Or like the fons of Vulcan vomit smoke,
Yet will they foon retire, if he but shrink.
E. B. Thyrfis, lead on apace, I'll follow thee,
And fome good Angel bear a fhield before us.

655

The Scene changes to a stately palace, fet out with all manner of deliciousness: foft mufic, tables spread with all dainties. Comus appears with his rabble, and the Lady fet in an inchanted chair, to whom he offers bis glafs, which she puts by, and goes about to rife.

1

COMUS.

Nay, Lady, fit; if I but wave this wand, Your nerves are all chain'd up in alabaster,

660

Again, ft. 51. "Ritrova il LIBRO confecrato, &c." Many striking paffages which Taffo has borrowed from Boiardo are unnoticed.

658. And fome good angel bear a shield before us.] From the di'vinities of the claffics and of romance, we are now got to the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Our author has nobly dilated this idea of a guardian-angel, yet not without fome particular and express warrant from scripture, which he has also poetically heightened, in SAMSON AGONISTES, V. 1431.

Send me the Angel of thy birth, to ftand

Faft by thy fide, who from thy father's field
Rode up in flames, after his message told
Of thy conception, and be Now a SHIELD
OF FIRE.

659. Here, as we fee by the ftage-direction, Comus is introduced with his apparatus of incantation. And much after the fame manner, Circe enters upon her Charme of Ulyffes in Browne's INNER TEMPLE MASQUE, p. 131. She appears on the ftage " quaintly attyred, her haire loofe about her fhoulders, an anadem of flowers on her head, with a wand in her hand, &c." See Note on PARAD. REG. ii. 401.

Ibid. Nay, Lady, fit; if I but wave this wand,

Your nerves are all bound up in alabafter.] It is with the fame magic, and in the fame mode, that Profpero threatens Ferdinand, in the TEMPEST, for pretending to refist. A. i. S. ii.

-Come from the ward;

For I can here difarm thee with this STICK.

Come

And you a ftatue, or as Daphne was
Root-bound, that fled Apollo.

Lad. Fool, do not boast,

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind
With all thy charms, although this corporal rind
Thou haft immanacled, while heav'n fees good.
Com. Why are you vext, Lady? why do you frown?
Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from these gates
Sorrow flies far: See, here be all the pleasures
That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts,
When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns 670

Thy NERVES are in their infancy again,
And have no vigour in them.-

Milton here comments upon Shakespeare.

663. Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind

With all thy charms.-] This ftoical idea of the inviolability of virtue is more fully expreffed, v. 589.

Virtue may

be affail'd, but never hurt,

Surpris'd by unjuft force, but not inthrall'd.

665. Thou haft immanacled.-] MANACLED is in PARAD. LOST, B. i. 426.

Nor tyed or MANACLED with joint or limb.

And in B. and Fletcher, THE HONEST MAN'S FORTUNE, A. iv. S. i. vol. x. p. 428.

-MANACLING itself

In gyves of parchment.——

See also our author's Free COMMONWEALTH, a number of new injunctions to MANACLE the native liberty of mankind." PR. W. vol. i. 595. In Shakespeare's time, MANACLE, properly a hand-cuff, was not out of familiar ufe. CYMBEL. A. v. S. iv. "Knock off his MANACLES: bring your prifoner to the king." And in other places. The verb is also in Shakespeare.

668.

Here be all the pleasures

That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, &c.] An echo to Fletcher, FAITHF. SHEPH. A. i. S. i. vol. iii. p. 119.

Brisk as the April buds in primrose-season.
And first behold this cordial julep here,
That flames, and dances in his crystal bounds,
With fpirits of balm, and fragrant fyrups mix'd ;-
Not that Nepenthes, which the wife of Thone 675
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena,

Is of fuch pow'r to stir up joy as this,

you

To life fo friendly, or fo cool to thirst.
Why fhould
be fo cruel to yourself,
And to thofe dainty limbs which Nature lent
For gentle ufage, and foft delicacy?

680

But you invert the covenants of her truft,
And harshly deal, like an ill borrower,

With that which you receiv'd on other terms;
Scorning the unexempt condition

685

By which all mortal frailty muft subsist,
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,

That have been tir'd all day without repaft,
And timely reft have wanted; but, fair Virgin,
This will reftore all foon.

Lad. 'Twill not, falfe traitor,

"Twill not restore the truth and honesty

And again, p. 128.

-Whofe virtues do refine

The blood of men, making it free and fair
As the first hour it breath'd, or the best air.

672. See Note on SAMS. AGON. V. 543.

699

675. Not that Nepenthes.-] The author of the lively and learned Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, has brought together many particulars of this celebrated drug, and concludes, p. 135. edit. i. "It is true they are opiates for pleasure all over "the Levant; but by the best accounts of them, they had them "originally from Egypt; and this of Helen appears plainly to be a production of that country, and a custom which can be traced "from Homer to Auguftus's reign, and from thence to the age preceding our own." Dr. J. WARTON,

66

That

That thou haft banish'd from thy tongue with lies.
Was this the cottage, and the fafe abode

Thou toldft me of? What grim afpects are these,
These ugly-headed monsters? Mercy guard me!
Hence with thy brew'd inchantments, foul deceiver;
Haft thou betray'd my credulous innocence
With visor'd falfhood and base forgery?

And would'ft thou feek again to trap me here
With liquorish baits fit to ensnare a brute?
Were it a draft for Juno when the banquets,
I would not taste thy treasonous offer; none
But fuch as are good men can give good things,

700

694. What grim afpects are thefe ?] So Drayton, POLYOLE S. xxvii. vol. iii. p. 1190.

Her GRIM ASPECT to fee.

Again, ibid. S. xxx. vol. iii. p. 1225.

Th' ASPECT of thefe GRIM dales.

And Spenfer, F. Q. v. ix. 48.

-With griefly GRIM ASPECT
Abhorred Murder.-

695. Thefe ugly-beaded monfters ?-] It is ougly in the old editions, which Peck thinks a paftoral way of spelling the word. But this was the old way of spelling ugly. Fairfax's TASSO, C. vii. 116. Heaven's glorious lampe wrapt in an OUGLIE vaile Of fhadowes darke..

Mr. Bowle adds thefe inftances. Ibid. C. xv. 47.

An OUGLY ferpent that forestall'd their way.

Again, ibid. C. xiii. 44.

Some oUGLY dragon, or chimera new.

And fo, throughout Fairfax. And Sylvefter, p. 427.
-The OUGLY fiend

Hath no fuch power upon a faint t'extend.

And Hollinfhead, DESCRIPT. IREL. P. 2. f. 15. part is ouGLY and gaftly."

"The other

696. Hence with thy brew'd inchantments, foul deceiver.] Magical potions, brewed or compounded of incantatory herbs and poifonous drugs. Shakespeare's Cauldron is a brewed inchantment, but of another kind.

And that which is not good, is not delicious
To a well-govern'd and wise appetite.

705

Com. O foolishness of men! that lend their ears
To thofe budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,
Praifing the lean and fallow Abstinence.
Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth,
With fuch a full and unwithdrawing hand, 711
Covering the earth with odours, fruits and flocks,
Thronging the feas with spawn innumerable,

707. To thofe budge doctors of the Stoic fur.] Thofe morofe and rigid teachers of abftinence and mortification, who wear the gown of the Stoic philofophy. BUDGE is fur, antiently an ornament of the scholastic habit. In the more antient colleges of our univerfities, the annual expences for furring the robes or liveries of the fellows, appear to have been very confiderable. "The Stoic fur" is as much as if he had faid "The ftoic fect." But he explains the obfolete word, in which there is a tincture of ridicule, by a very awkward tautology.

Mr. Bowle here çites a paffage from Stowe's SURUAY of LONDON, edit. 1618. p. 455. "BUDGE-ROWE, a ftreete so called "of Budge, furre, and of Skinners dwelling there.” I find, the place and name ftill remain,

I take this opportunity of observing, that it is wonderful Hamlet's "Suit of SABLES," fhould have been ever and fo long mis"understood. HAML. A. iii. S. ii. He certainly intends an equivocation between Black and Sables. But the fkin of the Sable or Martin was a fumptuous and showy article of drefs. King Henry the Sixth, in 1445, at a visit to Winchester College, gave his best robe furred with SABLES, cum furrura de SABLES, to the high altar in the college-chapel. Bishop Lowth's WYKEHAM, APPEND. N. xiii. p. xix. edit. ii. In the ftatutes of Trinity-college Oxford, dated 1556, none of the foundation, except under particular circumftances, are allowed the use of filk, velvet, or of other coftly ftuff, or of those furs, pellium, quas vocamus "SABILLES et "MARTYNES." CAP. xvii. And in thofe of Magdalene college, Oxford, given in 1459. All are forbidden to use, " pelluris pre"tiofis ac fumptuofis, vulgariter dictis SABYLLYNS five MAR"TRYNS." CAP. xliv. But perhaps thefe inftances, which yet may be added to Du Cange's examples under PELLES SABELLINE, and MARTERINÆ, are unneceffary, after what the late excellent commentators have collected on the paffage in Hamlet.

But