"Melancholy" in the seventeenth century often meant very nearly what we mean by melancholia. So Burton uses "melancholy" throughout The Anatomy of Melancholy. In "Il Penseroso," however, as in the lines extolling melancholy in "The Author's Abstract of Melancholy," we find the word employed with the unusual meaning of a fondness for solitary contemplation. Professor Amy L. Reed, in The Background of Gray's Elegy (p. 19), says of Milton's use of "melancholy" in "Il Penseroso": "He deliberately rejects all the associations of the word with disease, madness, suicide and fear. Deliberately also, he sets up a new set of connotations, with saintliness, with wisdom, with beauty, with leisure, with poetry, philosophy, and music, with lovely outdoor scenes, and with a widening experience maturing with age."

Il Penseroso (obsolete form of pensieroso) is Italian for "the thoughtful man"; Milton was doubtless mindful that "pensive" in his day was a synonym both of "thoughtful" and of "melancholy."

3. bested. Avail.

4. fill the fixed mind. Satisfy the steadfast mind.

4. toys. Trumpery.

6. fond. Foolish.

10. pensioners. Retainers.

10. Morpheus' train. Morpheus was a dream god, the most powerful of the sons of Sleep.

18. Memnon's sister. Memnon was an Ethiopian king who aided Priam during the Trojan War; his sister, mentioned in medieval works, as in Guido delle Colonne's Hystoria Destructionis Troiae, Book 8, was, like her brother, famous for her beauty (see Mabel Day, Modern Language Review, XII, 496). 18. beseem. Befit.

19. starred Ethiop queen. Cassiopeia, the wife of the Ethiopian king Cepheus. She was eventually placed in the heavens (starred).

23. bright-haired Vesta, etc. Milton chooses Vesta, virgin goddess of the hearth, and Saturn, later identified with Cronus, who was the father of six of the great Greek divinities, to be parents of Melancholy. Line 30 contains a reference to the story that Saturn, fearful lest he might be overthrown, swallowed all his children except Jove, who was spirited away to Crete, where he grew up, and whence he eventually returned, armed with his thunderbolt, to end his father's reign.

29. Ida's inmost grove. Crete and Phrygia each possessed a Mount Ida that was noted for its forests.

33. grain. Color.

35. stole of cypress lawn. A black linen scarf.

36. decent. Comely.

C. Miz ang Osgood quos de pening ines of Hesiod's Tregim, where we re mit dat de Muses of Beican dance on soft feet about the deep-cine gring and he ate of the amgir son of Cronos.” Departing dey *iter der song va ovey voice - Evelyn-White: Loeb

Calling de je vesti firme. In de frst dugter of Ezekiel there is a description of the fery drone of God, it was accompanied by four cherubim wic moved, a is vere, pa vireis. Mixon probably chose the cherub to personity contenciation on account of the medieval action that the cherubim exteled other angels in knowledge.

35 haz ding. Sammon with the carton "Hosh”; that is, summon Slendy.

5 Wale Croatia checks in Brgın yake Gently d'er the accustomed oak. Dragons seem to have been added by the Elizabethans to the Est of creatures that drew the chance of the moon. Ci 4 Maianner Night's Dream, Act IHI, scene II, L gmg; Drayton, "The Man in the Moce," L 431; and the following Enes from Dekker's "Song of the Cyclops" in Landon's Temper

"We shoe the horses of the sun,

Harness the dragons of the moon."

The "accustomed oak" may have been a favorite haunt of the nightingale.

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83. bellman's drowsy charm To Hess the doors. See Herrick's "The Bellman," p. 49, and note.

37. outmatch the Bear. Sit up all night, since the constellation known as "the Bear" never sets in the latitude of England.

83. thrice-great Hermes. Hermes Trismegistus, a designation of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom; used during and after the third century as a pseudonym in connection with certain works that dealt with theosophy, Neoplatonic philosophy, alchemy, etc.

88. unsphere The spirit of Plato. Call back his spirit from the sphere or

unseen world where he now resides. In his Phaedo Plato had argued for the immortality of the soul.

93. And of those demons, etc. A return in thought to "thrice-great Hermes,” mentioned in line 88. The Hermetic philosophy describes daimons resident in the four elements-earth, air, fire, and water-through whom the stars exert their influence upon the lives of men (cf. E. C. Baldwin, Modern Language Notes, XXXIII, 184) Lineal descendants of these daimons, or spirits, known among the Rosicrucians as "salamanders," "sylphs,” "nymphs," and "gnomes," played, it will be recalled, an amusing part in Pope's Rape of the Lock.

95. consent. Agreement.

98. sceptered pall. Royal robe.

99. Thebes. The Greek tragic poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and the Roman Seneca all treat in their plays the legends relating to Oedipus, the Theban hero who unwittingly married his mother as a reward for guessing the riddle of the sphinx.

99. Pelops' line. Ten extant tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides deal with tales of the house of Pelops. Among the members of this house were Agamemnon, his children Electra, Iphigenia, and Orestes, and his brother Menelaus.

100. the tale of Troy divine. To Euripides the tragic possibilities of the tale made a special appeal, but Sophocles and Seneca also employed it. Troy was called "divine" because its walls were built by Neptune and Apollo.

1. 36.

102. buskined. See note on "To the Memory of Shakespeare," p. 273,

104. Musaeus. A mythical Greek poet. Osgood cites Aeneid vi. 656 ff., which recounts how Aeneas saw Musaeus in a fragrant grove in Elysium towering above his companions, all of whom were chanting the joyful paean. 105. Orpheus. See note on "L'Allegro," p. 335, l. 145.

110-15. The story of Cambuscan bold, etc. Chaucer's unfinished "Squire's Tale." Cambuscan was a Tartar king, Camball and Algarsife were his sons, and Canace was his daughter. The ring, glass, and horse were magic gifts from the king of Araby to Canace and Cambuscan.

120. Where more is meant than meets the ear. In allegories, as in Spenser's Faerie Queene.

122. civil-suited. In sober garb.

123. tricked and frounced. Foppishly attired ("frounce" means to curl the hair).

124. Attic boy. Perhaps Cephalus, whom Aurora, goddess of the dawn, loved and snatched away. See Ovid Met. vii. 704.

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134. Sylvan. A deity of the woods.

140. no profaner eye. No eye less initiated into a due veneration of divine melancholy.

148. Wave at his wings. The thought seems to be that the wings of sleep, gently brushing his eyelids, communicate a rapidly changing dream to him. Wave is intransitive.

155. due. Appointed to arrive (Lockwood).

156. studious cloister's pale. The enclosure formed by cloisters. A portion of the cloisters of an abbey was often used by the monks for writing and study, but perhaps Milton had in mind a collegiate cloister and chapel

157. embowèd. Arched.

158. massy proof. Literally "massive-strong"; that is, of massive strength. 159. storied. “Ornamented with scenes from history or legend” (New English Dictionary).

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169. hairy gown and mossy cell. The hermit's hair-cloth shirt and secluded, single-chambered dwelling.

170. spell. Construe.

175-76. Cf. “L'Allegro,” p. 131, ll. 151–52, and note.

LYCIDAS (Page 135)

"Lycidas" was Milton's contribution to a volume of memorial verses on his college friend, Edward King. The latter, at the time of his death, was both fellow and tutor at Christ's, and he was also preparing himself for the ministry. He was shipwrecked off the Welsh coast when crossing to Ireland to visit friends during the long vacation of 1637. Milton must have known King well, but it does not appear that they were close friends; nor do the Latin poems of King, in spite of Milton's praise, reveal much poetical promise. The mere fact of the memorial volume, however, indicates the esteem in which King was generally held. "Lycidas" was written in November, 1637, as a notation in Milton's hand on the Cambridge MS of the poem proves; and the volume, of which this poem alone is memorable, was published in the following year.

In spite of Milton's familiarity with the Greek pastoral elegies of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, with the bucolics of Virgil, and probably with the work of most of their Renaissance imitators, his indebtedness to these poets, except for certain conventions of the pastoral elegy, is confined to a very few lines. The name Lycidas is borne by poet-shepherds in several pastorals— Theocritus' Seventh Idyll, Virgil's Ninth Eclogue, and two eclogues of the Italian poets Amaltheus and Sannazarius. Certain allusions to the sea in three

of these pastorals may have recalled them to Milton's mind as he thought about the death of King (see J. W. Hales, Athenaeum, August 1, 1891, p. 159).

1. O ye laurels, etc. The laurel, myrtle, and ivy were all associated with poetry. Milton is here declaring symbolically that he finds himself unripe for his task. "Once more" probably hints at a similar reluctance when he wrote Comus, three years before.

2. brown. Of a dusky color.

2. never sere. The ivy is an evergreen.

6. dear. Grievous.

11. to sing. How to sing (a Latinism).

13. welter. Be tossed about. King's body was never recovered.

15. Sisters of the sacred well. The nine Muses, goddesses of poetry; Aganippe and Hippocrene on Mount Helicon and the Pierian spring at the foot of Mount Olympus were all three sacred to the Muses. "Well" means spring. 19. Muse. Poet.

23. For we were nursed upon the selfsame hill. Here with the conventional imagery of the pastoral, Milton describes his association with King.

25. lawns. Pastures.

27. heard What time, etc. Heard the gray-fly when she winds her horn at midday.

29. Battening. Feeding.

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32. the rural ditties were not mute, etc. A reference, no doubt, to friendly rivalry among the students in the composition of verses, in which one of the tutors (Damoetas) took an interest.

50. Where were ye, nymphs, etc. Milton here identifies the sea nymphs with the Muses. His indebtedness in this passage to both Theocritus and Virgil has been pointed out; cf. Theocritus 1. 66–69 (tr. Calverley):

"Where were ye, Nymphs, oh where, while Daphnis pined?

In fair Peneus', or in Pindus' glens?

For great Anapus' stream was not your haunt,

Nor Aetna's cliff, nor Acis' sacred rill."

54. Mona. Anglesey, an island off the north coast of Wales, of whose druids Tacitus gives a vivid account.

55. where Deva spreads her wizard stream. The river Dee, called by the Romans "Deva," flows into the Irish Sea near Chester. "Wizard," perhaps, because thought to possess magical powers. Cf. Spenser, Faerie Queene, IV, xi, 39: The "Dee, which Britons long ygone Did call divine."