means to say is that Maggie looked very fierce. with her snakes cropped refers to Maggie's having cut off her own hair in a fit of anger. 112. Ti μévelos, Greek, "something great." 151. corpus delicti, body of the chosen (or favored). 231. spud, a kind of spade.

THACKERAY.-Vanity Fair is a satire on "Society." Rebecca, or "Becky," Sharp, an adventuress, married Captain Rawdon Crawley in expectation that he would inherit largely from a rich old aunt. The aunt disinherited him, but he became Colonel in the Waterloo campaign, after which he left the army. Soon afterwards the two went to London to live "on nothing a year" - that is, by the Colonel's gambling and his wife's cleverness. Her principal victim was Lord Steyne (pronounced like "stain"), a wealthy, unprincipled Marquis.

5. bonne, nursemaid. 60. Magasin des Modes, a French fashion journal. 79. holland, a fabric of cotton or linen; so called because first made in Holland. 124. maitre d'hotel, steward.

Washington Irving. — Nil Nisi Bonum means "nothing except good." In a sentence elsewhere in the essay Thackeray wrote: "And so with Macaulay's style there may be faults, of course what critic can't point them out? But for the nonce we are not talking about faults: we want to say nil nisi bonum." 1. John Gibson Lockhart was Sir Walter Scott's son-in-law, as well as his literary executor. 6. Irving had many characteristics leading to his being called the Goldsmith of his day. Macaulay was the greatest historian of the day, as Gibbon was of the preceding century. 15. pater patriae, father of his country. 50. The medal was that of the Royal Society of Literature. 64. diplomatized. Irving received the degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford. Note 1. Two Kings, etc. Alluding to an incident in an old farce called The Rehearsal. 131. Joseph René Bellot was a young Frenchman who was lost in the Arctic ice while a member of the party searching for Sir John Franklin.

HUXLEY. This extract is from a lecture to workingmen, to whom Huxley gave much thought and time. "If I am to be remembered at all," he once said, "I would rather it should be as a man who did his best to help the people than by any other title." He labored continually to make science intelligible and useful to unscientific people. 34. Molière, greatest French writer of comedy. The play referred to by Huxley is called Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (the "Mid

dle Class Gentleman"). good usage. "kind" is singular. 193. vera causa, true cause. 257. Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated the law of gravitation. Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace, French astronomer who framed the "nebular hypothesis." 278. You may have hypotheses, and hypotheses; that is, "there is an enormous difference in the value of hypotheses."

181. these kind is no longer considered

text.

RUSKIN's interpretation of Milton is really a lesson in what "is rightly called 'reading"" (see line 208). 11. pilot, the Apostle Peter, who was a fisherman on Galilee, and, Milton assumes, pilot of his boat. 14. mitred, wearing a miter, or bishop's hat. Peter is said by the Roman Catholic Church to have been the first bishop of Rome. 24. are sped, have prospered. 25. list, please. 26. pipes. See note on Lycidas, 33. 47. Ruskin uses bishop here in its usual New Testament sense synonymous with "elder," or priest. 48. episcopal power, power of a bishop. 49. that See Matthew XVI, 17-19. 82. lords over. 1 Peter V, 3. 116. Ruskin may use Bill and Nancy in a general sense, as we say "every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Or he may have in mind Dickens's Oliver Twist (see Preface, page 343 ff., and notes), though it is not recorded that Nancy ever struck Bill Sikes. is the highest among the English cathedrals quotations are from John III, 8. 166. sectarians, bigoted adherents of any pretation of Dante is in the ninth book of Purgatory, lines 68–121 of Cary's translation. 187. have taken. Luke XI, 52. 190. He that watereth. Proverbs XI, 25. 197. rock-apostle, Peter. The name is from the Greek petros, a stone. See reference on line 49. Take him. See Matthew XXII, 13. Ruskin's conclusion is expressed too strongly. Every reader has a right to his own thoughts about an author after he clearly understands what that author says.

121. Salisbury steeple 404 feet. 147 ff. Both 164. cretinous, idiotic. sect. 179. The inter

ARNOLD. For the source of the title, Sweetness and Light, see Swift's The Spider and the Bee, pages 138-143. 23. Arnold was a great admirer of Sainte-Beuve, and the most distinguished English representative of the Frenchmen's "school" of criticism. 25. in our English way. Arnold persistently pointed out the defects of English life, and his words were not without effect. In the words of another great critic, Sir Leslie Stephen, Arnold "applied good whole

43. Montesquieu,

some irritants to our stolid self-satisfaction." famous French philosophical writer of the eighteenth century. His best-known work is L'Esprit des Lois ("Spirit of the Laws"); but the quotation in the text is from his Discourse on the Motives Which Ought to Impel Us to Study. 70. Thomas Wilson was Bishop of the Isle of Man from 1697 to 1755. Arnold considered his work "the very best, perhaps, which our race and nation can do in the way of religious writing.'

8. Newman

Estimate of Emerson. - Considerations of space led the editor to omit a number of sentences from the first two paragraphs of the selection. None of those omitted deal with Emerson. was not a Cardinal when Arnold was at Oxford, but a minister in the Church of England. His "solution" of his doubts, which Arnold calls "impossible," was his entrance into the Church of Rome. 35. Arnold heard two of his "voices" when he read Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship in Carlyle's translation. The aim of that book is expressed by an English critic thus: "That we should give unity to our lives by devoting them with hearty enthusiasm to some pursuit, and that the pursuit is assigned to us by nature through the capacities she has given us.”

42. James Russell Lowell wrote a most appreciative and entertaining essay on Emerson the Lecturer. 54. Weimar, Goethe's home. 81. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, emperor from 161 to 180 A.D., show that he preserved "in a time of universal corruption, unreality, and self-indulgence, a nature sweet, pure, self-denying, unaffected."

Shakespeare.- 1. Others abide our question, other writers endure (and, in some sense, answer) our questioning (about their lives and experiences). Arnold in this sonnet says that Shakspere did not reveal himself, but by his understanding of mankind's pains (12), weakness, and griefs (13) was able to speak for the whole race of man. 8. the foiled searching of mortality, the search of mortals, which is foiled.

Memorial Verses. 2. Byron died in Greece in 1824, where he had gone to assist the Greeks in their struggle for independence. 10. the strife was in Byron's soul. He was a rebel against society, and set at naught its conventions. 18. Physician of the iron age. In classical mythology the iron age, following the golden, the silver, and the bronze, was the age "wherein toil and selfishness are the burden of a degenerate mankind." (New International Dictionary.) Arnold

says Goethe's mission was to relieve this. 23 ff. Goethe died in 1832, having seen England lose her American colonies; France set aside her rulers in a bloody "Reign of Terror"; and England, with Prussia's aid, defeat Napoleon's scheme to dominate Europe. 38-39. See note on L'Allegro, 145. 72. Rotha, usually "Rothay," a stream flowing by Grasmere churchyard, within a few feet of Wordsworth's grave. Requiescat. The Latin title of this dirge means, “May she rest.” On tombs it is usually followed by in pace, "in peace." The poem was written of no individual; but some one has suggested that the second stanza would apply well to some great comic actress. 2. The yew is found much in cemeteries. 13. cabined, confined in small space, as in a cabin. The poem is an expression of Arnold's "worldweariness," characterized by lines 42-44 of Memorial Verses, where he is speaking of Wordsworth.

Fall of Sohrab. - The story of Sohrab and Rustum is taken from a Persian epic poem, Shah Nameh (the “Book of Kings"), the Iliad and Odyssey of Persian literature. Arnold's "episode" narrates the portion of the story familiar in folk-lore as the "father-and-son combat." Sohrab, champion of the Tartars, has been chosen by his general, Afrasiab, to fight in single combat with a champion of the Persians. The latter choose Rustum, who does not know that Sohrab is his son, but who tries to dissuade him from fighting because of his youth and inexperience. Sohrab asks if his opponent is not Rustum, the latter evades the question, and the combat begins.

13 ff. like those . . . boughs. Long, formal comparisons and similes are features of the epic style. Cf. 75-77, 79–81. 15. Hyphasis, Hydaspes, rivers in northern India. 17. wrack, ruin. 119 ff. The effect of the "shouted" name is explained by Sohrab, lines 150-153. 122-123. Rustum's conduct contrasts most unfaIvorably with Sohrab's (23-29), as do his words (131-142) with Sohrab's (30-50). Sohrab, after his fall, proves by a mark on his arm that he is Rustum's son; whereupon the broken-hearted Rustum admits his identity, and announces that he will burn his tents, quit the Persian host, and take Sohrab's body home for burial.

Dover Beach. The French coast opposite Dover is nearer England than at any other point. The distance from Dover to Calais is only 21 miles. 15. Sophocles was one of the three greatest writers of Greek tragedy. — The poem is thus summarized by Professor Hale

(Select Poems of Matthew Arnold, xliii): "We have first a picture of the calm of nature, then the thought of the turbid tides of humanity, then the thought of the sad incomprehensible waning of faith, and then, as with a sudden pang at heart, he turns to the one beside him" [Ah, love-line 29] " as a sort of sole refuge in a confused and ignorant world." It is an expression of despair, but also of a stoical resignation characteristic of the author.

Geist's Grave. — 15. the Virgilian cry was Sunt lachrimae rerum! (Æneid, I, 462), freely translated in the next line. 42. After 1867 Arnold wrote very little poetry. Geist's Grave was written in 1881. 55. The absent master was the poet's son Richard. 70. At this time the family were living at Cobham, a few miles south of London on the Portsmouth road.

TENNYSON. - In Ulysses, of which we give the concluding line, (about a third of the whole), the old hero and wanderer expresses himself as dissatisfied with the peace and quiet of home life, and as determined to set forth in search of new adventures. The story is from Dante's Inferno, not Homer. 20. the Happy Isles, called also the "Fortunate Islands" and the "Islands of the Blest," were imagined by the ancients to be “somewhere” in the West. Like the "happy hunting-grounds" of the Indians, they were the abode after death of those favored by the gods.

In Memoriam is a poem of a hundred and thirty-three sections or, perhaps better, a collection of so many poems called forth by the death of Tennyson's best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. They were written during a period of seventeen years, on birthdays, Christmases, New Year's Days, and other anniversaries connected with the friendship. CVI. The time of this section is plainly New Year. It strikes a responsive chord in many hearts to-day (1917) more than half a century after its publication.

Home They Brought. — This is one of several "intercalary" songs (that is, inserted between the main divisions) in a poem that has had great popularity. The student is probably familiar with two others of these songs the "bugle" song, beginning "The splendor falls on castle walls," and the lullaby, "Sweet and low."

Idylls of the King is a series of narrative poems dealing with King Arthur and his knights. Geraint (g pronounced hard), one of these knights, "a tributary prince of Devon," had fallen in love with Enid, daughter of Earl Yniol, when Yniol had lost his possessions through