ich ran thus--

"Omne circa petusum sertum gero viridem
Per annum circa petasum et unum diem plus.
Si quis te rogaret, cur tale sertum gererem,
Dic, 'Omne propter corculum qui est inpartibus.'"

Allusions to the willow, as an emblem of grief, are of a very old date.
"Sing all, a green willow must be my garland," is the refrain of the song
which haunted Desdemona on the eve of her death (Othello, act iv. sc. 3).
That exquisite scene, and the beautiful air to which some contemporary of
Shakespeare wedded it, will make "The Willow Song" immortal.

{119a} {119b} Madame Laffarge and Daniel Good were the two most talked
about criminals of the time when these lines were written. Madame
Laffarge was convicted of poisoning her husband under extenuating
circumstances, and was imprisoned for life, but many believed in her
protestations of innocence--this, of course, she being a woman and
unhappily married. Daniel Good died on the scaffold on the 23rd of May
1842, protesting his innocence to the last, and asserting that his
victim, Jane Sparks, had killed herself, an assertion which a judge and
jury naturally could not reconcile with the fact that her head, arms, and
legs had been cut off and hidden with her body in a stable. He, too,
found people to maintain that his sentence was unjust.

{121} The two papers here glanced at were 'The Age' and 'The Satirist,'
long since dead.

{122a} The colonnaded portion of Regent Street, immediately above the
Regent Circus, was then called the Quadrant. Being sheltered from the
weather, it was a favourite promenade, but became so favourite a resort
of the "larking" population--male and female--that the Colonnade was
removed in the interests of social order and decorum.

{122b} The expression of contemptuous defiance, signified by the
application of the thumb of one hand to the nose, spreading out the
fingers, and attaching to the little finger the stretched-out fingers of
the other hand, and working them in a circle. Among the graffiti in
Pompeii are examples of the same subtle symbolism.

{122c} Well known to readers of Thackeray's 'Newcomes' as "The Cave of
Harmony."

{123} Sir Peter Laurie, Lord Mayor; afterwards Alderman, and notable for
his sagacity and severity as a magistrate in dealing with evil-doers.

{157} Sir James Graham was then, and had been for some years, Secretary
Of State under Sir Robert Peel.

{160} Moxon was Tennyson's publisher.