot on forty.' You may allow here for difference in value of money. Another poet's village parson was "passing rich with forty pounds a year" [Goldsmith: Deserted Village, 1. 141]. What Herbert means is, if you cannot make your income keep you, it is because your habits are extravagant, and additions to income would only be material for extravagance. Lord Bacon says, Certainly, if a man will keep but even of hand, his ordinary expenses ought to be but half of his receipts; and if he think to wax rich, but to the third part." Mr. Gladstone, on July 6th, 1867, thus spoke: "There are two kinds of wealth in this world, and two kinds of poverty. There is the wealth and the poverty which are absolute, and which are measured by the amount of money or money's worth. There is also the wealth and the poverty which are relative, and which are not measured by the mere amount of money or money's worth that is possessed, but by the relation that the money or the money's worth bears to the views and character and habits of the possessor. In consequence of this, you will often find a man who uses small means wisely not unprepared to confess that he is rich; and conversely, you will find a man whose great means are outstripped by the still greater greediness of his desires complain of poverty, even while he is rolling in abundThe great thing that is required is this-not what the condition of each man shall be, but that each man shall be master of his own condition." A learned Hindoo was asked the VOL. I. II

ance.

other day to assist a Government official in Calcutta in a new translation of the Arabian Nights. The Eastern sage counted such work beneath his dignity, and declined. The official reminded him of his opportunities of seeing him at Court. "What can you do for a man who has 100l. a year, and lives on 50l. ?" was the reply.' L. Cf. Petrarch. Epist. ad Post.

St. xxx. 1. 4, 'unthrift:''i.e. the prodigal who wastes his money on curious and fanciful objects.' Unthrift is used substantively in Richard II. act ii. sc. 3, where Bolingbroke speaks of "upstart unthrifts. . . ." Dryden uses it of the Prodigal : "Then poor and naked come,

Thy Father will receive his unthrift home,

And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sum.' L. [The Hind and the Panther, part iii. 11. 295-7.] Dr. Lowe irrelevantly illustrates the adjectival use of 'unthrift :' found in all the Dictionaries.

St. xxx. 1. 5, too wide.' The illustration from the clothes may be an allusion to the ludicrous exaggeration in width of the trunk-hose worn in King James I.'s time.' L. Extravagance in dress being such a vice of the age, Herbert makes it stand for all unthrift; but he speaks of clothes only, not of curious and fanciful objects. Curious is here fanciful; and this sense is derived, as it were, from the two meanings of 'curious,' according as it refers to the agent or object--painstaking or over-busy, and strange or finished by art over-busy in reference to curious fashions, fanciful. See on 1. 5.

St. xxxi. 1. 1, hopes.' 'Do not incur an outlay in making a showy appearance, for the sake of getting credit. If you have only a dashing exterior to commend you, you are worth no more than a ship with sails set and no cargo aboard. If fine feathers make fine birds, the French proverb adds, "Grands oiseaux de coutume sont privés de leurs plumes." "Fine clothes," said Dr. Johnson, "are good only as they supply the want of other means of securing respect." How far they can supply this, Herbert shows. The condition of those who "by pleading clothes do fortunes seek" is happily hit off by Belarius, the old courtier-hermit, in Cymbeline, where, speaking of men "rustling in unpaid-for silk," he says, "such gain the cap of him that makes them fine, yet keeps his book uncrossed." L. [Cymbeline, iii. 3.] If it is pleasant at this day to find oldfashioned literature, such as Dr. Johnson, Spectator, and the like, being read, it must, I fear, be said that much in above, as

elsewhere, is wholly beside Herbert's meaning. The next sentence shows it is 'spend not in hopes of preferment,—not credit, waste not your substance thus.' I have put a hyphen in 'pleading-clothes,' as making the sense clearer, and as it is really a compound word.

St. xxxii. 1. 1, 'bear the bell.' 'Several explanations of this common expression are offered. The best perhaps is, that in olden days, and in Herbert's time, a bell was the prize in horseracing. Some have found its meaning in bell-wether; the sheep that carries the bell being the leader of the flock; others have fancied it a corruption of bearing the "belle," i.e. winning a fair girl over other suitors. The first explanation and the last are funnily combined by an author of 1664, quoted by Brande, who, speaking of women, says, "Whoever bears the bell away, yet they will ever carry the clapper." My antiquarian friend and coadjutor, the Rev. J. T. Fowler, has drawn my attention to a description in Magius de Tintinnabulis of the Caroccius, a vehicle used in war by medieval Italians, which, carrying a bell, and surrounded by a flag, and used for calling the troops to mass, was regarded as a shrine of honour and sanctity, and was carried into battle, something like " the ark of God." If the enemy won this, he would indeed "bear the bell." L.

St. xxxii. 1. 5, curiousness:' used for affectation in dress, always striving to produce a new effect, and so, like a perpetual courtship, never possessing the desired object. Polonius's advice is in part like Herbert's: "Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy."' L. [Hamlet, act i. sc. 3.]

St. xxxiii. 1. 1, 'sport.' This may apply to risking money on any chance, as in betting.' L. Herbert's idea is, You may play a game, but not as gambling; for the game' [=sport] not to make or lose money.

St. xxxiii. 1. 4, 'play their part.' 'At the dissolution of the monasteries, many of the Church lands and buildings were gambled away at Court.' L. And much later too; yet as Herbert speaks of servants and Churches,' his meaning probably was, that as in gambling he lost not his own merely, but his wife's and children's fortunes, so he also spent that due to his servants, and the alms and oblations due to his God. Hence, by a figure, he says that in playing away these the servants and churches play their part with him, go partners in his play, and with him lose their part.