Note 140 — GREVILLE and JULIA.
Reading edition
l. 1. This apostrophe to a young prince is another improvement in the Latin version. It preserves the moral of the original and less spirited stanza, with heightened force from the personal address, and from the grand image in the third line. Compare it with the stanza in the Ballad:
“So shall the fairest face appear “When youth and years are flown, “And such the robe that kings must wear “When death has reft their crown.”
Here is no picture, and years after youth in the second line, form a pleonasm;—but the exquisite music produced by the alliteration in those two words, and by the number of vowels in the line, disarms criticism.