[11] [Conscience.]
[12] Mr Gifford, in a note on Massinger's "Virgin Martyr," points out an elegy by Secundus as the origin of this pretty fancy, which is thus employed by Fairfax in his translation of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered"—
"Death hath again exchanged his darts with Love,
And Cupid thus lets borrow'd arrows fly."
The allusion is not to be found in the original Italian (bk. ii. s. 34). Davenant, in bk. ii. c. 7, of his "Gondibert," also mentions the fable, and it would be easy among foreign writers to point out many instances in which more extensive use has been made of it. The sonnets by Annibale Nozzolini and by Girolamo Pompei are well known.—Collier.
[13] [Old copy, was.]
[14] So in "Macbeth," act v. sc. 5—
"I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in't. I have supt full with horrors!
Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me."
[And see note to the "Heir," xi. 449.]