‘Great ruth in all the gazers hearts did grow.’

Milton (Lycidas, 163) favours the poetical employment of the word, which modern poets continue to use.  Cp.  Wordsworth, ’Ode for a General Thanksgiving’:—­

’Assaulting without ruth
The citadels of truth;’

and Tennyson’s ‘Geraint and Enid,’ ii. 102:—­

                             ’Ruthbegan to work
      Against his anger in him, while he watch’d
      The being he lov’d best in all the world.’

Stanza xx. line 385. doublet, a close-fitting jacket, introduced from France in the fourteenth century, and fashionable in all ranks till the time of Charles ii.  Cp.  As You Like It, ii. 4. 6:—­’Doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat.’

line 398.  Fontevraud, on the Loire, 8 miles from Saumur, had one of the richest abbeys in France.  It was a retreat for penitents of both sexes, and presided over by an abbess.  ’The old monastic buildings and courtyards, surrounded by walls, and covering from 40 to 50 acres, now form one of the larger prisons of France, in which about 2000 men and boys are confined, and kept at industrial occupations.’  See Chambers’s ‘Encyclopaedia,’ s. v., and Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, 2d.  S, I. 104.

Stanza xxi. line 408. but = except that.  Cp.  Tempest, i. 2. 414:—­

                            ’And, but he’s something stain’d
      With grief that’s beauty’s canker, thou might’st call him
      A goodly person.’

line 414.  Byron, writing to Murray on 3 Feb., 1816, expresses his belief that he has unwittingly imitated this passage in ‘Parisina.’  ‘I had,’ he says, ’completed the story on the passage from Gibbon, which indeed leads to a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind; but it comes upon me not very comfortably.’  Byron is quite right in his assertion that, if he had taken this striking description of Constance as a model for his Parisina, he would have been attempting ‘to imitate that which is inimitable.’  See ‘Parisina,’ st. xiv:—­

’She stood, I said, all pale and still,
The living cause of Hugo’s ill.’

Stanza xxii. line 415. a sordid soul, &c.  For such a character in the drama see Lightborn in Marlowe’s Edward ii, and those trusty agents in Richard iii, whose avowed hardness of heart drew from Gloucester the appreciative remark:—­

‘Your eyes drop millstones, when fools’ eyes drop tears.’ 
Richard iii, i. 3. 353.

Stanza xxiii. line 438. grisly, grim, horrible; still an effective poetic word.  It is, e.g., very expressive in Tennyson’s ‘Princess,’ sect. vi, where Ida sees

’The haggard father’s face and reverend beard
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood,’ &c.

See below, iii. 382.