[L. 203.] élever sa langue for élever la voix is decidedly indefensible. But Chénier carefully avoids obvious alliances of words. See note to p. 64, l. 4.
[L. 205.] Sans craindre qu'un affront ne trouble. The second negative ne had better have been left out. The strict rule is to omit it after sans. Yet several instances of sans que... ne and even sans que... ne... point occur in the seventeenth century, namely in Mme de Sévigné. See Haase, § 103 B.
[L. 206.] L'indigent se méfie. Menander in Stobaeus, Florilegium, xcvi. Od. vii. 307.
[L. 209.] A reminiscence of Horace, Od. ii. 9. The same thought occurs again at p. 66, l. 4.
[L. 210.] Propertius, ii. 28. 31; Theocritus, Idyll. iv. 4.
[L. 211.] Et tel pleure. Cf. 'Tel qui rit vendredi, dimanche pleurera.'—Racine, Plaideurs, i. I. Observe the fitness of those two forms of the same proverb to their several contexts. The vendredi and dimanche, humorous precisions, would never do here.
[L. 212.] en tes discours préside—not 'à tes discours.' Chénier means, not 'wisdom presides over thy discourses,' but 'wisdom rules, bears sway, prevails, is paramount in thy discourses,' Cf. Od. xix. 352; xx. 37.
[Ll. 228-231.] Aen. i. 628.
[Ll. 229, 230.] n'a point à l'indigence fait..., 'has not caused indigence to envy the destiny of the wealthy Lycus,' The object of faire, which is at the same time the subject of the infinitive envier, is in the dative. See Littré, Dict., s. v. 'Faire,' Remarques 1-5; also Haase, 390.
[L. 235.] et te souviens. This peculiar form of the imperative is used only when another imperative goes before. Whereas in the ordinary form, souviens-toi, the stressed form of the pronoun is used (as is the rule when the pronoun is the object of an imperative or a prepositional object: écris-moi, nous avons songé à lui), in this construction the pronoun preceding the verb follows the rule of all pronouns placed before verbs and is in the unstressed form.