358
Notes.
apposite. In honour of the ladies they are all heroines. Birtha, Rhodalind, and Bellario, are female characters in Davenant's Gondibert," a poem which still finds some readers, and still exercises the ingenuity of critics.
When King Edward I. had been stabbed, as was supposed, by a poisoned dagger in the Holy Land, Eleanor his queen sucked out the poison.
Who was
That brave dame, who following her lord
Stept still before at sight o'th' frightful sword,
Stept still before at sight o'th' frightful sword,
my confined knowledge of minute history will not enable me to explain.
Say, truth with fables here you mixed see,
That shews who were, and these, how we may be.
That shews who were, and these, how we may be.
A judicious distinction between history and fiction.
P. 92. This is an elegy on the death of the first Lord Aston, who died in 1639, soon after his return from his second embassy in Spain.
L. 11.For greife does all things els annihilate
As not consistent with his high estate.
As not consistent with his high estate.
So Tickell, in his beautiful Elegy on Addison:
What mourner ever felt poetic fires?
Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires.
Grief unaffected suits but ill with art,
And flowing numbers with a bleeding heart.
Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires.
Grief unaffected suits but ill with art,
And flowing numbers with a bleeding heart.
I doe the author see,
That gave me life, and not that death kill me, &c,
That gave me life, and not that death kill me, &c,
Why grow the branches when the root is gone?
Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?
Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?
Shakesp. Rich. III. Jet. 2. Sc. i.
