“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 gypsies. 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 gypsies; 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 compassed 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.
NOTE [18], PAGE 299.
_Thyrsis._
Throughout this poem there is reference to the preceding piece, “The
Scholar-Gypsy.”
NOTE [19], PAGE 305.
_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.
NOTE [20], PAGE 312.
_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 Fellowship in
the East,” died at Gibraltar, on his way home from India, April the
9th, 1859.
NOTE [21], PAGE 313.
_So moonlit, saw me once of yore._
See the poem, “A Summer Night,” p. 278.
NOTE [22], PAGE 313.
_My brother! and thine early lot._
See Note 20.
NOTE [23], PAGE 317.
_I saw the meeting of two
Gifted women._
Charlotte Brontë and Harriet Martineau.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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