[49b] Arthur’s quoit.—The name given to several cromlechau in Wales; there is one so named, near the Bard’s home, in the parish of Llanddwywe, “having the print of a large hand, dexterously carved by man or nature, on the side of it, as if sunk in from the weight of holding it.” (v. Camb. Register, 1795.)
[54] In the Pope’s favor.—Clement XI. became Pope in 1700, his predecessor being Innocent XII.
[55] Their hands to the bar.—Referring to the custom (now practically obsolete) whereby a prisoner on his arraignment was required to lift up his hands to the bar for the purpose of identification. Ellis Wynne was evidently quite conversant with the practice of the courts, though there is no proof of his ever having intended to enter the legal profession or taken a degree in law as one author asserts. (v. Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry, sub. tit. Ellis Wynne.)
[67] “The Practice of Piety.”—Its author was Dr. Bayley, Bishop of Bangor; a Welsh translation by Rowland Vaughan, of Caergai, appeared in 1630, “printed at the signe of the Bear, in Saint Paul’s Churchyard, London.”
[69] At one time cold.—Cp.:
I come
To take you to the other shore across,
Into eternal darkness, there to dwell
In fierce heat and in ice.—Dante: Inf. c. III. (Cary’s trans.).
[71] Above the roar.—Cp.:
The stormy blast of Hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on:
When they arrive before the ruinous sweep
There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans,
And blasphemies.—Dante: Inf. c. V. (Cary’s trans.).
[73] Amidst eternal ice.—Cp.:
Thither . . . all the damned are brought
. . . and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce!
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immoveable, infix’d and frozen round
Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.—Par. Lost, II. 597–603.