_Note 4. Author’s notes_.--“A great deal must be made out of the spiders, and their gloomy, dusky, flaunting tapestry. A web across the orifice of his inkstand every morning; everywhere, indeed, except across the snout of his brandy-bottle.--Depict the Doctor in an old dressing-gown, and a strange sort of a cap, like a wizard’s.--The two children are witnesses of many strange experiments in the study; they see his moods, too.--The Doctor is supposed to be writing a work on the Natural History of Spiders. Perhaps he used them as a blind for his real project, and used to bamboozle the learned with pretending to read them passages in which great learning seemed to be elaborately worked up, crabbed with Greek and Latin, as if the topic drew into itself, like a whirlpool, all that men thought and knew; plans to cultivate cobwebs on a large scale. Sometimes, after overwhelming them with astonishment in this way, he would burst into one of his laughs. Schemes to make the world a cobweb-factory, etc., etc. Cobwebs in his own brain. Crusty Hannah such a mixture of persons and races as could be found only at a seaport. There was a rumor that the Doctor had murdered a former maid, for having, with housewifely instinct, swept away the cobwebs; some said that he had her skeleton in a closet. Some said that he had strangled a wife with web of the great spider.”--“Read the description of Bolton Hall, the garden, lawn, etc., Aug. 8, ‘53.--Bebbington church and churchyard, Aug. 29, ‘53.--The Doctor is able to love,--able to hate; two great and rare abilities nowadays.--Introduce two pine trees, ivy-grown, as at Lowwood Hotel, July 16, ‘58.--The family name might be Redclyffe.--Thatched cottage, June 22, ‘55.--Early introduce the mention of the cognizance of the family,--the Leopard’s Head, for instance, in the first part of the romance; the Doctor may have possessed it engraved as coat of arms in a book.--The Doctor shall show Ned, perhaps, a drawing or engraving of the Hospital, with figures of the pensioners in the quadrangle, fitly dressed; and this picture and the figures shall impress themselves strongly on his memory.” The above dates and places refer to passages in the published “English Note-Books.” CHAPTER XI. _Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Compare it with Spenser’s Cave of Despair. Put instruments of suicide there.” _Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Once, in looking at the mansion, Redclyffe is struck by the appearance of a marble inserted into the wall, and kept clear of lichens.” _Note 3. Author’s note_.--“Describe, in rich poetry, all shapes of deadly things.” CHAPTER XII. _Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Conferred their best qualities”: an alternative phrase for “done their utmost.” _Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Let the old man have a beard as part of the costume.” CHAPTER XIII. _Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Describe him as delirious, and the scene as adopted into his delirium.”