Or, again, do we keep in mind, or are we even aware, that whenever the word ‘influence’ occurs in our English poetry, down to comparatively a modern date, there is always more or less remote allusions to invisible illapses of power, skyey, planetary effects, supposed to be exercised by the heavenly luminaries upon the lives of men{ 201}? How many a passage starts into new life and beauty and fulness of allusion, when this is present with us; even Milton’s
“store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain _influence_”,
as spectators of the tournament, gain something, when we regard them--and using this language, he intended we should--as the luminaries of this lower sphere, shedding by their propitious presence strength and valour into the hearts of their knights.
The word even in its present acceptation may yield, as here, a convenient and even a correct sense; we may fall into no positive misapprehension about it; and still, through ignorance of its past history and of the force which it once possessed, we may miss a great part of its significance. We are not _beside_ the meaning of our author, but we are _short_ of it. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher’s _King and no King_, (Act iii. Sc. 2,) a cowardly braggart of a soldier describes the treatment he experienced, when like Parolles he was at length found out, and stripped of his lion’s skin:--“They hung me up by the heels and beat me with hazel sticks, ... that the whole kingdom took notice of me for a _baffled_, whipped fellow”. The word to which I wish here to call your attention is ‘baffled’. Were you reading this passage, there would probably be nothing here to cause you to pause; you would attach to ‘baffled’ a sense which sorts very well with the context--“hung up by the heels and beaten, all his schemes of being thought much of were _baffled_ and defeated”. But “baffled” implies far more than this; it contains allusion to a custom in the days of chivalry, according to which a perjured or recreant knight was either in person, or more commonly in effigy, hung up by the heels, his scutcheon blotted, his spear broken, and he himself or his effigy made the mark and subject of all kinds of indignities; such a one being said to be ‘baffled’{ 202}. Twice in Spenser recreant knights are so dealt with. I can only quote a portion of the shorter passage, in which this infamous punishment is described: