A father's "sneer"? Would a high-born man in those days sneer at a daughter's disgrace—would he only sneer?
Reproach, and biting shame, and—worse
Than all—the estranged father's curse.
I only throw this hint out in a hurry.
177. "Stern and sear"? I see a meaning in it, but no word is good that startles one at first, and then you have to make it out: "drear," perhaps. Then why "to minstrel's glance"? "To fancy's eye," you would say, not "to fiddler's eye."
422. A knight thinks, he don't "trow."
424. "Mayhap" is vulgarish. Perchance.
464. "Sensation" is a philosophic prose word. Feeling.
27. [The hill, where ne'er rang woodman's stroke,
Was clothed with elm and spreading oak,
Through whose black boughs the moon's mild ray
As hardly strove to win a way,
As pity to a miser's heart.]
Natural illustrations come more naturally when by them we expound mental operations than when we deduce from natural objects similes of the mind's workings. The miser's struggle thus compared is a beautiful image. But the storm and clouds do not inversely so readily suggest the miser.
160. [Havock and Wrath, his maniac bride, Wheel o'er the conflict, &c.]