Flounce is but another form of frounce. In the Romaunt of the Rose, 860, we have her forehead frounceles." 20. 124. Attick boy = Cephalus. See Ovid's Metam. vii. 701-4. 125. cherchef't = kerchiefed. The ker = cur, in curfew. See Merry Wives of Windsor, III. iii. 62: "A plain kerchief, Sir John; my brows become nothing else." 127. usher'd. See Paradise Lost, iv. 355. 128. [What part of the sentence is his fill?] = 132. flaring strictly, fluttering. Comp. German flackern. Comp. flaunt. "In shadier bower, More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, Com. 268. Virg. Georg. ii. 493: "Fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestes, Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores." shadows brown. See Pope apud Johnson: "From whence high Ithaca o'erlooks the floods, 135. monumental oake. (Faerie Queene, I. i. 8), calls it Chaucer (Assembly of Fowles, 175), and Spenser after him "the builder oak." 21. 136. with heaved stroke. See v. 121. 140. profaner = somewhat, or at all profane ; = profan-ish, if there were such a word. Such is frequently the force in Latin also of what is called the comparative degree: thus senior somewhat old, elderly, &c. 141. gareish. See Romeo and Juliet, III. ii. 25: "the garish sun." Lilly, Drayton, and others use the word in a good sense. (See Halliwell.) There is an old English verb gare, "It is a favourite word with Drayton." (Todd.) to stare. 142. See the description of the sleep-enticements in the palace of Morpheus, Faerie Queene, I. i. 41. Amongst these there is a "Murmuring winde, much like the sowne Of swarming bees." See Virg. Ecl. i. 56. Comp. Paradise Regained, iv. 247. 144. sing. This verb has a very comprehensive force. Comp. Shaksp. Rich. II. II. 253: "We hear this fearful tempest sing." 145. consort. See Hymn Nat. 132. [Who are they?] 146. Comp. Ovid, a favourite author with Milton, Metam. xi. 602-4: "Saxo tamen exit ab imo Rivus aquæ Lethes, per quem cum murmure labens dewy-feather'd. For dewy comp. Shakspere's "golden dew of sleep" (Richard III. IV. i. 84), 'the honey-heavy dew of slumber" (Julius Cæsar, II. i. 230), &c. Explain this metaphor. For feathered, comp. Virgil's "volucris somnus," Æn. ii. 794, vi. 702. Ovid (Met. The details scarcely suit King's College Chapel. Milton was one of the latest true lovers of Gothic architecture when the taste for it was declining, as Gray was one of the earliest when the taste was reviving. 21. 157. Comp. a once widely popular passage of Congreve's Mourning Bride: 158. massy. "How reverend is the face of this tall Pile, Whose ancient Pillars rear their marble heads By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable, Milton and Shakspere do not use the form massive. proof, i.e. proof against (= able to bear) the enormous weight of the roof. Comp. Coriolanus, I. iv. 25, "with hearts more proof than shields." Sometimes with an adverb or adjective so used, as in Samson Agonistes, 134, of "a frock of mail," "adamantean proof;" with which compare Paradise Regained, iv. 533: Some editors read in the text massy-proof. More commonly, that against which what is spoken of is proof is mentioned, as "shame-proof," Love's Labour Lost, V. ii. 513; starproof," Arcad. 88: see also Paradise Lost, ix. 298; x. 882, &c. 159. storied. See Com. 516; Shakespere, Cymb. I. iv. 36. dight. See L'Allegro, 62. 160. [What is meant by religious here?] Collins borrows the word in his Ode to Evening. He speaks of evening's "religious gleams." 161. the pealing organ. See Paradise Lost, i. 708-9; xi. 560; Hymn Nat. 130. 163. anthems. This word radically is identical with antiphons = amœbean or alternate chanting. 168. the. The article is here used generically, as in v. 156, as in our phrase "he went to the university." Hermits and hermitages are perpetually mentioned in the old romances. See te D'Arthur (Globe Ed.), p. 423, &c.; Faerie Queene, &c. do, subjunctive. So above, 11. 44 and 122. In L'Allegro, 44, there is the indicative. e autumn of 1637, and published at Cambridge in the following oriam poems, some in Latin, some in Greek, some in English, rsity. It would seem, from the opening lines, that Milton write no more poetry for the present-to write no more do so; but "bitter constraint and sad occasion dear" ably, the last piece he had produced was Comus, in 1634 cidas was one King, a fellow-collegian and an poet (only Latin pieces by him are extant). 19. 59. dragon yoke. Night's, not the Moon's, dragons are often spoken of, as in Shakspere, Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii. 379: “Night's swift dragons." Troilus and Cressida, V. viii. 17: "The dragon wing of night." Cymbeline, II. ii. 48: "Yon dragons of the night." By the Latin poets Ceres is described as dragon-drawn: see Ovid, Fast. iv. 497: "frenatos curribus angues jungit ;" and 561: "inque dracones transit." Not only here does Milton give the moon dragons; see in his Silvarum Liber the lines, In obitum præsulis Eliensis, 1. 56: "Vidi triformem dum coercebat suos Ovid speaks of the moon's snow-white horses (Fast. i. 374). 60. th' accustom'd oke. The article seems to show that the poet has in his mind some particular landscape. 61. noise. See note, Hymn Nat. 97. 63. chauntress. Wotton calls birds "yon curious chanters of the wood." Comp. Chanticleer. 64. eeven-song. Comp. the cock's matin, L'Allegro, 114. 65. unseen. Contrast L'Allegro, 57. 66. smooth-shaven green. "" Comp. 'short-grass'd green," Shakspere's Tempest, IV. i. 83. Shakspere uses both participial forms: shaved in 1 Henry IV. III. iii. 68; shaven in Much Ado about Nothing, III. iii. 145. 67. the wandring moon. Comp. Shelley's "Art thou pale for weariness," &c. 68. neer her highest noon = nearly full. Or perhaps rather in the middle of the night— that is, of the moonlit hours of the night; near her highest point of ascension. 73. plat is a various form of plot. = strictly, fire-cover. We still speak of a “ grass plat." Comp. flat, plat form, plate. 74. curfeu See Bacon apud Johnson: "But now for pans, pots, curfews, counters, and the like, the beauty will not be so much respected so as the compound stuff is like to pass." It was commonly used for the fire-cover bell-i.e. the bell at whose ringing all household fires were to be put out for the night, as in Tempest, V. i. 40; Lear, III. iv. 120. In Romeo and Juliet, IV. iv. 4, curfew bell is used generally for a bell. [What part of speech is sound here?] 75. over some shore and the wide piece of water it edges. wide-water'd. Our older writers often speak of "a water," meaning a lake or a river. See Morte D'Arthur. Tennyson has revived the phrase in his Morte D'Arthur: "On one side lay the ocean, and on one Milton here may be thinking of the Thames. 80. Comp. Paradise Lost, i. 62-4. 83. The belman present police system. bellman: = the watchman of a later time, down to the establishment of the Herrick in one of his poems blesses his friends in the character of a From noise of scare fires rest ye free, From murders benedicite ; From all mischances that may fright Mercie secure ye all and keep For other "bellman's verses," see Chambers' Book of Days, i. 496. = 19. 83. nightly during the night, not night by night See note on Hymn Nat. 179. 88. thrice great Hermes Hermes Trismegistus = the Egyptian Thot or Theut, with whom the Greek Hermes was identified. This Egyptian Hermes was held in great reverence by the Neo-Platonists: he was the Word (ó Móyos) incarnate; he was the source of Plato's knowledge, and of that of Pythagoras. Certain works ascribed to him (really written probably in the fourth century of our æra) were much pored over. The Hermetical Philosophy was so called after him. Probably Milton here is thinking of his Pamander, a work discussing the creation of the world, the deity, the human soul, &c. unsphear: so unthrone, Paradise Lost, ii. 231, &c. 90. See Plato's Phæd. passim. 91. forsook. See note, Hymn Nat. 98. 20. 93. Salamanders, sylphs, nymphs, and gnomes. See Rape of the Lock, 60-4. 95. consent. Compare Shakspere, 1 Henry VI. I. i. 2–4 : Hor. Od. II. xvii. 22. "Ye comets, scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto Henry's death." 96. with planet. There was a very general belief in astrology throughout the seventeenth century. Then lived Dee, Forman, Napier, Lilly, and others of like pretensions. See Shakspere, passim; Butler's Hudibras, &c. Dryden was a believer in the art. See Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature. 98. scepter'd pall = royal robe; scepter'd may answer to Horace's "honesta" (Ars Poet. 278). Or perhaps the phrase = with sceptre and with pall-i.e. two things are expressed as one, just as often one thing is expressed as two, which latter figure is called Hendiadys. The former figure is dúo d' évós. Comp. above, 1. 75. pall is called ξυστίς. the Latin palla. See Hor. Ars Poet. 8. The great tragedy robe was 99. Edipus and Pelops and their respective houses, and the various heroes who fought before Troy, formed the three most popular subject-matters of Attic Tragedy. 100. [What is meant by the epithet of divine applied to Troy ?] 101. It may be supposed that Milton has in his mind's eye Othello, King Lear, Hamlet. 102. buskind Latin cothurnatus. The Greek Kółoрvos, Latin cothurnus, was a boot with high heels designed to add to the stature, and so to the dignity, of the Tragic Actor. The comic soccus was a sort of slipper. Horace uses these words to represent the dramas to which they respectively belonged; as in Ars Poetica, 80: "Hunc socci cepere pedem grandesque cothurni." i.e. both comedy and tragedy adopted the iamb. See Ib. 280, 1 Sat. I. v. 64. 104. from his bower. Comp. "the Muses' bower" in Sonnet III. The cothurnus Hence "silver 109. Chaucer's Squire's Tale breaks off in the middle. Spenser continues and finishes the story in his own style in Faerie Queene, IV. ii. and iii. It was also finished by one John Lane, a friend of Milton's father; of which version there are MS. copies in the British and in the Ashmolean Museums. (See Masson's Life of Milton, p. 42.) This tale, then, must have been particularly well known to Milton. Amongst the Canterbury Tales it is conspicuous for a certain Oriental richness of invention and of ornament. 110. Cambuscan. word = Cambus Khan. The accentuation of this word here is strange. Of course the to the middle syllable, e.g.;, This noble King was cleped Cambuscan." |