14 32 A VERY FINE STORY FROM ONE OF OUR ELDER DRAMATISTS: The dramatist in question has not been identified. I am indebted indirectly to Professor W. Strunk, Jr., of Cornell University, for reference to Johann Caius' Of English Dogs, translated by A. Fleming, in Arber's English Garner, original edition, Vol. III, p. 253 (new edition, Social England Illustrated, pp. 28-29), where, after telling how Henry the Seventh, perceiving that four mastiffs could overcome a lion, ordered the dogs all hanged, the writer continues: "I read an history answerable to this, of the selfsame HENRY, who having a notable and an excellent fair falcon, it fortuned that the King's Falconers, in the presence and hearing of his Grace, highly commended his Majesty's Falcon, saying, that it feared not to intermeddle with an eagle, it was so venturous and so mighty a bird; which when the king heard, he charged that the falcon should be killed without delay: for the selfsame reason, as it may seem, which was rehearsed in the conclusion of the former history concerning the same king." 15 l OMRAHS... FROM AGRA AND LAHORE: There seems to be a reminiscence here of Wordsworth's Prelude, Book X, 11. 18-20: The Great Mogul, when he Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore, Rajahs and Omrahs in his train. Omrah, which is not found in Century Dictionary, is itself really plural of Arabic amir (ameer), a commander, nobleman. 15 23 THE 6TH OF EDWARD LONGSHANKS: a De Quinceyan jest, of course. This wrould refer to a law of the sixth year of Edward I, or 1278, but there are but fifteen chapters in the laws of that year. 16 8 NOT MAGNA LOQUIMUR,... BUT VIVIMUS: not "we speak great things," but "we live" them. 17 21 MARLBOROUGH FOREST is twenty-seven miles east of Bath, where De Quincey attended school. 18 18 ULYSSES, ETC.: The allusion is, of course, to the slaughter of the suitors of Penelope, his wife, by Ulysses, after his return. Cf. Odyssey, Books XXI-XXII. 19 3 ABOUT WATERLOO: i.e. about 1815. This phrase is one of many that indicate the deep impression made by this event upon the English mind. Cf. p. 58. 19 17 "SAY, ALL OUR PRAISES," ETC.: Cf. Pope, Moral Essays: Epistle III, Of the Use of Riches, II. 249-250: But all our praises why should lords engross, Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross. 20 3 TURRETS: "Tourettes fyled rounde" appears in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, 1. 1294, where it means the ring on a dog's collar through which the leash was passed. Skeat explains _torets_ as "probably eyes in which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little larger than the thickness of the ring." Cf. Chaucer's _Treatise on the Astrolabe_, Part I, sec. 2, "This ring renneth in a maner turet," "this ring runs in a kind of eye." But Chaucer does not refer to harness. 21 2 MR. WATERTON TELLS ME: Charles Waterton, the naturalist, was born in 1782 and died in 1865. His _Wanderings in South America_ was published in 1825.