"to stirre up gentle ruth
Both for her noble blood, and for her tender youth;"

Milton, Lycidas, 163: "Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth,"
etc.

380. His targe. Scott says: "A round target of light wood, covered with
strong leather and studded with brass or iron, was a necessary part of
a Highlander's equipment. In charging regular troops they received the
thrust of the bayonet in this buckler, twisted it aside, and used the
broadsword against the encumbered soldier. In the civil war of 1745
most of the front rank of the clans were thus armed; and Captain Grose
(Military Antiquities, vol. i. p. 164) informs us that in 1747 the
privates of the 42d regiment, then in Flanders, were for the most part
permitted to carry targets. A person thus armed had a considerable
advantage in private fray. Among verses between Swift and Sheridan,
lately published by Dr. Barrett, there is an account of such an
encounter, in which the circumstances, and consequently the relative
superiority of the combatants, are precisely the reverse of those in the
text:

'A Highlander once fought a Frenchman at Margate,
The weapons, a rapier, a backsword, and target;
Brisk Monsieur advanced as fast as he could,
But all his fine pushes were caught in the wood,
And Sawny, with backsword, did slash him and nick him,
While t'other, enraged that he could not once prick him,
Cried, "Sirrah, you rascal, you son of a whore,
Me will fight you, be gar! if you'll come from your door."'"

383. Trained abroad. That is, in France. See on i. 163 above. Scott says
here: "The use of defensive armor, and particularly of the buckler,
or target, was general in Queen Elizabeth's time, although that of the
single rapier seems to have been occasionally practised much earlier
(see Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. ii. p. 61). Rowland
Yorke, however, who betrayed the fort of Zutphen to the Spaniards, for
which good service he was afterwards poisoned by them, is said to have
been the first who brought the rapier-fight into general use. Fuller,
speaking of the swash-bucklers, or bullies, of Queen Elizabeth's time,
says, 'West Smithfield was formerly called Ruffian's Hall, where such
men usually met, casually or otherwise, to try masteries with sword
or buckler. More were frightened than hurt, more hurt than killed
therewith, it being accounted unmanly to strike beneath the knee. But
since that desperat