Note 143 — GREVILLE and JULIA.
Reading edition
l. 12.—“This is the dull, the dreary hour “When injur’d ghosts complain; “When yawning graves give up their dead “To haunt the faithless swain!” William and Margaret.
Excellent as are the three first lines of this original stanza, yet the Latin quatrain strengthens the awful horrors of inhumation, and the re-translator flatters herself they have not here lost any of their terrific powers. Swain, in the last line of the stanza from William and Margaret, seems a botching appellation, used merely from the rhyme’s necessity. Whatever might have been the original meaning of the word swain, custom has attached to it a certain character of amorous effeminacy and tenderness, ill-suited to the perfidious conduct of the accused, and the sepulchral solemnity of the accuser.