104. Musaus; a Greek poet of the mythical age to which Orpheus also belonged.

110-115. The story of Cambuscan bold; Chaucer's Squire's Tale. The names which follow are persons of the story. The "Tartar king" is Cambuscan or Cambynskan, a corruption of Gengis Khan, the Grand Khan of Tartary.

113. Virtuous ring; ring endowed with magic powers.

120. Where more is meant than meets the ear; such poems as those of Spenser, where an allegorical meaning underlies the story.

122. Civil-suited; soberly dressed.

124. The Attic Boy; Cephalus, the lover of Aurora.

134, Sylvan; Sylvanus, god of fields and for

ests.

147-150. The meaning is, "Let some mysterious dream move to and fro at the wings of Sleep, unrolling its pictures, until they fall upon my eyelids." The expression is so hurried that the idea is slightly obscured.

156. Cloister's pale; pale = enclosure. For a long time cloister's was written without the apostrophe, and pale taken as an adjective. Page 30. To THE NIGHTINGALE.

4. Jolly, from French joli, had not its present connotation of rollicking fun. The meaning was rather "gay or blithe" in appearance. 6. First heard, i. e. if heard before the cuckoo. Page 30. ON TIME.

3. The heavy-plummet's pace; i. e. the slow descent of the weights in an old-fashioned clock. 12. Individual; not to be divided or broken, so eternal.

Page 30. AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.

2. Sphere-born sisters: this is Milton's own mythology. Cf. Comus, 1. 241, where Echo is called "Daughter of the sphere."

6. Consent; harmony.

23. Diapason; octave covering all the notes of the scale.

27. Consort; probably "society," from Latin consortium.

Page 31. UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

1. Ye flaming Powers, i. e. the Seraphim, whose name in Hebrew signifies "burning." 6-9. Masson explains these obscure lines by paraphrasing thus: "if it is impossible for your Angelic constitutions, formed as they are of fire, to yield tears, yet, by burning as you sigh, you may borrow the water of our tears, turned into vapor." The process still remains a trifle vague. Page 38. ARCADES.

14-15. Older members of the family or friends may have been grouped about the chair of

state.

20-22. The comparison of the Dowager to Latona, or Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, conveyed a double compliment to her and to her offspring. Likewise the comparison to the " great mother" Cybele, or Rhea, mother of Jove, Juno, Neptune, etc., is appropriate because of the Dowager's large family. The turreted crown of Cybele would have its counterpart in the duchess's coronet.

...

at the centre of the light, they saw that its extremities were fastened by chains to the sky. For this light binds the sky together, like the hawser that strengthens a trireme, and thus holds together the whole revolving universe. To the extremities is fastened the distaff of Necessity, by means of which all the revolutions of the universe are kept up. The nature of the whorl may be thus described: In shape it is like an ordinary whorl; but from Er's account we must picture it to ourselves under the form of a large hollow whorl, scooped out right through, into which a similar, but smaller, whorl is nicely inserted, like those boxes which fit into one another. In the same way a third whorl is inserted within the second, a fourth within the third, and so on to four more. For in all there are eight whorls, inserted into one another, and all together forming one solid whorl embracing the shaft, which is passed right through the centre of the eighth. The distaff spins round upon the knees of Necessity. Upon each of its circles stands a siren, who travels round with the circle, uttering one note in one tone; and from all the eight notes there results a single harmony. At equal distances around sit three other personages, each on a throne. These are the daughters of Necessity, the Fates, Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos; who, clothed in white robes, with garlands on their heads, chant to the music of the sirens, Lachesis the events of the past, Clotho those of the present, Atropos those of the future."

The Myth of Er was very popular with seventeenth-century writers, especially with the masque-writers, and in adapting the above passage Milton did not run much risk of mystifying his audience. The "nine infolded spheres" are the concentric sphere of the Ptolemaic

Mundus, or Terrestrial Universe. The "daughters of Necessity" may be thought of as gigantic figures sitting outside the Universe, which rests like the whorl of a spindle on the knees of their mother.

70. Keep unsteady Nature to her law; meaning that the music of the spheres tempers the chaotic turbulence of Nature, and makes her functions harmonious and steady.

81. State; here used in the sense of dais, or platform, upon which sat the throne-chair.

97-102. Ladon's lilied banks, etc. Ladon was a river of Arcadia; Lycæus, Cyllene, Erymanthus, and Mænalus were mountains of Arcadia.

106. Syrinx, a nymph, fleeing from her lover Pan, prayed to be transformed into a reed. The Glosse to Spenser's Shepheard's Calender continues, "So that Pan, catching at the Reedes, in stede of the Damosell, and puffing hard (for he was almost out of wind), with hys breath made the Reedes to pype; which he seeing, tooke of them, and, in remembrance of his lost love, made him a pype thereof."

Page 40. COMUS.

Dedication. Henry Lawes, whose name must often be mentioned in connection with Comus, stood at the head of the English composers of his time. He was born in 1595. His father was a vicar-choral of Salisbury Cathedral, and probably the boy received his first training as a chorister in the Cathedral choir. Later on he studied under the well-known musician Giovanni Coperario, an Englishman who had Italianized his patronymic-John Cooper. In 1626 Lawes was made one of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal. Coperario had won distinction as a writer of music for Masques; that for the Masque of Flowers, 1614, was from his pen; and Lawes soon turned his attention the same way. In 1633, in conjunction with his brother William Lawes and Simon Ives of St. Paul's choir, he produced the incidental music to Shirley's Triumph of Peace; and wrote single handed the music of Carew's Cælum Britannicum. Comus followed in 1634. Probably Lawes was responsible for the production of Arcades. celled as a song-writer. He did not belong to the line of our learned church-composers. He wrote little sacred music, little at any rate that has survived, though we possess the coronation anthem-"Zadock the Priest". - composed at the accession of Charles II. The older historians of English music-Burney and Hawkins - treat Lawes rather contemptuously. The former dismissed his music as "languid and insipid; "the latter complained that much of it was a compromise between recitative and air. Really Lawes's merit lay herein. A poet himself, he was content in setting the poetry of others to subordinate the music to the verse. Accent and rhythm were preserved, and the melody (very often a species of aria parlante) did not divert attention from the words. This is perhaps rare with musicians, and it accounted for Lawes's great popularity with contemporary poets-Cartwright, Waller, Carew, Herrick, and others. Herrick and Milton were not alone

He ex

in praising the favorite Court-composer. Dur ing the civil war he lost his post in the Chapel Royal, but was reinstated at the Restoration. He died in 1662. He was buried in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey. A portrait of him hangs in the Music-school at Oxford. The elder brother was killed at the siege of Chester in 1645. The following sonnet by Milton was first printed in 1648 among several laudatory pieces of verse prefixed to a volume of Choice Psalms, put into Musick for three Voices: composed by Henry and William Lawes, Brothers, and Servants to his Majestie:

"HARRY, whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long," etc. The first quatrain exactly expresses the quality for which Lawes's music was conspicuous: ef. Comus 86-88, and 494-96. The Cambridge draft of these lines is dated Feb. 9, 1646, new style. Evidently political differences had not interrupted the friendship of poet and composer. The best account of Lawes is given in the article on him in Grove's Dictionary of Music. VERITY.

7. Pestered in this pinfold; pestered is from a low-Latin word pastorium-clog or hobble for a horse at pasture. It means, therefore, "shackled," 66 confined." Pin-fold-pound, an enclosure for strayed cattle. 10. Mortal change; death, change from mortality.

13. Golden key; cf. Lycidas, 110-111.
17. Mould-earth.

18-21. In the division of territory, Neptune took the sea; Jove, the sky; and Dis (nether Jove), Hades.

29. Quarters to his blue-haired deities; quarters assigns. Sea-gods were usually represented on the stage with blue hair, as we learn from the elaborate stage-direction printed with the old masques.

37. Perplexed; involved, tortuous.

38. Horror; in the Latin sense of "roughness or shagginess."

48. After the Tuscan mariners transformed; a Latin construction, post nautas mutatos. The allusion is to the story of Bacchus, who was kidnapped by Tyrrhenian pirates, on his way from Icaria to Naxos. "The god changed the masts and oars into serpents, and himself into a lion; ivy grew round the vessel, and the sound of flutes was heard on every side; the sailors were seized with madness, leaped into the sea, and were metamorphosed into dolphins."- SMITH'S Class. Dict.

60. Celtic and Iberian fields; France and Spain.

65. Orient; this epithet was first applied to gems, as coming from the East, and later came to have a general application to anything rich and clear in color.

67. Fond; foolish.

71. Ounce; a kind of small tiger or cata

mount.

88-91. Nor of less faith as faithful in service as he is skilful in song. In this office, etc., means, by reason of his office as guardian of the mountain he is the most likely person to be at hand in the present emergency.

93-99. The time indicated seems to be midnight, but the details are not easy to explain. If the "folding-star" is Vesper, the evening star, it would not hold the top of heaven," but be below the horizon. The car of day' would not be just quenching its axle in the Atlantic, but would be at the antipodes. Perhaps the folding-star is merely the first star seen in the east, which would be in the zenith at midnight. The slope sun," etc., refers to the cone of shadow which the earth throws outward from the sun; at midnight the point of this cone would be in the zenith.

116. Wavering morrice; the morrice or morris was a very popular old dance brought from Spain; the word is a corruption of "Moorish."

129. Dark-veiled Cotytto; a Thracian goddess, whose worship was introduced into several Greek states. Her rites were celebrated with great licentiousness.

134, 135. The connection of Cotytto with Hecate Milton makes on his own responsibility. The masque-writers allowed themselves great liberties in dealing with the classical mythol

189. Sad votarist in palmer's weed. Votarist one who has taken a vow to go on pilgrimage; palmer's weed the long dark robe of the pilgrim to the Holy Land, who, after accomplishing his pilgrimage, might bear a palmbranch as a token. "Sad" serious, solemn. 231. Airy shell; the surrounding air, conceived of as a hollow containing vessel.

=

232. Meander's margent green; Keightley suggests that this river of Asia Minor was selected as a haunt for Echo because of its windings, which would correspond to the replications of echoing sound.

237. Narcissus; Echo, in love with Narcissus, pined away until only her voice was left; in punishment of his hard-heartedness, he was made to fall in love with his own reflection in a brook.

241. Daughter of the Sphere; cf. At a Solemn Music, "sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice and Verse."

251, 252. A forced and rather tasteless figure, which has been nevertheless much admired.

253-59. Milton mixes mythological personages here with a reckless hand. The island of the Sirens Odysseus passed after leaving Circe. Being previously warned by her, he bade his sailors

put wax in their ears so that they might not hear the singing: he himself listened, bound to the mast. Scylla and Charybdis were much too far away from the Sirens' Isle to hear their singing. Although Circe has in Homer nothing to do with the Sirens, Verity notes that they are associated in the Inner Temple Masque of William Browne, which Milton had read. In the Odyssey, Circe is waited upon by four nymphs of wood and water.

277-290. This kind of dialogue, called in Greek orixouveia, is employed by all the Greek dramatists, especially Sophocles.

287. Imports their loss, etc. i. e., Is their loss of importance to you, aside from your present need of them?

293. Swinked; wearied, from Anglo-Saxon swincan, to labor.

297-304. A compliment to the two boys, Lord Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, who were about to enter. One of the chief duties of the masque-writer was to bestow compliments upon the distinguished personages who took part in the presentation.

313. Bosky bourn burn, or brook, with banks covered with bushes and trees. Bourn, meaning limits or boundary, is another word."

315. Stray attendance; strayed attendants. 329, 330. Square my trial, etc.; i. e. make my trial proportionate to my strength. 332. Benison benediction, blessing; hence, welfare.

341-342.

=

star of Arcady,

Or Tyrian Cynosure.

Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, after being transformed to a she-bear by the jealousy of Juno, was placed by Jupiter in the sky as the constellation of the Great Bear (star of Arcady); Arcas, her son, became the Lesser Bear. The Greek sailors steered by the first constellation, the Phoenicians by the second, whence it is called "Tyrian Cynosure." For Cynosure, see note to L'Allegro, 80. It there means "something gazed at by many people; here it has its original meaning.

349. Innumerous; innumerable. 359. Over-exquisite; super-subtle. 360. A metaphor from casting the horoscope in astrology.

369. Single want; mere want.

375-380. Pattison calls attention to these lines as a description of Milton's life at Horton. 376. Seeks to; resorts to.

378. Plumes = prunes.

380. The prefix in "to-ruffled" is intensive. 393-395. One of the labors of Hercules was to fetch the golden apples from the tree in the garden of the Hesperides, guarded by the dragon Ladon. Unenchanted not to be enchanted, proof against enchantment.

401. Danger will wink on Opportunity; “wink on "shut the eye to, fail to see. We would look for some such word as "desire" in the place of "danger."

423. Unharbored; offering no shelter or harbor.

454. Sincerely entirely; Latin sincerus, pure, unalloyed.

455. For "liveried angels " compare the line in Nativity Ode, bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable." Lackey=attend.

471-475. This passage is adapted from the Phædo of Plato; see Jowett's translation, vol. i. p. 429.

474. Sensualty; i. e. sensuality, and often unwarrantably so emended by editors.

480. Crude undigested, a derived meaning from the original one of "unripe."

483. Night-foundered; plunged in night, night-bound.

494-496. A pretty compliment to Lawes. 495. Huddling; hurrying, one wave crowding upon another.

509. Sadly; seriously.

517. Chimeras; the Chimera, slain by Bellerophon, was a beast with a lion's head, dragon's tail, and woman's body.

520. Navel; centre.

531, 532. Crofts that brow, etc.; small enclosed pieces of land near to the houses on the hill, sloping up from the valley.

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548. Ere a close; close is probably used in the technical musical sense of "cadence;" if so, the meaning is, "Ere I had reached the first cadence."

66

is

552-554. This is a much-discussed passage. All three early editions, that of Lawes, 1637, and those of Milton, 1645 and 1673, read drowsie frighted;" the Cambridge manuscript alone gives drowsy flighted" (the hyphen has been put in by the editors). "Drowsy-flighted certainly the more picturesque; but what is to be done with gave respite to"? The "stop of sudden silence" could give to the steeds of Sleep respite from fright, and allow them to proceed in their course undisturbed; but could it give them respite in any other sense? It is possibly this difficulty which caused Milton to leave the picturesque phrase in the one place, and the logical one in the other. 567,"

64

Near" modifies "thou," not snare." 568. Lawns; cleared spaces in the wood. 607. Purchase; booty.

610. I love thy courage yet; the force of yet" is either "still as of old," or "although it is of no avail."

620. Of small regard to see to; colloquially, 66 not much to look at.' 99 One wonders if Milton has his friend Diodati in mind.

634. Unknown, and like esteemed, i. e. unesteemed.

635. Clouted; patched. The derivation from French clou, nail, has been disproved.

636, 637. Cf. Odyssey, x. 281-306: "Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from the ground, and he showed me the growth thereof. It was black at the root, but the flower was like to milk. Moly the gods call it, but it is hard for mortal men to dig; how beit with the gods all things are possible" (Butcher and Lang).

638. Hæmony; a word of Milton's creation, from Hæmonia, or Thessaly, the land of magic. 646. Limetwigs of his spells; a reference to the practice of catching birds by smearing birdlime on the twigs of trees.

655. Virgil (Æneid, viii. 251, 252) attributes this action to Cacus, Vulcan's son.

661. Daphne, fleeing from the embraces of Apollo, prayed to be changed into a laureltree. The tree was ever afterward sacred to Apollo.

675-676. Odyssey, iv. 219-229: "Helen, daughter of Zeus, presently cast a drug into the wine whereof they (Menelaus and Telemachus) drank, a drug to full all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow. Whoso should drink a draught thereof, when it is mingled in the bowl, on that day he would let no tear fall down his cheeks, not though his father and mother died. . . . Medicines of such virtue had the daughter of Zeus, which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, had given her, a woman of Egypt" (Butcher and Lang).

685. Unexempt condition; condition from which no exemption is given.

694. Aspects; apparitions, objects.

698. Vizored; concealed or disguised, as with a vizor.

700. Lickerish; tempting to the palate, but used in a bad sense. The word is connected with "lecherous."

707, 708. The "Cynic tub" is the tub in which Diogenes, the cynic philosopher, used to sit, in scorn of the comforts and luxuries of life. "Budge doctors of the Stoic fur" means of course, in general, "Stoic philosophers;" but the phrase is not easy to explain. Budge has two meanings, "fur" (cf. Budge-row, the London street where furriers had their shops) and an adjectival meaning "solemn," "formal." The second meaning would fit here exactly, but seems not to have been in use before the end of the 17th century. Budge was especially used of the fur employed in the trimming of academic gowns, and in writing the line Milton doubtless had in mind some of the solemn bigwigs of Cambridge whose pedantry and lifelessness he had had occasion to know.

714. Curious: critical, discriminating. 719. Hutched; stored. Hutch bin or shed; cf. rabbit-hutch.

722. Frieze; a coarse woolen cloth, imported originally from Friesland.

732-736. Can it be that Milton believed that diamonds were found, like pearls, in the sea, or does he refer to diamonds which have been cast there from shipwrecks? Or is diamond

used in a general sense for precious stones? "They below," i. e. the creatures of the deep, has been unaccountably misunderstood as men on earth” (δι κάτω).

750. Sorry grain; dull color.

66

760. Bolt her arguments; the metaphor is from the bolting of flour, i. e. the sifting out of the bran so as to leave the flour fine and white.

768-775. A rather striking statement of socialistic doctrine, considering the time and place.

803-805. In allusion to the war between Jove and the Titans.

808. Canon laws of our foundation; Comus sarcastically represents his palace as a religious institution, ruled by the Canon law, i. e. the series of laws and statutes promulgated by the Pope and the Councils for the government of the church.

817. Backward mutters of dissevering power; incantations muttered backward dissolved the enchantments which they had produced.

823. Soothest; truest; cf. forsooth, in good sooth.

826-842. The story of Sabrina was a favorite one with poets, having been told by Drayton in his Polyolbion, by Warner in Albion's England, and by Spenser in the Faerie Queene; all of these poets drew upon the account in Geoffry of Monmouth's History of the Britons. Milton tells the story in his History of England, a book which he completed during the last years of his life. Locrine, son of Brut, defeated in battle Humber, king of the Huns, who had invaded Britain. Locrine was engaged to marry the daughter of Corineus, a follower of Brut who had been made king over Cornwall; but among the spoils of war taken from Humber were certain beautiful maidens, "Estrildis, above the rest, passing fair, the daughter of a king in Germany; whom Locrine, though before contracted to the daughter of Corineus, resolves to marry. But being forced and threatened by Corineus, whose authority and power he feared, Guendolen the daughter he yields to marry, but in secret loves the other: and... had by her a daughter equally fair, whose name was Sabra. But when once his fear was off by the death of Corineus, divorcing Guendolen, he makes Estrildis now his queen. Guendolen, all in rage, departs into Cornwall, where Madan, the son she had by Locrine, was hitherto brought up by Corineus his grandfather. And gathering an army of her father's friends and subjects, gives battle to her husband by the river Sture; wherein Locrine, shot with an arrow, ends his life. But not so ends the fury of Guendolen : for Estrildis, and her daughter Sabra, she throws into a river: and, to leave a monument of revenge, proclaims that the stream be thenceforth called after the damsel's name; which, by length of time, is changed now to Sabrina, or Severn." It will be noticed that Milton uses step-dame" loosely.

838. Nectared lavers; baths sweetened with nectar.

846. Shrewd; the meaning "bad" or malicious" is usual in Elizabethan literature, and survives in some modern uses of the word.

868-882. Oceanus; god of the great Oceanstream which Homer represents as encircling the earth. Tethys, wife of Oceanus. The

66

Carpathian wizard" is Proteus, whose home was the island of Carpathus, between Crete and Rhodes. Glaucus, a Boeotian fisherman, eating of a magic herb, was transformed into a seagod and gifted with the power of prophecy. Leucothea, a daughter of Cadmus, who, to es cape her husband's fury, plunged with her son into the sea, and was changed to a sea-goddess;

lovely hands" is the Miltonic variant on the "fair ankles" traditionally ascribed to her. Her son, Melicertes, was identified by the Romans with Portumnus, god of harbors. Thetis is called by Homer "the silver-footed," hence "tinsel-slippered." Parthenope, a sea-nymph, whose body was washed ashore at Naples, and to whom a shrine was erected there; see Milton's third Epigram on Leonora Baroni. Ligea was one of the Sirens.

897. Printless feet; feet that leave no print.

934, 935. Interpreted literally this would mean the head, i. e. source, of the river. Some confusion arises because Milton is thinking of the head of the nymph also. The purely ideal nature of the image is shown by the mention of "groves of myrrh and cinnamon " which follows.

66

964. Mincing; delicately tripping. The word had none of its modern derogatory connotation. Cf. French mince, from which mincing

comes.

999-1008. The passage is saturated with Milton's peculiar conception of Paradisaic love. Assyrian queen = Aphrodite, connected with

the Phoenician Ashtaroth.

1015. Welkin; sky. Cf. German Wolke. 1021. Spheary chime; music of the spheres. Page 60. LYCIDAS.

1-7. These verses are autobiographical; see Introduction to Lycidas.

10, 11. He knew himself to sing; a few pieces of indifferent Latin verse have been traced to Edward King.

13. Welter to the parching wind; the verb "welter" renders very descriptively the helpless heaving and rolling motion of an object tossed by the swell of the sea.

15, 16. The "Sisters of the sacred well" are the nine Muses of classical mythology, to whom the fountain of Aganippe, on Mt. Helicon, was sacred. On this mountain was an altar dedicated to Jove; Milton alone is responsible for