Longer English Poems

CANTO I.

39. 1. Comp. beginning of Pope's translation of the Iliad.

3. This verse, &c. See Introd.

89. 4. [What is the force of ev'n here? What part of speech is it ?]

5. Comp. Virg. Georg. iv. 6, 7.

6. [Would there be any difference in the sense if he had written inspires and approves ?]

8. Belle.

Beau (1. 23, &c.) is almost fallen out of use.

11. Comp. Hor. Od. II. xvi. 17.

12. Comp. Virg. Æn. i. 11.

13. Sol. The tendency to classical names and titles was beginning to be excessive in the early part of the eighteenth century. Phoebus, Titan, Sol, were superseding the simple sun; Chloe, Mary, &c. Cowper may be said to have commenced for us that deliverance from such classicism which Wordsworth completed.

14. must are ordained.

See Lycidas, 38.

15. lap-dogs. There are many references in our literature to these pets of the ladies, from Chaucer's Prologue (see the description of the Prioress) downwards.

[What is the force of the here ?]

16. [What part of speech is just here? How can he say they awake, if they were sleepless?]

17. It would seem that three rings of the bell with a tap on the floor were the signal that the sleeper had arisen.

rung. See note on blow, Hymn Nat. 130.

18. The watch was what we should call " a repeater."

19. prest. In the preceding line the past participle is spelt pressed.

20. Sylph. See Introd.

22. Comp. Il Penseroso, 147.

23. a Birth-night Beau, i. e. a fine gentleman, such as were to be seen at the state ball given on the anniversary of the royal birthday. See Satires of Dr. Donne versified, iv. 130:

"Mere household trash! of birthnights, balls, and shows
More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stowes,
When the Queen frown'd or smiled, he knows."

Spectator, No. 15: "A ball is a great help to discourse, and a birthnight furnishes conversation for a twelvemonth after.' See Spectator, No. 294, for Feb. 6 (Queen Anne's birthday). 27. He is parodying Paradise Lost, v. 35 et seq.

care. See note on sorrow, in Lycidas, 166.

40. 29. touch'd. Comp. Lat. tango; e.g. Hor. A. P. 98.

30. the Nurse, &c., the Priest, &c. This conjunction is not insignificant of the age Comp. Dryden's Hind and Panther, Part III. 1686:

"The priest continues what the nurse began,

And thus the child imposes on the man."

[What is the force of the here?]

31. Comp. Paradise Lost, i. 781-8.

[What is the force of by here ?]

32. the silver token. See Bishop Corbet's The Fairies' Farewell:

"And though they sweepe the hearths no lesse

Than maides were wont to doe,

Yet who of late for cleanlinesse

Findes sixpence in her shoe?"

and Poole's English Parnassus, of Queen Mab:

"But if so they chance to feast her,

In their shoe she drops a tester."

See Ellis's Brand's Pop. Ant., Notes to Fairy Mythology. Comp. the Story of the Pixics in Keightley's Fairy Mythology, p. 303 of Bohn's Edition.

40. 32. the circled green.

Panther, Part I. 212:

See Tennyson's Gardener's Daughter; Dryden's Hind and

"As where in fields the fairy rounds are seen,'

For many other allusions, see Ellis's Brand's Pop. Ant.

" &c.

33. See Chaucer's Secounde Nonnes Tale, 12,146, et seq. Ed. Wright.

36. narrow is used here "proleptically," or anticipatingly, as adjectives are often used in Latin and in Greek. So propitious in Canto ii.

[What is the force of bound here?]

37. He does not shrink from parodying the New Testament. See St. Matthew's Gospel, xi. 25.

40. [What does still mean here ?]

42. Militia. There was scarcely yet that sharp antithesis between the militia" and the army" which prevailed afterwards. The idea of "a standing army" was scarcely yet altogether accepted by the nation. The first "Mutiny Act" was passed in 1689.

44. the Box: i.e. at the opera. See below.

the Ring our "Row." See below, and Spectator, No. 15: "She thinks life lost in her own family, and fancies herself out of the world when she is not in the Ring, the playhouse, or the drawing-room." See Swift's Cadenus and Vanessa:

&c. &c.

"To scandal next: 'What awkward thing

Was that last Sunday in the Ring?'"

46. See Dryden's Juvenal, 1st Sat. 184:

"Some beg for absent persons, feign them sick,
Close-mew'd in their sedans for want of air,
And for their wives produce an empty chair."

47. "The poet here forsakes the Rosicrucian system, which in this part is too extravagant even for ludicrous poetry, and gives a beautiful fiction of his own on the Platonic Theology of the continuance of the Passions in another state, when the mind before its leaving this has not been well purged and purified by philosophy; which furnishes an occasion for much useful satire." (Warburton.)

55. See Virg. Æn. vi. 653-5. For the passion of the ladies for fine equipages see Tatler and Spectator, passim.

56. Ombre. See below.

41. 73. [What part of the sentence is safe?]

spark. Comp. "flame."

87. 'Tis these.

Prop. IV. ix. 17, 18:

Comp. Greek eσTI o. So in Latin, but perhaps the instance is unique,

"Est quibus Eleæ concurrit palma quadrigæ ;

Est quibus in celeres gloria nata pedes."

Dr. Johnson, in his Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language, 1747, quotes this line as erroneous in syntax, to illustrate the unsettled, ill-regulated state of our language; but his objection would not seem well-founded. Comp. the Greek idiom. 'Tis here, as often, is used in a purely rhetorical manner; 'tis these that is but a more emphatic form of these. In such uses 'tis and 'twas do not necessarily require numerical inflexion. They serve just to introduce the subject of the sentence; they need not vary in form according to the number of that subject.

94. [What does impertinence mean here? What is its etymological meaning?]

96. [What is meant by treat?] See below, and Prior to Swift: "I have treated Lady Harriot at Cambridge, (a Fellow of a College treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and cap," &c.

41. 100. They keep re-arranging the affections, so to speak.

Comp. Addison :

"Fans, silks, ribbands, laces, and gewgaws lay so thick together,

that the heart was nothing else but a toyshop."

[What is the sense of moving here ?]

101. Warburton quotes from Statius:

66 Jam clypeus clypeis, umbone repellitur umbo,

Ense minax ensis, pede pes, et cuspide cuspis."

102. Beau had been so completely adopted that it formed its plural according to the English rule. In Warburton's edition the French plural appears.

drive: i.e. drive out, expel.

105. [What is meant by thy protection claim? What other meaning might the words have, not here, but with another context?]

108. The language of the Platonists, the writers of the intelligible world of spirits," &c. (Pope.)

110. We should rather say "this morning's sun.”

112. [What is meant here by pious? What other meaning has the word ?]

113. all thy guardian can = all that is in thy guardian's power. Comp. Dryden apud Johnson :

"Mæcenas and Agrippa, who can most
With Cæsar, are his foes."

"The Rosicrucian doctrine was delivered only to Adepts, with the utmost caution, and under the most solemn injunctions of secrecy." (Warburton.)

42. 115. Shock. "A rough-coated dog." (Halliwell's Dict.) "Shoughs" are mentioned as a species of dog in Macbeth, III. i. 94. "I would fain know," writes Locke, "why a shock and a hound are not distinct species." (Shakspere, 2 Henry VI. III. i. 367.)

The word is cognate with shaggy, shag-haired.

[What difference would our modern usage make in this line?]

121. Toilet is strictly the cloth covering the dressing-table; a diminutive of French toile. 128. Pride. Comp. Piers Ploughman, Prol. 23:

"And some putten hem to pruyde; apparailed hem thereafter

In contenaunce of clothing comen disguised."

So in R. Brunne's Handlyng Synne, of Pride, amongst the Seven deadly Sins (Ed. Furnivall, for the Roxburgh Club).

131. [What is meant by nicely?]

138. See Vicar of Wakefield, chap. iv.

See Spectator, No. 478; Prior's Hans Carvel:

"An untouch'd Bible grac'd her toilet;

No fear that hand of hers should spoil it."

146. set = adjust, arrange.

See Swift's Cadenus and Vanessa: 'Dear madam, let me set your head."

CANTO II.

152. [What does Lanch'd mean here? what is its strict meaning?]

the silver Thames. See Spenser's Proth. 11.

43. 161. [What is meant by strike?]

43. 167. to. Comp. Psalm xv. 4; 2 Kings xiv. 10, &c.
173. sprindges. See Hamlet, V. ii. 317:

"As a woodcock to my own springe, Osrick,
I'm justly killed with mine own treachery."

175. insnare = ensnare. So inquire, enquire, &c. Some persons pronounce as "ingine."

Disraeli, in the Curiosities of Literature (in his chapter on "Poetical Imitations and Similarities"), more aptly, from Howell: "'Tis a powerful sex: they were too strong for the first, the strongest and wisest man that was; they must needs be strong when one hair of a woman can draw more than an hundred pair of oxen." Howell would seem to be referring to some older proverb or phrase.

186. twelve vast French Romances the works of Calprenede, Mad. Scuderi, La Fayette, and others: e.g. Cleopatra, Le Grand Cyrus, Clelie, Zayde, &c. &c. Pope may well call them " vast; " e.g. Clelie appeared in ten volumes of 800 pages each. The English translations were published in huge folios. See especially Spectator, No. 37.

193. See Virg. Æn. i. 794-5.

196. tydes. Comp. Dryden:

"But let not all the gold which Tagus hides,

And pays the sea in tributary tides," &c.

[What is meant by floating?]

44. 197. melting music. Comp. Il Penseroso, 165.

203. Denizens. The old French deinzein (from deins, Latin de intus), means properly one who dwells within, i.e. within the city, or who enjoys its franchise; then generally an inhabitant; then specially a naturalized citizen. Here his Denizens his fellow-inhabitants. 205. [What are the shrouds of a ship?] For other meanings of shrouds see note to

Hymn Nat. 218.

207. [What is the force of insect here ?]

See Paradise Lost, vii. 476-9.

208. waft: here in a middle sense. So wave in Il Penseroso, 148.

in clouds of gold. This use of cloud is common enough: e.g. see Paradise Lost, a pitchy cloud of locusts," &c. For gold see Paradise Lost, i. 483. Comp. "gilded butterfly" (King Lear, V. iii. 12; Coriolanus, I. ii. 65, &c.).

340:

210. [What part of speech is half here?]

211. to the wind. See Lycid. 13.

212. filmy. Properly film means a thin skin or pellicle. See Paradise Lost, xi. 412. It is used for a very slender thread: Queen Mab's "lash" was of film. (Romeo and Juliet, I. iv. 63.) Here filmy dew seems to mean the film-like moisture that covers leaves, &c. glittring textures. Milton's " glittering tissues" (Paradise Lost, v. 592). Tissue

and texture are radically identical.

213. dipt-tincture. See Paradise Lost, v. 283 and 285.

218. Superior by the head. See Hom. I. iii. 168:

So Ibid. 193, 227.

221. Sylphs and Sylphids. The feminine form sylphid is formed after the analogy of Achæid or Achæad (Iliad, v. 424), Troad, &c. Comp. Hom. Il.:

“Αχαΐδες, οὐκέτ' Αχαιοι.”

294

(Comp. Virg. Æn. ix. 616.) This id or ad is also the Greek feminine patronymic sign. Comp Nereus and Nereid, &c. (The masculine is ida. Comp. Atreus and Atreides, &c.) This same termination is also specially used to denote a poem or work on some subject specified in the first part of the word: thus Thebaid = poem on Thebes; Æneid = poem on Æneas; Iliad poem on Ilium. (Iliad: a Trojan woman in Æn. i. 480, &c.)

44. 221. This is a parody of Paradise Lost, v. 600:

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