Note 63 — CANTO I.
Reading edition
This passage occurs in the following notable account of the wardrobe of our ancestor Adam after the fall, translated by Sylvester from Du Bartas. It has the honour to be elsewhere alluded to by Dryden:
But when the winter's keener breath began, To crystallize the Baltic Ocean; To glaze the lakes, and bridle up the floods, And periwig with wool the baldpate woods, Our grandsire shrinking, 'gan to shake and shiver, His teeth to chatter, and his beard to shiver: Spying therefore a flock of muttons coming, (Whose freeze-clad bodies feel not winter's mumming,) He takes the fairest, and he knocks it down, Then by good hap, finding upon the down, A sharp great fish-bone, which long time before The roaring flood had cast upon the shore; He cuts the throat, flays it, and spreads the fell; Then dries it, pares it, and he scrapes it well; Then clothes his wife therewith; and of such hides, Slops, hats, and doublets, for himself provides. Fourth Part of the first day of the second week. The Handy-crafts.