How many sonnets had ensued the bedding?—[MS.]
[172] [The Ballad of "Death and the Lady" was printed in a small volume, entitled A Guide to Heaven, 1736, 12mo. It is mentioned in The Vicar of Wakefield (chap. xvii.), Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 1854, i. 369. See Old English Popular Music, by William Chappell, F.S.A., 1893, ii. 170, 171.]
[173] {146}[See The Prophecy of Dante, Canto I. lines 172-174, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 253, note 1.]
[174] Milton's first wife ran away from him within the first month. If she had not, what would John Milton have done?
[Mary Powell did not "run away," but at the end of the honeymoon obtained her husband's consent to visit her family at Shotover, "upon a promise of returning at Michaelmas." "And in the mean while his studies went on very vigorously; and his chief diversion, after the business of the day, was now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Lee.... This lady, being a woman of excellent wit and understanding, had a particular honour for our author, and took great delight in his conversation; as likewise did her husband, Captain Hobson." See, too, his sonnet "To the Lady Margaret Ley."—The Life of Milton (by Thomas Newton, D.D.), Paradise Regained, ed. (Baskerville), 1758, pp. xvii., xviii.]
[175] ["Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella.... She is a poetess—a mathematician—a metaphysician."—Journal November 30, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 357.]
[CJ] {147}
Displayed much more of nerve, perhaps, of wit,
Than any of the parodies of Pitt.—[MS.]
[CK] {148} —— toothpicks, a bidet.—[MS. Alternative reading.]