Line 550:  debris

 

I wish to say something about an earlier note (to line 12).  Conscience and scholarship have debated the question, and I now think that the two lines given in that note are distorted and tainted by wistful thinking.  It is the only time in the course of writing these difficult comments, that I have tarried, in my distress and disappointment, on the brink of falsification.  I must ask the reader to ignore those two lines (which, I am afraid, do not even scan properly).  I could strike them out before publication, but that would mean reworking the entire note, or at least a considerable part of it, and I have no time for such stupidities.

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