Note 92 — CABINET OF BIOGRAPHY. (continued 5)
Reading edition
There is a very obscure stanza following this, it runs thus:—
"¿ Quien te dixera che al exento labio, que apenas de un cabello se ofendia, amanciera dia de tan pesado agravio que cubierto de nieve agradecida? ¡ no separaos si fu e cometa ó vida!"
In the Quarterly Review this is translated. "Who would have thought that this chin which had scarcely a hair upon it, should have sometimes been found in the morning so shagged with snow that it might have been mistaken for a comet?" This is obviously wrong. He alludes to his youth at the time of sailing with the Armada, and his age at the time of writing the eclogue to Claudio; and the swiftness with which the interval had passed. "Who could have told thee that there should come a day when the lip then scarcely deformed by a hair, should be so heavy covered with welcome snow (his beard turned white), [and that so swiftly that], we do not know whether it was a comet or life?" Nothing, however, can be so ill expressed and obscure.