Non comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum,
Et rabie fera corda tument; maiorque videri
Nec mortale sonans, adflata est numine quando
Iam propiore dei.'
l. 588. Stared, stood up stiffly. Cp. Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 280, and Tempest, i. 2. 213, 'with hair upstaring.'
l. 600. See above, l. 468, and note.
Stanza XXXIII. 1. 616. for terror's sake = because of terror. Cp . 'For fashion's sake,' As You Like It, iii. 2. 55.
l. 620. The custom of ringing the passing bell grew out of the belief that a church bell, rung when the soul was passing from the body, terrified the devils that were waiting to attack it at the moment of its escape. 'The tolling of the passing bell was retained at the Reformation; and the people were instructed that its use was to admonish the living, and excite them to pray for the dying. But by the beginning of the 18th century the passing bell in the proper sense of the term had almost ceased to be heard.' A mourning bell is still rung during funeral services as a mark of respect. See s. v. 'Bell,' Chambers's Encyclopædia. Cp. Byron's 'Parisina,' st. xv.
But mournfully and slow;
In the grey square turret swinging
With a deep sound to and fro.'
In criticising 'Marmion,' in the Edinburgh Review, Lord Jeffrey says that the sound of the knell rung for Constance 'is described with great force and solemnity;' while a writer in the Scots Magazine of 1808 considers that 'the whole of this trial and doom presents a high-wrought scene of horror, which, at the close, rises almost to too great a pitch.'
INTRODUCTION TO CANTO THIRD.
'William Erskine, Esq. advocate, sheriff-depute of the Orkneys, became a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord Kinnedder, and died in Edinburgh in August, 1822. He had been from early youth the most intimate of the Poet's friends, and his
