Note 1. From Rosalind, 1590. “Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to ‘the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries;’ and he seems to have caught, in those southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost contemporary Art of Venice,—the glory and the glow of Veronese, or Titian, or Tintoret, when he most resembles Titian, and all but surpasses him.” (F. T. Palgrave, Golden Treasury, First Series.) Line 1, Like to the clear … is her hair. “The clear (clearness) in highest sphere is the empyrean or sphere of pure fire, which was outermost and next to the primum mobile in the old cosmography, not the crystalline sphere as explained by Mr. Palgrave. This passage then means: Her hair is of the self same color as the brightness (the clear) of the empyrean. The difficulty of the passage consists in the tautology, or possibly the double construction, involved in saying like to and of self same, of the same color like to the empyreal brightness. I am indebted to Professor Kittredge for this note.” (Schelling, A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics.) [back]
