P. 253. d'Arblay.—Macaulay notes that Miss Burney 'describes this conversation as delightful; and, indeed, we cannot wonder that, with her literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing in how magnificent a manner the greatest lady in the land encouraged literature'. The conversation took place at Windsor in December, 1785.
P. 255. Lamb.—Walter Pater says of Charles Lamb: 'He was a true "collector", delighting in the personal finding of a thing, in the colour an old book or print gets for him by the little accidents which attest previous ownership. Wither's Emblems, "that old book and quaint," long-desired, when he finds it at last, he values none the less because a child had coloured the plates with his paints.'
P. 256. Milton.—'The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge.'—Dr. Johnson.
P. 257. Browning.—The statue referred to is that of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, father of Cosimo de' Medici, in the Piazza San Lorenzo. The imaginative Sienese is Ademollo; the 'Frail one of the Flower' will be recognized as La Dame aux Camélias. Browning 'translates' the title-page of his 'find' thus:—
A Roman murder-case:
Position of the entire criminal cause
Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,
With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay,
Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death
By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,
At Rome on February Twenty Two,
Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight:
Wherein it is disputed if, and when,
Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape
The customary forfeit.'
P. 260. Eliot.—
I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.
E. FitzGerald. Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám.
P. 263. Lewis.—This is a portion of an imitation of Horace. Ep. 20, Bk. i.
P. 265. Gay.—The authorship of this and the following poem cannot be decided definitely, but it is presumed that they were written by Gay and Pope respectively, and they have been so credited in the text.