NOTES. Psalms cxiv, cxxxvi. THE Commentators have perceived, in certain epithets and rhymes in these translations, traces of the author's early study of Sylvester's translation of the Divine Works and Weeks' of Du Bartas-a poetical sacred history of the world. This book was very popular in Milton's school-days, and retained its reputation until Dryden, recalling his juvenile admiration of its laboured conceits, pronounced it to be abominable fustian,' and it was consigned to contempt or oblivion. Wordsworth asks: Who now reads the 'Creation' of Du Bartas? Yet all Europe once resounded with his praises; he was caressed by Kings; and when his poem was translated into our language, the Faery Queene faded before it.' Of the expressions supposed to have been taken from its pages to adorn these paraphrased Psalms, some might well have had another and an earlier source: e. g. 'golden-tressed' is used by Chaucer in his Troilus and Creseide (v. 9), and a similar phrase occurs in the opening speech of Henry VI. Part I. The horned moon' has been noted as Spenserian, but it probably owes its place in the clowns' play in the Midsummer Night's Dream to its already hackneyed use. 1. 1. Gen. xi. 27. Psalm cxiv. 1. 3. Pharian fields;-Egypt. Pharos, an island on the Egyptian coast of the Mediterranean, was famous for the lighthouse built thereon by Ptolemy II. 1. 15. agast;-agazed, frightened, as in 1 Henry VI. i. 1, All the whole army stood agaz'd on him.' See Morris' Specimens, 413; and Glossary to Faery Queene, Bk. I. in this series. See also Glossary to Faery Queene, Bk. II. under V (prefix). Psalm cxxxvi. 1. 5. blaze (contracted from blazon, the heraldic term), proclaim. 1. 26. Erythræan main; - the Red Sea, included by Herodotus in the sea Erythra. The Red Sea is supposed to have derived its name from the masses of coral therein, but is called in Hebrew 'the weedy' (Exod. x. 19). See note on Paradise Lost, i. 306. 1. 34. prowess;- bravery, from the French adjective preux, and that again from Lat. probus or probatus (sc. multis praeliis). Preux chevalier' was Bayard's appellation. Milton, like Spenser, uses prowest (Paradise Regained, iii. 342). Cf. Glossary to Chaucer, Prow. On the Death of a Fair Infant. This poem was first printed in ed. 1673. 1. 1. Cf. Shakespeare, Passionate Pilgrim, 'Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluckt, soon vaded.' 1. 2. timeless;-untimely. So 'knightless'=unknightly (Faery Queene, VI. ii. 14). 'Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.' 5. amorous on; = (Romeo and Juliet, v. 3.) The affix -less has nothing to do with the adjective less, but is derived from lôs, destitute of, Lat. expers. (Latham, English Language, 468.) Keightley considers this construction more correct than amorous of,' and cites My brother is amorous on Hero' (Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 1). The idea is parallel to the supposition of Romeo that Unsubstantial death is amorous.' (Romeo and Juliet, v. 3.) 1.6. In Shakespeare's poem, Venus says of the boar that killed Adonis, He thought to kiss him.' envermeil ;-tinge with vermilion. The story is 1. 8. Boreas (whose Latin name was Aquilo), the north-wind, carried off to Thrace Orithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens. told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, vi. 677, &c. 1. 12. Cf. Comus 424. Spenser also accentuates infámous (Faery Queene, III. vi. 13), agreeably to the quantity of the second syllable. 1. 13. Pluto is said by Claudian to have carried off Proserpine from the same motive. 1. 16. Cf. Paradise Lost, i. 516. 1. 18. quest;—search (from Lat. quaerere). The word is specially applied to the mission of a knight in romance (Faery Queene, III. vii. 53). 1. 23. unweeting;-unwitting, from witan, to know. Cf. Samson Agonistes, 1680. 1. 25. Eurotas;-a river in Laconia. Hyacinth was the son of a king of Sparta. He was accidentally slain by Apollo with a quoit. The 'purple flower inscribed with woe' (Lycidas 106), is that which bears his name. On its leaves are certain marks, said to be AI, AI, (alas !) or Y the Greek initial of Hyacinth. 1. 31. wormy bed is used by Shakespeare (Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2, Puck's speech). 1. 39. Cf. Paradise Lost, iii. 483; and see note on Arcades 69. 1. 41. say;-for tell.' Spenser (Faery Queene, VI. vii. 50) defers an intended narrative Till Mirabella's fortunes I do further say.' 1. 44. shak'd;- used before and in Milton's time. Shakespeare (Cymbeline, ii. I; Troilus and Cressida, i. 3). It is found in 1. 45. true beboof;-true interest, from A.S. bebofath, oportet, interest. It is thus used in 2 Henry VI. iv. 7, Lord Say's speech. 1. 47. The Titans were earth's sons.' But their contest with Zeus was often confounded (as here) with the attack of the giants on Olympus, the seat of the gods. 1. 48. sheeny; — bright. Spenser uses sheen also as an adjective, but Shakespeare only as a substantive, spangled starlight sheen' (Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1); and Milton observes the same use (Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, 1. 73). 1. 49. Cf. Lycidas 175. 1. 50. Astraea, who quitted the earth when the golden age had ended. 1. 53. The line being defective, Mercy' has been conjecturally supplied in most editions. Truth, Justice, and Mercy are associated in the fifteenth stanza of the Nativity Hymn. 57. Cf. Il Penseroso 52; Comus 214. 1. 59. Cf. Sonnet xv. l. 13. 'While we are now 1. 68. The plague was then raging in London. speaking,' said a Member of Parliament, the bell is tolling every minute.' The Houses were adjourned to Oxford in consequence. 1. 75. render is here used in its primary sense of 'giving back.' Ben Jonson tells the parents of the Marchioness of Winchester that they 'Have paid again a blessing was but lent.' The stanzas of this ode are not of nine lines, as in Spenser, but of seven, as in Sackville's Mirror for Magistrates. They differ from the stanzas of that poem by ending with an Alexandrine. Vacation Exercise. First printed in ed. 1673. 1. 14. daintest ;-from daint or dainty, used by Spenser (Faery Queene, II. xii. 2), and by Chaucer (see Glossary to Prologue). 1. 19. new-fangled;—a Shakespearian epithet (Love's Labour's Lost, i. 1 ; As You Like It, iv. 1). toy is defined (1 Henry VI. iv. 1) a thing of no regard.' 1. 20. take is used for charm,'' captivate,' in Tempest, v. I ( That must take the ear strangely'); in Ben Jonson's Epitaph on Shakespeare ('That did so take Eliza and our James'); and the hoot of Tennyson's Owl that took Echo with delight.' 'Lisping affected fantasticoes' are denounced by Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4); Todd thinks the fantastics meant are Lyly (author of Euphues), Gabriel Harvey (friend of Spenser), and their followers. But it is more probable that Milton here glanced at his own college acquaintance, of whom he had already spoken (in College Exercises i. Masson's translation), as 'priding themselves on a certain overboiling, and truly laughable foam of words; from whom if you strip the rags that they have borrowed from new-fangled authors, how much barer than my nail would you behold them!' Cf. Nativity Ode 98, Comus 256, 558. 1. 21. attire here = head-dress (Keightley). But tire seems to have been used in that sense, and attire for the rest of the costume. 'Attired in a robe of white' (Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4). 1. 22. spirit;-continually used as a monosyllable by Milton. Spenser has spright as the shortened form. 1. 29. The earliest indication we possess of Milton's deliberation in the selection of a subject. 1. 31. coffers;-here used for the chests in which apparel was kept. 1. 33. deep-for 'high''—as Latin altus has both meanings. Cf. the lines in Milton's Spring Elegy (Hayley's translation): 'I mount, and, undepressed by cumbrous clay, 1. 36. Thunderous is used by Milton (Paradise Lost, x. 702); but Thunderer's throne' has been proposed. 1. 37. unsborn is the classic epithet of Apollo in Horace (Odes, i. 21. 2), and Pindar (Pyth. Od. iii. 26). 1. 38. Cf. Solemn Music 18. 1. 40. Cf. Ode on the Nativity, 21. This passage resembles that in Du Bartas, in which the soul is represented as soaring into the airy regions where she 'learns to know Th' originals of wind, and hail, and snow, 1. 42. piled thunder;-referring to the thunderbolts. Cf. Othello's speech (v. 2), Are there no stones in heaven, but what serve for the thunder?' 1. 43. green-eyed. This is a translation of the adjective yλavkós (glaucus), used in Homer of the eyes of Athena, and in Virgil (Georgics, iv. 451) of those of Proteus. From its application to the sea, its primary meaning of glistening, gleaming seems to have been subordinated in Milton's mind to the conventional colour of the sea, green. But it is employed in classical writers to express light grey or blue. (Vide Liddell and Scott, Lexicon.) 1. 46. beldam. Nares says that this word is used in Spenser in the sense of 'belle dame,' but gives no reference. Todd remarks that it here implies great age, being used by old writers for grandmother.' 1. 48. Demodocus, bard of Alcinous, song Ulysses wept (Odyssey viii. 521). king of the Phaeacians, at whose 1. 58. In the Aristotelian logic, Ens or Being is regarded as containing everything that is, while of everything one or more of what are termed predicaments might be asserted, and nothing else. They are ten in number; Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Time, Place, Position, Possession, Action, Passion. They were all represented in various forms and habits on the occasion for which Milton wrote these verses. The following address of Ens is, as Warton says, 'a very ingenious enigma on substance.' (Keightley.) 1. 66. The substance, being a mere abstraction, is of course invisible. 1. 69. Sibyla prophetess. According to old derivation Aids Bovλý. Doric Zids Bóλλa, she that tells the will of Zeus. 1. 71. This was the property of the virtuous glass (Il Penseroso 113) in the Squire's Tale of Chaucer. 1. 74. The substance stands under, underlies the accidents. It is the invisible ground of the visible phenomena. No dispute can touch it; all disputes must be about them.' Yet one of the greatest disputes the world had seen was whether or not the invisible and imperceptible substance underlying bread and wine could be exchanged for another substance (also invisible and imperceptible) by the formula of consecration, the accidents, the visible phenomena, remaining unaltered. 1. 88. His accidents, inconsistent with each other. 1. 90. The assembled Phrygians were told by an oracle that a waggon should bring them a king. Immediately after, the peasant Gordius appeared, riding in his waggon. Having been chosen king, Gordius dedicated his wain to Zeus, and foretold that whoever could unloose the knot by which the pole was fastened to the yoke, should be ruler of Asia. Alexander, on his march against Darius, came to Gordium, and cut the knot to fulfil the prophecy. 1. 91. This enumeration of the rivers is based on Spenser's Faery Queene, IV. xi, and Drayton's Polyolbion. A writer in the Saturday Review (vol. vii. p. 130) suggests that the part of Relation was performed by a youth named Rivers, thus accounting for the singular invocation whether thou be.' 6 1. 93. The thirty floods of name' are mentioned by Drayton, Polyolbion 28. 1. 95. At Mickleham, Surrey, this river 'Like a nousling mole doth make His way still underground till Thames he overtake.' (Spenser.) 1. 96. Sabrina. Cf. Comus 824 et seqq. 1. 98. Cf. Lycidas 55. 'Dee that long agone, Did Britons call divine.' (Faery Queene, IV. xi. 39.) 'Hallowed Dee' is Drayton's epithet. 1. 99. Humber, in Polyolbion, asserts that his name was derived from that eastern king, Humber, King of Huns, once drowned in him. Spenser mentions six knights, six Yorkshire rivers, All whom a Scythian king that Humber hight (Faery Queene, IV, xi. 37.) Milton, in his History of England, relates that Humber having invaded the territory of Locrine, King of Logria (the middle part of Britain), was by him defeated, and was 'in a river drowned, which to this day bears his name.' 1. 100. See note on Arcades 21, quotation from Spenser. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. 1. 6. forfeit;-foris facere extraneum facere, to misdo. (Fr. forfait, perhaps from forisen.) All this suffered our Lord Jesus Christ that never forfeited,' i. e. did amiss. (Persones Tale.) In Lord Berners' Translation of Froissart, forfeit is used for harm, a country that never did us forfeit.' It here signifies the penalty of misdoing, as when the Duke (Measure for Measure, v. 1) says to Lucio, 6 Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal 1. 10. wont (from A.S. wunian, to dwell, thence to do habitually) here= 'used,' 'was wont.' Spenser has his strange weapon, never wont in war,' i. e. used (Faery Queene, V. iv. 44). 1. 15. strain; from A.S. strangian, to be strong, to stretch, to strain the voice to a pitch. 1 |