In Alexander and Campaspe, by Lyly, a quip is defined as 'a short saying of a sharp wit, with a bitter sense in a sweet word.'

1. 33.

Cf. Comus 144.

'Come and go,

Each one tripping on his toe.'

(Ariel to the Spirits, Tempest, iv. 2.)

1. 40. unreproved;-that cannot be reproved. So Spenser has unreproved truth,' Faery Queene, II. vii. 16, and a similar usage of unblamed,' 'Joying together in unblamed delight' (VI. ii. 43).

Cf. Paradise Lost, iii. 3.

1. 42. Cf. dull as night' (Merchant of Venice, v. 1), 'night's dull ear' (Henry V. Chorus to act iv).

1. 44.

The gentle day

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray.'

(Much Ado about Nothing, v. 3.)

1. 45. To come;-following in sense after ‘admit me,' like the previous 'to live,' 'to hear,' in the list of unreproved pleasures. Awakened by the lark, the poet, after listening to that early song, arises to give a blithe good-morrow at his window. Other matin sounds are heard, and he goes forth to enjoy the cheerful music of the chase, or the sight of the rising sun. From line 69, the vision is mental rather than bodily. The plurals 'mountains,' 'meadows,' 'towers,' give a sense of generality that does not accord with the description of any actual scene: the delight given by the poem springs from touches of diverse yet harmonious associations.

1. 47. Eglantine and sweet-briar being the same plant, it is conjectured that by twisted eglantine,' Milton means the honeysuckle.

1. 57. Contrast with Il Penseroso 65. Some particulars of the following description of morning are taken from Browne's Britannia's Pastorals (Book IV. v. 75).

1. 62. dight;

decked, arranged; from A. S. dibtan, parare. See Glossary to Faery Queene, Bk. I.

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liveries;-Cf. The shadowed livery of the burnish'd sun.'

(Merchant of Venice, ii. 1.)

1. 67. The tale here is not a tale of love, but the tale of sheep counted by the shepherd as he turns them forth to pasture. So the 'tale' of the bricks (Exodus v. 8.).

1. 71. lawn. Cf. Nativity 85.

gray light-brown, as in Gray Friars. (Keightley).

1. 75. Warton says that pied was so hackneyed an epithet for flowers, that from it Shakespeare formed the substantive piedness (Winter's Tale, iv. 3). When daisies pied' begins the spring song at the end of Love's

Labour's Lost.

1. 79. lies;-resides, e. g. When the court lay at Windsor' (Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 2); When I lay at Clement's Inn' (2 Henry IV. iii. 2).

1. 80. Cynosure is the constellation of the Little Bear, by which the Phoenician mariners steered their course, as the Greeks did by the Great Bear. In Hacket's Life of Williams, the Countess of Buckingham is described as the Cynosura that all the Papists steered by.' Cf. note on Comus 342.

1. 83. Milton's classic fancy plays round the sights and sounds of English rural life, and gives to Berkshire peasants the names of Virgilian swains and shepherdesses. He saw nature through the spectacles of

books.'

1. 91. secure here means, not safe,' but 'void of care' (Lat. sine curâ). Quarles, in his Enchiridion, observes, The way to be safe is not to be Hamlet's father was murdered in his secure hour.'

secure.'

·

'Security

Is mortal's chiefest enemy.' (Macbeth, iii. 5.)

So Ben Jonson, in his Epode:

Men may securely sin, but safely never.'

1. 93. Bells were abominations to the Puritans. Bellfounders are inveighed against as antichristian by Tribulation in the Alchemist of Ben Jonson.

1. 94. The rebeck was a fiddle of four strings. The fiddler in Romeo and Juliet, iv. 5, is named Hugh Rebeck.

1. 98. Cf. Comus 959. The deposed Richard II. (iv. 1) wishes Bolingbroke many years of sunshine days.'

1. 102. For Queen Mab, see the well-known passage in Romeo and Juliet, i. 4.

junkets; from Ital. giuncata, covered with rushes, i. e. cream cheese, and so used for other rural delicacies.

1. 103. The punishment inflicted by fairies on tell-tales.

'It was a just and Christian deed,
To pinch such black and blue.'

(Corbet's Farewell to the Fairies.)

Cf. Shakespeare's fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor (v. 5), and Dromio's speech in Comedy of Errors (ii. 2),

'They'll suck our breath, and pinch us black and blue.'

1. 104. Keightley thinks this a palpable mistake. The friar is the celebrated Friar Rush, who haunted houses, not fields, and was never the same with Jack-o'-the-Lanthorn.'

1. 105. goblin is derived from Germ. Kobold, the German domestic sprite. Puck or Robin Goodfellow is called 'lob of spirits,' Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. I. See Glossary to Faery Queene, Bk. II. Gobbeline. Milton gives a more elevated meaning to the word in Paradise Lost (ii. 688), where he applies it to Death.

1. 120. Triumph here show, spectacle. One of Bacon's Essays is on Masques and Triumphs, the latter title being applied to 'justs, tourneys, and barriers,' the glories of which are chiefly in the chariots, wherein the challengers make their entry.' 'Triumphs and justs are named together in York's speech (Richard II. v. 2), and Aumerle was expected at their celebration in gay apparel,' the weeds of peace.' Achilles desires to see great Hector in his' weeds of peace' (Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3). Cf. Samson Agonistes, 1312, Pericles ii. 2.

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1. 121. great store of was a familiar expression for 'plenty of,' 'many.' Spenser has it, Faery Queene, V. iii. 2,

Of lords and ladies infinite great store.'

Cf. Paradise Lost, ix. 1078.

1. 122. influence;-one of the words ('disastrous,' 'ill-starred,' 'ascendancy') which still testify to the once prevalent belief in astrology. Marvell says of Cromwell that

By his beams observant princes steer,

And wisely court the influence they fear.'

Randolph's Epilogue to his Jealous Lovers attributes 'influence' in this sense to his audience :

'You are the stars we gaze at; we shall find

Our labours blest, if your aspects be kind.'

Cf. Edmund's speech in King Lear (i. 2), and Horatio's words before the second entrance of the Ghost (Hamlet, i. 1). Ben Jonson, in his Elegy on Shakespeare, exclaims,

'Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage.'

Cf. note on Nativity 71.

Cf.

1. 126. Not (as in the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, 20) with a ‘scarce-well-lighted flame.' Hymen's dress in the masques was saffron-coloured. His mask and teade (i. e. torch) are named in Spenser's Epithalamion. 1. 127. pomp;—solemn procession, as in its classical meaning. Samson Agonistes 1312. Feasts, pomps and vain glories' are inveighed against by Apemantus (Timon of Athens, i. 2), and Theseus uses 'pomp' in a kindred sense (Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 1).

1. 133. Fancy had a wider range of meaning in Milton's time than now. Cf. Solemn Music 5. Shakespeare often uses it as a synonym for 'love,' and Spenser makes Fancy the leader of the Maske of Cupid (Faery Queene, III. xii. 7).

1. 134. Archbishop Trench demurs to this line. "Fancy's child" may pass, for fancy and imagination were not effectually desynonymized when Milton wrote; nay, "fancy" was for him the greater name (Paradise Lost, V. 100, 113). "Sweetest" Shakespeare undoubtedly was, but then the sweetness is so drawn up into the power that this is about the last epithet one would be disposed to use about him. And then what could Milton possibly have intended by "his native wood-notes wild?" the sort of praise which might be bestowed, though with no eminent fulness, upon Clare or a poet of his rank.' Tennyson, in the Palace of Art, has applied what seem at first glance equally inadequate epithets to Shakespeare-bland and mild.' But it should be remembered that it just that feature of Shakespeare's poetic genius, the stillness of his power, which is most in harmony with the mood of intellectual luxury depicted in that poem. So here, the tragedies being relegated to Il Penseroso. the comedies would to Milton's mind present an artless beauty and irregular grace, sharply contrasting with the more severe formal and conscious displays of Jonson's learned sock.' Milton did not trace the operation of the 'wanton heed and giddy cunning' of art in literature as in music.

1. 135. Eating cares is translated from Horace (Odes i. 18. 4).

1. 136. The three (supposed) original ancient modes were the Dorian, the Phrygian, and the Lydian. The principal note of the last is F, its scale being the scale of F with B natural substituted for B flat. The tender character ascribed by the ancients to this mode results from the ascent by a

semitone to the key-note, the form of cadence most conclusive and agreeable to us moderns. Therein the Lydian measure differed from the Dorian, which was the key of D with F and C natural instead of sharp. Dryden assigns to the Lydian measure the tender strains that lull the passions of his hero. In Beethoven's quartet in A, there is a movement defined as a song of gratitude in the Lydian mode, offered to the Divinity by a convalescent.' (Macfarren's Lectures on Harmony, pp. 13, 14.)

1. 137. Cf. Solemn Music 3. Ben Jonson, in his lines to Filmer, says 'French air and English verse here wedded lie ;'

and Du Bartas,

'Marrying their sweet tunes to the angels' lays.'

1. 139. bout;-fold or twist, a word used by Spenser, Faery Queene, I. i. 15, and I. xi. II). It comes from bow, not from French bout.

1. 141. The adjectives describe the appearance, the nouns the reality.

1. 142. The accompanied voice is meant, otherwise there would be melody but not harmony.

1. 146. golden;-in sense of excellent,' as used by Plato and Horace, and in the phrase 'the golden age.' Shakespeare has golden sleep' twice (1 Henry IV. ii. 3; Romeo and Juliet, ii. 3).

1. 149. In this passage Milton's opinion of the superiority of the modern over the ancient classical music is strongly asserted.

1. 151. No such doubt finds a place in the parallel passage of Il Penseroso.

Il Penseroso.

1. 1. Hence, hence, fond pleasures, momentary joys' is a line of Sylvester. The commencement of the poem appears to have been suggested by a song in Fletcher's Nice Valour:

1. 3. bestead.

'Hence, all you vain delights.'

Here it would seem equivalent to help,' but in Shakespeare (2 Henry VI. ii. 3) and in some passages of Spenser it means simply to be in such and such a state. Only used here by Milton.

1. 4. Cf. Paradise Lost, i. 97.

'Nothing could my fixed mind remove.'

(Faery Queene, IV. vii. 16.)

With so eternal and so fixed a soul.'

(Troilus and Cressida, v. 2.)
Cf. Lycidas 56. Thou fond

1. 6. fond in its old meaning of 'foolish.' mad man,' says Friar Laurence to Romeo (iii. 3). 1. 7. Cf. 'As thick as motes in the sonne-beem.'

(Canterbury Tales 6450.)

1. 10. Queen Elizabeth had for her guard a select band of tall and handsome gentlemen, called Pensioners. The word became common for 'train,' ' retinue.' Cf. Mrs. Quickly's climax, earls, nay, which is more, pensioners' (Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 2); and

The cowslips tall her pensioners be'

1. 14. to bit; to meet, touch.

A strange invisible

(Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1). Cf. its use in Arcades 77. perfume hits the sense.'

(Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2.)

1. 16. Cf. Paradise Lost, iii. 380.

1. 18. Memnon, King of Ethiopia, was an auxiliary to the Trojans, and was slain by Achilles. Archbishop Trench remarks that Milton did not, as some say, invent the sister. Her name is Hemera, and she is mentioned by Dictys Cretensis. As Memnon was the fairest of warriors (Od. xi. 522)

his sister might be presumed to be no less beautiful.

1. 19. Cassiope was wife to Cepheus, King of Ethiopia. To appease the Nereids she exposed her daughter Andromeda to the sea-monster which they had prevailed upon Poseidon to send into Ethiopia with an inundation. She was afterwards placed among the stars.

1. 23. Vesta, or Hestia, was the goddess of the hearth. She was daughter of Saturn or Cronos. According to classic legends she swore by the head of Zeus to remain a virgin. To her father is attributed the origin of civilisation. Milton's Melancholy is therefore the offspring of Retirement and Culture.

1. 25. Saturn's reign; 'the first age, when there was no summer nor winter, spring nor autumn, but all after one air and season.' (Bacon, Advancement of Learning, ii.)

1. 32. demure ;-solemn.

'The drums demurely wake the sleepers.'

(Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 9.) Todd derives the word from Fr. des moeurs, Keightley from Fr. demeuré, staid. 'It formerly meant truly virtuous and good' (Trench).

1. 33. granum means seed or kernel, and was early applied to all small objects resembling seeds. A species of oak common on all Mediterranean coasts, and especially in Spain, is frequented by an insect of the genus Coccus, the dried body, or rather ovarium of which furnishes a variety of red dyes. From its form the prepared coccus was called granum. This grain Milton and other English poets often use as equivalent to Tyrian purple. Here the epithet darkest,' and the character and attributes of the wearer of the robe, shew that the poet meant the violet shade. In Paradise Lost, xi. 242, ' grain of Sarra' = purple of Tyre, Sarra being used by some Latin authors for Tyre. In Paradise Lost, v. 285, sky-tinctured' is not necessarily azure, for sky in old writers means clouds which may be of various hues, and ‘regal ornament' suggests the imperial purple. Though we commonly restrict purple to the violet shade, it is employed in poetry to express as wide a range of colour as its Greek and Latin equivalents—that is, all shades between scarlet and dark violet inclusive. In Comus 750, 'grain' is used for vermilion. (Abridged from Marsh's Lectures.)

1. 35. stole here = veil or hood (as in Faery Queene, I. i. 4), not the long robe of the Roman matrons. 'Cyprus black' is one of the wares of Autolycus. Minshew (1625) defines cipresa fine curled linen, crespé,' whence our crape.' Olivia says

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'A cyprus, not a bosom, hides my poor heart.'

(Twelfth Night, iii. 1.)

Take off the cypress veil and leave a mask.'

(Marvell to Dr. Witty.)

1. 36. decent here either means 'comely,' 'beautiful,' as Horace uses it when he applies the word to the cheeks of Europa, to Venus, and to the Graces, or (as Warton thinks) decent because covered.