Stanzas X, xi.  The two pictures in the song are very effectively contrasted both in spirit and style.  The lover’s resting-place has features that recall the house of Morpheus, ‘Faery Queene,’ I. i. 40-1.  Note the recurrence of the traitor’s doom in Marmion’s troubled thoughts, in vi. xxxii.  The burden ‘eleu loro’ has been somewhat uncertainly connected with the Italian ela loro, ’alas! for them.’

Stanza xiii. lines 201-7.  One of the most striking illustrations of this is in Shakespeare’s delineation of Brutus, who is himself made to say (Julius Caesar, ii.  I. 18):—­

     ’The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
      Remorse from power.’

For the sentiment of the text cp. the character of Ordonio in Coleridge’s ‘Remorse,’ the concentrated force of whose dying words is terrible, while indicative of native nobility:—­

     ’I stood in silence like a slave before her
      That I might taste the wormwood and the gall,
      And satiate this self-accusing heart
      With bitterer agonies than death can give.’

line 211.  ’Among other omens to which faithful credit is given among the Scottish peasantry, is what is called the “dead-bell,” explained by my friend James Hogg to be that tinkling in the ears which the country people regard as the secret intelligence of some friend’s decease.  He tells a story to the purpose in the “Mountain Bard,” p. 26 [pp. 31-2, 3rd edit.].’—­Scott.

Cp.  Tickell’s ‘Lucy and Colin,’ and this perfect stanza in Mickle’s ‘Cumnor Hall,’ quoted in Introd. to ’Kenilworth’:—­

     ’The death-bell thrice was heard to ring,
        An aerial voice was heard to call,
      And thrice the raven flapp’d its wing
        Around the towers of Cumnor Hall.’

line 217.  Cp.  Midsummer Night’s Dream, v.  I. 286:  ’The death of a dear friend would go near to make a man look sad.’

Stanza xiv. lines 230-5.  Cp. the effect of Polonius on the King (Hamlet, iii.  I. 50):—­

     ‘How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!’

Hamlet himself, ib. line 83, says:—­

     ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.’

line 234.  For vail = lower, see close of Editor’s Preface.

Stanza xv. line 243.  For practised on = plotted against, cp.  King Lear, iii. 2. 57, ‘Hast practised on man’s life.’

lines 248-51.  See above, ii. xxix.

Stanza xvii. line 286.  Cp.  Burns’s ’Bonnie Doon’:—­

     ’And my fause lover staw my rose,
        But ah! he left the thorn wi’ me.’

Stanza xviii. line 307.  Loch Vennachar, in the south of Perthshire, is the most easterly of the three lakes celebrated in the ’Lady of the Lake.’

line 321.  Cp. ‘wonder-wounded hearers,’ Hamlet, v.  I. 265.

Stanza xix. line 324.  Clerk is a scholar, as in Chaucer’s ’Clerk of Oxenford,’ &c., and the ‘learned clerks’ of 2 Henry vi, iv. 7. 76.  See below, vi. xv. 459, ‘clerkly skill.’