Line 12. _Loire._ This word has puzzled more than one editor. There are two rivers: the great river Loire, which is feminine, and the little Loir, which is masculine. Here Du Bellay spells the name of the great river, but puts it in the masculine gender. It has been imagined that he was talking of the smaller river. But he was not. The Loire alone has any connection with Lire or with his life, and as for the gender, strained as the interpretation may seem, I believe that Du Bellay deliberately used it in the parallel with the Tiber and the idea of the "Fleuve Paternel," to which he alludes so often elsewhere. Line 13. _Lyre._ The modern Lire, his birthplace, on the left bank of the Loire, just opposite Ancenis. As you go along the Poitiers road to the bridge it stands up on your right, just before the river. THE DOG. Line 1. _Motte_=a turf. Line 40. _Damoiselet._ Still used more or less in its old sense of a young man _armed_: not merely a young page or a cadet of the gentry,="like a little sentry." Line 43. _Anvie_=(of course) "envie." THE CAT. Line 22. _Rouet_=spinning-wheel. Line 26. _Panne_=the Italian _Panno_--cloth. Line 27. _Troigne_=the mouth and face of an animal, the muzzle. Line 32. _Chere_=(originally) "head" and one of the few old French words derived from Greek, but the first signification has long been lost. Here the phrase is equivalent to "faire bonne chere" which has for centuries been used proverbially for what we call "a good time." _V. supra_ in "The Farewell" of Charles of Orleans. MALHERBE. EXTRACTS FROM THE "ODE TO LOUIS XIII." Stanza 3, line 1. _Centieme._ He dates the Huguenot trouble from a century. It may be said to have originated in the placards threatening the defilement of the Sacrament, placards which appeared in the streets of Paris in 1525. Stanza 2, line 3. _Le nom de Juste._ Louis XIII had no particular affectation of that title: it is rather a reminiscence of his distant collatoral and namesake who closed the fifteenth century. Last stanza, line 1. _Toutes les autres morts._ He has just been speaking of death in battle against the factions. SONNET ON HIS SON'S DEATH. Line 1. _Mon fils._ The only survivor of his many children, a young man, just called to the bar at Aix and passionately loved by his father, he bore the curious name of Marc-Anthony. A M. de Piles killed him in a duel, having for second his brother-in-law. The whole was an honourable bit of business, and the death such as men of honour must be prepared to risk: but Malherbe would see no reason and defamed the adversary.