[38. ]armas y letras: these words summarize the Renaissance ideal of culture. The perfect gentleman must combine literature and arms. Letters were not considered to be apart from active life. Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and many others of Spain's great writers of the classic period exemplify this ideal.
[53. ]embozado: to avoid breathing the cool mountain air of his country, a Spaniard frequently draws the corner of his cape over his face, concealing it. He is then embozado, 'muffled.' When a woman is heavily veiled she is tapada. This national custom has been effectively used by Spanish poets, novelists, and dramatists. It offered a plausible excuse for the concealment or confusion of identity.
[64. ]calle: this word is the object of atraviesa, l. 72.
[65. ]la calle del Ataúd: this dismal name does not seem to be of Espronceda's own invention. It is found in José Gutiérrez de la Vega's "Don Miguel de Mañara," 1851. Espronceda probably used some earlier edition of the prose romance of Don Miguel de Mañara.
[96. ]que: a relative adverb used with the force of a genitive Translate 'whose.'
[100. ]Segundo Don Juan Tenorio: see the Introduction.
PARTE SEGUNDA
[The quotation] is taken from Byron's "Don Juan," Canto IV, stanza 72, the description of Haidée's tomb. I restore the first two words, omitted in all previous editions, without which the passage is devoid of meaning. The way in which this passage has been garbled was pointed out by Piñeyro, "El Romanticismo en España," Paris, 1904.
[181. ]de luceros coronada: this verse occurs also in Meléndez Valdés' "Rosana en los fuegos." See Foulché-Delbosc, "Quelques Réminiscences dans Espronceda," Revue Hispanique, XXI, p. 667.
[218. ]hoja tras hoja, etc.: in the first part of "Faust," Margarete pulls out one by one the petals of a daisy to determine whether or not Faust loves her. Is this a reminiscence of Margarete's Er liebt mich—liebt mich nicht?