Page:The Lady of the Lake - Scott (1810).djvu/423

 ceived the thrust of the bayonet in this buckler, twisted it aside, and used the broad-sword against the encumbered soldier. In the civil war of 1745, most of the front-rank of the clans were thus armed; and Captain Grose informs us, that, in 1747, the privates of the 42d regiment, then in Flanders, were for the most part permitted to carry targets.—Military Antiquities, vol. I. p. 164. 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:

The use of defensive armour, 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 prac-