第219章

1 In Scotch the ch and gh are almost always guttural.The gh according to Mr.Alexander Ellis, the sole authority in the past pronunciation of the country, was guttural in England in the time of Shakspere.

2 An exclamation of pitiful sympathy, inexplicable to the understanding.Thus the author covers his philological ignorance of the cross-breeding of the phrase.

3 Extra--over all--ower a'--orra--one more than is wanted.

4 Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur.

Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc.

neid: IV.285

5 This line is one of many instances in which my reader will see both the carelessness of Ericson and my religion towards his remains.

6 Why should Sir Walter Scott, who felt the death of Camp, his bullterrier, so much that he declined a dinner engagement in consequence, say on the death of his next favourite, a grayhound bitch--'Rest her body, since I dare not say soul!'? Where did he get that dare not? Is it well that the daring of genius should be circumscribed by an unbelief so common-place as to be capable only of subscription?

7 Amongst Ericson's papers I find the following sonnets, which belong to the mood here embodied:

Oft, as I rest in quiet peace, am I

Thrust out at sudden doors, and madly driven Through desert solitudes, and thunder-riven Black passages which have not any sky.

The scourge is on me now, with all the cry Of ancient life that hath with murder striven.

How many an anguish hath gone up to heaven!

How many a hand in prayer been lifted high When the black fate came onward with the rush Of whirlwind, avalanche, or fiery spume!

Even at my feet is cleft a shivering tomb Beneath the waves; or else with solemn hush The graveyard opens, and I feel a crush As if we were all huddled in one doom.

Comes there, O Earth, no breathing time for thee?

No pause upon thy many-chequered lands?

Now resting on my bed with listless hands, I mourn thee resting not.Continually Hear I the plashing borders of the sea Answer each other from the rocks and sands.

Troop all the rivers seawards; nothing stands, But with strange noises hasteth terribly.

Loam-eared hyenas go a moaning by.

Howls to each other all the bloody crew Of Afric's tigers.But, O men, from you Comes this perpetual sound more loud and high Than aught that vexes air.I hear the cry Of infant generations rising too.

8 This sonnet and the preceding are both one line deficient.

9 To these two sonnets Falconer had appended this note.

'Something I wrote to Ericson concerning these, during my first college vacation, produced a reply of which the following is a passage: "On writing the first I was not aware that James and John were the Sons of Thunder.For a time it did indeed grieve me to think of the spiritual-minded John as otherwise than a still and passionless lover of Christ."'