The words are
"Quis legem det amantibus?
Major lex amor est sibi."
("Who can give law to lovers? Love is a law unto himself, and
greater")
14. "Perithous" and "Theseus" must, for the metre, be
pronounced as words of four and three syllables respectively --
the vowels at the end not being diphthongated, but enunciated
separately, as if the words were printed Pe-ri-tho-us, The-se-us.
The same rule applies in such words as "creature" and
"conscience," which are trisyllables.
15. Stound: moment, short space of time; from Anglo-Saxon,
"stund;" akin to which is German, "Stunde," an hour.
16. Meinie: servants, or menials, &c., dwelling together in a
house; from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning a crowd. Compare
German, "Menge," multitude.
17. The pure fetters: the very fetters. The Greeks used
"katharos", the Romans "purus," in the same sense.
18. In the medieval courts of Love, to which allusion is
probably made forty lines before, in the word "parlement," or
"parliament," questions like that here proposed were seriously
discussed.
19. Gear: behaviour, fashion, dress; but, by another reading, the
word is "gyre," and means fit, trance -- from the Latin, "gyro," I
turn round.
20. Before his head in his cell fantastic: in front of his head in
his cell of fantasy. "The division of the brain into cells,
according to the different sensitive faculties," says Mr Wright,
"is very ancient, and is found depicted in mediaeval
manuscripts.
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