[_The Author's Hermaphrodite._] (_1647_.) The note, which appears in all editions, seems evidently conclusive as to this poem. Moreover the quibbles are right Clevelandish.] [Line: 7 'main' is a little ambiguous, or may appear so from the recent mention of dice. But that sense will hardly come in, and Cleveland was probably thinking of the famous passage in Spenser (Artegall's dispute with the giant, _F. Q._ v. ii) as to the washing away and washing up of the _sea_. Yet 'main' _might_ mean 'stock'. The reading of 'gets place' in one edition (_1662_), rather notable for blunders, cannot be listened to.] [Line: 15 steeple] By synecdoche for 'church' or 'parish'.] [Line: 16 donative] A play on words, as also in 'cure'.] [Line: 19 Theban wittol] Amphitryon.] [Line: 22 Hans-in-kelder] = 'unborn'. [Line: 28 She'th] _1667_ changes to 'Th'hast'. barbary] 'Barbs' or Spanish horses were imported for the stud as early as Anglo-Saxon times; but before Cleveland's day actual Arabs had been tried.] [Line: 34 compurgators] persons who swear in a court of law to the innocence or the veracity of some other person.] [Line: 35 I was unable to say why the King of Bashan comes in here, except that the comparison of the _Dialogue on the &c._, 'Og the great _commissary_', and the put case about 'penance', suggest some church lawyer of portly presence. But Mr. Simpson and Mr. Thorn-Drury have traced the thing from this point as follows: Cf. _A Dialogue upon the &c._, l. 47 'Og the great commissary', where the copy in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 26, fol. 94 _b_, has a marginal note 'Roan'. This was Dr. William Roan, of whom an account is given in the _Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum_, Division 1, 'Political and Personal Satires', p. 156: 'Dr. Roane was one of the most eminent doctors who acted in Laud's Ecclesiastical Courts; he fled from the indignation of the House of Commons, and is frequently alluded to in pamphlets and broadsides of the time (see _Times Alteration_, Jan. 8, 1641,... _Old News newly Revived_, Dec. 21, 1640,...and _The Spirituall Courts Epitomised_, June 26, 1641).' The pamphlet illustrated in this note is _A Letter front Rhoan in France Written by Doctor Roane one of the Doctors of the late Sicke Commons, to his Fellow Doctor of the Civill Law. Dated 28, of Iune last past. With an Ellegy written by his oune hand upon the death and buriall of the said Doctors Commons. Printed in this happy yeare, 1641_. (Thomason's copy dated June 28.)