Note 272 — No. XXX.

These are the warnings very properly given to readers, to beware how they judge of what they cannot understand. Thus if the translation runs, “lightning of my soul, fulgation of angels, sulphur of hell,” we should recollect that this is not coarse or strange in the German language when applied by a lover to his mistress; but the English has nothing precisely parallel to the original Mulychause Archangelichen, which means rather emanation of the archangelic nature—or to Smellmynkern Vankelfer, which, if literally rendered, would signify made of stuff of the same odour whereof the devil makes flambeaux. See Schüttenbrüch on the German idiom.