[121.]—Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870) was born in Seville, and became an orphan in his tenth year. When eighteen years of age he went penniless to Madrid, where he earned a precarious living by writing for journals and by doing literary hack-work.
See [Introduction], p. xxxix; Blanco García, II, 79-86 and 274-277. For his works, see his Obras, 5th ed., Madrid, 1898 (with a Prólogo by Correa: the Rimas are in vol. III).
[122.—12-13.] Del salón... olvidada = en el ángulo obscuro del salón, tal vez olvidada de su dueño. Bécquer, in his striving after complicated metrical arrangements, often inverts the word-order in his verse. See also Introduction, Versification, p. lxxii.
[19.] arrancarlas: las refers to Cuánta nota, which seems to have here the force of a plural.
[24.] See Introduction, Versification, [p. lxv.]
[124.—14.] intérvalo: the standard form is intervalo.
[126.—12.] El nicho á un extremo: the meaning is, one end of the recess, in which the coffin will be placed. The graveyards of Spain and Spanish America have lofty walls with niches or recesses large enough to contain coffins. After receiving the coffin, the niche is sealed with a slab that bears the epitaph of the deceased.
[128.]—The Valencian Vicente W. Querol (1836-1889) gave most of his time to commerce, but he occasionally wrote verses that had the merit of correctness of language and strong feeling.
Cf. Blanco Garcia, II, 376-378. For his verses, see Rimas (Prólogo by Pedro A. de Alarcón), 1877; La fiesta de Venus, in the Almanaque de la Ilustración, 1878.
[7.] Ó en el que = ó en el día en que: the reference is to the anniversaries of the wedding day and the saints' days of the parents.