" It opens thus--
"Ponderying, expendying, and revolutying with myself, your urgent
affabilitee, and ingenious capacitee, for mundaine affaires, I cannot
but celebrate and extolle your magnificall dexteritee above all other;
for how could you have adopted such illustrate, prerogative, and
dominicall superioritee, if the fecunditee of your inginie had not been
so fertile and wonderfull pregnant?"--Fo. 86. edit. 1553. Wilson
elsewhere calls them "_ink-pot_ terms."
[114] [The popular idea at that time, and long afterwards, of
Machiavelli, arising from a misconception of his drift in "Il Principe."
See an article on this subject in Macaulay's "Essays."]
[115] [Old copy, _toucheth_, which may, of course, be right; but the
more probable word is that here substituted.]
[116] [The "Ebrietatis Encomium."]
[117] [Perhaps the "Image of Idleness," of which there was an edition in
1581. See Hazlitt's "Handbook," p. 291, and ibid. Suppl.]
[118] Nash alludes to a celebrated burlesque poem by Francisco Copetta,
entitled (in the old collection of productions of the kind, made in
1548, and many times afterwards reprinted), "Capitolo nel quale si
lodano le Noncovelle." Some of the thoughts in Rochester's well-known
piece seem taken from it.
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