And I must hafte ere morning hour
To wait in Amphitrite's bow'r.

With spotless hand, on fpotlefs breast,
I put these herbs, to give thee reft;
Which, till it heal thee, will abide
If both be pure, if not, off slide.

Again, fhe fays, A. v. S. i. p. 187.

Shepherd, once more your blood is ftaid:

Take example by this maid,

Who is heal'd ere you be pure,

So hard it is lewd luft to cure, &c.

920

I must add the disappearance of the river god, A. iii. S. i. p. 155. Fairest virgin, now adieu!

I muft make my waters fly,

Left they leave their channels dry;
And beafts that come unto the fpring
Mifs their morning's watering;
Which I would not for of late
All the neighbour people fate
On my banks, and from the fold
Two white lambs of three weeks old
Offered to my deity:

For which this year they fhall be free
From raging floods, that as they pass
Leave their gravel in the grass:
Nor fhall their meads be overflown

When their grafs is newly mown.

Here the river god resembles Sabrina in that part of her character, which confifts in protecting the cattle and paftures. And for these fervices fhe is alfo thanked by the fhepherds, v. 344. fupr.

Vifits the herds along the twilight meadows, &c.

For which the fhepherds at their festivals

Carol her goodness loud in ruftic lays ;

And throw fweet garland wreaths into her ftream,
Of pancies, pinks, and gawdy daffadils.

921. To wait in Amphitrite's bow'r.] Drayton's Sabrina is ar

rayed in,

A watchet weed, with many a curious wave,
Which as a princely gift great Amphitrite gave.

POYOLB. S. v. vol. ii. p. 752. And we have

Amphitrite's

BOWER," ibid. S. xxviii. vol. iii. p. 1193. See alfo Spenfer of Cymoent, F. Q. iii, iv. 43.

Deepe in the bottom of the fea her BOWRE.

Sabrina defcends, and the Lady rifes out of her feat.

Again, iii. viii. 37. Of Proteus.

His BOWRE is in the bottome of the maine.

930

924. May thy brimmed waves for this.] Doctor Warburton propofes brined, and thinks that BRIMMED, for waves rifing to the brim or margin of the fhore, is a strange word. And in bishop Hurd's 's copy he has added to his note, BRINED, for the waters "here spoken of, being the tribute paid by Sabrina to the ocean, "muft needs be brined or falted, before they could be paid." But he had not remarked the frequent and familiar ufe of BRIM for Bank in our old poets. See above at v. 119. And " BRIMMING ftream" afcertains the old reading, PARAD. L. iv. 336. 925. Their full tribute never miss

66

From a thousand petty rills,.

That tumble down the fnowy hills.] The torrents from the Welch mountains fometimes raise the Severn on a fudden to a prodigious height. But at the fame time they fill her molten cryftal with mud. Her ftream, which of itself is clear, is then discoloured and muddy. The poet adverts to the known natural properties of the river. Here is an echo to a couplet in Jonfon's Mask at Highgate, 1604. WORKS, edit. 1616. p. 882.

Of sweete and feuerall fliding rills,

That ftreame from tops of those leffe hills, &c.

932. May thy billows roll afhore

The beryl, and the golden ore.] This is reasonable as a wish. But jewels were furely out of place among the decora

May thy lofty head be crown'd

With many a tow'r and terrace round,
And here and there thy banks upon
of myrrhe and cinnamon.

With groves

935

tions of Sabrina's chariot, on the fuppofition that they were the natural productions of her stream. The wish is equally ideal and imaginary, that her banks fhould be covered with groves of myrrh and cinnamon. A wifh, conformable to the real state of things, to English seasons and English fertility, would have been more pleasing as lefs unnatural. Yet we must not too feverely try poetry by truth and reality. See above, at v. 834. 891. 934. May thy lofty head be crown'd

With many a tow'r and terrace round.] So, of the imperial palace of Rome, PARAD. REG. B. iv. 54.

-Confpicuous far

TURRETS and TERRASES.

Milton was impreffed with this idea from his vicinity to Windforcaftle.

This votive addrefs of gratitude to Sabrina, was fuggefted to our author by that of Amoret to the river-god in Fletcher's FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS, A. iii. S. i. vol. iii. P. 157. But the form and fubject, rather than the imagery, is copied. Milton is more fublime and learned, Fletcher more natural and easy.

For thy kindness to me shown,
Never from thy banks be blown
Any tree, with windy force,

Cross thy ftreams, to ftop thy course;
May no beast that comes to drink,
With his horns caft down thy brink:
May none that for thy fish do look
Cut thy banks to dam thy brook :
Barefoot may no neighbour wade
In the coole ftreams, wife nor maid,
When the spawne on ftones doth lye,

To wash their hempe, and spoile the frye.

I know not which poet wrote firft: but in Browne's BRITAN NIA'S PASTORALS, certainly written not after 1613, and printed in 1616, I find a fimilar vow. B. i. S. i. p. 28. Milton has fome circumftances which are in Browne and not in Fletcher.

-May firft

Quoth Marine, swaines give lambes to thee:

May all thy floud have feignorie

Of all flouds elfe, and to thy fame

Of

Come, Lady, while heav'n lends us grace,

Let us fly this curfed place,

Left the forcerer us entice

With fome other new device.
Not a waste, or needless found,

Till we come to holier ground;

940

Meete greater fpringes, yet keepe thy name.

May neuer euet, nor the toade,

Within thy bankes make their abode :

Taking thy journey to the fea,

Maift thou ne'er happen in thy way

On nitre or on brimstone myne,

To spoyle thy tafte. This fpring of thyne
Be ever fresh! Let no man dare

To fpoyle thy fish, make lock or ware;

But on thy margent still let dwell

Those flowers which have the sweetest smell;

And let the duft upon thy ftrand

Become like Tagus' golden fand.

In this paftoral, a paffage immediately follows, ftrongly refembling the circumftance of the river-god in Fletcher applying drops of pure water to the inchanted Amoret, or of Sabrina doing the fame to the Lady in Coмus. A rock is discovered in a grove of fycamores, from which a certain precious water diftills in drops, P. 29.

The drops within a cefterne fell of stone, ́

Which fram'd by nature, art had never none
Halfe part fo curious, &c.

Some of thefe drops, with the ceremony of many fpells, are infused by the water-nymphs into the lips of Marine, by which the is cured of her love,

From a clofe parallelifm of thought and incident, it is clear that either Browne's pastoral imitates Fletcher's play, or the play the paftoral. Moft of B. and Fletcher's plays appeared after 1616. But there is unluckily no date to the first edition of the FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS. It is, however, mentioned in Davies's SCOURGE OF FOLLY, 1611.

As Milton is fuppofed to have taken fome hints in COMUS from Peele's OLD WIVES TALE, I may perhaps more reasonably claim an excufe for lengthening this note, by producing a paffage not quite foreign to the text, from that writer's play, entitled THE LOVE OF KING DAUID AND FAIRE BETHSABE, &c. edit. 1599. 4to. Signat. B. B. ij.

VOL. I.

I i

May

I fhall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide,
And not many furlongs thence
Is your Father's refidence,
Where this night are met in ftate
Many a friend to gratulate
His wish'd presence, and beside
All the fwains that near abide,
With jigs and rural dance refort;
We shall catch them at their sport,
And our fudden coming there
Will double all their mirth and chear;
Come let us hafte, the ftars grow high,

But night fits monarch in the mid fky.

945

950

955

May that sweet plaine that beares her pleasant weight
Be ftill enamel'd with difcouloured flowers;

The precious fount beare fand of purest gold,
And for the peble, let the filuer ftreames

That pierce earth's bowels to maintaine her force,
Play upon rubies, faphires, chryfolites :
The brims let be embrac'd with golden curles
Of moffé.

Let all the graffe that beautifies her bower
Beare manna euery morne instead of dew;

Or let the dew be fweeter far than that,

That hanges like chaines of pearle on Hermon's hill.

See Note on ARCAD. V. 84.

956.

-The ftars grow high,

But night fits monarch yet in the mid fky.] So in Fletcher's play, A. ii. S. i. p. 145.

Now while the moon doth RULE the sky,

And the stars whofe feeble light

Give a pale fhadow to the night,

Are up.

Compare PARAD. L. B. i. 785.

-The moon

SITS ARBITRESS.

The