[P. 237.] prouder than. Cf. Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida,” i, 3, 380: “His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends.”
silly sooth. “Twelfth Night,” ii, 4, 47.
[P. 239.] denotes a foregone conclusion. “Othello.” iii, 3, 428.
[P. 240.] in cell monastic. Cf. “As You Like It,” iii, 2, 441: “To live in a nook merely monastic.”
[P. 241.] thoughts that breathe. Gray’s “Progress of Poesy,” 110.
[P. 242.] Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature. In the paper on “Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles,” Hazlitt’s tone is more generous: “His Lordship likes the poetry, the imaginative part of art, and so do we.... He likes the sombre part of it, the thoughtful, the decayed, the ideal, the spectral shadow of human greatness, the departed spirit of human power. He sympathizes not with art as a display of ingenuity, as the triumph of vanity or luxury, as it is connected with the idiot, superficial, petty self-complacency of the individual and the moment (these are to him not ‘luscious as locusts, but bitter as coloquintida’); but he sympathizes with the triumphs of Time and Fate over the proudest works of man—with the crumbling monuments of human glory—with the dim vestiges and countless generations of men—with that which claims alliance with the grave, or kindred with the elements of nature.” Works, XI, 496.
poor men’s cottages. “Merchant of Venice,” i, 2, 14.
reasons high. “Paradise Lost,” II, 558.
[P. 243.] Till Contemplation. Dyer’s “Grongar Hill,” 26.
this bank. “Macbeth,” i, 7, 6.