Comp. French bonnet-à

24. 104. bonnet, in older English, as in Scotch still, denoted a man's head-covering. See Richard II. I. iv. 31; Hamlet, V. ii. 95; Coriolanus, III. ii. 74. poil, bonnet-de-police.

sedge. See Tempest, IV. i. 130:

"You nymphs, call'd Naiads, of the windring brooks,

With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks, &c."

105. What figures are here meant, has not yet been satisfactorily explained. Warburton says allusion is made "to the fabulous traditions of the high antiquity of Cambridge;" others think, to certain natural streaks on sedge-leaves or flags "when dried, or even beginning to wither."

106. that sanguine flower, &c. = the hyacinth. See Ovid, Met. x. 215. Phoebus, mourning for Hyacinthus dead, is not content that he should be metamorphosed into a flower: "Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit, et ai ai

Flos habet inscriptum, funestaque littera ducta est.'

[Does like apply to bonnet or figures?] 107. pledge = child. So pignus in Latin. Comp. Titus Andronicus, III. i. 292. quoth he. So ". says he," "said he." The position of the pronoun in these cases serves to illustrate the meaning discovered by philology of the various endings of verbs in the numbers of each tense. These endings are, in fact, but personal signs, which have become amalgamated with the verb. Quoth he," and such phrases, show the tendency there is to place the pronoun after the verb.

109. St. Peter.

Archbishop Laud was at this time at the height of his power. The policy of 'thorough" was being vigorously pursued in the state; a kindred policy was being carried out with no less vigour in the Church. A Ritualistic reform was in course of enforcement both in England and Scotland. Against this and against all Laud's proceedings the Puritanism of this country was vehemently opposed; and this Puritanism was the great growing, nearly fullgrown, power of the day. Milton here for the first time speaks out his sympathy with that party with which he was afterwards to be so conspicuously associated.

110. twain. In the Elizabethan writers twain is used (1) predicatively; (2) when the substantive is placed first; (3) substantively.

111. amain. See Paradise Lost, ii. 165, 1024, &c. Shakspere, Tempest, IV. i. 75, &c. Spenser has the form "mainly." [What is the force of the word?]

112. bespake. See Hymn Nat. 1. 76.

"9 This form is

114. anowenow. Paradise Lost, ii. 504: "hellish foes enow." generally said to be the plural of enough. See quotations from Sidney, Hooker, and Dryden, Addison apud Johnson.

One

115. Comp. Paradise Lost, iv. 192. Sonnet to Cromwell. St. John x. 12, 13. of Milton's pamphlets was entitled, The likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the

116. Of other care. [What should we say in our present English?] 119. Blind mouthes, &c. Comp. 1. 88. Paradise Lost, v. 711, 718. different to the verbal incongruity; there is none in sense. Mouths = gluttons.

Milton is in

Comp. gula

24. 119. know how to hold. In 1. 10 we have "knew to sing."

120. the least. [In what two ways may this phrase be parsed? Which is the better?] 121. faithfull. In Elizabethan writers full in composition retains all its letters; its independent force was still fresh.

heardsman "has a general sense in our older writers, and often occurs in Sydney's Arcadia, a book well known to Milton. In our old Pastorals heard-groome sometimes occurs for shepherd." (Warton.)

122. sped. See Merchant of Venice, II. ix. 72: “So be gone; you are sped." Romeo and Juliet, III. i. 95. Knolles apud Johnson: "Barbarossa, sped of all he desired, staid not long at Constantinople." As a preterite the word occurs in Shakspere, Merry Wives of Windsor, III. v. 67, &c. In Measure for Measure, IV. v. 10, and Paradise Regained, iii. 267, there is the longer form of the participle, viz. speeded. So "lift" has two participial forms, lift and lifted. [Mention other verbs that have two.] Speed was used much more frequently and more variously in older English than it is now. Comp. "God speed the Parliament" in Shakspere, 1 Henry VI. III. ii. 60; "an honest tale speeds best," Richard III. IV. iv. 358, &c.

25. 123. list is akin to German and Old English lust = pleasure. It survives in listless, as reck in reckless. It was originally used impersonally: thus, "if the list," Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 1185; "what them listeth," Hooker, &c. So please, reck, &c. were originally impersonal.

flashy. "Distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things." (Bacon's Essays.) [What does the word mean?]

124. grate. So blow, Il Penseroso, 161.

Comp. Virg. Ecl. iii. 26:

"Non tu in triviis, indocte, solebas,

Stridenti miserum stipula disperdere carmen?"

scrannel is used in Lancashire for "a lean person" (Halliwell). "Scranny" is

a common provincial word for "lean." The metaphor, therefore, is the same as in “lean and flashy songs." Comp. Cicero's "tenuis exsanguisque sermo" (De Or. I. xiii. 57). 125. See Spenser's Eclogue for May.

126. draw. So Paradise Lost, viii. 284: "From where I first drew air." We still speak of a "draught." Comp. Latin haurio, haustus.

128. There were many perversions to the Church of Rome about this time. See Masson's Life of Milton, i. 638.

129. and nothing sed. [How would you parse this phrase ?]

130. Comp. St. Matth. iii. 10; St. Luke iii. 9. Raleigh apud Johnson: "The sword, the arrow, the gun, with many terrible engines of death, will be well employed." The word engine is radically connected with "ingenious," "ingenuity," and means simply something clever. For two-handed Shakspere has "a two-hand sword," 2 Henry VI. II. i. 49. (See a description of one in Scott's Monastery.) Comp. Paradise Lost, vi. 251.

He means to say, generally, that the time of retribution is at hand. Some commentators, unwisely in my opinion, take the words as a definite prophecy of Laud's execution (in 1645). Certainly they could never have been understood in that sense at the time of the poem's first publication, "under the sanction and from the press of one of our universities," and "when the proscriptions of the Star Chamber and the power of Laud were at their height." In his Of Reformation in England he speaks of "the axe of God's reformation hewing at the old and hollow trunk of papacy."

132. Alpheus. See Class. Dict.

133. shrunk. See Hymn Nat. 203. Comp. Rowe's Jane Shore, I. i.:

"Our common foes

The Queen's relations, our new-fangled gentry,
Have fall'n their haughty crests."

25. 133. Sicilian Muse. See above, 1. 85.

attributed to Moschus.

Comp. Psalm civ. 7.

Virg. Ecl. vi. 1; iv. 1. Epitaph. Bion.

"The dread voice," and another equally dreadful, afterwards "shrunk the streams" of poetry for Milton for nearly thirty years. After writing Lycidas, in 1637, Milton wrote scarcely any more poetry till after the Restoration. Paradise Lost was published in 1667. Between it and Lycidas he had produced in poetry only a few sonnets. During nearly all that interval he abandoned, at the call of duty, his proper vocation of poet, and gave all his energies to politics. See Reason for Church Government against Prelaty.

134. hither cast = come hither and cast. Comp. Soph. Ed. Col. 23:

of a thousand hues. So in 1. 93, "Of rugged wings."

[flowrets. Mention other substantives with this dimin. termination.]

136. use. See 1. 67.

milde whispers. Comp. Theocritus' " ψιθύρισμα” (Id. i. 1).

138. fresh lap. See Richard II. V. ii. 47: "the green lap of the new-come spring:" Ib. III. iii. 47:

66

66

'The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land."

"

the swart star: i.e. swart-making (tanning, brown-dyeing) star. So "albus Notus in Hor. Od. I. vii. 15 = white- or clear-making (comp. Od. III. xxvii. 19). Homer's “apyeστns,” Il. xi. 306; Virgil's "clarus Aquilo," Georg. i. 460. Comp. "dim" in Paradise Lost, iii. 26, &c. The star meant is, of course, Sirius or Canicula, a star just in the mouth of the constellation Canis (Orion's dog). It rose at Athens about the time of the greatest heat, and was therefore supposed to cause that heat. See Eschylus' Agam. 939-40 (Ed. Paley):

“ ῥίζης γὰρ οὔσης φυλλὰς ἵκετ ̓ ἐς δόμους

σκιὰν ὑπερτείνασα Σειρίου κυνός.”

The Latins echo this theory. See Horace, passim. His "rubra Canicula," in Sat. II. v. 39, probably = flagrans.

Comp. Hor. Od. III. xiii. 9.

sparely. Comp. Horace's "parcius," Od. I. xxv. I.

139. quaint. See Hymn Nat. 194.

enameld. "The materials of glass melted with calcined tin compose an undiaphanous body. This white amel is the basis of all those fine concretes that goldsmiths and artificers employ in the curious art of enamelling." (Boyle on Colours, apud Johnson.)

142-51. Comp. Shakspere, Cymbeline, IV. ii. 220-30. Comp. also Spenser's Ecl. April. 142. rathe. The root of this word yet appears in "rather" earlier, sooner. (Holofernes uses "" ratherest" in Love's Labour Lost, IV. ii. 19.) Tennyson has revived the word itself. (In Mem. cix.)

Comp. Shakspere's "Primroses that die unmarried," &c. (Winter's Tale, IV.

iv. 122.)

66

25. 143. crow-toe. Comp. the name crow-foot" (the ranunculus).

144. freakt. Freckle is a dim. of freak, the substantive. Comp. "freckled cowslip," Henry V. V. ii. 49.

146. well attir'd

head-dressed, as it were.

well covered with leaves; or, perhaps, = fair-flowered, well The head-dresses of Elizabethan ladies were called "attiers."

It may be noticed that attire has been adopted by botanists as a technical term. See Johnson.

149. his. See note, Hymn Nat. 106.

[What part of the verb is shed here?]

150. daffadillies. Constable uses this form with an addition, viz.

See a song by him in the Golden Treasury, No. XV.

daffadowndilly."

151. laureat may allude to Lycidas' being a poet, or rather to his being lamented by poets. Comp. Epitaph on Marchioness of Winchester, 55-9:

See 1.

66 Here be

. some flowers, and some bays For thy herse, to strow the ways, Sent thee from the banks of Cam."

herse tomb. So in Ben Jonson's well-known Epitaph, "Underneath this marble hearse," &c. Comp. Hamlet, I. iv. 47: "hears'd in death," &c. According to Wedgwood, it was originally "a triangular framework of iron used for holding a number of candles at funerals and Church ceremonies; "then a funeral monument-in particular, a temporary cenotaph.

152. [What does so mean here? How otherwise might this passage be punctuated? What would so mean then?]

154. [What is the predicate to shores?] Comp. Virg. Æn. vi. 362.

158. monstrous here to be taken literally (not as, for instance, in Othello, III. iii. 427). So Paradise Lost, ii. 624-5:

"Nature breeds,

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things," &c.

There is a powerful picture of this "monstrous world" in the old poem of Beowulf, where the hero invades Grendal's dam in her den at the sea-bottom. (See II. 2820-3028, Ed. Thorpe.) For another, see Clarence's dream in Richard III. I. iv. 16–33. See Virg. Æn.

vi. 729.

159. [our moist vows. What is the substantive qualified in sense by moist ?]
160. [In what sense is fable used here?]

Bellerus = one of the old Cornish giants. "No such name occurs in the Catalogue of the Cornish giants, but the poet coined it from Bellerium. At first he had written Corineus.' (Warton.) Corineus was a giant who came into Britain with Brute. See Faerie Queene, II. X. 10 and 12. Diodorus Siculus speaks of Belerium; Ptolemy of Bolerium. On the old Giants see Faerie Queene, II. x. 7-12.

161. Camden tells us that Land's End is "the only part of our island that looks directly towards Spain." (Warton.) See Drayton's Polyolb. xxiii.

"

the great vision, &c. A stone lantern in one of the angles of the church" built on St. Michael's Mount "is called St. Michael's Chair. There is still a tradition that a vision of St. Michael seated on this crag, or St. Michael's chair, appeared to some hermits.' Warton also takes "guarded" to refer to "a strong fortress, regularly garrisoned," that was built on the Mount; but it seems better to understand it of the watch kept by the angel. (Comp. Hamlet's "heavenly guards.")

162. Namancos. It used to be thought that the ancient Numantia was here meant ; but this was an error. Todd found, in Mercator's Atlas, ed. fol. Amst. 1623, and in the ed. of

1636, in the map of Galicia, near Cape Finisterre, "Namancos T." (i.e. Turris). "In this map the castle of Bayona makes a very conspicuous figure."

25. 163. angel: i.e. St. Michael.

[ruth. What derivative of this word is still in use? What cognate verb ?]

164. O ye Dolphins, &c. As in the old days a dolphin had borne Arion safely through the seas to land. See Herod. I. i. 24; Ovid, Fast. ii. 83-118; Wordsworth's Power of Sound, ix.

i. 71-3:

waft, "to carry through the air or the water." (Johnson.) See King John, II.

"In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits
Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er,
Did never float upon the swelling tide," &c.

165. Warton compares Spenser's Ecl. Nov.; Epith. Damonis, 201-8; Ode on the Death of a fair Infant, stanza x.

26. 166. your sorrow. So love, care, joy, delight, pride, hope, are used in a concrete sense. So in Latin and Greek amor, spes, пóvoc, wdig, &c.

167. watery floar. Comp. Shakspere's "floor of heaven," Merchant of Venice, V. i. 58.

168. the day-star the sun. So "diurnal star," Paradise Lost, x. 1069.

169. Comp. Gray's Bard, of the "orb of day":

So in Shakspere,

"smile," &c. &c., govern

V. 272,

"muse,"

"a phoenix gazed by all." accusatives. So "myself was then travelling that land," Tennyson's Golden Supper. 174. Comp. Virg. Æn. vi. 641; Wordsworth's Laodamia.

175. Comp. Hor. Od. III. iv. 61.

oozy. Hymn Nat. 124.

176. unexpressive. Hymn Nat. 116. So "inenarrabile carmen," in his poem Ad Patrem. Comp. "insuppressive," Shakspere, Julius Cæsar, II. i. 134.

nuptiall song. See the Revelation xxii. 17.

179. Comp. Paradise Lost, xi. 82.

'Milton's angelic system. . . is to be seen at large in Thomas Aquinas and Peter Lombard." (Warton.)

181. See Isaiah xxv. 8; Rev. vii. 17.

183. Comp. the story of Melicerta or Palæmon. Ov. Met. iv. 522; Fast. vi. 485; Virg. Georg. i. 436.

184. In thy large recompense.

Prothal. 158.

[What is the force of thy here?] See Spenser's

good. See Il Pens. 153; cf. Virg Ecl. v. 65.

185. in. We should say on or "o'er."

186. uncouth. See L'Allegro, 1. 5.

187. still. This is a favourite word with Milton. See Il Pens. 127.

Comp. the description of evening in Comus, 188-90.