NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Page 7. ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NA

TIVITY.

15. Heavenly Muse; the Muse of sacred song addressed at the beginning of Par. Lost.

19. Now while the Heaven, etc. Cf. Elegy VI, near the end, where Milton speaks of beginning the Hymn at the first light of dawn on Christmas day.

23. Wisards; wise men: the present sense of "enchanter" existed in Milton's day, but he follows Spenser in using the word as a term of compliment.

28. From out his secret altar, etc.; cf. the Reason of Church Government: "that eternal Spirit, that sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases." The reference is to Isaiah vi. 6-7.

41. Blume; wrong, not reproof.

48. Turning sphere; the whole universe of concentric spheres, according to the Ptolemaic astronomy.

50. Turtle-wing; the turtle-dove, like the olive and myrtle, is a traditional emblem of peace. 56. Hooked chariot; currus falcatus, chariot with scythes projecting out ward from the axles. 64. Whist; hushed. The word is another form of "hist," both originally onomatopaic exclamations to enforce silence.

68. Birds of calm; while the halcyon was breeding, according to the classical tradition, the sea was calm. Charmed; laid under a spell.

71. Bending one way their precious influence; bending toward the new-born babe all the good influence which the stars were supposed to exert upon the lives of mortals. Cf. Job xxxviii. 31. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades."

74. Lucifer; the morning star.

85. Lawn; field, or any open space of ground. 86. Point of dawn; break of dawn. Cf. modern French point du jour, and the old verb poindre, to dawn.

89. Mighty Pan; Christ, as the "good shepherd," is frequently introduced into the pastoral

poetry of the Renaissance as Pan.

92. Silly; simple, innocent.

95. Strook; the favorite form with Milton, though he has also struck and strucken.

101-103. Construe: Nature, that heard such Bounds thrilling the airy region (i. e. the upper air) beneath the hollow round of Cynthia's seat (i. e. the sphere of the moon).

106. Its occurs only three times in Milton. The form was not commonly adopted until the close of the century.

125-132. Ring out, ye crystal spheres, etc.; for once, let the music of the nine spheres moving upon each other become audible to mortal ears.

146. Tissued clouds probably refers to the cloth called tissue, woven of silk and silver threads.

156. Wakeful trump; awakening trump. 157-159.

And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice." Exod. xix. 18-19.

168. The Old Dragon; Satan is so spoken of in Revelations.

186. Genius, i. e. the genius loci, or guardian spirit of a place.

189-191. The Lares, beneficent spirits of the dead, were worshiped by the Romans, and a particular room in private houses (here referred to as "holy hearth") was set apart for them. The Lemures were inimical spirits of the dead, of a lower grade than the Lares, and approximating to our ghosts or goblins.

194. Flamens, priests of ancient Rome. Quaint" is probably to be taken in the sense, not of "odd," but of "elaborate," "ceremoni

197. Peor and Baälim; different names of the same sun-god, called also Baal-Peor, worshiped by the Phoenicians.

199. Twice-battered god of Palestine; Dagon, a sea-god of the Philistines. See 1 Samuel v. 3-4.

200. Ashtaroth, the moon-goddess of the Phonicians, identical with the Syrian Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite.

203. Libyc Hammon; an Egyptian deity whose chief seat of worship was at Thebes. He was represented in the form of a ram, with curled horns.

204. Thammuz; see note to Par. Lost, I. 446. 205-210. Milton had in mind, Warton thought, the description of Moloch in Sandys's Travels, where the god is described as an Idoll of brasse, having the head of a Calfe, the rest of a kingly figure, with arms extended to receive the miserable sacrifice, seared to death with his burning embracements. For the Idol was hollowe within, filled with fire. And least their lamentable shreeks should sad the hearts of their parents,

the Priests of Molech did deafe their eares with the continual clang of trumpets and timbrels."

212. Isis; goddess of the Earth; Orus, or Horus, god of the sun; Anubis, son of Osiris, represented with the head of a dog or jackal. 213-220. Osiris was worshiped by the Egyptians under the form of Apis, the sacred bull. He was said to have been put into a chest by conspirators and floated down the Nile. This chest or ark was preserved at Memphis as an object of worship.

226. Typhon, or Typhoeus, was represented by the Greeks as a hundred-headed monster, destroyed by Zeus. His Egyptian name was Suti; he was worshiped in Egypt sometimes under the form of a crocodile, which fact Milton seems here to have in mind.

240. Youngest-teemed; youngest-born.

Page 10. A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV. 1. Terah's faithful son: Abraham, whose "blest seed "" were the children of Israel. 3. Pharian; Egyptian, from Pharaoh. Page 11. A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXXXVI.

46. Erythrean main; the Red Sea, from a Greek word meaning red.

65-66. Seon... that ruled the Amorrean coast; a borrowing from Buchanan's Latin version of Psalm cxxxv.: Quique Amorrhæis Seon regnavit in oris.

Page 12. ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR IN

FANT.

8-9. Grim Aquilo; Aquilo, or Boreas, the north wind, carried off Oreithyia, the daughter of King Erechtheus.

23-27. Hyacinthus, son of the king of Laconia, was slain by a quoit which Apollo threw and which the wind blew from its course. The flower hyacinth sprang from the ground where the boy's blood had flowed. Eurotas is a river of Laconia.

39. That high first-moving sphere; the Primum Mobile, or First-moved, the outer containing sphere of the Ptolemaic system. See Introduction to Paradise Lost, on Milton's cosmology.

47. Earth's sons; the Titans, who strove to conquer Olympus and overthrow Zeus.

50. That just Maid; Astræa, or Justice, who left the earth after the Golden Age.

68. The slaughtering pestilence; referring to the plague which raged in England during the summer of 1625.

76. He will an offspring give; Edward and John Phillips scarcely fulfilled the prophecy.

Page 13. AT A VACATION EXERCISE. 7-8. Milton asks pardon for deferring the English portion of the exercise till the last.

14. The daintiest dishes; i. e. the dramatic speeches of Quantity, Quality, and the other Predicaments.

19-20. Those new-fangled toys, etc.; an interesting reference to the Marinist school of conceitful writing, by which Milton himself was much affected in his youth.

74. Subject to many an Accident; the lines preceding and following constitute a riddle on the Aristotelian doctrine of Substance;

so long as Substance remained absolute or undetermined by the Accidents of quality, quantity, time, place, posture, habit, action, and passion, he "walked invisible; "he was dependent upon them for clothing because substance is not perceptible.

undetermined

90. Your learned hands; addressed directly to the student audience.

95-100. Sullen Mole, that runneth underneath, etc.; the Mole, in Surrey, flows through a subterranean channel for a part of its course. The Severn derived its name from the maid Sabrina, who was drowned in it (see Comus, 1. 824). The Dee, near Chester, was hallowed by Druidical associations. Humber was believed to have derived its name from an early Hunnish invader. Thames is "royal-towered" because it flows past Hampton Court, Windsor, and London.

Page 15. THE PASSION.

1-4. This reference to the Hymn on the Nativity shows that the present poem was writter later, probably on the following Easter.

6. Wintry solstice; when the days are short

est.

24-26. The reference is to the Christiad, a Latin poem by Marco Girolamo Vida of Cremona, who flourished during the first half of the sixteenth century.

37. The prophet; Ezekiel.

43. That sad sepulchral rock; the tomb of Christ.

56. Had got a race of mourners, etc.; refers to the fable Ixion, who mistook a cloud for Juno and begot the Centaurs.

Page 16. ON SHAKESPEARE.

10. Thy easy numbers; "His mind and hand went together: And what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarcely received from him a blot in his papers," say the editors of the first Folio Shakespeare. Milton's habit of composition was very different.

12. Delphic lines, i. e. oracular, inspired.

14. Dost make us marble; an extravagant and rather tasteless conceit; the meaning is that Shakespeare excites our imagination so intensely that we are carried out of ourselves, become dead to our surroundings.

Page 17. ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER. 1. Girt; girth.

8. Dodged; Masson quotes the following definition of the word "dodge " from Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymologies; to jog, to move quickly to and fro; hence to follow in the track of any one, to follow his ins and outs, also to deceive one by change of motion.” Page 17. ANOTHER ON THE SAME.

5. Sphere-metal, i. e. of material as enduring as that of the heavenly spheres.

14. Too long vacation hastened on his term, a pun on the Long Vacation and Terms of the English universities.

32. His wain was his increase; a pun on the word wain, a wagon, and wane, a diminishing. Page 18. ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WIN

CHESTER.

24. To greet her of a lovely son; Charles Paulet,

Lord St. John of Basing, afterwards Duke of Bolton.

26. Lucina; goddess of child-birth.

28. Atropos; the Fate who clips the thread of life; her sisters were Clotho and Lachesis.

50. Sweet rest seize thee: the verb is used in the legal sense, to put in possession of.

63. Syrian shepherdess, Rachel, wife of Jacob. Page 19. ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE.

5. Perhaps my semblance; an allusion to the extreme youthfulness of Milton's appearance after he reached the age of manhood."

Page 26. L'ALLEGRO.

1-3. Having personified Melancholy, Milton invents a parentage for her, and assigns as her place of birth a cave like that of her father Cerberus, on the banks of Styx, the "river of deadly hate." Erebus, not Cerberus, was properly the spouse of Night.

9. Ragged; rugged.

10. Cimmerian desert; the Cimmerians are placed by Homer in a waste land far to the west, perpetually involved in mist and darkness.

12-16. The first parentage assigned to Euphrosyne (on the strength of a scholiast's commentary to a passage of the Eneid) makes her the half-sister of Comus, who was the son of Circe by Bacchus. Euphrosyne represents innocent pleasure; Comus represents evil, sensual pleasure. In the double parentage Milton has in mind two ideals of innocent pleasure that which springs from Wine and Love, and that which springs from Dawn and the light breezes of summer.

24. Burom; spritely, lively. It originally meant pliant, yielding (German biegsam), and is so used by Milton elsewhere, in the phrase "buxom air."

29. Hebe, cup-bearer to the gods, and personification of eternal youth.

36. Liberty is probably called a "mountainnymph" because of the traditional association of the love of freedom with mountain-dwell

ers.

40. Unreproved; unreprovable, innocent.

43. Watch-tower; a metaphor which partakes of the nature of a pun; the word is suggested by "tour," which means soaring flight.

45-48. Then to come, etc.; a much-disputed passage. What is the construction of the infinitive? Grammatically it seems to be parallel with ". to hear" just above, in which case it is L'Allegro who comes to the window of his room. But in that case, to what or whom does he bid good morrow, unless, indeed, it be to the waking world in general? If we suppose lark be the understood subject of the infinitive, the construction is very irregular, and Milton ought to have known that larks do nothing of the kind. Mr. Masson cuts the knot by supposing L'Allegro to have emerged from the house, and to look in at the window to greet some one inside. The reader is at liberty to choose.

to

45. In spite of sorrow; in order to spite sorrow; the idea seems rather awkwardly introduced.

67. Tells his tale; the common interpretation of this phrase is "tells his story." But tale may be used in the sense of number," and tells in the sense of counts; in that case the phrase would mean, counts the number of his flock," to see that none had been lost during the night, certainly a more realistic morning occupation than story-telling.

66

71. Lawns; open fields: fallows; ploughed land left untilled.

77. Towers and battlements; probably a reminiscence of Windsor Castle, which is not far from Horton.

80. Cynosure; the constellation of the lesser Bear, which contains the Pole-star. The Tyrian (not the Greek) sailors steered by this constellation. Cynosure means literally “dog's tail," the name referring to the fancied shape of the constellation. The secondary meaning of the word, is of course, "something much looked at."

83-88. The names are common ones in both classic and modern pastoral poetry. The introduction of them here gives a touch of unreality which is of questionable appropriateness.

91. Secure; from Latin securus, care-free. 94. Rebeck; a kind of rude fiddle or crowd, the precursor of the violin.

102-114. A maid of the company tells of the mischievous doings of Mab, who was traditionally the patron and tormentor of servant maids. A man then tells of two characters famous in folk-lore, Friar Rush, or Jack-a-lantern, as he was variously called, and Robin Goodfellow. The latter performed for farm-laborers much the same offices of capricious good-will, sprinkled with mischief, as did Mab for the maids. 110. Lubbar-fend, i. e. lubbar-fiend. Cf. 'Lob-lie-by-the-fire."

114. Matin; matin or morning song. 120. Weeds; garments. The word was originally of universal application, though now confined to the mourning garments of widows.

131. Well-trod; this allusion to the actors is an incidental proof that L'Allegro is supposed to view the plays on the stage of a theatre, not merely to read them.

132. Jonson's learned sock; "sock" implies comedy, from the soccus, or low slipper, worn by actors in comedy, in contrast with the cothurnus, or high boot (buskin), worn by actors in tragedy. The learning displayed by Jonson in his great comedies much impressed his contemporaries

133-134. Sweetest Shakespeare, etc.; this characterization applies better to some of Shakespeare's scattered songs than to his romantic plays or his comedies as a whole. In spite of the epitaph, it is extremely doubtful