Notes.—“His award,” “Him whom all honour,” “Thou didst smile, poet,” “Sun-treader” (lines 142, 144, 151, 1020): all these refer to Shelley. “A god wandering after beauty” (line 321): Apollo seeking Daphne. Apollo pursued Daphne, who fled from him, seeking the aid of the gods, who changed her into a laurel. “A giant standing vast in the sunset” (line 322): Atlas, one of the Titans, is referred to here.
“A high-crested chief
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos” (line 324):
“After the fall of Troy, many of the Greek chiefs, among them Nestor, set sail for home, while others, at the desire of Agamemnon, remained behind to sacrifice to Pallas. Those who set sail went to the island of Tenedos, where they made offerings to the gods” (Poet Lore, vol. i., p. 244; Homer, Odyssey, iii.). “The dim clustered isles in the blue sea” (line 321): the islands of the Ægean Sea, east of Greece.
“Who stood beside the naked swift-footed,
Who bound my forehead with Proserpine’s hair” (line 334):
the swift-footed was Hermes, the name of Mercury among the Greeks. He was the messenger of the gods. He was presented by the King of Heaven with a winged cap, called petasus, and with wings for his feet, called talaria. Proserpine was the daughter of Ceres by Jupiter. “As Arab birds float sleeping in the wind” (line 479): this is considered by some to refer to the pelican, by others to the Birds of Paradise.
“The king
Treading the purple calmly to his death” (line 568):
Agamemnon, to whom his loved Cassandra foretells his doom in vain:—
“Well, sire, I yield me vanquished by thy voice;
I go, treading on purple, to my house.”
(Potter’s “Agamemnon” of Æschylus, 1017.)
“The boy with his white breast,” etc. (line 574): see Potter’s “Choephoræ” of Æschylus, 1073: Orestes avenged his father’s death by assassinating his mother Clytemnestra and the adulterer Ægisthus. Andromeda (line 656): Andromeda was ordered to be exposed to a sea-monster, and was tied naked to a rock; but Perseus delivered her, changed the monster into a rock, and married her. “The fair pale sister went to her chill grave” (line 963): Antigone interred by night the remains of her brother Polynices against the orders of Creon, who commanded her to be buried alive. She, however, killed herself before the sentence could be executed (see “Antigone” of Sophocles). The long Latin preface to Pauline from the Occult Philosophy of Cornelius-Agrippa is thus englished in Mr. Cooke’s Browning Guide-Book:—“I doubt not but the title of our book, by its rarity, may entice very many to the perusal of it. Among whom many of hostile opinions, with weak minds, many even malignant and ungrateful, will assail our genius, who in their rash ignorance, hardly before the title is before their eyes, will make a clamour. We are forbidden to teach, to scatter abroad the seeds of philosophy, pious ears being offended, clear-seeing minds having arisen. I, as a counsellor, assail their consciences; but neither Apollo nor all the Muses, nor an angel from heaven, would be able to save me from their execrations, whom now I counsel that they may not read our books, that they may not understand them, that they may not remember them, for they are noxious—they are poisonous. The mouth of Acheron is in this book: it speaks often of stones: beware, lest by these it shape the understanding. You, also, who with fair wind shall come to the reading, if you will apply so much of the discernment of prudence as bees in gathering honey, then read with security. For, indeed, I believe you about to receive many things not a little both for instruction and enjoyment. But if you find anything that pleases you not, let it go that you may not use it, for I do not declare these things good for you, but merely relate them. Therefore, if any freer word may be, forgive our youth; I, who am less than a youth, have composed this work.” The preface is dated London, January 1833. V.A. XX. is the Latin abbreviation of Vixi annos viginti, I was twenty years old.
Pearl, A, a Girl. (Asolando, 1889.) According to Eastern fable there is a great power in a pearl: if you could speak the right word, you could call a spirit from the simple-looking stone which would make you lord of heaven and earth. Be this as it may, the poet says if you utter the right word, that evokes for you the love of a girl—held, perhaps, in little esteem by the world—her soul escapes to you, and you are creation’s lord!