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596. bruited up, noised abroad.

849. 613. style, name.

851. 750. Seistan. See 1. 82.

751. Helmund, a river in Seistan, in Afghanistan. 752. Zirrah, a lake in Seistan.

763-4. Moorghab, Tejend, Hohik, rivers in Turkestan.

765. The northern Sir, the Maxartes. See 1. 129. 852. 861. Jemshid, a mythical king. Persepolis, an ancient capital of Persia.

878. Chorasmian waste, a region of Turkestan. 880. Right... star, i.e., due north. Or. gunje, a village near the delta of the Oxus. 887. Pamere. See 1. 15.

890. luminous home, the Aral Sea.

THE SCHOLAR GIPSY

'There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there and at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem that they discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while exercized in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars who had formerly been of his acquaintance. They quickly spied out their old friend among the gipsies, and he gave them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, and told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others; that himself had learned much of their art, and when he had compassed the whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.' (Glanvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing, 1661.)

2. wattled cotes, sheep-folds.

853. 19. corn, grain.

31. Glanvil's book. See note above. 42. erst, formerly.

57. Hurst, Cumner Hurst, a hill a few miles southwest of Oxford.

58. Berkshire, a county south of Oxford. 59. ingle-bench, bench in the chimney-corner. 854. 74. Bab-lock-hithe, a village about four miles southwest of Oxford.

79. Wychwood bowers, Wychwood Forest, ten miles or so northwest from Oxford.

83. Fyfield elm in May, the May-pole dance at Fyfield, some six miles southwest of Oxford.

91. Godstow Bridge, about two miles up the Thames from Oxford.

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ROSSETTI: FRANCESCA DA RIMINI

Francesca da Rimini, an Italian lady of the thirteenth century, became the wife of Giovanni Malatesta. Having discovered the love between Francesca and his young brother Paolo, Giovanni killed them both. An incident in the love-story of Paolo and Francesca is put into the mouth of Francesca in Dante's Divine Comedy, Hell, Canto v, whence it is here rendered by Rossetti.

861. 17. Lancelot, the lover of Queen Guenevere, in several medieval romances.

862. 26. A Galahalt. Galahalt was the go-between for Lancelot and Guenevere. Hence the book that brought Paolo and Francesca together is here called 'a Galahalt.'

THE KING'S TRAGEDY

'Tradition says that Catherine Douglas, in honor of her heroic act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers of James the First of Scots, received popularly the name of "Barlass." This name remains to her descendants, the Barlas family, in Scotland, who bear for their crest a broken arm. She married Alexander Lovell of Bolunnie.

A few stanzas from King James's lovely poem, known as The King's Quair, are quoted in the course of this ballad. The writer must express regret for the necessity which has compelled him to shorten the ten-syllabled lines to eight syllables, in order that they might harmonize with the ballad meter.' (Rossetti.)

The passages from The King's Quair quoted in the present poem are printed in italics.

James I was murdered at Perth, Feb. 20, 1437, by the Earl of Atholl and Robert Graham (Græme). 864. 8. palm-play ball, an old kind of tennis in which the ball was struck with the hand rather than with a racket.

25. Bass Rock, an islet at the entrance of the Firth of Forth.

29. England's king, Henry IV.

30. long years immured. In 1405, on his way from Scotland to France, James was captured by the English, and detained in one English prison or another until 1424.

37. a lady, Joan Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset. She became the wife of James in 1424.

41. a sweeter song, a reference to King James' poem, The King's Quair.

865. 45. teen, sorrow, grief.

48. At Scone crowned. Scone, in Perthshire, Scotland, was the traditional scene of Scottish coronations. The coronations of James I and Joan occurred on May 21, 1424.

72. leaguer, siege. Roxbro' hold, Roxburgh Castle, on the Tweed, near the English border, besieged by James I in 1436.

106. Three Estates, that is, the nobility, the clergy,

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316. Worship, ye lovers. The lines printed in italics are adapted from King James' The King's Quair.

343. blissful aventure, happy chance.

388. pearl-tired, attired in pearls.

869. 414. voidee-cup, a drink of spiced wine served well after dinner-time and before bed-time. 424. riven and brast, torn and broken.

430. hurdles, narrow boards.

440. ingle-nook, a corner by the fire.

442. arrased wall, hung with tapestries from Arras.

445. dight, prepared, placed.

448. doffed, took off.

462. dule to dree, sorrow to suffer.

469. Aberdour, north of Edinburgh, on the north shore of the Firth of Forth.

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FIRST CHORUS

Itylus

895. 5-8. nightingale Thracian ships tongueless vigil. Philomela and Procné were daughters of Pandion, king of Attica, who gave Procné in marriage to his ally, the Thracian king Tereus. After Procné had borne a son, Itys (Itylus), Tereus concealed her in the country, that he might dishonor her sister Philomela. Having accomplished his purpose, he deprived Philomela of her tongue. By embroidering her story on a robe, however, Philomela communicated the truth to Procné, whereupon Procné killed her son and served his flesh on a dish before Tereus. When Tereus pursued the fleeing sisters, the gods granted them an escape by transforming Procné into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. 10. Maiden most perfect, Artemis. 896. 41. Pan, god of flocks and shepherds.

44. Manad, a female worshipper of Bacchus. Bassarid, a Lydian or Thracian bacchanal.

THIRD CHORUS

897. 49. Aphrodite, Venus, goddess of love. 136, 146. Tyro, Enipeus. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus, beloved by the river-god Enipeus in Thessaly.

THE GARDEN OF PROSPERPINE 898. 28. Prosperpine, queen of the infernal regions. During the six months of the year that she passed in Olympus she was considered an amiable and propitious divinity; but during the six months in Hades she was stern and terrible. She personified the changing seasons.

HERTHA

Hertha, or Nerthus was the Germanic goddess of the earth, of fertility, and of growth.

A FORSAKEN GARDEN

The scene of this poem is East Dene, Bonchurch, Isle of Wight.

THALASSIUS

903. 15. Oread, a nymph of the hills.

18. Cymothoë, a nereid, or nymph of the sea. 37. he, Walter Savage Landor. See p. 657. 904. 88-9. And gladly dead. A rendering

of the epitaph written by Landor for the Spanish troops who died resisting the invasion of Napoleon:

Emeriti lubenter quiescerimus
Libertate parta;

Quiescimus amissa perlubenter.

THE ROUNDEL

The roundel in Swinburne's sense is illustrated by this poem. It consists of nine complete lines arranged as follows: a b a, b a b, a ba, part of the first line being repeated as a refrain after the third and ninth lines. The refrain is usually so selected as to rime with the lines.

THE ARMADA

Written for the three hundredth anniversary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English.

907. 8. affrayed, frightened.

908. 28. when Athens hurled back Asia. A reference to the wars between the Persians and the Greeks, which began in 500 B. C. and ended about 449 B. C.

33. the fierce July. The Armada descended upon England in July, 1588.

34. galleon, a large, unwieldy vessel, usually having 3 or 4 decks. galliass, a large galley carrying, usually, 3 masts and some 20 guns.

39. bastions of serpentine. A bastion is a part of a fortification projecting from the main rampart. A serpentine is a kind of cannon.

41. charged with bale, laden with destruction. 46. the Lion, the symbol of England. 909. 63. the helmsman's bark, boat of Charon, in which souls were ferried across the Styx.

65. told, counted.

910. 110. burgeon, bud, sprout. yearn, feel desire. 124. hurtles, knocks violently, dashes.

133. Python, a huge serpent which lived on Mount Parnassus.

911. 194. Sark, one of the Channel Islands, off the northern coast of France. Wight, the Isle of Wight.

213. England's Drake, Sir Francis Drake, viceadmiral to Lord Howard.

912. 238. Oquendo, Miguel de Oquendo, the most valiant of the captains under the Spanish admiral, the Duke of Medina.

246. Humber, Tees, Tyne, Tweed, English rivers emptying into the North Sea.

252. Forth, the Firth of Forth, in Scotland.

254. quarry, game.

262. ruth, pity.

913. 264. Shetlands and Orkneys, groups of islands off the northern coast of Scotland.

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916. b. 7. Bacon. See above, p. 187.

8. Livy, Titus Livius (59 B. C.-17 A. D.), greatest of the Roman historians. Carlyle. See p. 714. 9. Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B. C.-43 B. C.), the celebrated orator, philosopher, and statesman. Newman. See p. 702.

10. Plato (429 or 427-347 B. C.), a famous Greek philosopher. Michelet, Jules Michelet (1798–1874), French historian and man of letters. Sir Thomas Browne. See p. 200.

12. Milton. See p. 236. Taylor. See p. 221. 917. a. 7. Lycidas. See p. 240.

15. Dryden. See p. 266.

46. dichotomy, a division into two parts.

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the French man of letters, Gustave Flaubert (18211880):

8. Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, a novel by Marie Henri Beyle (1783-1842), best known by his pseudonym De Stendhal.'

36. Michelangelo, Michelagnolo Buonarroti (14751564), a famous Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet.

b. 47. Dean Mansel, Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871), dean of St. Paul's, an English metaphysician.

922. b. 30. ante-penultimate, immediately preceding that one of a series which is next to the last one. 55. Blake. See p. 485. 923. a. 36. Swedenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a Swedish philosopher and theosophist. Tracts of the Times, a series of 90 pamphlets published at Oxford from 1833-1841, to which Newman, Pusey, and others contributed. See p. 702. b. 29-39. series of letters. Madame X. Flaubert's letters to Madame X., in which he so often disparages human love and exalts the love of art, were written during the latter half of the year 1846. Madame X. was Madame Colet.

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924. a. 55. a sympathetic commentator, Guy de Maupassant, who wrote an introduction to Lettres de Gustave Flaubert à George Sand. The passage here quoted will be found in the edition of Paris, 1884, pp. lxii-lxv.

b. 48. Blake's rapturous design. See p. 485. 925. b. 2. ennuis, wearinesses, vexations.

37. Buffon, the Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), a celebrated French naturalist. Especially known to literary criticism for his Discours sur le style (1853).

926. a. 41. Scott's facility. See p. 579.

b. 13. Les Misérables, a famous novel by Victor Marie Hugo (1802-1885).

44. Raphael, Raphael Santi (1483-1520), a famous Italian painter.

927. a. 8. Flaubert's commentator, Guy de Maupassant. See Lettres de Gustave Flaubert à George Sand, Paris, 1884, pp. lxi-lxii.

32. Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), one of the greatest of German musicians.

b. 22. The Divine Comedy, the greatest work of the greatest of Italian poets, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321).

918. a. 1. Tacitus, Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55-after 117), an eminent Roman historian and orator. 919. a. 31. neology, innovation in language. b. 4. le cuistre, the pedantic fellow. 31. Johnson. See p. 405.

920. a. 51. Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592), a famous French essayist.

b. 6. ascêsis, a transliteration of a Greek word meaning exercise, training, art.'

25. Esmond, a historical novel, Henry Esmond, by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).

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STEVENSON: THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 929. a. 4. biggin', building.

17. Black Country. In the English Midlands. Moor of Rannoch. In Perthshire.

b. 22. Miss Bird. Isabella L. Bird, authoress of a popular book of travel, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.

930. a. 35. plausible, pleasing, acceptable. 52. roundly, plainly, flatly.

53. a Scottish legal body. The Society of Scottish Advocates, whose examinations Stevenson passed at his father's request, though he never practiced law. See his Apology for Idlers.

b. 27. bickering, flushing, quivering.

931. a. 9. harled, rough-cast with lime mingled with small gravel.

b. 5. commerce, conversation, intercourse. 10. counters, remarks that mean nothing, not true coin.

25. Give him the wages of going on. A reminiscence of Tennyson's poem entitled Wages, in which the poet says of Virtue, 'Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.'

932. a. 37. Byron did actually discuss theology on his way to take part in the Greek war of independence. As to his descent and schooldays, see the biographical sketch on p. 586.

b. 3. proctors, officers who supervise the behavior of students at Oxford and Cambridge.

18. rotten borough. The constituencies which before the Reform Act were in the gift of great patrons were so-called; they were regarded as safe refuges for unknown or unpopular politicians, and some of the greatest of English statesmen made their entrance into Parliament Gladstone for in- in this way.

stance

21. raffish, fashionable.

35. Professor Blackie (1809-95), a popular professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh. 37. umbrageous, suspicious, shy.

933. a. 6. iron skerries, rocks projecting from the sea, hard as iron.

13. girdle, griddle, gridiron.

20. Flodden Field, where James IV of Scotland was defeated in 1513.

21. Darien, an attempt in 1698 to plant Scottish settlers on the Isthmus of Panama, which caused considerable loss of life and widespread disappoint

nient.

Forty-five, the rebellion of 1745, which was crushed by the defeat of the Scotch at Culloden the following year.

24. Wallace, the Scottish hero who was defeated by the English at Falkirk in 1298.

25. Bruce defeated the English at Bannockburn in 1314; he was King of Scotland, 1306-29, and suffered many reverses.

47. Shorter Catechism, adopted at an Assembly of Puritan divines held at Westminster during the Commonwealth.

b. 3. another church. The Highlanders were, for the most part, Roman Catholics.

8. Highland costume, the kilt, a short plaited skirt, coming to the knees.

15. Black Watch, a famous Highland regiment. 43. Ireland, though in the political aggregation' of the British Empire, retains its own religion and

customs.

FRANÇOIS VILLON

934. a. 24. exhumed, dug out of the grave.

b. 20. pilloried, exposed to public disgrace. 935. a. 21. tubbed and swaddled, washed and wrapped in baby clothes.

26. given piously, addicted to pious practices.

b. 24. Notre Dame de Paris, a novel by Victor Hugo (1831).

936. a. 9. piping the eye, pretending to cry.

54. the red door, the Porte Rouge of the previous column, I.

b. 32. Clough. See p. 673.

937. b. 41. cannikin clinked. A reminiscence of Iago's drinking song, Othello II, iii, 71.

938. a. 12. words of Mariana. Pericles IV, vi, 173-4.

25. Murger (1822-61), author of Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.

939. a. 11. Hogarth (1697-1764), the great English caricaturist. One of his most famous series portrayed the careers of The Industrious and the Idle Apprentice.

b. 42. pitch-and-toss. Matching' coppers. 940. a. 55. aumries, boxes in which the offerings for the poor were kept.

b. 21. made a demonstration against, attempted to break into. 941. a. 19. was upsides with him, had the advan tage of him.

942. a. 7. pantler, butler.

39. extraordinary, by torture.

b. 26. put to the question, tortured. 35. of our pleasant vices. Lear V, iii, 170

171:

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.

48. Nathan's parable. See ii Samuel xii, 3. 943. a. 4. planted upright, buried alive. See 937. b. 20.

22. mortal push, hand of death.

51. more pecked, pecked more full of holes. 944. a. 26. present volume. Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882).

b. 21. roystering, swaggering. 945. a. 43. Rabelais (1483-1553), the great humorous writer of the French Renaissance.

51. a work of some power. Perhaps Albert Glatigny's L'Illustre Brezacier, which made some sensation in 1873. Stevenson's essay appeared first in Cornhill, August, 1877.

946. a. 23. Béranger (1780-1857), the most popu lar of French lyrical poets.

26. Johnson. See p. 405.

31. fox burrowing. Like the Spartan boy of ancient fable, who concealed under his cloak a fox he had stolen.

52. mauvais pauvre, wicked poor man.

53. Victor Hugo (1802-85), the great French poet of the century.

57. mole-skin cap, sometimes worn by the lower classes in England.

b. 27. for me, so far as I am concerned. I will not translate it.

52. yester, last.

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES Stevenson began this collection of Rimes for Children' (as he once intended to call them another rejected title was 'Penny Whistles') in 1881. They were dedicated when published in 1885 to his old nurse Alison Cunningham, the 'Cummy' of his own childhood.

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