In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
[P. 324.] The Wedding. The name, 'Owing Merrythief' (i.e., Owen Meredith), invented by Hood the Younger, sufficiently explains the Tennysonian fragrance of these lines.
[P. 327.] A Clerk ther was. The seventy-fifth birthday of that distinguished scholar and oarsman, the late Dr. F. J. Furnivall, was celebrated by the publication by the Oxford University Press of a Festschrift, An English Miscellany. Professor Skeat's contribution was received too late for inclusion among the other tributes in this volume, and it was first published in The Periodical, the organ of the Oxford Press.
[P. 330.] A Reminiscence of 'David Garrick,' etc. T. W. Robertson's David Garrick was produced in 1864.
[P. 330.] Lord Dundreary. A farcical stage character in Tom Taylor's play, Our American Cousin, in which Edward A. Sothern created something of a furore in 1861-62.
[P. 330.] Mr. Buckstone's playhouse—i.e., The Haymarket Theatre.
[P. 331.] But at last a lady entered. Nelly Moore (d. 1869), an actress whose chief success was gained at the Haymarket with Sothern.
[Pp. 336-41.] From Specimens of Modern Poets | The Heptalogia | or | The Seven against Sense.| a Cap with Seven Bells: by permission of Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton and Messrs. Chatto and Windus. The poets parodied are Tennyson, Robert and Mrs. Browning, Coventry Patmore, 'Owen Meredith,' D. G. Rossetti, and Swinburne himself. The Specimens were published anonymously in 1880. The 'Owen Meredith' is particularly severe, and strikes the same note as that of Hood the Younger (p. 324). Swinburne's parody of himself is one of the rare successes of its kind. 'The Kid' Idyll is the third part of a parody of The Angel in the House.
The Poet and the Woodlouse is presumably suggested by Lady Geraldine's Courtship.
[P. 342.] Bret Harte. The Bret Harte poems are taken from his Complete Works by permission of Messrs. Chatto and Windus and the Houghton, Mifflin Company.