The erasure of the abbreviation "N. Y." may indicate Melville's realization that he acquired this volume elsewhere.

Melville employs the same variant spelling "devel" (line 4) in his 1849 London journal (see Journals 23 and 42).

As shown in this image, Melville's inscription was revised by another hand: the first word and the initial letter of the second word are erased, and a capital "T" was added to make the second word appear as the initial word.

Line 1: [Damn] The "volumes"] [Damn] <t>The "volumes"

Melville marked these same two stanzas on the clipping of "A Wish" tipped in before the front flyleaf of his copy of Arnold's Poems (Sealts No. 21).

Walter Bezanson, in consultation with Jay Leyda, Howard Horsford and Merton Sealts, provided several possible alternate readings. In line 7, "has both" could be either "does have" or "forfeited." In line 8, for "indisputable" Bezanson suggests either "unmistakable," (with comma), or "inscrutably"; and for "impurely" either "very rarely" or possibly "religiously" (Bezanson, 386).

Melville identifies the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) as an influence on Arnold's conception of divinity. He also marked heavily Arnold's essay on Spinoza in Essays in Criticism (Sealts No. 17).

Melville's annotation identifies Arnold's source for this character, the Letters from Switzerland of Etienne Pivert de Senancour (1770-1846).