[Line: 32 All editions, I think, before _1677_ (which substitutes 'false') have 'half'. 'False' is very feeble; 'half' refers picturesquely to the delineation of the Serpent tempting Eve with a human head, being coiled below like the curves of the _&c._ 'False' _MS._] [Line: 33 _1677_, _MS._ 'Accurst Et Caetera! now, now I scent'.] [Line: 34 I do not know whether these very Livyish oysters have been traced. _1677_ and _MS._ omit 'lately' and read 'prodigious bloody oysters'.] [Line: 35 John Booker (1603-1677), Manchester man, haberdasher, writing-master, and astrologer, gained a great deal of credit by interpreting an eclipse after the usual fashion as portending disaster to kings and princes, the great Gustavus Adolphus and the unfortunate Frederick, 'Winter'-King of Bohemia, being complaisant enough to die in accordance.] [Line: 36 This sign] _1677_, _MS._ 'This _fiend_'--more energetically.] [Line: 37 ''Tis the dark vault where the' _MS._] [Line: 40 The sting of 'the _Father Garnets_ that _stand by_ it' lies in the words immediately preceding the obnoxious '&c.'--'archbishops, bishops, &c.'--whom the Puritan divine stigmatizes as Jesuits and traitors to Church and State. As has been stated, the oath distinctly, in set terms and twice over, abjured Rome and all things Roman; but the Puritans of those days, like their descendants, paid no attention to trifles of this kind. For 'stand' _MS._ reads 'stood'.] [Line: 43 Yet] Nay _MS._] [Line: 44 _1647_, _1651_ 'abominous'; _1653_ 'abhominous'. The 'h' must be kept in 'ab_h_ominous', though not unusual for 'ab_om_-', because it helps to explain, and perhaps to justify, _1677_ and _MS._ in reading 'ab_d_ominous'. This, though something suggestive of a famous Oxford story, derives some colour from 'untruss' and may be right, especially as I do not know another example of 'abominous' for 'abominable'.] [Line: 47 Og] _v. sup._, p. 31. _MS._ has marginal note 'Roan'.] [Line: 48 'Skew-bald' is not = 'piebald', though most horses commonly called piebald are skewbalds. 'Pie[magpie]bald' is _black_ and white; skewbald _brown_ (or some other colour not black) and white. The Church-courts were much more unpopular, in these as in mediaeval times, than the Church, and High Commissioners and commissaries and apparitors were alleged to lurk under the guileful and dreadful '&c.'] [Line: 49 'babes' _1677_.] [Line: 52 Blount's _Glossographia_ (1656), a useful book, shows the ignorance of Northern English then prevailing by supposing 'we_a_-bit' (the form found in Cleveland originally) to be '_way_-bit'. It is, of course, 'little bit', the Scotch 'mile and a bittock'.] [Line: 53 Here] Then _1647_, _1651_, _1653_. God's diggers] = nails or fingers. Commoner in the corruption 'Ods niggers'.]