[Footnote 3:  Almonte and Mambrino, two Saracens of great valour, had each a golden helmet.  Orlando Furioso took Almonte’s, and his friend Rinaldo that of Mambrino.  “Orlando Furioso,” Canto I, St. 28.  And readers of “Don Quixote” may remember how the knight argued with Sancho Panza that the barber’s bason was the helmet of Mambrino.—­“Don Quixote,” pt.  I, book 3, ch. 7.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 4:  Stella.]

[Footnote 5:  The Duke of Marlborough was accused of having received large sums, as perquisites, from the contractors, who furnished bread, forage, etc., to the army.—­Scott.]

[Footnote 6:  Scott prints this word “plumes,” substituting a false meaning for the real point of the poem.—­Forster.]

[Footnote 7:  The result of the investigations of the House of Commons was the removal of the Duke of Marlborough from his command, and all his employments.—­Scott.]

TOLAND’S INVITATION TO DISMAL[1] TO DINE WITH THE CALVES’ HEAD CLUB

Written A.D. 1712.—­Stella.
Imitated from Horace, Lib. i, Epist. 5.

Toland, the Deist, distinguished himself as a party writer in behalf of the Whigs.  He wrote a pamphlet on the demolition of Dunkirk, and another called “The Art of Reasoning,” in which he directly charged Oxford with the purpose of bringing in the Pretender.  The Earl of Nottingham, here, as elsewhere, called Dismal from his swarthy complexion, was bred a rigid High-Churchman, and was only induced to support the Whigs, in their resolutions against a peace, by their consenting to the bill against occasional conformity.  He was so distinguished for regularity, as to be termed by Rowe
  “The sober Earl of Nottingham,
  Of sober sire descended.”—­HOR., Odes, ii, 4. 
From these points of his character, we may estimate the severity of the following satire, which represents this pillar of High-Church principles as invited by the republican Toland to solemnize the 30th January, by attending the Calves’ Head Club.—­Scott.

If, dearest Dismal, you for once can dine
Upon a single dish, and tavern wine,
Toland to you this invitation sends,
To eat the calfs head with your trusty friends. 
Suspend awhile your vain ambitious hopes,
Leave hunting after bribes, forget your tropes. 
To-morrow we our mystic feast prepare,
Where thou, our latest proselyte, shall share: 
When we, by proper signs and symbols, tell,
How by brave hands the royal traitor fell;
The meat shall represent the tyrant’s head,
The wine, his blood our predecessors shed;
Whilst an alluding hymn some artist sings,
We toast, Confusion to the race of kings! 
At monarchy we nobly show our spight,
And talk, what fools call treason, all the night. 
  Who, by disgraces or ill fortune sunk,
Feels not his soul enliven’d when he’s drunk?