[15] It is unfortunate that this word is often used in the sense of something unreal as mere idle fancy instead of an active creative faculty, see pp. [357], [358].
[16] In 1843 Mrs. Browning’s fine appeal, “The Cry of the Children.” appeared in “Blackwood,” but I presume had little effect. So also Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,” “Bridge of Sighs,” and “Song of the Labourer,” were written about the same time, but could have made little real impression.
[17] The family name is now apparently pronounced as it is spelt (see “An English Pronouncing Dictionary,” by Daniel Jones, and the “Century” and “Webster”). Such a change must often happen. I have cousins named Colclough, who in Australia became so tired of correcting people that they finally resigned themselves to the loss of the old pronunciation “Cokely” and accepted the less euphonious “Colclo.”
[18] Was a phrase of Cowper’s in Bentham’s mind? The latter wrote to Christopher Rowley, “We are strange creatures, my little friend; everything that we do is in reality important, though half that we do seems to be push-pin.”
[19] “Squyer” is a dissyllable. The final e at the end of a line is always sounded like a in “China.” “Lokkes,” “sleves” and “faire” are also dissyllables, because e, ed, en, es are sounded as syllables, except before vowels and certain words beginning with h.
[20] Micah vi. 8.
[21] One certainly protests. There is a great mass of medical and other evidence to the contrary. Sir William Osler made notes of about 500 cases, and says, “To the great majority their death, like their birth, was a sleep and a forgetting.”
[22] The “Summit,” completion or end.
[23] The eyes, smile, etc., referred to in the intermediate verses.