gination, to the
ideal world of beauty symbolized by the song of the bird. Here finding
all real things, even the most beautiful, pall upon him, he extols the
fancy, which can escape from reality and is not tied by place or season
in its search for new joys. This is, of course, only a passing mood, as
the extempore character of the poetry indicates. We see more of settled
conviction in the deeply-meditative _Ode to Autumn_, where he finds the
ideal in the rich and ever-changing real.

This poem is written in the four-accent metre employed by Milton in
_L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and we can often detect a similarity of
cadence, and a resemblance in the scenes imagined.

NOTES ON FANCY.

PAGE 123. l. 16. _ingle_, chimney-nook.

PAGE 126. l. 81. _Ceres' daughter_, Proserpina. Cf. _Lamia_, i. 63,
note.

l. 82. _God of torment._ Pluto, who presides over the torments of the
souls in Hades.

PAGE 127. l. 85. _Hebe_, the cup-bearer of Jove.

l. 89. _And Jove grew languid._ Observe the fitting slowness of the
first half of the line, and the sudden leap forward of the second.

NOTES ON ODE

['BARDS OF PASSION AND OF MIRTH'].

PAGE 128. l. 1. _Bards_, poets and singers.

l. 8. _parle_, French _parler_. Cf. _Hamlet_, I. i. 62.

l. 12. _Dian's fawns._ Diana was the goddess of hunting.

INTRODUCTION TO LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

The Mermaid Tavern was an old inn in Bread Street, Cheapside. Tradition
says that the literary club there was established by Sir Walter Raleigh
in 1603. In any case it was, in Shakespeare's time, frequented by the
chief writers of the day, amongst them Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Selden, Carew, Donne, and Shakespeare himself. Beaumont, in a poetical
epistle to Ben Jonson, writes:

What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that any one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And has resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.

NOTES ON LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

PAGE 131. l. 10. _bold Robin Hood._ Cf. _Robin Hood_, p. 133.

l. 12. _bowse_, drink.

PAGE 132. ll. 16-17. _an astrologer's . . . story._ The astrologer would
record, on parchment, what he had seen in the heavens.

l. 22. _The Mermaid . . . Zodiac._ The zodiac was an imaginary belt
across the heavens within which the sun and planets were supposed to
move. It was