Part Fourth

Footnotes

^[1288] Compositis.

^[1289] I have endeavoured to give some intelligible sense to these lines; but the absence of syntax in the original, as it now stands, makes it necessary to guess at the meaning as best one may.

^[1290] Venturi ævi.

^[1291] “But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.”—Shakespeare, Macbeth, act iii. scene 2.

^[1292] Sæcula.

^[1293] Sæcula.

^[1294] Sermone tenus: i.e., the exertion (so to speak) needed to do such mighty works only extended to the uttering of a speech; no more was requisite. See for a similar allusion to the contrast between the making of other things and the making of man, the “Genesis,” 30–39.

^[1295] Dicto.

^[1296] i.e., from the solid mass of earth. See Gen. i. 9, 10.

^[1297] Faciem.

^[1298] “Auram,” or “breeze.”

^[1299] “Immemor ille Dei temere committere tale!

Non ultra monitum quidquam contingeret.”

Whether I have hit the sense here I know not. In this and in other passages I have punctuated for myself.

^[1300] Munera mundi.

^[1301] These lines, again, are but a guess at the meaning of the original, which is as obscure as defiance of grammar can well make it. The sense seems to be, in brief, that while the vast majority are, immediately on their death, shut up in Hades to await the “decreed age,” i.e., the day of judgment, some, like the children raised by Elijah and Elisha, the man who revived on touching Elisha’s bones, and the like, are raised to die again. Lower down it will be seen that the writer believes that the saints who came out of their graves after our Lord’s resurrection (see Matt. xxvii. 51-54) did not die again.

^[1302] Cf. Ps. xlix. 14 (xlviii. 15 in LXX.).

^[1303] i.e., the dust into which our bodies turn.

^[1304] i.e., the surface or ridge of the furrows.

^[1305] i.e., the furrows.

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