[90.] Slow-consuming Age. Cf. Shenstone, Love and Honour: "His slow-consuming fires."
[95.] As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in Comus, 359:
| "Peace, brother, be not over-exquisite To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; For grant they be so, while they rest unknown What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?" |
[97.] Happiness too swiftly flies. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil, Geo. iii. 66:
| "Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit." |
[98.] Thought would destroy their paradise. Wakefield quotes Sophocles, Ajax, 554: [Greek: En tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistos bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").
[99.] Cf. Prior, Ep. to Montague, st. 9:
| "From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise." |
and Davenant, Just Italian: "Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, it is not safe to know."