76. Unkindness' altered eye. "An ungraceful elision" of the possessive inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, Hind and Panther, iii.: "Affected Kindness with an alter'd face."

79. Gray quotes Dryden, Pal. and Arc.: "Madness laughing in his ireful mood." Cf. Shakes. Hen. VI. iv. 2: "But rather moody mad;" and iii. 1: "Moody discontented fury."

81. The vale of years. Cf. Othello, iii. 3: "Declin'd Into the vale of years."

 

82. Grisly. Not to be confounded with grizzly. See Wb.

83. The painful family of death. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, ii. 118: "Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;" and Dryden, State of Innocence, v. 1: "With all the numerous family of Death." On the whole passage cf. Milton, P. L. xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, Æn. vi. 275.

86. That every labouring sinew strains. An example of the "correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (Essay on Criticism, 371),

 

90. Slow-consuming Age. Cf. Shenstone, Love and Honour: "His slow-consuming fires."

95. As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in Comus, 359:

97. Happiness too swiftly flies. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil, Geo. iii. 66:

98. Thought would destroy their paradise. Wakefield quotes Sophocles, Ajax, 554: [Greek: En tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistos bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").

99. Cf. Prior, Ep. to Montague, st. 9:

and Davenant, Just Italian: "Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, it is not safe to know."

 

 

 

 

 

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