=Motto.= "Once more, ye woods, farewell."--Virgil, _Eclogues_, x. 63.
=171=: 2. =Spring anything to my mind.= The metaphors in this and the
following lines are drawn from the chase. To "spring" is to rouse game
from cover; to "put up" has much the same meaning.
=171=: 6. =Foil the scent.= When a variety of game is started, and
their trails cross, the dogs become confused and cannot follow any one.
=171=: 14. =My love of solitude, taciturnity.= See paper I of this
volume.
=171=: 28. =White Witch.= Called "white" because doing good; most
witches were believed to practise a black art.
=172=: 10. =Some discarded Whig.= Discarded, or he would not have been
staying in the country among Tories.
=173=: 19. =Stories of a cock and a bull.= Any idle or absurd
story. The phrase in this form or in the other now more common, "a
cock-and-bull story," has been common in English for nearly three
hundred years; but its origin is not known.
=173=: 25. =Make every mother's son of us Commonwealth's men.= Sir
Andrew Freeport, it will be remembered, was a pronounced Whig, and the
Whigs were charged with having inherited the doctrines and traditions
of the Commonwealth.