N.B.--In the P.S. to my last note, "N. & Q.," Vol. _viii._, p. 156., was a misprint for Vol. V.
[Footnote 1: The titles of these books remind one of "a merry disport," which formerly took place in the hall of the Inner Temple. "At the conclusion of the ceremony, a huntsman came into the hall bearing a fox, a pursenet, and a cat, both bound at the end of a staff, attended by nine or ten couples of hounds with the blowing of hunting-horns. Then were the fox and cat set upon and killed by the dogs beneath the fire, to the no small pleasure of the spectators." One of the masque-names in this ceremony was "Sir Morgan Mumchance, of Much Monkery, in the county of Mad Popery."
In _Ane Compendious Boke of Godly and Spiritual Songs_, Edinburgh, 1621, printed from an old copy, are the following lines, seemingly referring to some such pageant:
"The Hunter is Christ that hunts in haist, The Hunds are Peter and Pawle, The Paip is the Fox, Rome is the Rox That rubbis us on the gall."
The symbolism of the brute creation is copiously employed in Holy Scripture and in ancient writings, and furnishes a magazine of arms in all disputes and party controversies. Thus, the strange sculptures on _misereres_, &c. are ascribed to contests between the secular and regular clergy: and thus Dryden, in his polemical poem of _The Hind and the Panther_, made these two animals symbolise respectively the Church of Rome and the Church of England, while the Independents, Calvinists, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other sects are characterised as wolves, bears, boars, foxes--all that is odious and horrible in the brute creation.
"A Jesuit has collected _An Alphabetical Catalogue of the Names of Beasts by which the Fathers characterised the Heretics_. It may be found in _Erotemata de malis ac bonis Libris_, p. 93., 4to., 1653, of Father Raynaud. This list of brutes and insects, among which are a variety of serpents, is accompanied by the names of the heretics designated." (See the chapter in D'Israeli's _Curios. Lit._ on "Literary Controversy," where many other instances of this kind of complimentary epithets are given, especially from the writings of Luther, Calvin, and Beza.)]
[Footnote 2: [We are enabled to give the remainder of the title and the date:--"Together with the Lord Falkland's Speech in Parliament, 1640, relating to that subject: London, printed for Ben. Bragg, at the Black Raven in Paternoster Row. 1710."--ED.]]