6. 6. deadly forfeit. Comp. "penal forfeit,” Samson Agonistes, 508, and Paradise Lost, xi. 195-8: 66 or to warn Us, haply too secure of our discharge From penalty, because from death released See Measure for Measure, V. i. 525: "Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal Remit thy other forfeits." release is etymologically a modified form of relax, coming to us through the French; = let go, quit, remit. See Deut. xv. 2: "Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it." Comp. Esther ii. 18: "He made a release to the provinces, and gave gifts, according to the state of the king." 7. with. Not the Lat. cum, but rather apud, or inter. Comp. Dryden : "Immortal powers the term of Conscience know, But Interest is her name with men below." 8. unsufferable. The old usage preferred the English prefix. So unpossible (Ascham, &c.), unproperlie (Ascham), unhospitable (Shakspere), unvulnerable (ib.), uncessant (Milton), &c. &c. In Paradise Lost, x. 256, occurs "unagreeable." 10. wont. See note on Prothal. 1. 139. 11. the midst = rather "in the midst " than "the midmost one." [What part of speech is midst in Paradise Lost, v. 164-5?— "On earth join, all ye creatures, to extol Him first, him last, him midst, and without end."] 'The midst" is very common in older English as a substantive. On the " vulgarisms" in our midst, in your midst, see Marsh's English Language, Ed. Smith. 14. darksom. Some is a favourite adjectival termination in older English, = Early English sum, German sam. Thus, we find laboursome, gaysome, ugsome, bigsome, longsome, toothsome, &c. &c. See Trench's English Past and Present. In Paradise Lost, vii. 355, Milton uses unlightsome. This some is radically identical with the adjective same. with us must not be taken in close connexion with the verb, but rather with the object. [What does with mean here?] 15. vein. See Paradise Lost, vi. 628. 16. afford. Afford is commonly used in Elizab. English for to give, present, without any reference such as it now has to the means of the giver. Paradise Lost, iv. 46: "What could be less than to afford him praise, &c. ?" Ib. x. 271; Samson Agonistes, 910 and 1,109; Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 16; Henry VIII. I. iv. 17. But it sometimes seems to have that reference, as in Paradise Lost, v. 316, &c. The stem is said to be the Latin forum. 19. while during which time. When at which time. In modern English we very commonly use when where while would be more exact, and where while would have been used by our forefathers: e.g. in l. 30. 20. took. So Il Penseroso, 91: forsook, &c. 21. spangled, &c. is here an adjective, from the substantive spangle, rather than the participle of the verb spangle. 7. 23. See Paradise Regained, i. 249-54. Wisards. -Ard had originally an intensive force, as in sweethard (corrupted into sweetheart), drunkard, coward, braggart, laggard, &c. It appears in some person-names, as Leonard, Bernard, Everard. It seems to have been very commonly appended to nouns of a contemptuous and depreciatory meaning. Most of the words ending in it that now survive are of this sort. Add to those already mentioned bastard, sluggard, dotard; Trench mentions others now obsolete (English Past and Present). In our text wisards perhaps means nothing more than the Wise Men, without anything of the later sense of magicians attached to it, although in the Middle Ages the three Eastern kings were undoubtedly regarded as "wizards" in the modern sense of the word, and that with all reverence. In Comus, 571, the modern sense appears, and so ib. 872. river Dee. Spenser calls the ancient philosophers "antique wizards" (Faerie Queene, IV. xii. 2). 7. 24. prevent. See Psalms cxix. cxlvii. &c. &c. See Trench's Select Gloss. In Lycid. 55 the word is applied to the personified " prevenient," Paradise Lost, xi. 3; "prevention," ib. vi. 129. 27. the angel quire. See ll. 85-140; Paradise Regained, i. 242-5. Comp. 28. See Isaiah vi. 6, 7. He has the same allusion in his Reason of Church Government. 29. born is dissyllabic here. 31. all. See Prothal. 1. 56. 32. to him is to be taken in connexion with in awe, rather than with had dofft. 41. pollute is the Latin participle pollutus, with its termination Anglicized. "I Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure 42. maiden white. Comp. maiden sword (1 Henry IV. V. iv. 134); marden walls (Henry V. V. ii. 449); maiden flowers (Henry VIII. IV. ii. 169). 45. cease. Here causal. Comp. "shrink," inf. 1. 203; Lycid. 133. So Bacon: "You may sooner by imagination quicken or slack a motion than raise or cease it." Comp. also Ascham's Schoolmaster: "Therefore, my heart, cease sighes and sobbes, cease sorowes seede to sow." 48. The turning sphear. Comp. Paradise Lost, iii. 416: "Thus they in heaven above the starry sphere," &c. In the Ptolemaic System the earth was the centre round which the heavens, with their stars, revolved. Sphere here means this great revolving framework. On the words orb, sphere, globe, ball, see Smith's Marsh's Lectures on the English Language. "Before him a great prophet to proclaim His coming is sent harbinger," &c. See also Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii. 380; Comedy of Errors, III. ii. 12; Macbeth, I. iv. 46; and V. vi. 10; Hamlet, I. i. 122. Hawkins' Life of Bishop Ken: "On the removal of the court to pass the summer at Winchester, Bishop Ken's house, which he held in the right of his prebend, was marked by the harbinger for the use of Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn," &c. (Apud Halliwell.) For the form of the word, as messenger from message, scavenger from scavage, porringer from porridge, so herbinger from harb'rage; see Wedgewood. In the Ayenbite of Inwit there is the form herberyeres for innkeepers, = harbourers. In Chaucer's Man of Lawes Tale herbergeour = harbinger: "The fame anon throughout the toun is born, How Alla King shal com on pilgrimage, For harbourage, see King John, II. i. 234. In Pericles, I. iv. 100, “harbourage" is asked for "ourself, our ships." Harbour radically = a shelter for a host. 7. 50. See Collins' Ode to Peace: 52. strikes = "O thou, who bad'st thy turtles bear And sought'st thy native skies; When War, by vultures drawn from far, And bade his storms arise," &c. produces with a stroke, i.e. instantaneously. So Dryden : "Take my Caduceus: With this th' infernal ghosts I can command, And strike a terror through the Stygian strand." So Richard III. V. iii. ; 1 Henry VI. II. iii. Such, no doubt, is the force of the word here. Otherwise, one might comp. the Lat. fœdus ferire, &c. About the time of the birth of Christ the Temple of Janus was shut; i.e. there was peace in the Roman empire. See Merivale's Romans under the Empire, iii. 401, smaller Ed. 8. 56. the hooked chariot = covinus, variously described or referred to as falcifer, falcatus, rostratus. Comp. Spenser's Faerie Queene, V. viii. 28. It is said to have been a Keltic invention. The Romans adopted it, with certain natural changes, for their domestic use. Their covinus seems to have resembled our cabriolet. See Martial's enthusiastic apostrophe to it (xii. 24), &c. It is curious that so many Roman carriage-names are Keltic. Essedum, petorritum, rheda, are all so. 58. Comp. in Ovid's adjuration to Peace (Fast. i. 716): “And let the wild trumpet sound no signal-blast save for the festal train.' 59. awfull. So Richard II. III. iii. 76. It has its more usual sense in Taming of the Shrew, V. ii. 108; 2 Henry VI. V. i. 98, &c. Awless, in King John (I. i. 266), may have either an active or a passive meaning. 60. sovran. Old French, souverain. Our erroneous modern spelling has probably arisen from the popular tendency to force strange word-forms into, or at least into some proximity to, familiar ones. Comp. beaf-eater, sparrow-grass, sweetheart, island, Charles' Wain, lanthorn, emerods, colleague, could, gooseberry, liquorice, frontispiece, shamefaced, Jerusalem artichoke, cray-fish, country-danse, Bag-o'-nails (as an inn name), Goat and Compasses (ditto), Bull and Mouth (ditto), loadstone, Billy Ruffian (as a ship's name), &c. 64. whist hushed. So Spenser's Faerie Queene, VII. vii. 59. I. ii. 77-82: "Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands; Courtsied when you have and kissed, The wild waves whist, Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear." See Tempest, where Johnson takes whist to be a verb are silent; but it is probably a participle, as in our text, the phrase the wild waves whist standing in an adverbial relation to the predicate, just as thus done the tales in L'Allegro, l. 115. No doubt the word is originally a sort of interjection commanding silence. Comp. the Latin st, Italian zitto, French chut. So our hush, hist, &c. Then whist is used as a verb to say whist-i.e. to silence. It is also "They whisted all, with fixed face intent." Comp. hush. Whisper is from the same root. There is a provincial form whister = whisper. (Halliwell.) Then we have whist for the name of a game at cards, where the players are supposed to keep silence (it was frequently called whisk); whist, as an adjective, as in Euphues and his England: "So that now all her enimies are as whist as the bird attagen," &c. (H. & W.'s Nares.) The forms whish and whisht are also found. = 8. 68. birds of calm halcyons. See the story of Alcyone, told by Ovid, one of Milton's favourite authors, in Metam. xi. There was an ancient belief, that during the seven days preceding and the seven succeeding the shortest day of the year, at which time the alcyon was breeding, a great tranquillity prevailed at sea. When it "sat brooding," the "wave was charmed." Frequent allusions to this belief occur in the Classics, as in Aristophanes' Birds and his Frogs, in Theocritus, &c. &c. The Greeks spoke of "alcyon days (αλκυονίδες nuépa); the Latins, of Alcedonia, the halcyon time, alcedo being the old Latin name for the bird. Thus the Prologue-speaker of Plautus' play, the Casina: "There is a calm. All about the forum [= pretty much our "the City "] 'tis halcyon-tide;" i.e. there is no bustling and tumult. See "halcyon beaks" in Lear, II. ii. 84; "halcyon days," 1 Hen. VI. I. ii. 131. 70. stedfast. Fast, in the form fæst, is an Anglo-Saxon word, denoting firm. Soothfast = firm in truth, &c. In the modern editions of our Bible translation shamefast is corrupted into shamefaced, and shamefastness into shamefacedness. Rootfast has become obsolete. 71. influence. Here used in its original sense of the rays, or glances, or aspects, flowing from the stars to the earth. These aspects were believed to have a great mysterious power over the fortunes of men; and hence influence came to have its modern meaning. "The astrologers," says Bacon (Essay ix.), "call the evill influences of the starrs evil aspects." Job xxxviii. 31: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?' Paradise Lost, ii. 1034: Measure for Measure, III. i.: "the skiey influences." King Lear, I. ii. 135: "planetary influence." Comp. L'Allegro, l. 122. Other astrological terms still surviving are "ill-starred," disastrous," 'ascendency," "lord of the ascendant," "jovial," "saturnine," "mercurial." (See Trench's Study of Words.) See what Gloucester and Edmund respectively say of the old faith, in King Lear, I. ii.; and this verse in Fletcher's lines Upon an Honest Man's Fortune (quoted in Bible Word-Book): "Man is his own star, and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man So also Paradise Lost, x. 659. Fuller's Scripture Observations, xviii. 73. for = in spite of, notwithstanding. So frequently, as in Davies (apud Johnson): "But as Noah's pigeon, which return'd no more, Did show she footing found for all the flood," &c. Probably the full phrase would be "for all the flood, or the morning light, or &c. &c could do." Certainly, the all does not qualify "the flood," or "the morning light," or &c. 74. often. As if Lucifer gave several separate admonitions, instead of, by his very appearance, one long one. 8. 75. Comp. Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii. 61: "Venus in her glimmering sphere." 76. bespake = spake. So Lycid. 112; Paradise Lost, i. 43. Sometimes the prefix be has its transitive-making force, as e.g. when Dryden writes: "Then staring on her with a ghastly look Paradise Lost, ii. 849: "No less rejoiced ( His mother bad, and thus bespake her sire.' omp. bewail, bemoan, &c. ii. 514 bid. The weak preterite is here preferred to the strong form. So Paradise Lost, The form bidde occurs in The Vision of Piers Ploughman. In the case of the preterite of bite the weak form has with us altogether superseded the strong form. In Piers Ploughman we have boot, Ed. Wright, l. 2642: "That he boot hise lippes." In that same poem both the forms sitte and sat are found. 77. Comp. Spenser's Shep. Cal. April. 78. her may refer either to shady gloom, i.e. night, or to day. 79. withheld. Comp. withdraw. 81. as. So commonly in modern English we should say as if; but in older English, when the force of the subjunctive was livelier, the if was not needed. 84. axle-tree. Comp. Comus, 95-7. Tree in Old English dore-tree door-post, Piers Ploughman, roof-tree, &c. wood, beam, &c. So Lawn seems to denote So launde in Piers 9. 85. lawn = pasture; commonly any open grassy space. radically a clear or cleared space, where the view is unobstructed. Ploughman. Comp. lane, an opening, a passage between houses or fields (see Wedgewood). Comp. Paradise Lost, iv. 252, where the groves of Eden are described : Pope: "Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks "Interspersed in lawns and opening glades, Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades." With the sense here, comp. L'Allegro, l. 71. 86. or ere= before ever. See Daniel vi. 24; Hamlet, I. ii. 147; Psalm xc. 2. From the same root as or come our ere, erst, early. Or is common enough in Old English, as in Mirror for Magistrates: "And, or I wist, when I was come to land." As for This same form occurs in Tempest, I. ii. 11; King John, IV. iii. 20 (Ed. 1623), &c. in or ere, it probably stands for ever: it increases the force of the adverbial clause of time in which it appears; thus in King Lear, II. iv. : ere, "I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Or ere I'll weep: " |