“Where Etna over hill and valley casts
His shadow stretching towards Syracuse,
The city of Timoleon,”
gives utterance to that unusual outburst of feeling:—
“Oh! wrap him in your shades, ye giant woods,
On Etna’s side; and thou, O flowery field
Of Enna! is there not some nook of thine,
From the first play-time of the infant world
Kept sacred to restorative delight,
When from afar invoked by anxious love?”
Wordsworth’s Poetical Works, 1889, “The Prelude,” Book XI. p. 319.
[23] A short treatise entitled Observations on Egypt, which is extant in MS., may have been among the papers sent to Stuart with a view to publication.
[24] Shakespeare, Richard III., Act I. Scene 4.
[25] He had, perhaps, something more than a suspicion that Southey disliked these protestations. In the letter of friendly remonstrance (February, 1804), which Southey wrote to him after the affair with Godwin, he admits that he may be “too intolerant of these phrases,” but, indeed, he adds, “when they are true, they may be excused, and when they are not, there is no excuse for them.” Life and Correspondence, ii. 266.
[26] Cynocephalus, Dog-visaged. Compare Milton’s “Hymn on the Nativity:”—
“The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis haste.”
[27] A printed slip, cut off from some public document, has been preserved in one of Coleridge’s note-books. It runs thus: “Segreteria del Governo li 29 Gennajo 1805. Samuel T. Coleridge Seg. Pub. del. Commis. Regio. G. N. Zammit Pro segretario.” His actual period of office extended from January 18 to September 6, 1805.