Longer English Poems

15. 78. [What is the exact meaning of boosom'd here, and of tufted?] See Paradise Lost, v. 127, and Com. 225.

79. lies dwells, as very commonly in Old English. See 1 Henry VI. II. ii. 41 ; Othello, III. iv. 1, &c.

16. 8o. cynosure.

Com. 341:

See Class. Dict. Ovid, Fast. iii. 107.
"And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,
Or Tyrian Cynosure."

Comp. "lode-star" in Midsummer Night's Dream, I. i. 183.

81. hard by. "The idea is from hard substances being usually compact, close in texture." (Bible Word-Book.) Compare close by, fast by.

85. messes.

See Gen. xliii. 34; 2 Sam. xi. 8. Comp. Virg. Ecl. ii. 10.

86. neat-handed. "He uses neat-fingered of a cook in Animadversions.” (Mr. Keightley.)

87. bowre. See note, Prothal. 15.

90. This line may be connected immediately with lead, in which case must be understood "She goes there," or something of that sort; or, better, it may be loosely connected with her bowre she leaves, which phrase conveys the notion of going: i.e. her bowre she leaves is used zeugmatically.

91. [What are the derivation, the first meaning, the classical use, of secure?] 92. upland hamlets, opp. to towred cities, v. 117. Upland country as opp. to town. Strictly it means "highland," Germ. oberland, and derives that other force from the fact that large towns belong to the plains. A third meaning naturally is rude, illiterate, unrefined, savage. See Trevisa's Higden's Polych. apud Mr. Morris's Spec. Early Eng. : "Uplondysche men wol lykne hamsylf to gentile man," &c. Gray in his Elegy seems to use the word loosely for "on the higher ground." Perhaps he took it from Milton without quite understanding in what sense Milton used it. So Johnson says, that it means here "higher in situation." So Mr. Keightley, &c.

94. rebecks. "Hugh Rebeck" is one of the musicians in Romeo and Juliet, IV. v. 135It was an instrument of music having catgut strings, and played with a bow; but originally with only two strings, then with three, till it was exalted into the more perfect violin with four strings." (Nares.) See Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time.

96. Comp. Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 15.

97. [What part of the verb is com here?]

98. See Com. 959.

100. the spicy nut-brown ale Shakspere's "gossips' bowl" (Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 47), says Warton. This beverage consisted of "ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples; it was called Lamb's Wool. In Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess it is styled ' the spiced wassail-bowl.'"

to the, &c. Comp. v. 90.

102. fairy Mab. See Mercutio's description of her in Romeo and Juliet, I. iv. 54. See also Keightley's Fairy Mythology.

junkets, also written juncates, = sweetmeats, dainties. Cotgrave, in his definition of dragée, speaks of "jonkets, comfits, or sweetmeats, served in the last course for stomach closers.' any delicacy. See Taming of the Shrew, III. ii. 250. Faerie Queene,

V. iv. 49:

Then

"And beare with you both wine and juncates fit,

And bid him eate."

Comp. Ital. giuncata

cream-cheese. Then a feast, a merrymaking. So the verb. "Job's children," says South, apud Johnson, “junketed and feasted together often," &c. ; and "the Apostle would have no revelling or junketing." In Devonshire and Cornwall junkets is still in use, for curds and clouted cream.

15. 103. See Merry Wives of Windsor, V. v. 95:

"As you trip, still pinch him to your time."

According to the old ballad of Robin Goodfellow, servant-maids were only so pinched if they deserved it:

"When house or hearth doth sluttish lie,

I pinch the maids both black and blue,
And from the bed the bedcloths I

Pull off, and lay them nak'd to view."

See also Butler's Hudibras, III. i. 1413; and especially Ben Jonson's Entertaynment at Althorpe :

"When about the cream-bowles sweete," &c.

On the other hand, clean and tidy servants were rewarded. See Dryden's Fables, The Wife of Bath, her tale:

"The dairy maid expects no fairy guest

To skim the bowls, and after pay the feast;
She sighs and shakes her empty shoes in vain,
No silver penny to reward her pain."

On which Bell quotes from Bishop Corbett's ballad, The Faerye's Farewell:

"And though they sweepe theyr hearths no less

Than mayds were wont to doe,

Yet who of late for cleanliness

Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Compare particularly in Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i., the conversation between Fairy and Puck.

104. Two stories seem here run into one as regards the grammar: (1) the story of how Will o' the Wisp misled the swain; (2) the story of the servant spirit. Otherwise, if led is to be taken as a predicate, there is no subject to tells. But the confusion of the two stories is so awkward, that it is perhaps better to take led so. Milton might use tells" for "he tells,"

that is, might regard the pronoun as superfluous, as indeed it etymologically is (for the final s is the sign of the third person in the present tense), and in Latin and Greek is practically. In Par. Reg. i. 85 he uses am for I am. So dost is used for dost thou; so hast, didst, &c. The 1645 Edition reads:

"And by the Friar's lantern led."

"It was

Scott, in

friars lanthorn. According to Mr. Keightley, Milton is guilty here of confounding two very different beings, viz. Friar Rush and Jack o' the Lanthorn. probably the name Rush, which suggested rushlight, which caused Milton's error.' a note on Marmion, makes a like blunder: "Friar Rush, alias Will o' the Wisp." Friar Rush "haunted houses, not fields." "He is the Brüder Rausch of Germany, the Broder Ruus of Denmark." For Jack o' the Lanthorn (the Scotch Spunkie) see Comus, 432: Paradise Lost, ix. 634-42. This ignis fatuus was also called Meg with the Wad.

105. Comp. Butler's Hudibras, III. i. 1407:

"Thou art some paltry blackguard spright

Condemn'd to drudgery in the night," &c.

Burton's Anat. Mel. I. ii. 1, subsect. 1: "A bigger kind there is of them ["terrestrial devils"], called with us hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that would in those superstitiou

times grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any kind of drudgery work," &c. &c. Comp. Scotch "brownie." See Reginald Scott's Discoverie of Witchcrafte, IV. ch 10; Warner's Albion's England, ch. 91.

16. 105. [Swet. Explain this form of the pret.]

107. ere. See note, Hymn Nat. 86.

108. hath. The old Southern inflection survived in this word after it had for the most part disappeared from the written language. Milton does not use the form has.

In Grim, the Collier of Croydon, Robin Goodfellow "enters with a flail." 109. [What does end mean here?]

110. lies him down. So "sits him down," &c.

See above, line 25.

lubbar. See Fairy Myth. The fairy in Midsummer Night's Dream addresses Puck as "Thou lob of spirits," II. i. 16. In Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, III. i. : "There is a pretty tale of a witch that had a giant to be her son, that was called Lob Lie-bythe-fire." (Comp. stretch'd out all the chimney's length.") Connect with it loby, looby, lubbard, lubberkin, lob-cock, lob-coat.

III. chimney

fire-place. Comp. chimney-piece. So Shakspere, Cymbeline, II. iv. 80: "The chimney is south the chamber." The word comes to us through the French, from the Latin caminus. In the Turke and Gowin (Bishop Percy's MS. Fol. i. 98) it is used for a grate, a sort of huge brazier :

"Then there stood amongst them all

A chimney in the kinges hall

With barres mickle of pride;

Then was laid on in that stond
Coals and wood that cost a pound,
That upon it did abide."

113. crop-full. Specially, crop is the craw or first stomach of fowls.
114. See Paradise Lost, v. 7.

115. Thus don the tales.

I. ii. 379.

For grammatical construction compare Shakspere, Tempest,

116. [In what grammatical relation does this verse stand to creep?]

117. Milton himself showed this variety of taste. His residence at the "upland hamlet" of Horton was diversified by visits to the "towered city" of London.

then (not when the tales are over and the tellers in bed, but) = at some other time. He is not describing one long day, but the pleasures which one day or another might entertain L'Allegro.

120. weeds. This word was not confined to a widow's dress in the seventeenth century. See Shakspere, passim. The phrase "weeds of peace" occurs in Troilus and Cressida,

III. iii. 239.

triumphs:

"public shows or exhibitions, such as masques, pageants, processions. Lord Bacon, describing the parts of a palace, says of the different sides: The one for feasts and triumphs, and the other for dwelling. (Nares.) See Bacon's Essay on Masques and

Triumphs. Sams. Agon. 1312.

121. store. See Prothal. 1. 33.

339

122. influence. See note, Hymn Nat. 71.

17. 123. Probably the poet is here drawing from what he had read rather than from anything he had seen or heard. What the Tournaments were for "arms" in the old Romance days, that were the Parliaments of Love for "wit."

125. As a specimen of the marriage gaieties here referred to, see Ben Jonson's Hymenæi, or the Solemnities of Masque and Barriers at a Marriage. See also the last scene of As You Like It.

126. See Jonson's Hymen.: "Entered Hymen... in a saffron-coloured robe, his under

vestures white, his socks yellow, a yellow veil of silk on his left arm, his head crowned with roses and marjoram, in his right hand a torch of pine-tree."

17. 126. taper. See Hymn Nat. 202.

127. Pomp, &c. These were various forms of entertainment highly popular in the early part of the seventeenth century. They were all the rage at the court. Inigo Jones, Ben Jonson, and others, each in his way, assisted in the "getting-up" of them. The Queen of James I. delighted to take a part in them. See especially Jonson's Entertainments. See also Shakspere, Tempest, IV. i.; Henry VIII. I. iv. ; Romeo and Juliet, I. iv.; Winter's Tale, IV. iv. "The King," says Armado, in Love's Labour Lost, V. i. 117, "would have me present the princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antique, or firework." See also Milton's own Comus and Arcades.

Revelry. Revels was both a special and a generic term. In the general sense, “a master of the revels was appointed at the court in 1546." Todd quotes Minshen's definition of revels: " sports of dauncing, masking, comedies, tragedies, and such like, used in the king's house, the houses of court or of other great personages.'

128. See Warton's Hist. Eng. Poet. ii.

130. See Hymn Nat. 183.

132. Jonson, educated at Westminster School, and for a time at Cambridge, and much given to classical studies subsequently, was held in high esteem for his learning. He had attempted to introduce into the English drama the observance of the so-called unities, so great was his affection for the classical drama. His learning is not unfrequently so lavishly displayed as to render him liable to the charge of pedantry. At the time L'Allegro was written, he had outlived his popularity as a play-writer. His New Inn, brought out in 1630, was received with derision. But he was still the leading figure in the world of letters. He died in 1637. sock. Lat. soccus. Contrast "buskin'd stage," Il Pens. 102. "Or when thy socks were on occurs, as Warton notes, in Ben Jonson's recommendatory verses prefixed to the Shakspere Folio of 1623.

133. Gray writes in the same strain. See Progress of Poesy, 1. 84. The one recognised form of learning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the classical. Shakspere, having comparatively little of that, was regarded as altogether unlearned. He was "Fancy's child.' The romantic drama, of which he was the supreme master, differed much from that drama which the scholarship of Milton's day admired: it seemed lawless and rude. Hence "his native wood-notes wilde" are spoken of. At the same time, that Milton admired him profoundly appears from his Epitaph on the admirable dramatic poet William Shakspeare. See also what is said of Shakspere in the Theatrum Poetarum, by Milton's nephew, who was probably assisted by his uncle, 1675. See Pope's Imitat. of Horace's Ep. II. i.: "Not one but nods and talks of Jonson's art,

Of Shakespear's nature, and of Cowley's wit."

134. warble. See Hymn Nat. 97.

135. eating cares. Horace's "mordaces sollicitudines."

136. lap. "Lapt in proof," Macbeth, I. ii. 54, &c. Spenser, too, uses the word. Lydian aires. Of the three prevailing Greek "modes," or musical styles (the Lydian, the Phrygian, the Dorian), the Lydian was soft and voluptuous. See Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 1. 79. Spenser's Faerie Queene, III. i. 40:

"And all the while sweet Musicke did divide

Her looser notes with Lydian harmony."

137. Comp. Horace's "Verba loquor socianda chordis" (Od. IV. ix. 4).

141. [How would you explain the apparent contradiction between wanton and "heed," between "giddy" and "cunning?"]

17. 143. In every soul-indeed in all creation—there is harmony, but for the most part it lies imprisoned and bound, so that it cannot be heard. The sweetness of the music described in the text is to be such that it shall set free this prisoner, and make its voice audible. See Hooker's Eccles. Pol. v. 38: "Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument or voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstanding is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been hereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is, or hath in it, harmony." By "some" Hooker means Plato. See Phæd. cap. xxxviii. Merchant of Venice, V. i. 61:

"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony [i.e. a like harmony] is in immortal souls.

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it, we cannot hear it."

Books