Page 291 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

216 NOTES 3.4.
140. Beware... Cf. 1. 45, n. Smulkin Prob.
suggested by 'mice' (1. 138) since 'Smolkin' is one of
Harsnett's devils, reported as seen creeping out of a man's
ear in the form of a mouse. Cf. Muir, pp. 254, 256.
143. The...Darkness sc. who is my attendant! Edg.
pretends that Glo.'s question is addressed to him. For
'the Prince of Darkness', see Harsnett, pp. 147, 168.
144. Modo..Mahu More devils in Harsnett (p. 46).
Question and answer reflect a passage on p. 47 about
another devil who, though described as a 'Prince &
Monarch of the world', had 'no follower but two men
and an urchin boy'; upon which Harsnett comments:
'It was little becoming his state (I wis) being so mighty
a Monarch to come into our coasts so skurvily attended,
except he come to see fashions in England' [Muir,
2?.£.S. (1951), p. 15].
Blunden (ap. Bradby, p. 331) observes that 'Modo%
together with 'Theban' (1. 157) and Edg.'s boast of
riding 'over four-inch bridges' (11. 55-6), an English
version of the Lat. prov. 'Ire per extentum funem',
somehow reflect four lines in Horace (Ep. 11, i, 210-13):
Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur
Ire poeta; meum qui pectus inaniter angit,
Inritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet,
Ut magus 5 et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis.

This in J.D.W.'s rough trans, runs:

The poet for me is one capable of the greatest of poetic
feats, that is to say one who by the illusion of art can
agonize, enrage and comfort my spirit in turn, who like a
magician can fill me with terror or transport me now to
Thebes, now to Athens.

It is not odd that a devil called Modo should recall this
passage to Sh.'s mind, since it is Horace's description of
the tragic poet, a finer one than anything in Aristotle.