143. [By pure intent and soul sincere
            Sustained and nerved, I will not fear
            Reproach, shame, scorn, the taunting jeer,
            And worse than all, a father’s sneer.]

A father’s “sneer”?  Would a high-born man in those days sneer at a daughter’s disgrace—­would he only sneer?

Reproach, and biting shame, and—­worse
Than all—­the estranged father’s curse.

I only throw this hint out in a hurry.

177.  “Stern and sear”?  I see a meaning in it, but no word is good that startles one at first, and then you have to make it out:  “drear,” perhaps.  Then why “to minstrel’s glance”?  “To fancy’s eye,” you would say, not “to fiddler’s eye.”

422.  A knight thinks, he don’t “trow.”

424.  “Mayhap” is vulgarish.  Perchance.

464.  “Sensation” is a philosophic prose word.  Feeling.

27. [The hill, where ne’er rang woodman’s stroke,
            Was clothed with elm and spreading oak,
            Through whose black boughs the moon’s mild ray
            As hardly strove to win a way,
            As pity to a miser’s heart.]

Natural illustrations come more naturally when by them we expound mental operations than when we deduce from natural objects similes of the mind’s workings.  The miser’s struggle thus compared is a beautiful image.  But the storm and clouds do not inversely so readily suggest the miser.

160. [Havock and Wrath, his maniac bride,
            Wheel o’er the conflict, &c.]

These personified gentry I think are not in taste.  Besides, Fear has been pallid any time these 2,000 years.  It is mixing the style of Aeschylus and the Last Minstrel.

175.  Bracy is a good rough vocative.  No better suggests itself, unless Grim, Baron Grimm, or Grimoald, which is Saxon, or Grimbald!  Tracy would obviate your objection [that the name Bracy occurs in Ivanhoe] but Bracy is stronger.

231. [The frown of night
            Conceals him, and bewrays their sight.]

Betrays.  The other has an unlucky association.

243. [The glinting moon’s half-shrouded ray.]

Why “glinting,” Scotch, when “glancing” is English?

421. [Then solemnly the monk did say,
            (The Abbot of Saint Mary’s gray,)
            The leman of a wanton youth
            Perhaps may gain her father’s ruth,
            But never on his injured breast
            May lie, caressing and caressed. 
            Bethink you of the vow you made
            When your light daughter, all distraught,
            From yonder slaughter-plain was brought,
            That if in some secluded cell
            She might till death securely dwell,
            The house of God should share her wealth.]