[2] The reference is to a then prevalent form of brigandage and blackmail practised by the females of the smaller American cities, by which reputable women also were permitted to "accost" and to exercise all the other street privileges of strumpets.
[3] A minor poet and essayist of the period.
[4] In the Revised Version: King James's bishops hushed up this awkward matter with a pious mistranslation.
IV
THE THIN QUEEN OF ELFHAME
"This pleasing method of instilling instruction into the mind has been found by experience to be the shortest and best way of accomplishing that end among all ranks of persons. The fable of The Poor Man and His Lamb, for example, as related by Nathan to King David, carried with it a blaze of truth that flashed conviction on the mind of the royal transgressor: and many lessons of reproof, religion, and morality, we find to be continually delivered in this mode by the sages."
4.
The Thin Queen of Elfhame
§ 37
The literary artist plays, I had said, with these large ageless symbols. And all artists would, I thought, continue indefinitely in such playing, because their fundamental desire in life is not quite the same desire which guides their fellows. The artist is as other men: he may well, in common with Shylock, assert himself to be fed by the same food and subject to the same diseases as a Christian is: and yet between him and the Christian is a difference.