ongratulating Charles
the Second on his return from exile, and is describing the way in which
all men, even those formerly most hostile to him, were now seeking his
favour, and he writes:

"Offenders now, the chiefest, do begin
To strive for grace, and expiate their sin:
All winds blow fair that did the world embroil,
_Your vipers treacle yield_, and scorpions oil".

Many a reader before now has felt, as I cannot doubt, a moment's
perplexity at the now courtly poet's assertion that "_vipers treacle
yield_"--who yet has been too indolent, or who has not had the
opportunity, to search out what his meaning might be. There is in fact
allusion here to a curious piece of legendary lore. 'Treacle', or
'triacle', as Chaucer wrote it, was originally a Greek word, and wrapped
up in itself the once popular belief (an anticipation, by the way, of
homoeopathy), that a confection of the viper's flesh was the most potent
antidote against the viper's bite{206}. Waller goes back to this the
word's old meaning, familiar enough in his time, for Milton speaks of
"the sovran _treacle_ of sound doctrine"{207}, while "Venice treacle",
or "viper wine", as it sometimes was called, was a common name for a
supposed antidote against all poisons; and he would imply that regicides
themselves began to be loyal, vipers not now yielding hurt any more, but
rather healing for the old hurts which they themselves had inflicted. To
trace the word down to its present use, it may be observed that,
designating first this antidote, it then came to designate any antidote,
then any medicinal confection or sweet syrup; and lastly that particular
syrup, namely, the sweet syrup of molasses, to which alone it is now
restricted.

{Sidenote: '_Blackguard_'}

I will draw on the writings of Fuller for one more example. In his _Holy
War_, having enumerated the rabble rout of fugitive debtors, runaway
slaves, thieves, adulterers, murderers, of men laden for one cause or
another with heaviest censures of the Church, who swelled the ranks, and
helped to make up the army, of the Crusaders, he exclaimed, "A
lamentable case that the devil's _black guard_ should be God's
soldiers"! What does he mean, we may ask, by "the devil's _black
guard_"? Nor is this a solitary mention of the "black guard". On the
contrary, the phrase is of very frequent recurrence in the early
dramatists and others down to the time of Dryden, who gives as one of
his stage directions i