Note 278 — CANTO THE THIRD.
Reading edition
{217} [Compare The Two Noble Kinsmen (now attributed to Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Massinger), act ii. sc. 1, lines 73, seq.—
"Oh, never Shall we two exercise like twins of Honour Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses Like proud seas under us."
"Out of this somewhat forced simile," says the editor (John Wright) of Lord Byron's Poetical Works, issued in 1832, "by a judicious transposition of the comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite waves for seas, Lord Byron's clear and noble thought has been produced." But the literary artifice, if such there be, is subordinate to the emotion of the writer. It is in movement, progress, flight, that the sufferer experiences a relief from the poignancy of his anguish.]