A court of coblers, and a mob of kings; as better expressing the confusion of ideas incident to dreaming.] [Footnote 181: Kenelm, son of Kenulph, king of Mercia, was murdered at the age of seven years by his sister Quendreda, and accounted a martyr.] [Footnote 182: This vision Chaucer found, not in Homer, but in Dares Phrygius. Shakespeare alludes to it: ----Come, Hector, come, go back, Thy wife hath dreamed.---- ] [Footnote 183: _In principio_ refers to the beginning of Saint John's Gospel.] [Footnote 184: Taken from a fabulous conversation between the Emperor Adrian and the philosopher Secundus, reported by Vincent de Beauvais, SPEC. HIST. _Quid est Mulier? Hominis confusio; in saturabilis bestia,_ &c. The Cock's polite version is very ludicrous.] [Footnote 185: Indulging, as usual, his political antipathies, Dryden fails not to make the fox a Puritan.] [Footnote 186: According to the romantic history of Charlemaign, Gano, or Ganelon, betrayed the Christian army, at the battle of Roncesvalles, where Orlando and the Peers of France were slain. The pun upon _Gallic_, which is renewed in deriving the cock from Brennus and Belinus, a little farther down, is entirely Dryden's.] [Footnote 187: Thomas Bradwardin, archbishop of Canterbury, a contemporary of Chaucer, composed a treatise on Predestination, and a work entitled, _De Causu Dei_, against Pelagius.] [Footnote 188: Nigellus Wireker, who, in Richard the First's reign, composed a Book, called "_Burnellus, seu Speculum Stultorum_." The story alluded to, is of a cock, who, having been lamed by a priest's son, called Gundulfus, in revenge, omitted to crow upon a morning, when his enemy had directed that he should be called very early, in order to go to a distant church, where he was to take orders. By this stratagem, Gundulfus overslept himself, and was disappointed of his ordination.] [Footnote 189: _Native_, in astrology, is the person whose scheme of nativity is calculated.] [Footnote 190: Ganfride, or Geoffrey de Vinsauf, a Norman historian, and parcel poet, bewailed the death of Richard in plaintive hexameters, in which he particularly exclaims against Friday, the day on which that hero was shot by Bertram de Gurdun: _Oh Veneris lacrymosa dies, O sydus amarum_ _Illa dies tua nox fuit, et Venus illa venenum_, &c. ] [Footnote 191: Dryden has given Jack Straw the national antipathies of the mob in his own time. Chaucer says more correctly, their rage was directed against the Flemings. In the next two lines, Dryden again alludes to the riots of his own time, whose gathering cry used to be "one and all."] [Footnote 192: This excellent parody upon Virgil is introduced by Dryden, and marks his late labours: ----_Vicisti! et victum tendere palmas Ausonii videre._-- ] [Footnote 193: In the original, the tale concludes by a reflection of the Fox. The cock had said,