Part 75 (1/2)
[Footnote 14: NOTE 14, PAGE 213.
_The Hunter of the Tanagraean Field._
Orion, the Wild Huntsman of Greek legend, and in this capacity appearing in both earth and sky.]
[Footnote 15: NOTE 15, PAGE 214.
_O'er the sun-redden'd western straits._
Erytheia, the legendary region around the Pillars of Hercules, probably took its name from the redness of the West under which the Greeks saw it.]
[Footnote 16: NOTE 16, PAGE 273.
_The Scholar-Gipsy._
”There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there; and at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. They quickly spied out their old friend among the gipsies; and he gave them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, and told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others: that himself had learned much of their art, and when he had compa.s.sed the whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.”--GLANVIL'S _Vanity of Dogmatizing_, 1661.]
[Footnote 17: NOTE 17, PAGE 281.
_Thyrsis._
Throughout this poem there is reference to the preceding piece, _The Scholar-Gipsy_.]
[Footnote 18: NOTE 18, PAGE 287.
_Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing._
Daphnis, the ideal Sicilian shepherd of Greek pastoral poetry, was said to have followed into Phrygia his mistress Piplea, who had been carried off by robbers, and to have found her in the power of the king of Phrygia, Lityerses. Lityerses used to make strangers try a contest with him in reaping corn, and to put them to death if he overcame them. Hercules arrived in time to save Daphnis, took upon himself the reaping-contest with Lityerses, overcame him, and slew him. The Lityerses-song connected with this tradition was, like the Linus-song, one of the early plaintive strains of Greek popular poetry, and used to be sung by corn-reapers. Other traditions represented Daphnis as beloved by a nymph who exacted from him an oath to love no one else. He fell in love with a princess, and was struck blind by the jealous nymph. Mercury, who was his father, raised him to Heaven, and made a fountain spring up in the place from which he ascended. At this fountain the Sicilians offered yearly sacrifices.--See Servius, _Comment. in Virgil.
Bucol._, v. 20, and viii. 68.]
[Footnote 19: NOTE 19, PAGE 294.
_Ah! where is he, who should have come._
The author's brother, William Delafield Arnold, Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab, and author of _Oakfield, or Fellows.h.i.+p in the East_, died at Gibraltar on his way home from India, April the 9th, 1859.]
[Footnote 20: NOTE 20, PAGE 295.
_So moonlit, saw me once of yore._
See the poem, _A Summer Night_, p. 257.]
[Footnote 21: NOTE 21, PAGE 295.