823. ~soothest~, truest. The A.S. _sóth_ meant _true_; hence also 'a true thing' = truth. It survives in _soothe_ (lit. to affirm to be true), _soothsay_ (see l. 874), and _forsooth_ (= for a truth). 824. ~from hence~. _Hence_ represents an A.S. word _heonan_, _-an_ being a suffix = from: so that in the phrase 'from hence' the force of the preposition is twice introduced. Yet the idiom is common: it arises from forgetfulness of the origin of the word. Comp. _Arc._ 3: "which _we from hence_ descry." 825. ~with moist curb sways~: comp. l. 18. Sabrina was a _numen fluminis_ or river-deity. 826. ~Sabrina~: The following is Milton's version of the legend:--"After this, Brutus, in a chosen place, builds Troja Nova, changed in time to Trinovantum, now London; and began to enact laws (Heli being then High Priest in Judea); and, having governed the whole isle twenty-four years, died, and was buried in his new Troy. His three sons--Locrine, Albanact, and Camber--divide the land by consent. Locrine had the middle part, Loëgria; Camber possessed Cambria or Wales; Albanact, Albania, now Scotland. But he, in the end, by Humber, King of the Huns, who, with a fleet, invaded that land, was slain in fight, and his people driven back into Loëgria. Locrine and his brother go out against Humber; who now marching onward was by them defeated, and in a river drowned, which to this day retains his name. Among the spoils of his camp and navy were found certain young maids, and Estrilidis, above the rest, passing fair, the daughter of a king in Germany, from whence Humber, as he went wasting the sea-coast, had led her captive; whom Locrine, though before contracted to the daughter of Corineus, resolves to marry. But being forced and threatened by Corineus, whose authority and power he feared, Gwendolen the daughter he yields to marry, but in secret loves the other; and, ofttimes retiring as to some sacrifice, through vaults and passages made underground, and seven years thus enjoying her, had by her a daughter equally fair, whose name was Sabra. But when once his fear was off by the death of Corineus, not content with secret enjoyment, divorcing Gwendolen, he makes Estrilidis his Queen. Gwendolen, all in rage, departs into Cornwall; where Pladan, the son she had by Locrine, was hitherto brought up by Corineus, his grandfather; and gathering an army of her father's friends and subjects, gives battle to her husband by the river Sture, wherein Locrine, shot with an arrow, ends his life. But not so ends the fury of Gwendolen, for Estrilidis and her daughter Sabra she throws into a river, and, to have a monument of revenge, proclaims that the stream be thenceforth called after the damsel's name, which by length of time is changed now to _Sabrina_ or Severn."--_History of Britain_ (1670). 827. ~Whilom~, of old. An obsolete word, lit. 'at time'; A.S. _hwílum_, instr. or dat. plur. of _hwil_, time.