1. 37. To keep state was a familiar phrase taken from the cloth of estate or canopy under which the throne was placed. This chair shall be my state' says Falstaff (1 Henry IV. ii. 4). Lady Macbeth, when queen, keeps her state at the banquet, remaining on the dais while her husband goes about among his guests to play the humble host (Macbeth iii. 4). The expression also occurs in the Chamberlain's speech (Henry VIII. i. 3). 1. 39. Herbert accentuates in the same manner:

'Surely if each one saw another's heart

There would be no commérce.'

1. 40. So in Macbeth i. 3:

Look how our partner's rapt.'

The word is used by old writers for 'ravished' in both its primary and secondary meanings.

1. 44. As firmly fixed on the earth as before on heaven.

1. 50. trim;-trimmed, as in L'Allegro 75.

1. 52. Cf. Fair Infant 57.

1. 59.

Cf. Fly swift, ye dragons of the night.'

(Cymbeline, ii. 2.)

'Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast.'

1. 69. Sir Philip Sidney has a beautiful sonnet beginning

'With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies

How silently! and with how wan a face!'

and Wordsworth took the same two lines as the commencement of another nearly as beautiful. Shelley asks of the moon

v. I).

76. Cf.

'Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth ?'

sullen bell' (2 Henry IV. i. 1); solemn curfew' (Tempest,

1. 78. removed was formerly used where we employ its equivalent ' remote.' The Ghost beckons Hamlet to a more removed ground' (i. 4), and Orlando wonders how a shepherd could have acquired so fine an accent in so removed a dwelling' (As You Like It, iii. 2).

1. 83. Keightley quotes Stow: The bell-man at every lane's end, and at the ward's end, gave warning of fire and candle and to help the poor, and to pray for the dead.' Cf. Lady Macbeth (ii. 2),

'It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman

Which gives the stern'st good-night.'

84. nightly is used by Shakespeare both as adjective and adverb. It here means by night.'

1. 87. As the Bear never sets, he could only out-watch him by sitting up till day-break. (Keightley.)

1. 88. Hermes Trismegistus, thrice great'-a fabled king of Egypt made contemporary with Moses. To him many books on politics, physics, and theology were ascribed. Chemistry, or rather alchemy, was called the

hermetical art, from his supposed invention of it. The books now extant under his name are forgeries by the Neo-Platonists, who wished to make the Egyptian religious system appear more venerable than the Christian mysteries. Cf. note in the ed. of Hooker, Bk. I. in this series. Bacon speaks (Advancement of Learning, i.) of the triplicity which in great veneration was ascribed to the ancient Hermes; the power and fortune of a king, the knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher.'

1. 88. unsphere;-draw down from the station assigned to him. Cf. Comus 3.

1. 90. This is treated in the Phaedo of Plato; and in some of his other dialogues he speaks of the intelligences which he names daemons. But this assigning them their abode in the four elements over which they had power, rather belongs to the later Platonists and to the writers of the middle ages. (Keightley.)

1. 95. Drayton (Polyolbion v.) enunciates the opinion of the humorous

Platonist'

Which boldly dares affirm that spirits themselves supply
With bodies to commix with frail mortality;

And here allow them place, beneath this lower sphere
Of the inconstant moon; to tempt us daily here.

Some earthly mixture take; as others, which aspire,
Their subtler shapes resume, of water, air, and fire:

Being those immortals long before from heaven that fell,
Whose deprivation thence, determined their hell.'

1. 96. Cf. Paradise Regained, ii. 122.

1. 97. Ovid gives Tragedy a sceptre (Amor. iii. 2. 13). The subjects of Attic tragedy are taken from the misfortunes of royal and heroic personages, which afforded stateliest and most regal argument,' as Milton says in his Tractate of Education.

1. 98. The pall is Lat. palla, the outer garment, usually of wool or cloth, often richly dyed or embroidered.

1. 99. Presenting;-representing. It was the technical word for acting a masque or play. The nine worthies are 'presented' by Holofernes, Armado, and Costard in Love's Labour's Lost. Lord Brackley and the rest presented' Comus.

Thebes, the capital of Boeotia. Aeschylus made it the scene of his Seven against Thebes, Sophocles of his Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone, and Euripides of his Bacchae. In ed. 1645 Theb's is printed lest the reader should make it a dissyllable. So hero's in Vacation Exercise 47.

Pelops' line; allusion to the trilogy of Aeschylus on the subject of the murder of Agamemnon, a descendant of Pelops, king of Pisa in Elis, who has given his name to Peloponnesus.

1. 100. Troy divine;-Its story has been dramatically treated, at least in selected episodes, by Sophocles in his Ajax and his Philoctetes, and by Euripides in his Hecuba and his Andromache.

1. 102. This couplet is probably intended to include the tragedies of Shakespeare.

1. 104. Musaus;—a mythical bard of Thrace; according to some legends

the son of Orpheus. The yearning after the long-lost past is here forcibly expressed in language that, by dwelling on the dim fragments yet remaining, gives the beauty of the feeling without its pain.

1. 106. Cf. Arcades 87.

1. 110. The Squire's Tale in Chaucer.

1. 116. Referring to Spenser, in whose great poem all the enumerated circumstances may be found.

1. 120. It is somewhat strange that Dante finds no place in this catalogue. He and Petrarch were favourite writers with Milton.

1. 122. Juliet calls 'civil Night' a

'Sober-suited matron all in black' (iii. 2).

1. 123. trickt;-adorned.

Only used once by Shakespeare,
'Horridly tricked

With blood of fathers.' (Hamlet, ii. 2.)

frounc't;-applied to the dressing of the hair.

"Some frounce their curled hair in courtly guise.'

(Faery Queene, I. iv. 14.)

1. 124. The Attic boy is Cephalus. His mother was daughter of Cecrops, king of Attica. He was beloved by Eos, the Dawn.

1. 127. still here- gentle, as in the stage-direction in Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. I, 'still music.' Cf. The Passion 28.

1. 130. minute-drops ;-as we say

shower of fine rain.

'minute-guns,' indicating a gentle

1. 134. Milton uses brown for 'dark.' Italian bruno. (Keightley.) 1. 135. monumental;—i. e. a monument of other times, like the Talking Oak of Tennyson. 'Monument' is used for 'memorial' by Spenser and

Shakespeare.

1. 141. garish is Juliet's epithet for the sun (iii. 2), which is called 'the eye of heaven' in Faery Queene, I. iii. 4. Cf. Lycidas 26 (note), and Glossary to Faery Queene, II. Garre.

1. 147. In Spenser's poem (Faery Queene, I. i. 41) the noise of waters, bees, and rain lull Morpheus in his slumber soft. Cf. Virgil, Eclogue, i. 56. 1. 148. Of the spirit (Faery Queene I. i 44) we read that

'And on his little wings a Dream he bore.'

It has been suggested that Milton was here thinking of the old pictures of angels holding scrolls displayed against the background of their extended wings.

1. 151. Ferdinand (Tempest, i. 2) asks

'Where should this music be? i' th' air, or the earth?

It sounds no more

I hear it now above me.'

1. 156. Pale;-enclosure. Cf. studious university' (Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. 3).

1. 158. massy-proof;—able to resist the incumbent weight. So star-proof is used in Arcades 89.

1. 159. storia,' used for 'historia' in barbarous Latin. Chaucer has 'storial' for historical' (Canterbury Tales 3179), and Shakespeare 'story' for history' (Henry V. concluding Chorus) Story' was used in monastic records for Scripture history.

1. 161. Milton, in his Eikonoclastes, ridicules the organs and the singing men in the king's chapel, as well as the English mass-book' of the old Ephesian goddess called the Church of England.'

1. 172. Milton speaks (Epitaphium Damonis) of his hopes of being assisted in the study of botany by his friend Carlo Diodati.

Arcades.

The following particulars, mainly extracted from Professor Masson's Life of Milton, are here subjoined, in order that the connexion between the chief spectator of this, and the actors in the following mask, and the circumstances in which each poem was produced, may be duly understood.

On the night of Feb. 3, 1634, the Inns of Court, indignant at the publication of the Histriomastix, by Prynne, gave a grand mask at Whitehall. Whitelock declares it to have been the most splendid show that ever was beheld in England. A fortnight after, Carew, Lawes, and Inigo Jones, presented at Whitehall their mask Coelum Britannicum, in which acted Viscount Brackley and his brother Thomas Egerton, sons of the Earl of Bridgewater. The Earl had been raised to the peerage as a mark of respect to his father, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. Both father and son married about the same time. The former, while still Sir Thomas Egerton, wedded, as his third wife, Alice, daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, and widow of the fifth Earl of Derby. The latter married the daughter of the Countess by her former marriage. After the Chancellor's death, his lady retained her old title of Countess of Derby, and resided at Harefield. To her Spenser dedicated The Tears of the Muses, and he bewailed the Chancellor's death in Colin Clout come Home Again. In 1607, John Marston wrote a mask in her honour, containing some verses resembling those of Arcades.

The Earl of Bridgewater had been nominated President of Wales since 1631, but he did not begin residence till 1633. The hospitalities of his entry upon office extended to Michaelmas, 1634, and culminated in the mask presented in the great justice-chamber, the ruins of which still bear the name of Comus Hall.

The Earl died in 1649, and Viscount Brackley, his successor, in 1686. The latter was so scandalized at the Defensio pro Populo that he inscribed in his copy-'liber igne, auctor furcâ, dignissimi.' The Lady' Alice became the second wife of Richard Vaughan, Earl of Carberry. To her Jeremy Taylor dedicated part of his Life of Christ. Her husband appointed Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras, to the stewardship of Ludlow Castle.

1. 6. vows here=Lat. vota, and is thus synonymous with wishes This peculiarity of joining a Latin-derived word with its Saxon equivalent, is of frequent occurrence in the elder writers, as in the Liturgy acknowledge and confess,' dissemble nor cloak,' &c.

1. 9. erst; cf. Circumcision 2.

1. 16. silver threads;-Keightley explains this to mean the silver stripes in the canopy radiating from the point over the throne on which the countess

sat.

1. 20. Latona;-the Latin name of Leto, the first wife of Zeus, or, in

later legend, his mistress, persecuted by Hera. She wandered about till she came to Ortygia, a floating island, whereon, after Zeus had fixed it by adamantine chains to the bottom of the sea, she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis. Cf. Paradise Lost, x. 296; and Faery Queene, II. xii. 13.

1. 21. Cybele was an ancient Asiatic goddess, bearing the title of the Mother of the Gods. The Greeks identified her with their Rhea, daughter of Uranos and Ge (Heaven and Earth), wife of Chronos (Time), and mother of Zeus and Hera. She was worshipped with wild orgies and enthusiastic dances by armed priests. The epithet towered' is explained by these lines of Spenser

'Old Cybele, arrayed with pompous pride,
Wearing a diademe embattild wide

With hundred turrets, like a turribant (turban)
With such an one was Thamis beautifide

That was to weet the famous Troynovant (London)

In which her kingdomes throne is chiefly resiant.'

1. 23. i. e. Juno durst not meet her on equal terms, by setting aside her own divinity; as Falstaff was desired to lay his knighthood and his soldiership aside.' Cf. Wither's expression

1. 26. gentle;

1. 27.

Vie renown with demigods.' (Mistress of Philarete.)
here emphatic, of gentle blood.'
'Disguised glory shineth in his eyes.'

(Sylvester, Du Bartas.)

1. 30. Alpheus, a river in Arcadia. It runs underground for some distance; whence arose the legend that the nymph Arethusa was pursued by Alpheus, and was changed by Artemis into the fountain bearing her name in the island of Ortygia at Syracuse, and that he still attempted to mingle his stream with hers, so that they flowed through the sea, and rose together in Sicily. Arethusa is invoked by Virgil (Eclogue x. 1) and by Milton (Lycidas 133) as a Sicilian Muse.

1. 33. The cothurnus or buskin was worn by Diana. Belphoebe, in Spenser, wears golden buskins.

1. 46. Cf. 'An Eastern wind, commixt with noisome airs, Shall blast the plants and the young saplings.

1. 49. Cf. Comus 269.

1. 50. Cf. Tempest, i. 2:

(Spanish Tragedy.)

Caliban. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed.'

1. 51. thunder;- here for 'thunderbolt' or 'lightning,' both which meanings are taken by 'fulmen.'

thwarting-twisting, zig-zag. Cf. ' cross blue lightning' (Julius Cæsar, i. 3). 1. 58. Cf. L'Allegro 56. The Squire's horn in Spenser (Faery Queene, I. viii. 3) hangs in twisted gold and tassels gay.'

1. 60. Cf. Comus 526. In both passages the word murmurs is used as equivalent to 'charms' (Lat. carmina).

1. 63. celestial Sirens;-the Muses, who, when they had vanquished the Sirens in a vocal contest, took their wings and wore the feathers as trophies.