"This light was famous in its neighborhood.
... For, as it chanced,
Their cottage on a plot of rising ground
Stood single....
And from this constant light so regular
And so far seen, the House itself, by all
Who dwelt within the limits of the vale
... was named The Evening Star."
iron coast. This line inevitably calls to mind a stanza from Tennyson's Palace of Art:—
"One show'd an iron coast and angry waves.
You seemed to hear them climb and fall
And roar, rock-thwarted, under bellowing caves,
Beneath the windy wall."
[92.] prie-dieu. Praying-desk. From the French prier, pray; dieu, God.
[97.] seneschal. A majordomo; a steward. Originally meant old (that is, chief) servant; from the Gothic sins, old, and salks, a servant.—SKEAT.
[134.] gulls. Deceives, tricks.
"The vulgar, gulled into rebellion, armed,"
—DRYDEN.
[140.] posting here and there. That is, restlessly changing from place to place and from occupation to occupation.
[143-145.] Like that bold Cæsar, etc. Julius Cæsar (100?-44 B.C.). The incident here alluded to Is mentioned in Suetonius' [p.174] Life of the Deified Julius, Chapter VII. "Farther Spain fell to the lot of Cæsar as questor. When, at the command of the Roman people, he was holding court and had come to Cadiz, he noticed in the temple of Hercules a statue of Alexander the Great. At sight of this statue he sighed, as if disgusted at his own lack of achievement, because he had done nothing of note by the time in life (Cæsar was then thirty-two) that Alexander had conquered the world." (Free translation.)
[146-150.] Prince Alexander, etc. Alexander III., surnamed "The Great" (356-323 B.C.), was the most famous of Macedonian generals and conquerors, and the first in order of time of the four most celebrated commanders of whom history makes mention. In less than fifteen years he extended his domain over the known world and established himself as the universal emperor. He died at Babylon, his capital city, at the age of thirty-three, having lamented that there were no more worlds for him to conquer. (For the boundaries of his empire, see any map of his time.) Pope spoke of him as "The youth who all things but himself subdued."
Soudan (l. 149). An obsolete term for Sultan, the Turkish ruler.