So may the Queen of Love long duty bless, And all true lovers find the same success. NOTES. DEDICATION. Her Grace the Duchess of Ormond was by birth Lady Margaret Somerset. Her husband, to whom Dryden dedicated the volume of the _Fables_, was one of King William's supporters. He had been with him at the Battle of the Boyne, in the war on the Continent, had received marked evidences of his favor, and stood by his bedside at his death. 1 1. The bard. Chaucer, whose _Knight's Tale_, paraphrased as _Palamon and Arcite_, Dryden dedicated in these verses. 1 10. An Alexandrine, i.e., a verse of six accented syllables instead of five. 1 14. Plantagenet. The surname of the royal family of England from Henry II. to Richard III. 1 18. noblest order. The Order of the Garter, which is the highest order of knighthood in Great Britain, was founded by Edward III. about 1348. 2 21, 22, 23. A triplet, i.e., three successive verses with the same rhyme; one device of Dryden's to avoid monotony. 2 29. Platonic year. A great cycle of years, at the end of which it was supposed that the celestial bodies will occupy the same positions as at the creation. 2 42. westward. The Duchess' visit to Ireland. 2 43. benighted Britain. Deprived of the light of her Grace's presence. 2 44. Triton. A son of Neptune, generally represented with the body of a man and the tail of a fish. His duty was to calm the sea by a blast on his conch-shell horn. 2 45. Nereids. Nymphs of the sea as distinguished from the Naiads, nymphs of streams and lakes. 2 46. Etesian gale. The Etesian winds were any steady periodical winds. 2 48. Portunus. A lesser sea-god, more particularly the harbor-god. 2 51, 52. In these verses Dryden shows us that he had not shaken off entirely the conceits of his early verse. 2 53. Hibernia. Ireland. 2 56. His father and his grandsire. Ormond's father was the gallant Earl of Ossory, and his grandsire, the first Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the famous supporter of the Stuart cause. 3 58. Kerns. The Irish peasantry. 3 63. Venus is the promise of the sun. Venus, as morning star, is visible in the east just before sunrise. 3 65. Pales. A Roman divinity of flocks and shepherds. Ceres. The goddess of agriculture. 3 67. three campaigns. The Jacobites had found sympathy in Ireland and made a stand there. Vigorous efforts were made by William to dislodge them and subjugate the island; but years passed before civil strife was ended and peace restored. 3 72. relics of mankind. The human beings preserved in the ark, all that was left of mankind after the flood. 3 82, 83. Dryden copies Virgil's golden age,_Eclogue IV_., 39, 40. 3 87. venom never known. This refers to the absence of reptiles in Ireland. 4 102. New from her sickness. Recently recovered from a serious illness. 4 117. four ingredients. Earth, air, fire, water, then supposed to be the elements of all created substances.