Note.—"Bonum est nos hic esse, quia homo vivit purius, cadit rarius, surgit velocius, incedit cautius, quiescit securius, moritur felicius, purgatur citius, præmiatur copiosius."—Bernard.
"This sentence," says Dr. Whitaker, "is usually inscribed in some conspicuous part of the Cistertian houses." I cannot find in St. Bernard's works the passage to which Wordsworth's sonnet alludes, though I often see it referred to: e. g. Whitehead's College Life, p. 44., 1845; and Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Monastic Orders, Preface. Can any of your correspondents direct me to it?
RT.
83. Spenser's Faerie Queene (b. ii. c. ix. st. 22.).—
"The frame thereof seemed partly circulare,
And part triangulare," &c.
Warton (Observations on the Fairy Queen, vol. i. p. 121.) says that the philosophy of this abstruse stanza describing the Castle of Alma is explained in a learned epistle of Sir Kenelm Digby addressed to Sir Edward Stradling. In a foot-note he states that this epistle was—
"First printed in a single pamphlet, viz., Observations on XXII Stanza, &c., Lond. 1644, 8vo. It is also published in Scrinia Sacra, 4to. pag. 244. London, 1654."
Could any of your readers, acquainted with Sir Kenelm Digby's works, give his explanation of this stanza? There is no note on it in the one-volume edition of Spenser lately published by Moxon. The best explanation of it that I have seen is in the Athenæum, August 12, 1848.
E. M. B.