[12.] homily. Sermon.
[15.]the Virgilian cry. Sunt lacrimæ rerum! These words are interpreted in the following line.
[42.] On lips that rarely form them now. Arnold wrote but little poetry after 1867.
[55-56.] thine absent master. Richard Penrose Arnold, the poet's only surviving son.
[EPILOGUE TO LESSING'S LAOCOON][°]
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was a celebrated German dramatist and critic. For a time he studied theology at Leipsic, then turned his attention to the stage, and later to criticism. His greatest critical work (1766) is a treatise on Art, the famous Greek statuary group, the LAOCOON, which gives the work its name, forming the basis for a comparative discussion of Sculpture, Poetry, Painting, and Music.
[1.] Hyde Park. The largest park in London, and the principal recreation ground of that city.
[15.] Phœbus-guarded ground. Greece. Phœbus, a name often given Apollo, the sun god.
[16.] Pausanias. A noted Greek geographer and writer on art who lived in the second century. "His work, The Gazetteer of Hellas, is our best repertory of information for the topography, local history, religious observances, architecture, and sculpture of the different states of Greece."—K.O. MÜLLER, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece.
[21-22.] Dante (1265-1321), Petrarch (1304-1374),[p.192] Tasso (1544-1595), Ariosto (1475-1533). Celebrated Italian poets.