None of these explanations exactly agrees with the text. Bishop Bale certainly means, agreeably to the passage in the Bible to which he alludes, _to destroy_ or _overwhelm_.
294. _Achab_ in original, and Latimer in his First Sermon before King Edward VI., calls him _Hachab_.
295. In the former edition this and the next five lines were given to _Pater Coelestis_.
297. i.e., Asketh, inquireth. So, in Henryson's "Testament of Creside"--
"Quha had bene thair, and lyking for to heir His facound toung and termis exquisite, Of Rhetorick the prettick he micht leir, In breif sermone are pregnant sentence wryte, Befoir Cupide veiling his cap alyte, Speiris the caus of that vocatioun? And he anone schew his intentioun." --_Laing's Edit_., 1865, p. 84.
Again, Douglas's "Virgil," B. iii. p. 72--
"The seik ground deny is frute and fudis, My fader exhortis us turn againe our studis To Delos, and Apollois ansure _spere_, Be seiking him of succours us to lere."
"Ane uthir mache to him was socht and _sperit_."
298. The colophon is: Thus endeth thys Tragedy or enterlude, manyfestynge the chefe promyses of God unto Man by all ages in the olde lawe, from the fall of Adam to the incarnacyon of the Lorde Jesus Christ. Compyled by Johan Bayle, Anno Domini 1538.
299. Wood, in his "Athenae Oxonienses," vol. 1, p. 149, positively fixes his birth at this place. Other writers have made him a native of North Mims in Hertfordshire, but apparently without any authority. [See Warton's "H.E.P.," edit. 1871, i. 80.] Bale, who lived nearest to the author's time, calls him _Civis Londinensis_; which words, though they do not absolutely prove that he was born in London, yet surely are sufficient in a matter of this uncertainty to warrant any one to conclude that he was a native of that city, as no circumstance appears to induce a belief that he acquired the title of Citizen of London otherwise than by birth.
300. Peacham's "Compleat Gentleman," 4to, 1627, p. 95.
301. Gabriel Harvey's "MS. Note to Speght's Chaucer," as quoted in Mr Steevens's "Shakspeare," vol. 5.
302. T. Bastard, in his "Chrestoleros, Seven Bookes of Epigrams," 1598, has the following, addressed _Ad Johannem Dauis_, in which he speaks of Heywood and his reputation in this department--