Note 3 — Early Poems (continued 3)
Reading edition
In accurate accordance with the third life, Acta, i., 277: “Primum quidem columna ad sex erecta cubitos est, deinde ad duodecim, post ad vigenti extensa est”; but for the thirty-six cubits which is assigned as the height of the last column Tennyson’s authority, drawing on another account (Id., 271), substitutes forty: “Fecerunt illi columnam habentem cubitos quadraginta”.