FOOTNOTES.

“Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”

(Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice,” act v., sc. 1)

Shakespeare, “Sonnet” 35.

“Which his fair tongue—conceit’s expositor— Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That agéd ears play truant at his tables, And younger hearings are quite ravishéd, So sweet and voluble is his discourse.”

“And shall this ground fainthearted dastard Turnus flying view? Is it so vile a thing to die?”

(Phaer’s Translation [1573].)

“Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit,” &c.

Shrewd Flaccus touches each vice in his laughing friend. Dryden thus translated the whole passage:—

“Unlike in method, with concealed design Did crafty Horace his low numbers join; And, with a sly insinuating grace Laughed at his friend, and looked him in the face: Would raise a blush where secret vice he found; And tickle, while he gently probed the wound; With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled, But made the desperate passes while he smiled.”

“Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt, Strenua nos exercet inertia; navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis, hic est, Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus.”

They change their skies but not their mind who run across the seas; We toil in laboured idleness, and seek to live at ease With force of ships and four horse teams. That which you seek is here, At Ulubræ, unless your mind fail to be calm and clear.

“At Ulubræ” was equivalent to saying in the dullest corner of the world, or anywhere. Ulubræ was a little town probably in Campania, a Roman Little Pedlington. Thomas Carlyle may have had this passage in mind when he gave to the same thought a grander form in Sartor Resartus: “May we not say that the hour of spiritual enfranchisement is even this? When your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed and thrown open, and you discover with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your America is here or nowhere. The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable hampered actual wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere, is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself. Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of. What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, couldest thou only see.”

“Conscia mens recti famæ mendacia risit: Sed nos in vitium credula turba sumus.”

A mind conscious of right laughs at the falsehoods of fame but towards vice we are a credulous crowd.

“Some sons, indeed, some very few, we see Who keep themselves from this infection free, Whom gracious Heaven for nobler ends designed, Their looks erected, and their clay refined.”

“Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, Et quod temptabam dicere, versus erat.”

“Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.”