Chapter Erragon to Errors of Authors of E by Brewer's Readers Handbook

The Two Angels. Longfellow crowns the death-angel with amaranth, with which Milton says, “the spirits elect bind their resplendent locks;” and his angel of life he crowns with asphodels, the flowers of Pluto or the grave.

(37) Milton. Colkitto and Macdonnel. In Sonnet x. Milton speaks of Colkitto and M‘Donnel as two distinct families, but they are really one and the same. The M’Donnels of Antrim were called Colkittok because they were descended from the lame Colin.

In Comus (ver. 880) he makes the siren Ligea “sleek her hair with a golden comb,” as if she were a Scandinavian mermaid.

(38) Moore (Thom.) says—

The sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.
   —Irish Melodies, ii. (“Believe Me if all those Endearing Young Charms”).

The sunflower does not turn to either the rising or setting sun. It receives its name solely because it resembles a picture sun. It is not a turn-sun or heliotrope at all.

(39) Morris says—

She the saffron gown will never wear,
And in no flower-strewn couch shall she be laid;

i.e. she will never be a bride. Milton also, in L’Allegro, says—

There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe.

Brides wore a white robe, but were wholly enveloped in crocus-coloured veils of flammeum. “Lutea demiosos velarunt flammea vultus.”—Lucan, ii. 361. (See also Pliny, Natural History, xxi. 22.)

(40) Murphy, in the Grecian Daughter, says (act i. 1)—

Have you forgot the elder Dionysius,
Surnamed the Tyrant? … Evander came from Greece,
And sent the tyrant to his humble rank,
Once more reduced to roam for vile subsistence,
A wandering sophist thro’ the realms of Greece.

It was not Dionysius the Elder, but Dionysius the Younger, who was the “wandering sophist;” and it was not Evander, but Timoleon, who dethroned him. The elder Dionysius was not dethroned at all, nor ever reduced “to humble rank.” He reigned thirty-eight years without interruption, and died a king, in the plentitude of his glory, at the age of 63.

In the same play (act iv. 1) Euphrasia says to Dionysius the Younger—

Think of thy father’s fate at Coriuth, Dionysius.

It was not the father, but the son (Dionysius the Younger), who lived in exile at Corinth.

In the same play he makes Timoleon victorious over the Syracusians (that is historically correct); and he makes Euphrasia stab Dionysius the Younger, whereas he retreated to Corinth, and spent his time in debauchery, but supported himself by keeping a school. Of his death nothing is known, but certainly he was not stabbed to death by Euphrasia. (See Plutarch.)

(41) Phillips informs us that “a quaver is a measure of time in music, being the half of a crotchet, as a crotchet is half a quaver.” (He means half a minim.)

(42) Pope, in his fable The Mouse and the Weasel, makes the weasel eat corn.