ter's_ spots and stains
Still obscure THE POET'S Strains?
Overspread with antique rust,
Like whitewash on his painted bust
Which to remove revived the grace
And true expression of his face.
So, when I find misplaced B's,
I will do as I shall please.
If my method they deride,
Let them know I am not tied,
In my free'r course, to chuse
Such strait rules as they would use;
Though I something miss of might,
To express his meaning quite.
For I neither fear nor care
What in this their censures are;
If the art here used be
Their dislike, it liketh me.
While I linger on each strain,
And read, and read it o'er again,
I am loth to part from thence,
Until I trace the poet's sense,
And have the _Printer's errors_ found,
In which the folios abound."

PERIERGUS BIBLIOPHILUS.

October.

* * * * *

Minor Notes.

_Chaucer's Damascene._--Warton, in his account of the physicians who formed
the Library of the Doctor of Physic, says of John Damascene that he was
"Secretary to one of the caliphs, wrote in various sciences before the
Arabians had entered Europe, and had seen the Grecian philosophers."
(_History of English Poetry_, Price's ed., ii. 204.) Mr. Saunders, in his
book entitled _Cabinet Pictures of English Life_, "Chaucer", after
repeating the very words of this meagre account, adds, "He was, however,
more famous for his religious than his medical writings; and obtained for
his eloquence the name of the Golden-flowing" (p 183.) Now Mr. Saunders
certainly, whatever Warton did, has confounded Damascenus, the physician,
with Johannes Damascenus Chrysorrhoas, "the {323} last of the Greek
Fathers," (Gibbon, iv. 472.) a voluminous writer on ecclesiastical
subjects, but no physician, and therefore not at all likely to be found
among the books of Chaucer's Doctour,

"Whose studie was but litel on the Bible."

Chaucer's _Damascene_ is the author of _Aphorismorum Liber_, and of
_Medicinae Therapeuticae_, libri vii. Some suppose him to have lived in the
ninth, others in the eleventh century, A.D.; and this is about all that is
known about him. (See _Biographie Universelle_, s.v.)

ED. S. JACKSON.

_Long Friday, meaning of._--C. Knight, in his _Pictorial Shakspeare_,
explains Mrs. Quickly's phrase in _Henry the Fourth_--"'Tis a _long_ loan
for a poor lone woman to bear,"--by the synonym _great_: asserting that
_long_ is still used in the sense