NOTES ON POEMS
367
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| allowed to 'break' or separate, from which the game derived the second part of its name. When all had been caught, new couples were formed, and the pair which failed to occupy one of the ends of the ground was 'in hell.' 'Barley' may be derived from the fact that the game was often played in a cornfield: in Scotland, where one person caught the rest, and the rest, as caught, helped him, it was known as 'barla-bracks about the stacks.' Or 'barley' may be from a Scottish corruption of the cry 'parley.' For examples, see Nares' Glossary, and New English Dict., s.v. | ||
| 21. | Upon my Lady Carlisle's Walking in Hampton Court Garden. | |
| See note on A Session of the Poets, l. 60. T. C., of course, is Thomas Carew. W. W. has a long note here on the general tendencies of poetry in the age, and says of Carew: 'He, like his friend Suckling, was ambitious of being ranked among the metaphysical poets, but fortunately had not power to attain it.' | ||
| l. 8. | bean-blossoms] Cf. Coleridge, The Eolian Harp, ll. 9, 10: 'How exquisite the scents Snatched from yon bean-field.' See also Aglaura, I. v. 88. | |
| 23. | Against Absence. | |
| ll. 17, 18. | In ll. 9, 10 of the immediately preceding poem, Suckling expresses the somewhat contrary opinion that sense is essential to intelligence. | |
| 24. | A Supplement, etc. | |
| See Shakespeare, Lucrece, ll. 386, etc. W. W. writes: 'The continuation is equal to the first part.' | ||
| l. 11. | this pretty perdue] Lucrece's hand is 'sentinelle perdue' of her body—i.e., as Littré explains the word, 'sentinelle postée dans un lieu très-avancé.' W. J. Craig, on King Lear, IV., vii. 35 (Arden ed. 1901), quotes English uses of the word from Fletcher and Tourneur. Cf. Goblins, III. iv. below. | |
| 25. | ''Tis now since I sat down'] W. W. says: 'In this poem Suckling seems to have succeeded completely in what is called the metaphysical style of poetry.' For the metaphor of a siege, cf. the | |
