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GATEWAY SERIES 
 
 MILTON'S 
 MINOR POEMS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 MARY A. JORDAN, A.M. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, SMITH COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YOTkK •:• CINCT^•i^y,ltI ri'^mCAGO 
 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 
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 LIBRARY of CpNGRESp. 
 
 Two Copies* Received 
 
 JUN 2 1904 
 
 ODyrleht Entry 
 
 CLASS a. XXo. Na 
 
 COPY B 
 
 ^' 
 
 Copyright, 1904, by 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 
 
 Milton's minor poems. 
 W. P. I 
 
OF ENGLISH TEXTS 
 
 GENERAL EDITOR 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
THE GATEWAY SERIES, 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE, General Editor. 
 
 Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Professor Felix E. 
 
 Schelling, University of Pennsylvania. 
 Shakespeare's Julius C^sar. Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, 
 
 "The Outlook." 
 Shakespeare's Macbeth. Professor T. M. Parrott, Prince- 
 ton University. 
 Milton's Minor Poems. Professor Mary A. Jordan, Smith 
 
 College, 
 Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Professor 
 
 C. T. Winchester, Wesleyan University. 
 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Professor James A. 
 
 Tufts, Phillips Exeter Academy. 
 Burke's Speech on Conciliation. Professor William 
 
 MacDonald, Brown University, 
 Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. Professor George 
 
 E. Woodberry, Columbia University. 
 Scott's Ivanhoe. Professor Francis H. Stoddard, New 
 
 York University. 
 Scott's Lady of the Lake. Professor R, M. Alden, Leland 
 
 Stanford Jr. University. 
 iRViNG's Life of Goldsmith. Professor Martin Wright 
 
 Sampson, Indiana University. 
 Macaulay's Milton. Rev. E. L. Gulick, Lawrenceville 
 
 School. 
 Macaulay's Addison. Professor Charles F. McClumpha, 
 
 University of Minnesota. 
 Macaul/vy'S Life of Johnson. Professor J. S. Clark, North- 
 western University. 
 Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Professor Edwin Mims, Trin- 
 ity College, North Carolina. 
 George Eliot's Silas Marner. Professor W. L. Cross, 
 
 Yale University. 
 Tennyson's Princess. Professor Katharine Lee Bates, 
 
 Wellesley College. 
 Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and 
 
 Elaine, and The Passing of Arthur. Henry van 
 
 Dyke. 
 
PREFACE BY THE GENERAL 
 EDITOR 
 
 This series of books aims, first, to give the English 
 texts required for entrance to college in a form which 
 shall make them clear, interesting, and helpful to those 
 who are beginning the study of literature ; and, second, 
 to supply the knowledge which the student needs to 
 pass the entrance examination. For these two reasons 
 it is called The Gateivay Series. 
 
 The poems, plays, essays, and stories in these small 
 volumes are treated, first of all, as works of literature, 
 which were written to be read and enjoyed, not to be 
 parsed and scanned and pulled to pieces. A short life 
 of the author is given, and a portrait, in order to help 
 the student to know the real person who wrote the 
 book. The introduction tells what it is about, and 
 how it was written, and where the author got the idea, 
 and what it means. The notes at the foot of the page 
 are simply to give the sense of the hard words so that 
 the student can read straight on without turning to a 
 dictionary. The other notes, at the end of the book, 
 explain difficulties and allusions and fine points. 
 
 5 
 
6 Preface by the General Editor 
 
 The editors are chosen because of their thorough 
 training and . special fitness to deal with the books 
 committed to them, and because they agree with this 
 idea of what a Gateway Series ought to be. They 
 express, in each case, their own views of the books 
 which they edit. Simplicity, thoroughness, shortness, 
 and clearness, — these, we hope, will be the marks of 
 the series. 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Doctor Henry van Dyke, the editor-in-chief of the 
 Gateway Series, has recently put into suggestive and 
 trenchant words the two principal ends which this 
 volume tries to secure for the student of English. He 
 says to the young friend going away from home to get 
 an education : " A good many years ago I did what you 
 are doing now. Since then things have changed a 
 little in our American schools and colleges. The term 
 opens later in the fall and closes earlier in the summer. 
 Students' rooms are finer and warmer. ' Entrance re- 
 quirements ' are larger and stiffer. Tallow candles 
 have gone out, electric lights have come in, and even 
 kerosene oil has been refined to astral brilliancy. You 
 are going to have more teachers, more elective courses, 
 more expenses, more athletic trainers, more ' modern 
 advantages,' including probably more kinds of food 
 than I had. But, after all, these changes do not make 
 any real difference in the meaning of the fact that you 
 are going away from home to get an education. Your 
 outfit may be better than mine, and the road may be 
 a bit smoother, but you are starting on the same jour- 
 ney, and you have to face the same question. What 
 goal are you going to make for, and how are you going 
 to travel, straight or crooked? To answer this ques- 
 
 1 
 
8 Preface 
 
 tion rightly, you must, first of all, remember that you 
 are now a member of a privileged class. . . . 
 
 " Your studies . . . will be of two kinds : those that 
 you like and those that you dislike. Use the former 
 to develop your natural gifts, and the latter to correct 
 your natural defects. There is a great difference in 
 minds. Some are first-class, some are second-class, 
 and so on. You can never tell what kind of a mind 
 you have unless you test it thoroughly by hard work." 
 
 This volume has been prepared in the hope that it 
 may help to fit young students for membership in a 
 privileged class by supplying the hard work necessary 
 to test and train their minds, and by affording the 
 opportunity for both kinds of study, — that which 
 develops natural gifts as well as that which corrects 
 natural defects. For it is hardly to be expected that 
 any young reader will like all of Milton. It is greatly 
 to be deplored if the young student likes none of Mil- 
 ton. Some effort is clearly necessary to secure justice 
 for both aspects of Milton's work, — the beautiful and 
 the imposing. 
 
 To this end, the explanatory notes and the refer- 
 ences to such reading as Milton is known to have done 
 have been made as full as the space at hand would 
 permit. For some teachers and for many students 
 such a volume as this must take the place of diction- 
 aries and classic authors. A definite effort has been 
 made to direct the reader's attention to the structure 
 of Milton's verse and to the characteristics and sources 
 
Preface 9 
 
 of his diction as well as to his habits of composition. 
 It is believed that such study will increase the reader's 
 pleasure in the work and the worker, and lead to deeper 
 reverence for genius by making clearer its working, 
 whether its laws and explanation are fully attained or 
 not. No good teacher need fear to disgust the student 
 worth teaching by laying bare the ways of inspiration 
 or by supplying the detail necessary for full acquaint- 
 ance with the subject studied. The love of knowledge 
 that rejects the labour of knowing is not worth the 
 name. Aristotle and the writer of Eccksiastes supple- 
 ment each other and say the last word on education 
 even to experts in child study and the management of 
 the elective system. The one : "All men by nature are 
 actuated with the desire of knowledge." The other: 
 " And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wis- 
 dom concerning all things that are done under heaven : 
 this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to 
 be exercised therewith." 
 
 Obligation to previous students of Milton's life and 
 works is a matter of course. The writer of this book 
 has consulted them freely; used them, she believes, 
 not slavishly, and she now records her gratitude to 
 them for their labours of love and skill. A few passages 
 overlooked by them or left in doubt she has been able 
 to make clear. 
 
 MARY A. JORDAN. 
 
 Smith College, 
 Northampton, Mass. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introduction : 
 
 I. Life of Milton 1 1 
 
 II. L' Allegro, II Penseroso 40 
 
 III. Arcades 42 
 
 IV. Comus 47 
 
 V. An Expostulation with Inigo Jones ... 49 
 
 VI. Lycidas 53 
 
 VII. The Story of the Text . . . . . .56 
 
 Milton's Minor Poems: 
 
 L'Allegro 65 
 
 II Penseroso . Jl 
 
 Arcades ,78 
 
 Comus 83 
 
 Lycidas 126 
 
 .Notes 135 
 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. Life of Milton 
 
 Edmund Spenser had been ten years dead and William 
 Shakespeare had still about eight years longer to live 
 when John Milton was born. The day was the 9th of 
 December, 1608, and the place was his father's house, 
 known as "The Spread Eagle," in Bread Street, Cheap- 
 side, near St. Paul's, London. The maiden name of 
 Milton's mother was Sarah Jeffrey. She seems to have 
 had very little direct influence upon the poet's literary 
 development, his account of her being that she was " a 
 most excellent mother and particularly known for her 
 charities through the neighbourhood." To his father, at 
 every opportunity, Milton pays the tribute of affectionate 
 gratitude and enthusiastic respect. The character of this 
 father obviously deserved all that the son's eloquence 
 could commemorate. In the first place, he was a man 
 who had made his own way in London to " a plentiful 
 estate," after he had been disinherited by his father, 
 Richard Milton, one of the stanchest of Oxfordshire 
 Roman Catholics, for becoming a Protestant. How this 
 commercial success was accomplished is not known in 
 detail ; for it was not until February, 1 599-1 600, when he 
 
12 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 was thirty-seven years old, and married to a wife of about 
 twenty-eight, that he was duly quaUfied as a member of 
 the Scriveners' Company and that he set up house and 
 shop in Bread Street. At this time, a scrivener was 
 much more than a mere scribe or legal copyist. He was 
 a notary, one who did some of the less important work of 
 an attorney, in drawing up wills, bonds, mortgages, in 
 lending money and placing investments. Furthermore, 
 this particular scrivener was a thoughtful and cultivated 
 man, with a talent for music which gave him standing 
 among the composers of his time. Certain aspects of 
 his character and his relation to his son are best set forth 
 in that son's own words : 
 
 " My father destined me while yet a child to the study 
 of polite Hterature, which I embraced with such avidity 
 that from the twelfth year of my age I hardly ever retired 
 to rest from my studies till midnight, which was the first 
 source of injury to my eyes, to the natural weakness of 
 which were added frequent headaches ; all of which not 
 retarding my eagerness after knowledge, he took care to 
 have me instructed daily both at school and by other 
 masters at home." 
 
 The first of John Milton's teachers was Thomas Young, 
 a Puritan clergyman, of whom, in one of his Latin poems, 
 Milton says that this master is dearer to him than was 
 Socrates to Alcibiades, Aristotle to Alexander, or Chiron 
 to Achilles. In his twelfth year he was sent as a day- 
 scholar to St. Paul's School, near his father's home, but 
 Young still continued to teach him. This prolonged 
 
Introduction 13 
 
 service on the part of Young may have served as a re- 
 Hef to the discipline supplied by the master of St. Paul's, 
 Alexander Gill, who is described as " an ingeniose person, 
 notwithstanding his humours, particularly his whipping 
 fits." Of the master's son, another Alexander Gill, and 
 usher in the school, Milton became an intimate friend. 
 During the four or five years of his study at this time of 
 his life, he made good progress in Greek and Latin, 
 learned some Hebrew and, by his father's advice, studied 
 French and Italian. His own account is : *' When I had 
 acquired various tongues, and also some not insignificant 
 taste for the sweetness of philosophy, he sent me to 
 Cambridge." Besides his regular schooling, the young 
 poet was trained by books and reading to a more liberal 
 culture. The printer, Humphrey Lowndes, who also 
 lived in Bread Street, lent him books of poetry, among 
 them Spenser, and Du Bartas, translated by Sylvester. 
 Another important influence in Milton's life at St. Paul's 
 was his friendship with the young Italian, Charles 
 Diodati, so often and so feelingly characterized in his 
 letters and in his Latin Elegia Prima, Sexta, and Epi- 
 taphium Damonis, While he was still a scholar in St. 
 Paul's, his sister Anne, a year or two older than himself, 
 married, in 1624, Mr. Edward Philhps, second clerk in the 
 Crown office in Chancery, leaving John and his younger 
 brother, Christopher, the only children at home in Bread 
 Street. To the year of his sister's marriage belong the 
 earliest preserved specimens of John Milton's verse. They 
 are Paraphrases on Psalms cxiv and cxxxvi. This work. 
 
14 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 mechanical as it may seem to readers out of sympathy 
 with the type of Hterature it represents, still gives clear 
 evidence to the close observer of the pecuHar genius of 
 Milton, of his habits of Hfe and of mind, and of that 
 characteristic result of them all, his culture. It must be 
 remembered that before he went to Cambridge he had 
 probably *' ceaselessly studied " and " insatiably read " 
 the books of " his day," what we now call contemporary 
 literature ; Shakespeare's Coriolanus^ Sonnets, and Tempest^ 
 Chapman's Iliad, J. Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, the 
 King James Version of the Bible, Bacon's Novum Or- 
 ganujn, Burton's Anatomy of Melaiicholy, and the First 
 Folio of Shakespeare. Drummond, Drayton, and Wither 
 had written poetry commanding attention, and the year 
 after Milton entered college, the final form of Bacon's 
 ^j-j-^j'j appeared. All this justifies Edmond Scht^rer's asser- 
 tion that " he belongs at once to the Renaissance and to 
 Puritanism. The whole character of his work is explained 
 by this double filiation. He is a poet, not of the great 
 creative age, but of that age's morrow, — a morrow still 
 possessed of spontaneity and conviction. Yet he is a 
 didactic and theological poet, that is to say, the only 
 kind of poet which it was possible for an English republi- 
 can of the seventeenth century to be. . . . But also what 
 a transition was that from the Renaissance to Puritanism ! 
 And yet the one sprang from the other, for Puritanism is 
 but Protestantism in an acute form, and Protestantism 
 itself is but the Renaissance carried into the sphere of 
 religion and theology." 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 On the 1 2th of February, 1624-5, Milton was enrolled 
 as a Lesser Pensioner on the books of Christ College, 
 Cambridge. A pensioner in the University of Cambridge 
 is one who pays for his commons and so corresponds to 
 a commoner at Oxford. He was matriculated in the 
 University, April 9, 1625. Here he hved and studied, 
 with frequent absences in vacation and at other times, for 
 seven years. His tutor to whom he was assigned was the 
 Reverend William Chappell, later Bishop of Cork and 
 Ross. Milton got on so ill with this tutor that the 
 Master of the College, Dr. Thomas Bainbridge, had to 
 interfere. Justice seems to have been done with an even 
 hand, for Milton was sent, or withdrawn, from college 
 in circumstances equivalent to rustication ; but he was 
 allowed to return, and on his return was transferred to 
 another tutor, Mr. Nathaniel Tovey. When Christopher 
 Milton joined his brother at Christ's in 1 630-1, it was to 
 Tovey that he was assigned. Milton took his bachelor's 
 degree at th^ regular time in 1628-9, and the master's 
 degree in July, 1632. Still this episode was not without 
 its inconveniences ; for in later times of political and per- 
 sonal controversy, it gave some show of occasion for the 
 charge that he had been " vomited out " of the University 
 for unbecoming conduct and indecorous life. Milton's 
 treatment of the charge was as characteristic as the whole 
 episode doubtless was. 
 
 "It hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge 
 publicly with all grateful mind the more than ordinary 
 favour and respect which I found, above any of my 
 
1 6 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, 
 the Fellows of the College wherein I spent some years, 
 who, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the 
 manner is, signified many ways how much better it would 
 content them if I would stay, as by many letters full of 
 kindness and loving respect, both before that time and 
 long after, I was assured of their singular good affection 
 toward me. . . . My father sent me to Cambridge ; 
 there I devoted myself for a space of seven years to the 
 literature and arts usually taught, free from all reproach, 
 and approved of by all good men, as far as the degree 
 of Master, as it is termed." 
 
 The simple truth is that Milton did not particularly 
 enjoy " college." He does not look back to this time of 
 his life with any great affection. He was refined in his 
 tastes, and studious by choice. The rougher men nick- 
 named him " The Lady," — quite as much, probably, for 
 his haughty refinement as for his delicate beauty. An- 
 thony Wood says that he " performed the collegiate and 
 academical exercises to the admiration of all, and was 
 esteemed to be a virtuous and sober person, yet not to 
 be ignorant of his own parts." College popularity based 
 on the trait suggested by the last clause of Wood's char- 
 acterization would certainly be a plant of slow growth, in 
 our day, no less than in Milton's. None the less, when 
 Milton signed the Articles of Religion on the occasion 
 of his receiving the Master's degree, his name heads the 
 list of those from Christ's College. And there were stu- 
 dents of talent and worth in Cambridge who must have 
 
Introduction 17 
 
 appreciated the poet's genius whether they enjoyed his 
 manners or not. Here were Edward King, whom 
 Milton celebrated as Lycidas ; the satirical poet, John 
 Cleveland; Henry More, the Platonist; Jeremy Taylor, 
 pauper scholar, and " golden " writer ; Edmund Waller, 
 "nursed in parliaments"; quaint Thomas Fuller, and 
 Thomas Randolph, earlier employer of Milton's famous 
 phrase, " buxom, blithe, and debonair." The list of 
 Latin and English " pieces " produced by Milton during 
 his stay at Cambridge is long, and full of interest to the 
 student. Still more than the titles, the pieces themselves 
 supply much material for the history of Milton's opinions 
 and some evidence in regard to facts of his biography. 
 Most of those remained in manuscript ; only two pro- 
 ductions finding their way into print at the time. The 
 Natm-am non pati Senium was printed for academic 
 purposes. The lines On Shakespeare appeared anony- 
 mously in the Second Folio of Shakespeare, published in 
 1632. It is a pity that the wholly deserved attention 
 given to the English poems should seem to have diverted 
 an equally well merited interest from the Latin composi- 
 tions in prose and verse. At the risk, however, of still 
 further emphasizing this inequity, the young reader's love 
 and admiration are "bespoke" for the type of scholar 
 who expressed his own ideals and "joy of living " in such 
 poems as these : 
 
 Milton's minor poems- 
 
1 8 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET 
 VV. SHAKESPEARE 
 
 What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 
 
 The labour of an age in piled stones ? 
 
 Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid 
 
 Under a star-ypointing pyramid ? 
 
 Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
 
 What needst thou such weak witness of thy name ? 
 
 Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
 
 Hast built thyself a livelong monument. 
 
 For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art 
 
 Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 
 
 Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book 
 
 Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, 
 
 Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, 
 
 Dost make us marble with too much conceiving ; 
 
 And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie 
 
 That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. 
 
 ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE 
 
 How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 
 Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year ! 
 My hasting days fly on with full career, 
 But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 
 Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 
 That I to manhood am arrived so near ; 
 And inward ripeness doth much less appear, 
 That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. 
 Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow. 
 It shall be still in strictest measure even 
 
Introduction 19 
 
 To that same lot, however mean or high, 
 
 Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. 
 
 All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
 
 As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye. 
 
 Other well-known English poems of this period are 
 On the Death of a Fair Infant (1626), At a Vacation 
 Exercise (1628), On the Morning of Christ's Nativity 
 (1629), On the University Carrier (1630). 
 
 From the evidence of letters and statements bearing 
 directly and indirectly on the subject, it is well known 
 that Milton's father originally intended him for the 
 church. But the great changes that had taken place in 
 the pohtical condition of England during his stay at 
 Cambridge, where he was always an alert and sensitive 
 observer of contemporary events, had evidently reinforced 
 "an inward prompting" which, wherever it was to carry 
 him, forbade his taking orders in the church of England. 
 
 To Horton, a small village of Buckinghamshire, near 
 Windsor and twenty miles from London, Milton's father 
 had gone to live when he retired from business, and here 
 Milton spent five years and eight months in study and 
 literary work. His account is, "I was wholly intent, 
 through a period of absolute leisure, on a steady perusal 
 of the Greek and Latin writers, but still so that occasion- 
 ally I exchanged the country for the city, either for the 
 purpose of buying books, or for that of learning anything 
 new in Mathematics or in Music, in which I then took 
 delight." Milton's taste for music was one that he shared 
 with his father and it must have strengthened the uncom- 
 
20 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 mon sympathy between them. Possibly, even, it may 
 have helped the older man to withstand his own wistful 
 impatience to see his son give some fruit of his genius, 
 instead of so prolonging the time of "ripening." To 
 the influences of this time may not improbably be added 
 the natural grief of a sensitive young man over the death 
 of a good mother. A plain slab in the floor of the Hor- 
 ton Parish Church reads : " Heare lyeth the Body of 
 Sara Milton, the wife of John Milton, who died the 3rd 
 of April, 1637." About the same time died Edward King, 
 fellow of Milton's college in Cambridge. The first-fruits 
 of Milton's peculiar genius also belong to this time. For 
 here Masson places the best of what are called Milton's 
 minor poems. These are : L Allegro, II Fenseroso, Ar- 
 cades, At a Solemn Music, On Time, Upon the Circum- 
 cision, Comus, Lycidas. 
 
 Nor was the scholarship of Milton unrecognized. The 
 laborious days and reading nights of this terrible worker 
 were making him one of the most learned men of his 
 time. Milton was admitted to the master's degree at 
 Oxford in 1635. 
 
 But Milton had long dreamed of travel. His thoughts 
 turned to the centres of historic and artistic influence on 
 the Continent. In April, 1638, he gained his father's 
 somewhat reluctant consent to his plans. 
 
 He left his father at Horton in the companionship of 
 his younger son, Christopher Milton, and his newly 
 wedded wife, Thomasine Webber, of London. Well fur- 
 nished with letters of introduction, among which was one 
 
Introduction 11 
 
 from Sir Henry Wotton, Milton, accompanied by a man- 
 servant, went to Paris. Here through the attention of 
 Lord Scudamore, the EngHsh ambassador to Louis XHI, 
 he met the learned jurist Hugo Grotius, then living 
 in Paris as ambassador from Sweden. Through Nice, 
 Leghorn, and Pisa, Milton made his way to Florence, 
 where he stayed about two months, and met, greatly 
 to his satisfaction, the wits and scholars of the city, be- 
 sides enjoying the beauties and associations of the neigh- 
 bourhood. He speaks of receiving courtesies that he can 
 never forget from Jacopo Gaddi, Carlo Dati, Pietro 
 Friscobaldo, Agostino ColtelHni, Benedetto Buommattei, 
 Valerio Chimentelli, and Antonio Francini. He saw, 
 too, " the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the 
 Inquisition for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the 
 Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." A similar 
 experience of gratifying attentions from citizens of note 
 and consideration met him in Rome. He attended a 
 concert in the palace of Cardinal Francesco Barberini 
 and heard Leonora Baroni sing. He was made free of 
 the literary clubs, and in Naples met Giovanni Battista 
 Manso, full of years and honour. This friend of Tasso 
 was most gracious to Milton, whose sense of indebtedness 
 expressed itself in a Latin poem. Manso replied by the 
 gift of two engraved goblets and a Latin epigram. Milton 
 said of their intercourse : " I experienced from him as 
 long as I remained there, the most friendly attentions. 
 He accompanied me to the various parts of the city, and 
 took me over the Viceroy's palace, and came more than 
 
22 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 once to my lodgings to visit me. At ray departure he 
 made earnest excuses to me for not having been able to 
 show me the further attentions which he desired in that 
 city, on account of my unwillingness to conceal my re- 
 ligious sentiments." 
 
 In Naples "the sad news of civil war" reached him, 
 and he resolved to return to England, " inasmuch," he 
 says, " as I thought it base to be travelling at my ease 
 for intellectual culture while my fellow countrymen at 
 home were fighting for liberty." This estimate of the 
 critical condition of affairs in England was not strictly 
 accurate, as doubtless Milton soon found out, for he 
 made his journey in the fashion and pace of a philosopher 
 or poet rather than in that of the soldier or anxious pa- 
 triot. He revisited Rome and Florence and sought out 
 the Protestants of Geneva. He held daily intercourse 
 with Dr. Jean Diodati, who was not only an eminent 
 theologian, but commended to Milton as the uncle of his 
 friend, Charles Diodati. It was August, 1639, before 
 he reached England. The literary result of this journey 
 took the immediate form of Latin familiar epistles, Latin 
 poems, and Italian sonnets. During his journeying Milton 
 had learned the painful fact of the death of his close 
 friend, Charles Diodati. His return to Horton made 
 the details of his bereavement so sadly familiar to him 
 that only the foreign tongue in which it is written makes 
 the Epitaphiuffi Damonis second to Lycidas as an ex- 
 pression of noble grief. As an outburst of personal regret 
 even the Latin barrier cannot conceal its superiority. 
 
Introduction 23 
 
 Towards the close of 1639 Milton went into lodgings 
 in London. Here he hoped for studious leisure in which 
 to produce a great EngHsh poem. But the sympathy 
 of the English Puritans with the Scottish opposition to 
 Episcopacy, the contest of the Long Parliament with 
 Charles I, and Milton's Hfelong sense of duty combined 
 to make an atmosphere in which the poet's singing robes 
 and garland seemed hopelessly out of place. With the 
 breaking out of civil war in 1642, Milton had definitely 
 committed himself to the Parliament side. But a short 
 hst of dates and a brief statement of a single decision do 
 scant justice to the complexity of Milton's character or 
 the multiplicity of his interests. His effort to live satis- 
 factorily in Fleet Street lodgings had been given up after 
 a brief trial. He moved to a detached house with a gar- 
 den, in Aldersgate Street, where he could have more of 
 what were almost necessities to him, then and always, — 
 privacy and quiet. His mental attitude at this time may 
 be best described in his own words, "... with no small 
 dehght, I resumed my intermitted studies, cheerfully 
 leaving the issue of public affairs, first to God, and then 
 to those to whom the people had committed that charge." 
 His practical energy took the form of " commencing 
 schoolmaster." His two nephews, Edward and John 
 Phillips, had been " put to board " with him. These, 
 with a small number of boys, " the sons of gentlemen 
 who were his intimate friends," made a school that must 
 indeed have justified the description of it as select. The 
 course of study included mathematics and astronomy, 
 
24 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Syriac, Chaldee, Hebrew, Greek, French, Latin, Italian, 
 and the compilation from dictated notes of a system of 
 divinity arranged by Milton himself. The master be- 
 lieved in severe discipline, but used familiar and free 
 conversation; he worked hard, lived on a spare diet for 
 an example to his students ; but, none the less, gave him- 
 self what he called " a gaudy day," with " young sparks 
 of his acquaintance," about once a month. His resolve 
 to trust the issue of public affairs to God and then to 
 those appointed by the people was soon invaded by 
 "noises and hoarse disputes." 
 
 In 1 64 1 appeared Of Reformation touching Church 
 Discipline in England and the Causes that have hitherto 
 Hindered It, by Milton ; and the reply to Bishop Hall's 
 Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament 
 entitled Smectymmnts, a word made up of the initials 
 5f the names of the authors, by five Puritan ministers. 
 These were Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas 
 Young (Milton's first teacher), Matthew Newcomen, 
 and William Spurstow. In the controversy that fol- 
 lowed, Milton published Of Prelatical Episcopacy, 
 The Reason of Church Government urged against 
 Prelaty, Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's De- 
 fense against Smectymnuus. Complete absorption in 
 these high matters and stormy debates must have been 
 prevented by two events of personal significance to 
 Milton. One was the advent of Milton's father. In 
 1643 he came from the house of his son Christopher 
 in Reading to live with the poet. With John Milton he 
 
Introduction 25 
 
 lived until his death, in 1647. The other was the poet's 
 marriage, thus described by Phillips : " About Whitsun- 
 tide, he [Milton] took a journey into the country, no- 
 body about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it 
 was more than a journey of recreation. After a month's 
 stay home, he returns a married man who set out a 
 bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of 
 Mr. Richard Powell, then a Justice of the Peace of For- 
 est Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire." 
 
 The Powell family was Royalist in its political sym- 
 pathy. Mr. Justice Powell was in debt to Milton for 
 a considerable sum of money, lent by his father. In 
 spite of a " feasting held for some days in celebration of 
 the nuptials," within two months of the marriage day, 
 Milton's bride accepted an invitation from her friends in 
 the country to visit them. The somewhat miscellaneous 
 or conflicting considerations mentioned above did not" 
 afford grounds for a strong enough sense of conjugal duty 
 to bring the lady back at the Michaelmas appointed by 
 Milton as the limit of her stay. Milton's efforts to regain 
 his wife were treated "with some sort of contempt," nor 
 did she return for two years. This return has been vari- 
 ously interpreted as due to considerations of selfish pohcy, 
 quickened by the course of public events, the need of 
 support for the falling family fortunes, or the fear of her 
 husband's acting upon the theories of divorce and mar- 
 riage he was so fluently elaborating. For in 1644 Milton 
 had published, at first anonymously. The Doctrine and 
 Discipline of Divorce ; in 1645, Tetrachordon, or Expo- 
 
26 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 siiions upon the Four Chief Places of Scripture which treat 
 of Marriage, and Colas terion the reply to an attack upon 
 his first work on divorce. After Milton's forgiveness of 
 his wife, he moved to a house in Barbican, where he 
 received his impoverished father-in-law and his family 
 after the surrender of Oxford. For a matter of two years, 
 until Mr. Powell's death in January, 1647, Milton sup- 
 ported the family. His efforts to recover the sequestered 
 property were partly successful. His residence in the 
 house in Barbican was also marked by the birth of his 
 first child, Anne, July 29, 1646. 
 
 To the year 1644 also belong the Tractate oft Educa- 
 tion^ the Areopagitica, or a Speech for the Liberty of Un- 
 licensed Printing. The Areopagitica is the greatest of 
 Milton's prose works, both for the sentiments it embodies 
 and the dignity of its piled-up periods. The controversy 
 between the Presbyterians and the Independents supplied 
 him with occasion for weighty argument and sharp-drawn 
 distinctions, but the close of the Civil War, in 1648, found 
 Milton's store of poetry increased by only nine sonnets 
 and a few efforts in Latin. Meantime he had moved 
 again to a house in Holborn, where a second daughter, 
 Mary, was born. But even settled domestic relations did 
 not reheve Milton from the burden of public affairs. The 
 execution of Charles I, in 1649, called out from the poet 
 turned " proser " a defense under the title The Tenu7'eof 
 Kings and Magistrates. So it was probably no matter for 
 surprise when he was commissioned Secretary of Foreign 
 Tongues to the new Commonwealth by the Council 
 
Introduction 27 
 
 of State, March, 1649. His taste for statecraft was 
 also indicated in the Observations on Ortnond's Articles 
 of Peace with the Irish Rebels. The duties of the Latin 
 Secretary, as Milton was called, are said by Professor 
 Masson to have been much like those of the head of 
 the present Foreign Office under the rninister of that 
 department for the English government. There was, 
 however, one important difference ; the council of state 
 in Milton's time, as Masson accurately notes, managed 
 the foreign ministry as well as all the other depart- 
 ments of state. During the early years of Milton's 
 discharge of the duties of his post, the man and the 
 poet practically disappear in the official. But as the 
 man and his aims were great, so the officer was never 
 petty. Milton never became a mere clerk or substitute 
 for a district messenger boy. His labour was literally 
 terrible, the sense of duty and of " a clear call " became 
 a '' strong compulsion." He was warned that he had al- 
 ready overtaxed his eyes and must look for total bUndness 
 unless he would lessen his heavy demands upon them. 
 But these efforts were not called forth by the correspond- 
 ence with kings or the interviews with 'ambassadors, use- 
 ful as Milton was in these relations. Nor could his activity 
 as official licenser of a newspaper called Mercurius Poli- 
 ticus, uncongenial and therefore costly as such oversight 
 might seem to be to the author of the Areopagitica, have 
 been particularly burdensome. The truth is that Milton 
 was something between a" learned counsel," retained by 
 the Commonwealth, and its strong-hearted champion, 
 
28 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 ready to take up whatever gage was thrown down. Dur- 
 ing the ten years in which he defended it from all attacks, 
 his prose work is represented by the Eikonoklastes, 1649, 
 written in reply to the famous Eikon Basilike (Royal Im- 
 age), supposed to be the prayers and meditations of Charles 
 I ; the Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, 165 1, in reply to the 
 Leyden professor, Salmasius. For this last, the council 
 returned thanks to " Mr. Milton." The critics and schol- 
 ars of Europe made it their talk for months and expressed 
 amazement at the " manghng " that the great Salmasius 
 had suffered at the hands of one of " the English Mas- 
 tiffs." But in 1652 he was totally bhnd. He says : "The 
 choice lay before me, between dereliction of a supreme 
 duty and loss of eyesight ; in such a case I could not 
 hsten to the physician, not if ^sculapius himself had 
 spoken from his sanctuary : I could not but obey that 
 inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from 
 heaven. I considered with myself that many had pur- 
 chased less good with worse ill, as they who give their 
 Hves to reap only glory, and I thereupon concluded to 
 employ the little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in 
 doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was 
 in my power to render." 
 
 In the years from 1649 ^^ 1652 he had lived at Char- 
 ing Cross and in Scotland Yard, Whitehall, that he might 
 be near the scene of his duties. In the beginning of 
 1652, however, he moved to a garden house in Petty 
 France, Westminster, opening into St. James's Park. 
 This house was later owned by Jeremy Bentham ; and oc- 
 
Introduction 29 
 
 cupied by William Hazlitt, in 181 1. The preoccupation 
 of Milton's mind with the stir and smoke of conflict may 
 be inferred from the fact that in the ten years of his ac- 
 tive employment by the government, he wrote only eight 
 sonnets and a few Latin pieces in the interests of artistic 
 iiterature. In 1653-4 his wife died at the birth of a 
 daughter, Deborah. In 1656 he married again, Catherine 
 Woodcock, who died in childbirth fifteen months after 
 marriage. In 1662-3 he married a third wife, Elizabeth 
 Minshull, she being twenty-four and Milton fifty-four years 
 of age. His relations with his daughters were not happy 
 and hardly reasonable. The eldest was somewhat de- 
 formed, at this time in her seventeenth year, the next in 
 her fifteenth, the third in her eleventh. The eldest could 
 not write at all, the other two " but indifferent well." So 
 the legend of their writing to his dictation is not strictly 
 accurate. In lieu of better help, however, he would make 
 the younger ones read to him, and to this end he had 
 taught them to read in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, 
 Spanish, and Hebrew, although they did not themselves 
 understand a word of what they were reading. They 
 soon rebelled. He reproached them. He said they 
 *' made nothing of deserting him," they " made away with 
 some of his books, and would have sold the rest to the 
 dunghill women," they " did combine together and coun- 
 cil his maid-servant to cheat him in her marketings." 
 On the other hand, when his second daughter heard of 
 his intention of marrying again, she said that " that was 
 no news, to hear of his wedding, but if she could hear of 
 
30 
 
 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 his death, that was something." This miserable state of 
 things was modified for the better by the advent into the 
 family of the stepmother, and was finally ended by her 
 plan, put in force about 1669, by which the three daugh- 
 ters no longer tried to live with their father, but went 
 out, at their father's expense, " to learn some curious 
 and ingenious sorts of manufacture that are proper for 
 women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold and 
 silver." 
 
 Milton's literary work from 1652 to 1664 was impor- 
 tant and interesting. There were fourteen of his Latin 
 familiar epistles as one item. In 1654, appeared his 
 reply to the anonymous attack made upon him in the 
 interest of Salmasius. It was entided Joannis Miltoni 
 Angli pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda. Through- 
 out this work Milton assumes that the author of the 
 attack was Alexander More or Morus ; in reality, it was 
 Peter du Moulin. And Milton's abuse of Morus is ter- 
 rible. His eulogy of Cromwell and the heroes of the 
 Commonwealth is as splendid as his vituperation of their 
 enemies. Morus replied to Milton, who responded, in 
 1655, \^\\X\ Joannis Miltoni Angli pro se Defensio contra 
 Alexandrum Morum, Here belong six sonnets of Mil- 
 ton's best : On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (1655), On 
 His Blindness, To Mr. Lawrence, To Cyriack Skinner, 
 To the Same (1655), On His Deceased Wife (1658). 
 
 Four of these sonnets are so valuable in the knowl- 
 edge they afford of Milton that the student should study 
 them affectionately and repeatedly. 
 
Introduction 31 
 
 ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT 
 
 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; 
 Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
 When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, 
 Forget not : in thy book record their groans 
 Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
 Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
 The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
 To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
 O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
 The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow 
 A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way 
 Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 
 
 ON HIS BLINDNESS 
 
 When 1 consider how my light is spent 
 
 Ere half my days in this dark world and wide. 
 
 And that one talent which is death to hide 
 
 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
 
 To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
 
 My true account, lest he returning chide, 
 
 "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" 
 
 I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 
 
 That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need 
 
 Either man's work, or his own gifts. Who best 
 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 
 
 Is kingly : thousands at his bidding speed. 
 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest; 
 
 They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
32 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 TO CYRIACK SKINNER, ON HIS BLINDNESS 
 
 Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear 
 
 To outward view of blemish or of spot, 
 
 Bereft of light their seeing have forgot ; 
 
 Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
 
 Of sun or moon or star, throughout the year, 
 
 Or man or woman.' Yet I argue not 
 
 Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 
 Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer 
 
 Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
 
 In Liberty's defence, my noble task, 
 
 Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 
 
 This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask 
 
 Content though blind, had I no better guide. 
 
 ON HIS DECEASED WIFE 
 
 Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave. 
 Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, 
 Rescued from death by force though pale and faint. 
 Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint 
 Purification in the old Law did save, 
 And such as yet once more I trust to have 
 Full sight of her in heaven without restraint, 
 Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. 
 Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight 
 Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined 
 So clear as in no face with more delight. 
 But oh ! as to embrace me she inclined, 
 I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. 
 
Introduction 33 
 
 This period of Milton's life takes on special interest for 
 the student in view of the widely held opinion among 
 literary critics that Milton was right in his feeling that he 
 could work out only part, and that the baser part, of his 
 great task by writing prose. That Milton should have 
 preferred to write poetry, is natural, and we can under- 
 stand his feeling of " left-handed ness " while he was about 
 his pamphlets and state papers, but we cannot feel full 
 sympathy with those who regret the time and strength 
 expended on them. Nor do the facts give ground for 
 such regret. For there is Httle if any doubt that Pat-a- 
 dise Lost was actually begun in the last year of the Pro- 
 tectorate. The subject as a suitable one for his great 
 work had been in Milton's mind since 1639 or 1640, 
 although, as it was first planned, the poem was to have 
 been in dramatic form. Meantime Milton was writing 
 eleven Latin letters in the interests of Richard Cromwell, 
 and two for the restored Rump ParHament after the fail- 
 ure and abdication of Richard. At this time, October 
 1659, Andrew Marvell was his colleague in the office of 
 secretary. A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical 
 Causes and Considerations toiichifig the Likeliest Means 
 to remove LLirelings out of the Chwrh are titles showing 
 the direction of Milton's efforts in these wretched times. 
 The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commofi- 
 wealth, in March i66o, showed Milton still bearing up 
 and steering right onward, despite a desperate certainty 
 that the cause was lost and further struggle no more than 
 a show of personal courage. Later editions and other 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — -f, 
 
34 
 
 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 efforts of his are full of vehemence and urgent apprehen- 
 sion of the evil certain to come upon the British Islands. 
 Poetry during this impending crisis he wrote none ; in- 
 stead he must have needed all his natural and acquired 
 fortitude to bear up under the contemptuous retort of 
 Roger L'Estrange in his No Blind Gtiides. Three Latin 
 famihar epistles belong to this time. Charles II made 
 his entry into London, May 29. Some of the bloody 
 revenges that Milton had prophesied came about. But 
 by some extraordinary dispensation, Milton escaped. To 
 avoid apprehension, he fled from his house in Petty 
 France and was concealed in a friend's house in Bar- 
 tholomew Close, near Smithfield, while the Convention 
 Parliament discussed the punishment proper for the 
 regicides and anti-royaUsts. The fifty- four survivors 
 of the seventy-seven "king's judges" who had tried and 
 condemned Charles I were objects of bitter denunciation 
 and active search. They were of course foremost on the 
 list of those excepted from a Bill of General Indemnity 
 and Oblivion, brought into the Commons in accord with 
 the restored king's desire for clemency. Another hst of 
 some thirty or forty were denounced for general demerit 
 and delinquency. The Commons on the i6th of June 
 ordered Milton's arrest and indictment by the attorney- 
 general on the score of the Eikonoklastes and the 
 Defensio pro Popido Anglicano contra Salmasium. After 
 due petition, a royal proclamation on the 13th of August 
 called in all copies of these books and ordered them to 
 be burned. But Milton's name never appeared in any of 
 
Introduction 35 
 
 the lists of persons excepted from the Bill of Indemnity, 
 assented to by the king, August 29. Technically, then, 
 Milton escaped by default, as it might be. There is little 
 doubt, however, that he had powerful friends in the 
 Commons and the Lords who protected his life and then 
 advanced his interests as they could from time to time. 
 For a short time he was in custody, but the records of 
 the House of Commons show an order to the sergeant- 
 at-arms to release Mr. Milton on the payment of his fees. 
 Milton complained that the fees were exorbitant and Mr. 
 Andrew Marvell was the member who brought his com- 
 plaint before the House. Milton's complete release was 
 followed by a short stay in Holborn, near the present 
 Red Lion Square, with a still later removal to a house in 
 Jewin Street in the neighbourhood of Aldersgate Street. 
 In 1664, probably, Milton moved to what was to be the 
 last of his London houses. This was in Artillery Walk, 
 leading out of Bunhill Fields. Here, within two years, 
 in 1665, Paradise LostwsiS completed. It was pubHshed 
 in 1667. Gradually the world changed for Milton. The 
 "blind old rascal," the thwarted patriot, the man fallen 
 on evil days, and evil tongues, in darkness and compassed 
 round with dangers and soHtude, had come to his own 
 again. As Dryden is said to have put it, " This man cuts 
 us all out, and the ancients too." From this time on 
 Milton had no reason to complain of solitude. Professor 
 Masson's account of Milton's habits and mode of living 
 during the last ten years of his life is so interesting and 
 so instructive that it deserves quotation in full. " He 
 
^6 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 used to get up very early, generally at four o'clock in 
 summer and five in winter. After having a chapter or 
 two of the Hebrew Bible read to him, he worked, first in 
 meditation by himself, and then after breakfast by dicta- 
 tion to his amanuensis for the time being, interspersed 
 with farther readings to him from the books he wanted 
 to consult, till near his midday dinner. A good part of 
 the afternoon was then given to walking in the garden 
 (and a garden of some kind had been always a requisite 
 with him), or to playing on the organ, and singing, or 
 hearing his wife sing within doors. His wife, he said, 
 had a good voice, but no ear. Later in the afternoon he 
 resumed work ; but about six o'clock he was ready to 
 receive evening visitors, and to talk with them till about 
 eight, when there was a supper of ' olives or some light 
 thing.' He was very temperate at meals, drinking 
 very Httle ' wine or strong liquors of any kind ' ; but his 
 conversation at dinner and supper was very pleasant and 
 cheerful, with a tendency to the satirical. This humour 
 for satire was connected by some of his hearers with his 
 strong way of pronouncing the letter ;- ; ' litera canina^ 
 the dog letter, the certain sign of a satirical wit,' as 
 Dryden said to Aubrey when they were talking of this 
 personal trait of Milton. After supper, when left to him- 
 self, he smoked his pipe and drank a glass of water before 
 going to bed ; which was usually at nine o'clock. He 
 attended no church, and belonged to no communion, 
 nor had he any regular prayers in his family, having some 
 principle of his own on that subject which his friends did 
 
Introduction 37 
 
 not understand. His favourite attitude in dictating was 
 sitting somewhat aslant in an elbow-chair, with his leg 
 thrown over one of the arms. He would dictate his 
 verses, thirty or forty at a time, to any one that happened 
 to be at hand. . . . His poetical vein, Phillips tells us, 
 flowed most happily * from the autumnal equinox to the 
 vernal,' i.e., from the end of September to the end of 
 March, — so that, with all his exertions through the other 
 half of the year, he was never so well satisfied with the 
 results. His poor health, and frequent headaches, and 
 other pains, were another interference with his work; 
 but less than might have been supposed. Gout was his 
 most confirmed ailment, and it had begun to stiffen his 
 hands." 
 
 Jonathan Richardson, the painter, is quoted by Professor 
 Masson as follows : " I have heard many years since, that 
 he used to sit in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of 
 his house near Bunhill Fields, without Moorgate, in warm, 
 sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air, and so, as well as 
 in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished 
 parts as well as quahty : and very lately I had the good 
 fortune to have another picture of him from an aged 
 clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright. He found him in 
 a small house, he thinks but one room on a floor. In 
 that, up one pair of stairs, which was hung with a rusty 
 green, he found John Milton sitting in an elbow-chair, 
 black clothes, and neat enough ; pale, but not cadaver- 
 ous ; his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk-stones. 
 Among other discourse he expressed himself to this pur- 
 
38 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 pose, — that was he free from the pain this gave him, his 
 bUndness would be tolerable." 
 
 During the last four or five years of Milton's life he 
 published, in 1669, Accedence Couimenc' d Grammar ; in 
 
 1670, Histoiy of Britain to the Norman Conquest ; in 
 
 167 1, Paradise Regained^ and Samsoji Agofiistes ; in 1672, 
 a Latin treatise on logic, according to the system of 
 Ramus. 
 
 Milton died on Sunday, November 8, 1674, very 
 quietly of " gout struck in." He was laid beside his 
 father in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and was 
 followed to his grave by "all his learned and great 
 friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of 
 the vulgar." 
 
 It would seem that Milton's Hterary activity had been 
 enough, as shown by the record already given, to fill one 
 lifetime ; but seven years after his death appeared a few 
 pages under the title Mr. JoJm Milton's Character of the 
 Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines. It was alleged 
 that this had been omitted from the History of Britain 
 when Milton pubHshed it in 1670. In 1682 was pub- 
 lished A Brief Histojy of Muscovia ajid of other less 
 known countries lying eastward of Russia as far as 
 Cathay. A London bookseller in 1676 published a sur- 
 reptitious edition of the Latin State Letters. A better 
 edition appeared in 1690, and Phillips's translation in 
 1694. John Nickolls, in 1743, edited Milton's Letters 
 and Addresses of Cromwell in a thin folio. But far 
 more important than any of these is the long-lost treatise, 
 
Introduction 39 
 
 De Doctrina Christiana. This was published and trans- 
 lated by Dr. Sumner in 1825. It is no less interesting 
 to the student of Milton's opinions than to the ad- 
 mirer of his genius. Here he appears to be no Trini- 
 tarian, no Calvinist, no Sabbatarian. He does not hold 
 the commonly received doctrine with regard to spirit 
 and matter, or body and soul. These he considers one 
 and inseparable. He does behave in a literal resurrec- 
 tion of all that have ever lived. The Bible he holds to be 
 the sole rule of Christian faith, but it is to be studied and 
 interpreted by every man for himself He believes in 
 war against tyranny ; in prayers and curses against bad 
 men. He insists upon the right of divorce, and defends 
 polygamy. Among these heresies he manages to move 
 with decision and composure, and whatever surprise and 
 fear the reader may feel at such world-shaking doctrines, 
 it is clear that Johrf Milton feels none. 
 
 More than two hundred and fifty years ago, namely, in 
 1648, there was printed in London a book of Latin prose 
 and verse, called Novcb Solymce Libri Sex. It apparently 
 attracted no attention from the public then, and remained 
 in the dust of library corners until the Rev. Walter 
 Begley translated and edited it under the following title 
 and description : Nova Solyma, the Ideal City : or Jeru- 
 salem Regained. An anojiymous roma7ice written in the 
 time of Charles I, now first drawn fi'om obscurity and 
 attributed to the illustrious John Milton. . . . ig02. 
 Professor Gummere says of this claim upon " the illustri- 
 ous John Milton" : "Unless strong external evidence is 
 
40 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 forthcoming, we can never be wholly justified in shelving 
 Nova Solyma beside Paradise Lost, yet the case is so 
 probable that the book must hereafter be reckoned with 
 by all thoroughgoing students of Milton." The gratitude 
 of the thoroughgoing student is at all events due to Mr. 
 Begley for this opportunity to study in detail the copious 
 extracts from the Latin original. It is no slight privilege 
 to be able to scan the literary workmanship of an artist 
 who, if he were not John Milton, was clearly the only other 
 man of Milton's time who chose hard thoughts to play 
 with, and who could write better Latin verse than prose. 
 And whoever the author, the student of Milton will do 
 well to make himself familiar with a type of phrase that 
 bears the most extraordinary resemblance to Milton's in 
 structure and use. 
 
 IL L' Allegro, II Penseroso 
 
 These poems were published by Milton in the collec- 
 tion of his works made in 1645. They have been vari- 
 ously interpreted. There are the strict constructionists 
 and the free. There are critics who find them mines of 
 autobiography, and others who find them storehouses 
 of information about nature in her various moods. Some 
 even assert their faith in Milton's psychological and patho- 
 logical purpose of analysis of mood and portraiture of 
 temperament. And doubtless there is some truth in all this. 
 Milton left few fields unharvested, his young curiosity 
 was tireless, his reading was omnivorous. The quotation 
 
Introduction 41 
 
 heaps of Burton seemed no burden upon his intellectual 
 endurance. The appearance of Gunter's Tables was 
 received by him as an aid and elegant diversion rather 
 than as a labour-saving device. Attempts have been made 
 to reduce these poems from poetry to anatomy and psy- 
 chology of the precisely scientific sort. Just how much 
 these men or moods have in common with each other, 
 and how far either or both stand for the author in his 
 normal state when free from the fine frenzy of the poet ; 
 precisely how far the men and the moods are mutually 
 exclusive — these are questions which have had at least 
 the merit of producing minutely careful study of the 
 verses. But the main thing invariably discovered is that 
 the poetry is very beautiful and alluring poetry. And 
 from the seductions of this poetry the reader comes 
 back to hfe and himself happier and better and stronger. 
 Emotion has been varied by emotion, without strain and 
 without tension, and, above all, without sensation. 
 
 Dr. Henry Van Dyke says : " I do not think that 
 V Allegro, II Penseroso, and Comiis have any lower place 
 in the world, or any less enduring life, than Paradise 
 Lost. We have thought so much of Milton's strength 
 and sublimity that we have ceased to recognize what is 
 also true, that he, of all English poets, is by nature the 
 supreme lover of beauty." 
 
 But probably no other English poet has looked upon 
 beauty with so powerful a brain and conscience behind 
 the seeing eyes. " Follow Virtue. She alone is free," 
 his level, steady gaze at the insolence and pomp of fleet- 
 
42 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 ing Beauty seems to say. What the earliest Life of 
 Milton, recently published for the first time by Dr. 
 Edward S. Parsons of Colorado College, records of him 
 in another important relation of hfe is no less true of 
 him in this : 
 
 " From so Christian a Life, so great Learning, and so 
 unbyass'd a search after Truth it is not probable any 
 errors in Doctrine should spring. And therefore his 
 Judgment in his Body of Divinity concerning some 
 speculative points, differing perhaps from that commonly 
 received (and which is thought to bee the reason that 
 never was printed), neither ought rashly to bee con- 
 demned, and however himselfe not to bee uncharitably 
 censur'd ; who by beeing a constant Champion for the 
 liberty of opining, expressed much Candour towards 
 others." 
 
 III. Arcades 
 
 This work of Milton's has been too often lightly set 
 aside as a mere understudy for Comus. It possesses 
 great interest in view of its occasion, its subject-matter, 
 and its form. The occasion was the celebration of the 
 seventy years of the life of the Countess-Dowager of 
 Derby, one of the three daughters of Sir John Spencer, 
 known from Colin Cloufs Come Home Again as Ph)«}lis, 
 Charillis, and Sweet AmaryUis. Amaryllis (Alice) had 
 married Ferdinando, Lord Strange, who had already been 
 married twice, for her first husband. In 1600, six years 
 
Introduction 43 
 
 after his death, she became the second wife of Sir Thomas 
 Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. At their estate 
 of Harefield, during Queen Elizabeth's visit of four days, 
 Burbage's company played Othello, Masks of various 
 sorts were an important part of this royal entertainment. 
 Lord Egerton died in 16 17. Two sons of the Earl of 
 Bridgewater, stepsons to the Countess, planned this en- 
 tertainment in her honour and themselves took part in 
 Arcades. Milton treats the occasion with dignified ap- 
 preciation, but with the self-respect and sense of ultimate 
 values unfailing in him at all times. It is interesting to 
 see how the young poet spiritualizes the traditionally 
 robust, not to say heavy, entertainment of the English 
 public. 
 
 In the material Milton uses, the student and the man 
 of culture are frankly revealed. The verses demonstrate 
 the author's wide interests, personal independence, and a 
 determination already taken to err with Plato rather than 
 to be right with Aristotle That he failed to understand 
 either Plato or Aristotle is little to the point. This poem 
 may fairly be considered a sort of spiritual log-book of a 
 young adventurer in the sea of thought. Many men had 
 sailed those seas before, and the weather and the ocean 
 had been charted often, but never by a more resolute or 
 a more devoted sailor. 
 
 The form adopted, that of the Mask, was at this 
 time peculiarly fitted to serve as the medium for the ex- 
 pression of Milton's unique combination of temperament 
 and conscience. Historically the English Mask owed 
 
44 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 as much to the Miracle Plays and Moralities of EngUsh 
 guilds and churches as to the pageants of Florence or the 
 faint survival of Greek drama. Ben Jonson was the great- 
 est of English Masters of the Revels. Inigo Jones was the 
 great scene painter for entertainments that cost as high as 
 ^21,000, and Henry Lawes composed music for them. 
 In 1632 the Mask, with other theatrical entertainments 
 had been attacked in the Histrio-Mastix : The Player's 
 Scourge, as "the very pomp of the Divell." It is clear 
 that while Milton held no such opinion, he was quite 
 willing to detract from the spectacular effect of the per- 
 formance by the charm and beauty of the poetry he 
 offered as text. Arcades is as much more than a mere 
 " show " as the conventional Mask was less than the 
 pomp of the devil. 
 
 The manuscript oi Arcades is in Milton's handwriting 
 in the Cambridge manuscripts. It appeared in print in 
 the 1645 edition of the poet's work. 
 
 That Milton was not the first of English poets to feel 
 instinctive opposition to the part played by stage machin- 
 ery in the Mask is shown by reputed references, allu- 
 sions, and even direct attacks by critics and authors. 
 But no one of them all asserted himself so finally, and so 
 triumphantly demonstrated his superiority of all aids or 
 rivals, as did Milton. 
 
 The professional jealousy felt by Ben Jonson for the 
 stage setting of Masks and the more magnanimous, 
 because constructive and competitive, opposition of Mil- 
 ton is most interestingly justified in a recent account and 
 
Introduction 
 
 45 
 
 appreciation of the work of Inigo Jones by Ernest Rhys 
 in The Nhieteenth Century for July, 1903. The author 
 says, " Like other men who have Uved for their ideas, 
 he [Inigo Jones] showed an extraordinary persistence in 
 realizing them. . . . One is tempted by the further evi- 
 dence of his masks to consider him not only an artist 
 whose great ideal expressed itself in his smallest works 
 and a designer ' haunted by proportion,' but a master- 
 builder, who, if he had had his way, and the sky had not 
 fallen in the Civil War, would have done something to 
 build up a London as ordered and stately as any Italian 
 City. . . . Indeed all that can be said of him in the 
 praise of his work by those successors of his own calling 
 to-day who alone perhaps can wholly appreciate its merits, 
 has been said. But there is still one thing to be done, 
 to fill up the chart of his ambition and the outlines of 
 his never-to-be-realized dream of a great city rising 
 majestically along the Thames : and for that we must turn 
 to the series of masks which he helped to design. For 
 in the masks his ruling passion and his overmastering 
 ambition more and more declared themselves, as time 
 went on, leading incidentally to his quarrel with Ben 
 Jonson, and hinting very plainly at that larger work which 
 he fondly hoped to accomphsh. . . . 
 
 " Probably after his return from his first journey to 
 Italy — the native region of the mask — in 1604, he felt 
 he had a right to dictate what should be its appropriate 
 scenic effects to Ben Jonson and the poets who naturally 
 cared more for their poetry than its stage setting. . . . 
 
46 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 He spends hours over the fashion of a mantle, describing 
 half a circle, and cast back over the shoulders, or hanging 
 in a sinuous fringe. With these we have studies by the 
 pageful from some old picture ; of face or feature, eye or 
 eyebrow, or children's limbs and children's curves, and 
 figures curiously drawn to determine the proportions 
 and the proportionate hnes and movements of the body 
 and its garments. . 
 
 " In all these sketches of the figure, we find our artist 
 much absorbed in examining and defining the structure 
 behind the apparition of beauty. He saw men as he saw 
 houses, expressions of the same law of proportion, whose 
 parts of an enchanting symmetry, came of an essentia ( ?) 
 and no accidental grace. 
 
 " All this is of moment in judging the special application 
 of his art to the stage. Possessed of a genius of the eye, 
 that tyrannized over him, and compelled him to find 
 expression for it, he found his opening first in the aesthetic 
 fantasy of the mask, whose limits he presently extended 
 to their utmost capacity. ... It is impossible to trace 
 all the minor accessions from its prime Italian source, 
 which Inigo Jones may have brought to the Jacobean 
 mask. Enough to see how he speedily altered the 
 mechanical form, and practically gave us our modern 
 stage, and doing so was led to that gradual aggression on 
 Ben Jonson's jealous preserve which produced the final 
 quarrel between them. In the process, extending over 
 many years, we find the expression of his ideas as un- 
 mistakably determined in his masks as in his houses. 
 
Introduction 47 
 
 . . . Inigo gives us very modestly the theory of the 
 mask : ' These shows are nothing else but pictures with 
 light and motion.' . . . 
 
 "This was in 1631. Two or three years later came, 
 the definite break with Ben Jonson, who exclaimed vehe- 
 mently at these scenic aggressions on the poet's demesne. 
 In the Tale of a Tub he satirized Inigo with one violently 
 caricatured part — Vitruvius — which he was compelled 
 to withdraw. However, he retained another part, 'In- 
 and-in Medlay,' which effected his purpose less grossly. 
 ' You can express a Tub ? ' says Tub to Medlay, who 
 repUes : 
 
 If it conduce 
 
 To the design; whate'er is feasible. 
 
 The two words in italics were evidently favourite expres- 
 sions of Inigo Jones's, for they reappear in a later passage. 
 "... No doubt the pretty people of the Court, who 
 took a part in these gorgeous shows, found it easier to be 
 effective as angels in one of Inigo Jones's pasteboard 
 heavens, than as actors bound to speak Jonson's lines 
 (not always brief ones, either) as he wrote them. At 
 any rate, the poet, it proved, could be dispensed with : 
 there were other poets, good enough for court-masks : 
 there was only one Inigo." 
 
 IV. COMUS 
 
 As the Arcades found its occasion in a family festival 
 of close private interest, the more considerable work of 
 
48 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Comus is justified by its connection with a more widely 
 significant event. Sir John Egerton, first Earl of Bridge- 
 water, was appointed Lord President of the Council in 
 the Principality of Wales in 1631. His assumption of 
 the duties of the office in 1634 was marked by festivities 
 at the official seat of Ludlow Castle. Comus was pre- 
 sented Michaelmas night, September 29. Two copies 
 exist, one the stage copy of Lawes, the other in Milton's 
 handwriting in the Cambridge Manuscript. It was pub- 
 lished in the 1645 edition of Milton's work. Lawes had 
 previously pubUshed it in 1637. 
 
 Comus has in general the same features noticed in the 
 Arcades. Throughout the poem the same high level of 
 poetry and humanity is maintained, the same serene in- 
 terest in all things worthy and of good report prevails. 
 The world is not too much with us when we follow Milton. 
 His strongly and worthily egoistic imagination deals with 
 thoughts rather than with men, and readily deserts even 
 the show of dramatic action for monologue and elaborate 
 suggestion running into pathos or irony. Throughout the 
 Mask there is an intellectual dryness of atmosphere that 
 heightens indefinitely the sort of illusion produced by iso- 
 lating the episode for the purpose of thinking about it, 
 but that completely destroys the illusion commonly known 
 as the natural. Milton's characters go where their sen- 
 tences and periods lead them, and these in turn are what 
 Milton's reading and reflection made them. In form, for 
 example, Milton was past master of verbal harmony, but 
 his skill in little tunes was shght. His was not a parlour 
 
Introduction 49 
 
 voice. In the songs interspersed through Comus this is 
 well illustrated. In their proper setting they were doubt- 
 less effective, but who sings them now ? Milton's songs, 
 the reader suspects, came from his brain and conscience 
 by way of his deep-toned organ harmonies and must 
 have overpowered many an unsophisticated reader. Or 
 with their complexity of suggestion they must have seemed 
 artificial to plain folk who missed heartiness and melody 
 in all the measures of these book lyrics. The judicious, 
 Hke Henry I.awes and Sir Henry Wotton, in Milton's own 
 time, applaud ; all must admire ; but the haunting strain, 
 the singing spell, the lilt, the catch, are wanting to the 
 vulgar. The comment of Sir Henry Wotton leaves little 
 to be desired for discriminating appreciation of essential 
 character. " Since your going, you have charged me with 
 new obligations, both for a very kind letter from you 
 dated the 6th of this month, and for a dainty piece 
 of entertainment which came therewith. Wherein I 
 should much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did 
 not ravish me with a certain Doric delicacy in your Songs 
 and Odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen 
 yet nothing parallel in our language : Ipsa mollities.^' 
 
 V. An Expostulation with Inigo Jones 
 
 Ben Jonson 
 
 " Master Surveyor you that first began 
 From thirty pounds in pipkins, to the man 
 You are : from them leaped forth an architect, 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 4 
 
so 
 
 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Able to talk of Euclid, and correct 
 
 Both him and Archimede ; damn Archytas, 
 
 The noblest engineer that ever was : 
 
 Control Ctesibius, overbearing us 
 
 With mistook names out of Vitruvius ; 
 
 Drawn Aristotle on us, and thence shown 
 
 How much Architectonice is your own ! 
 
 Whether the building of the stage or scene, 
 
 Or making of the properties it mean, 
 
 Vizors or antics ; or it comprehend 
 
 Something your sir-ship doth not yet intend. 
 
 By all your titles, and whole style at once, 
 
 Of tireman, mountebank and Justice Jones, 
 
 I do salute you : are you fitted yet ? 
 
 Will any of these express your place, or wit ? 
 
 Or are you so ambitious 'bove 5^our peers, 
 
 You'd be an Assinigo by your ears ? 
 
 Why much good do't you ; be what part you will, 
 
 You'll be, as Langley said, ' an Inigo still.' 
 
 What makes your v^'retchedness to bray so loud 
 
 In town and court ? Are you grown rich, and proud ? 
 
 Your trappings will not change you, change your mind ; 
 
 No velvet suit -you wear will alter kind. 
 
 A wooden dagger is a dagger of wood, 
 
 Nor gold, nor ivory haft can make it good. 
 
 What is the cause you pomp it so, I ask ? 
 
 And all men echo, you have made a mask. 
 
 I chime that too, and I have met with those 
 
 That do cry up the machine, and the shows : 
 
Introduction 51 
 
 The majesty of Juno in the clouds, 
 
 And peering forth of Iris in the shrouds ; 
 
 The ascent of lady Fame, which none could spy. 
 
 Nor they that sided her, dame Poetry, 
 
 Dame History, dame Architecture too. 
 
 And goody Sculpture, brought with much ado. 
 
 To hold her up ! O shows, shows, mighty shows ! 
 
 The eloquence of masques ! what need of prose 
 
 Or verse, or prose t' express immortal you ? 
 
 You are the spectacles of state, 'tis true, 
 
 Court-hieroglyphics, and all arts afford, 
 
 In the mere perspective of an inch-board ; 
 
 You ask no more than certain politic eyes, 
 
 Eyes, that can pierce into the mysteries 
 
 Of many colours, read them and reveal 
 
 Mythology, there painted on slit deal. 
 
 Or to make boards to speak ! There is a task ! 
 
 Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque. 
 
 Pack with your peddling poetry to the stage, 
 
 This is the money-got mechanic age. 
 
 To plant the music where no ear can reach, 
 
 Attire the persons, as no thought can teach 
 
 Sense, what they are, which by a specious, fine 
 
 Term of [you] architects, is called Design ; 
 
 But in the practised truth, destruction is 
 
 Of any art, besides what he calls his. 
 
 Vv^hither, O whither will this tireman grow ? 
 
 His name is ;§Kr;vo7roio?, we all know, 
 
 The maker of the properties ; in sum, 
 
52 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 The scene, the engine ; but he now is come 
 
 To be the music-master ; tabler too ; 
 
 He is, or would be, the main Dominiis Do — 
 
 All of the work, and so shall still for Ben, 
 
 Be Inigo, the whistle, and his men. 
 
 He's warm on his feet, now he says ; and can 
 
 Swim without cork : why, thank the good Queen Anne. 
 
 I am too fat to envy, he too lean, 
 
 To be worth envy ; henceforth I do mean 
 
 To pity him, as smiling at his feat 
 
 Of lantern-lerry, with fuliginous heat 
 
 Whirling his whimsies, by a subtilty 
 
 Sucked from the veins of shop-philosophy. 
 
 What would he do now, giving his mind that way, 
 
 In presentation of some puppet-play. 
 
 Should but the king his justice-hood employ, 
 
 In setting forth of such a solemn toy ? 
 
 How would he firk ^ like Adam Overdo,^ 
 
 Up and about ; dive into cellars too, 
 
 Disguised, and thence drag forth Enormity, 
 
 Discover Vice, commit Absurdity : 
 
 Under the moral, show he had a pate 
 
 Moulded or stroked up to survey a state 1 
 
 O wise surveyor, wiser architect. 
 
 But wisest Inigo ; who can reflect 
 
 On the new priming of thy old sign-posts, 
 
 Reviving with fresh colours the pale ghosts 
 
 Of thy dead standards ; or with marvel see 
 
 1 To move quickly. 2 in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. 
 
Introduction 53 
 
 Thy twice conceived, thrice paid for imagery, 
 
 And not fall down before it, and confess 
 
 Almighty Architecture, who no less 
 
 A goddess is, than painted cloth, deal board, 
 
 Vermilion, lake, or crimson can afford 
 
 Expression for ; with that unbounded line, 
 
 Aimed at in thy omnipotent design ! 
 
 What poesy e'er was painted on a wall, 
 
 That might compare with thee ? What story shall, 
 
 Of all the worthies, hope t' outlast thy own. 
 
 So the materials be of Purbeck stone ? 
 
 Live long the feasting-room ! And ere thou burn 
 
 Again, thy architect to ashes turn ; 
 
 Whom not ten fires, nor a parliament can 
 
 With all remonstrance, make an honest man. " 
 
 VI . Lycidas 
 
 " In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, 
 unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on 
 the Irish Seas, 1637 ; and, by occasion, foretells the ruin 
 of our corrupted Clergy, then in their height." This 
 brief introduction to the contribution made by John Mil- 
 ton to the collection of elegies in honour of Edward King, 
 his successful rival for the Trinity College fellowship, was 
 inserted in the 1645 edition of his poems, and is still the 
 best account and the most adequate criticism of the poem. 
 Lycidas is less dramatic than Arcades, and Arcades is 
 hardly dramatic enough to merit the name of pastoral as 
 
54 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 the Italians understood it. The sorrow it expresses is, 
 indeed, dignified and intelligent, but it is courteous 
 rather than lamentable, and too often the inteUigent 
 dignity of sorrow is resented. The *' learned Friend " 
 is, indeed, rarely bewailed, but the reader forgets all 
 about the dead Edward King in growing sympathy with 
 the living " Author " and his vision of a corrupted clergy. 
 Milton had, to be sure, good authority for such blending 
 of themes and forms. And he perhaps did well to limit 
 his title to the term " monody." Theocritus of Syracuse 
 depicted a country hfe whose ideals were as different 
 from those of the actual goatherd as the simplicity he 
 praised was remote from poverty and monotony. Virgil, 
 while professing to employ the form of the Greek pasto- 
 ral, openly advocated " a somewhat loftier strain." The 
 Italians of the Renaissance introduced a vein of moraliz- 
 ing and satire. Edmund Spenser had made his rustics 
 natural philosophers and poets. Doctor Johnson and 
 critics of his type can not or will not understand all this, 
 and they will still be saying with him " passion runs not 
 after remote allusions and obscure opinions," and " where 
 there is leisure for fiction there is little grief." " Like, 
 very like," but there may be great poetry. When the 
 " sea of emotion " has " curdled into thoughts " the 
 reader does not inquire too closely whether the "un- 
 packing of the heart " has been necessary to the writer's 
 existence or not, or even whether it has been spontane- 
 ous and sincere. It is enough that it serves the reader's 
 well being and ministers to his comfort and good estate. 
 
Introduction ^^ 
 
 Milton wrote no less than the literal truth when he said : 
 " You ask what I am thinking of ? So may the Good 
 Deity help me; of immortality — I am pluming my 
 wings and meditating flight." Of course this amounts 
 to saying that Milton was writing great lyric poetry in 
 motive, whatever the form adopted might seem to require. 
 And perhaps it is not his least title to greatness that he 
 could and did forget Edward King. For it must be 
 remembered that here was no strong and intimate bond 
 of personal friendship, such as existed between the young 
 Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, nor such fabled poet-love 
 "this side idolatry" as unites the names of Shelley and 
 Keats, but an acquaintance fairly described probably as 
 academic. Members of the same university. King was 
 Milton's junior. There is no evidence that Milton was 
 particularly drawn to King's person or interests. The 
 assignment of a fellowship to King, for which Milton him- 
 self was eligible, is even looked upon by some students 
 of Milton as ground for coolness between them. There 
 is clear evidence that the fellowship was awarded to King 
 by royal influence and not in due course of academic 
 appreciation. Probably Milton's own account is sufficiently 
 accurate, when due allowance has been made for the 
 large and remote phraseology characteristic of Milton's 
 muse : 
 
 " For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, 
 Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill ; 
 Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 
 Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, 
 
56 Milton*s Minor Poems 
 
 We drove a-field, and forth together heard 
 
 "What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn, 
 
 Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 
 
 Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 
 
 Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. 
 
 Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute; 
 
 Tempered to the oaten flute 
 
 Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel 
 
 From the glad sound would not be absent long; 
 
 And old Damoetas loved to hear our song." 
 
 Here certainly is described the dignified association of 
 persons congenially and worthily occupied, but there is 
 certainly nothing of the fellowship of kindred minds, 
 still less of the love of attached hearts. Milton wrote 
 very differently of his father and of Charles Diodati, 
 when he wished to record personal friendship. 
 • The memorial volume of which this poem was part 
 appeared in 1638. It contained twenty-three poems in 
 Latin and Greek, and thirteen English poems, with the 
 title. Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King, 
 Anno Dam., 1638. Other contributors to the memorial 
 were Henry King, Henry More, the Platonist, and John 
 Cleveland. 
 
 Vn. The Story of the Text 
 
 The visitor to the Library of Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, is likely to have his attention called to the hand- 
 somely bound volume of forty-seven manuscript pages, 
 once described as " Milton's Juvenile Poems, etc., seem- 
 
Introduction 57 
 
 ingly the original." The history of this volume is indi- 
 cated by the Latin inscription on the first cover. 
 
 Membra haec Erudissimi et paene Divini Poetae olim 
 misere disjecta et passim sparsa, postea verb fortuitb 
 Inventa et in tinum denub collecta a Carolo Mason ejus 
 Col. Socio 6^ inter miscellanea 7'eposita, deinceps, ed, qua 
 decuit, Religiojie servari voluit Thomas Clarke, nuperrime 
 hujusce collegii nunc vero Medii Tejjtpli Londini Socius 
 
 1736' 
 
 [These fragments of a most learned and nearly divine 
 poet, formerly miserably broken apart and scattered about, 
 but afterwards by chance found and recently collated by 
 Charles Mason, Fellow of the same College and replaced 
 among the Miscellanies, are at last to be preserved with 
 proper reverence as directed by Thomas Clarke, very 
 recently of this College, now of the Middle Temple, 
 London, 1736.] 
 
 The earher history of the manuscripts themselves is 
 partly a matter of conjecture, partly material of record or 
 of well estabhshed tradition. As far back as the later 
 years of Milton's student life at Cambridge, he had kept a 
 notebook of the first drafts of his compositions in English, 
 Latin, prose, and poetry. The first edition of his poems 
 was advertised to be " printed by his true copies." Up 
 to 1658 these manuscripts were in Milton's possession, the 
 later work being in the handwriting of an amanuensis. 
 These and certain other manuscripts came into the keep- 
 ing of Milton's wife at his death in 1674, and were lost 
 sight of. By some unknown means, Sir Henry Newton 
 
58 Milton*s Minor Poems 
 
 Puckering, a considerable benefactor of the Trinity Col- 
 lege Library, is believed to have obtained possession of 
 this particular manuscript. Charles Mason, the Wood- 
 vvardian Professor of Geology, and probably the person 
 who best knew the Library, is the authority for the belief 
 that the Milton manuscript was part of the collection of 
 four thousand books and manuscripts given by Sir Henry 
 Puckering in 1691 to the Trinity College Library. It is 
 somewhat noteworthy that the catalogue by Bernard in 
 1697 makes no mention of the Milton manuscript. When 
 Mason discovered the leaves they were loose. After 
 they were bound, as described on the first leaf of the 
 cover, they were treated with too litde care. The volume 
 was too often shown to visitors. They were allowed to 
 handle it too freely, and the result was that some of the 
 readings are illegible; some necessary patching and repair- 
 ing has been roughly done, and a slip of paper contain- 
 ing seventeen lines of emended reading for a passage in 
 Counts has been lost. 
 
 At present the manuscript is much more carefully 
 treated. It is kept in a glass case and may be removed 
 for examination only by permission from the Master and 
 Fellows of Trinity College, and in the presence of one 
 of the Fellows. 
 
 With the generosity of true scholarship the Council of 
 Trinity College determined to put this manuscript within 
 the reach of a larger number of students than could 
 hope to study it in their library, by a photographic and 
 transHterated reproduction prepared under the superin- 
 
Introduction 59 
 
 tendence of William Aldis Wright. The photographic 
 work was done by Mr. A. G. Dew-Smith of Trinity Col- 
 lege. The Preface, 1899, makes the following interesting 
 statements and comments : 
 
 " I thought I should do a greater service to students 
 of Milton if, instead of merely recording the variations 
 between the manuscript and the printed text, I enabled 
 them to ascertain the variations for themselves. . . . The 
 Arcades with which the manuscript begins, was probably 
 written in 1633. . . . After Milton had written C^/;^//i- in 
 1634, Lycidas in 1637 . . . he appears to have gone back 
 to his first quire and made use of one of its blank pages 
 for . . . three Sonnets . . . which belong to the period 
 1 642-1 644 or 5. Pages 45, 46, and 47 are the work of 
 three amanuenses, whose handwritings differ from each 
 other and from the three handwritings which are not 
 Milton's on the preceding pages. Among these six, both 
 Peck and Warton profess to recognize five as the hand- 
 writing of five different women. 1 see no reason to be- 
 lieve that they are not all the work of men's hands. . . . 
 
 " It would be a matter of regret if the publication of 
 these facsimiles should have the same effect upon those 
 who examine them which the sight of the originals ap- 
 pears to have produced upon Charles Lamb. In a note 
 which was at first appended to his Essay on Oxford in 
 the Vacation, he says, ' I had thought of the Lycidas 
 as of a full-grown beauty — as springing up with all its 
 parts absolute — till, in an evil hour, I was shown the 
 original copy of it, together with the other minor poems 
 
6o Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 of the author, in the Hbrary of Trinity, kept like some 
 treasure to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them 
 in the Cam, or sent them after the latter Cantos of 
 Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me 
 to see the fine things in their ore ! interhned, corrected ! 
 as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at 
 pleasure ! as if they might have been otherwise, and just 
 as good ! As if inspiration were made up of parts, and 
 these fluctuating, successive, indifferent ! I will never go 
 into the workshop of any great artist again.' Many nev- 
 ertheless will find pleasure in contemplating the second 
 thoughts of the poet, or even the third, which we are told 
 by a prophet of the order are a riper first." 
 
 These manuscripts are of the highest interest, not only 
 to the curious hunter after reUcs of the past, but to the 
 student of literary masterpieces in the making. Some of 
 the ways of genius are not past finding out. The verses 
 reproduced in a slightly reduced form for the frontispiece 
 of this book are an interpolation made by Milton at the 
 close of the one hundred and forty-first verse of the 
 Lycidas. The new matter is connected with the main 
 body of the poem by a heavy slanting stroke of the pen, 
 and the words written in on the margin, " Bring the 
 rathe," etc. 
 
 The reproduction shows the various readings from a 
 rejected trial form through succeeding tentatives until 
 the final form of the poem, as the reader is familiar 
 with it, was reached. The rejected form reads as 
 follows : 
 
Introduction 6i 
 
 Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies 
 
 Collu colouring the pale cheeke of uninjoyd love 
 
 and that sad floure that strove 
 
 to vi^rite his owne woes on the vermeil graine 
 
 next adde Narcissus y* still weeps in vaine 
 
 the woodbine and y° pancie freak't w*** jet 
 
 the glowing violet 
 
 the cowslip wan that hangs his pensive head 
 
 and every bud that sorrow's liverie weares 
 
 let Daffadillies fill thire cups with teares 
 
 bid Amaranthus all his beautie shed 
 
 to strew the laureat herse, etc. 
 
 The later stages appear thus : 
 
 Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies 
 the tufted crowtoe and pale Gessamin 
 
 ye 
 
 the white pinke and ^ pansie freakt w"" jet 
 the glowing violet the well attir'd woodbine 
 the muske rose and the garish columbine 
 w"^ cowslips wan that hang the pensive head 
 
 X weare X wearM 
 
 and every flower that sad escutcheon ^ beares imbroidrie beares 
 bid Amaranthus all his beauties shed 
 & let daffadillies fill thire cups w"" teares 
 to strew, etc. 
 
 Examination and comparison of the readings show : 
 
 1. The lines originally " made sense." The inserted 
 verses are therefore pure elaboration, as the passage 
 concludes in verse 151 precisely as it did before the 
 change. 
 
 2. Milton prepared for the new material, or justified its 
 insertion, after revision, by the change in verse 139, in the 
 
62 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 original draft, of the word " Bring " to the present one 
 "Throw." 
 
 3. The only feature of the passage that remains con- 
 stant through all changes is the structure of the verse ; its 
 framework or anatomy, and its vocal harmony. The 
 movement of the lines affords a form of verbal counter- 
 point of which the short line " The glowing violet " was 
 the invariable factor. 
 
 4. The verbal changes are made in the interests of 
 sound and various suggested associations rather than of 
 the combination of popular science and visual accuracy, 
 known since Wordsworth's time as " love of Nature." 
 
 5. The entire passage in its final form shows the tri- 
 umph of the " mixture of a lie that ever gives pleasure " 
 over the elements of pure thought and exact record. 
 
 6. Milton's final preference is always for words that 
 embody force rather than for those that express an 
 appeal to the eyes exclusively. 
 
 7. The main trend of change is toward the social and 
 human aspect of life rather than toward the spectacular 
 or sentimental. 
 
 8. The whole passage, as an elaboration, affords an 
 illustration of the dramatic factor in pastoral elegy. It 
 illustrates Milton's lack of dramatic spontaneity, but his 
 abounding sense of poetic propriety. Doubtless if Soph- 
 ocles could have brought himself to this pass, he would 
 have rejected and changed with as resolute conscience 
 as that shown here. But Sophocles was not only classic 
 but dramatic. 
 
Introduction 6^ 
 
 9. The temper of the passage, the method of its 
 construction, and the aims made evident by the changes 
 accepted or rejected after trial show the extent to which 
 Milton was really indebted to his study of Greek and 
 Latin masterpieces. The student of the classics in Greek 
 and Latin should compare carefully Milton's use of adjec- 
 tives and verbs with that of his alleged models. 
 
lU^ti^^yyiM^x %K 
 
 -4^ 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS 
 
 ^^ PALLEGRO 
 
 / Hence, loatlijed Melancholy, 
 J. Of Cerberus and blackestJVIidmght born 
 In Stygian cave forlorn^ V t ^ 
 
 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrielcs, and sights unholy ! 
 Find out some uncouth ^ cell>i: 5 
 
 Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous ^ wings, 
 And the night- raven sings ; 
 
 There under ebon ^ shades and low-browed rocks, 
 As ragged as thy locks. 
 
 In dark (Cimmerian desert ever dwell. -■ ' i^o^ 
 
 But come, thou Goddess fair and free, 
 In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, 
 And by men heart-easing Mirth; 
 Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, 
 
 With two sister Graces more, 15 
 
 |=To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore : 
 I Or whether — as some sager * singC* 
 The frol\c wind that breathes the 'spring, 
 'ZepKyf,"" with Aurora playing, 
 
 As he met her once a-Mayingy 20 
 
 1 Uncanny. 2 pearfuh ^ Black. MViser. 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — % 65 
 
66 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 There, on beds of violets blue, 
 
 And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, 
 
 Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, 
 
 So buxom, bUthe, and debonair.^ ^_ 
 
 ■ --. Haste thee. Nymph, and bring with thee " 25 
 
 '' Jest and youthful Jollity, 
 / Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, 
 
 . Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles, ucn^^ 
 
 '%uch as hang on Hebe's cheek, ^^^ ^^ '<^^ * •** ^ \ 
 
 And love to Hve in dimple sleek ; 30 
 
 Sport that wrinkled Care derides. 
 
 And Laughter holding both his sides. 
 
 Come, and trip it as you go. 
 
 On the hght fantastic ^ toe ; 
 
 And in thy right hand lead with thee 35 
 
 The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty ; 
 
 And if I give thee honour due. 
 
 Mirth, admit me of thy crew,^ ^^^ 
 
 To Hve with her and hve with thee, 
 ^' In unreproved pleasures free ; < > j^o^ 
 
 To hear the lark begin his flight, 
 
 And, singing, startle the dull night, 
 
 From his watch-tower in the skies. 
 
 Till the dappled ^ dawn doth rise ; "'^^i^ '^ 
 
 . / Then to come, in spite of sorrow^X"^^^]^ 45 
 
 [ And at my window bid good-morro\^^^ 
 
 rlwmigh the sweet-brier or the vine,\ \ 
 
 1 Affable, gay and courteous. ^ Quaintly dancing. i 
 
 ' Company. * Variegated. 
 
L'Allegro 67 
 
 Or the twisted eglarnm^ ; 
 While the cock, with lively din, •r-^< 
 Scatters the rear of darkness thin ; 50 
 
 And to the stack, or the barn-door 
 Stoutly struts his dames before : 
 Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
 Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, 
 From the side of some hoar ^hill, r 55 
 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill : 
 i Sometime walking, not unseen, 
 
 * By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 
 
 Right against the eastern gate 
 Where the great Sun begins his state, 60 
 
 Robed in flames and amber light, 
 The clouds in thousand liveries dight ; ^ 
 While the ploughman, near at hand, 
 Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 7 1 
 
 And the milkmaid singeth blithe,''**^*''^ 65 
 
 ,j^ And the mower whets his scythe, 
 "V And every shepherd tells his tale 
 r Under the hawthorn in the dale.' 
 Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures. 
 Whilst the landskip round it measures : 70 
 
 Russet lawns and fallows ^ grey, 
 Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 
 Mountains on whose barren breast ' 
 Thie labouring clouds do often rest ; 
 
 1 Old. 2 Adorned. 
 
 •^ Plowed and harrowed, but uncropped ground. 
 
iiS\ Milton's Minor Poems . ^ 
 
 .^-^ 
 
 Meadows trim, with daisies pied, -^ 
 
 Shallow brooks and rivers wide ; 
 
 Towers and battlements it sees 
 
 Bosomed high in tufted trees, v 
 
 Where perhaps some beauty lies, 
 
 The cynosure ^ of neighbouring eyes.-Jf- 
 
 Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes 
 
 From betwixt two aged oaks, U/*^ ^ 
 
 Where Cory^n and Thyrsis met ^^^Zy<^ 
 
 Are at their savoury^ dinner set 
 
 Of herbs and other country messes, 85 
 
 Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses ; 
 
 And then in haste her bower she leaves, 
 
 With The?^tv1is to bind the sheaves ; ^ .jji 
 
 Or, if the earlier season lead, ^.Jy^^^. • 
 
 To the tanned haycock in the mea.d.^''^yM'^^^^> 
 
 Sometimes, with secure delight, .^It^ >''-'' ^ 
 
 The upland hajukts will invite, pv^^^ 
 
 When the merry bells png round. 
 
 And the jc^umi rj^ec^s^ sound 
 
 To many a youth and many a maid :^[A/\J^^^ 
 
 Dancing in the chequered shade,./'^'^^^ 
 
 And young and old come forth to play 
 
 On a sunshine holiday, 
 
 Till the livelong daylight fail : 
 
 Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, f. 
 
 With stories told of many a feat, ' 
 
 A>^ 
 
 ^ Spotted. 2 Centre of attraction. ^ Appetizing. 
 
 * Sun-dried. ^. Merry hddles. 
 
 •i 
 
L' Allegro 6^ 
 
 How Faery Mab the junkets ^ eat. 
 
 She was pinched and pulled, she said ; j^^Ju 
 
 And he, by Friar's lantern led, ^^^t^^^^^''^ "^ 
 
 Tells how the drudging goblin sweat 
 
 To earn his cream-bowl duly set. 
 
 When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 
 
 His shadowy_£ail hath threshed the corn 
 
 That ten day-labourers could not end| 
 
 Then lies him down, the lubber fiend>^^ 
 
 And, stretched out all the chimney's length, 
 
 Basks 2 at the fire his hairy strength, y 
 
 And crop-full out of doors he flings 
 
 Ere the first cock his matin ^ rings. Q 
 
 rf Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 115 
 
 By whispering winds soon lulled asleep^_ 
 
 Towered cities please us then, 
 
 And the busy hum of men. 
 
 Where throngs of knights and barons bold. 
 
 In weeds N>f peace, high triumphs hold, 120 
 
 With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 
 Rain influence,^ and judge the prize 
 
 Of wit or arms, while both contend 
 
 To win her grace whom all commend. 
 /yf'^fK^er^^'iet^ymen oft appear^^^ i^r"^ 125 
 
 Q In saffron ^ robe, with taper clear. 
 
 And pomp, and feast, and revelry. 
 
 With mask, and antique pageantry,^ 
 
 1 Sweetened curds. ^ Makes comfortable. » Morning song. 
 
 * Clothes. ^ Give strength. « Yellow. '^ Show. 
 
 >f 
 
70 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Such sights as youthful poets dream -t<^ 
 
 On summer eves by haunted stream. ^^ 130 
 Then to the well- trod stage anon,*'*^^ 
 If Jonson's learned sock ^ be on, 
 Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
 Warble his native wood-notes wild. "^ 
 
 And ever, against eating cares, 135 
 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
 -'Married to immortal verse, 
 -. - / Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 
 
 In notes with many a winding hout-^^^*-'*"^'^'^^ 
 
 Of hnkedp sweetness lon^ dr^wn out 140 
 
 With ^(^nton heed and ^fHHy cunning, 
 
 The melting voice through mazes running, 
 
 Untwisting all the chains that tie 
 
 The hidden soul of harmony ; 
 
 That Orpheus' self may heave his head 145 
 
 From golden slumber on a bed 
 
 Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear 
 
 Such strains as would have won the ear 
 
 Of Pluto to have quite set free 
 
 His half-regained Eurydice. 150 
 
 These delights if thou canst give, 
 
 Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 
 
 1 The low shoe worn in comedy. ^ Turn. 
 
II Penseroso 71 
 
 IL PENSEROSO 
 
 Hence, vain deluding Joys, • 
 
 The brood of FSfty'witliout father bred ! 
 How little you bested,^ 
 
 Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys ! 
 Dwell in some idle brain, ; L/>*^ — 5 
 
 And fancies fOnd with gaudy shapes possess, , 
 
 As thick and nmnbexiess - - - 
 
 As the gay mdiesthat people the sunbeams, 
 .' Or likest hovering dreams,^'^'"'''-"*-'^^^^ /stXs^' j - 
 ^^^A^ The fickle pensioners of Morpweus' train. uo\ 
 ^ But hail, thouGoddess sage and holy,/'*--^'*-*- 
 
 Hail, diwnest Melancholy ! 
 
 Whose saintly visage is too bright ^^y-*']^^^^-'*'^'''*'*''*^ 
 ft/^g^-tv-<^ To hit the sense of human sight, 
 
 And therefore to our weaker view 15 
 
 O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue ;aa-'-|»lZ£^>«>^ 
 
 Black, but such as in esteem /Vti^^ 
 ^Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 
 Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove 
 To set her beauty's praise above 20 
 
 The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended. '^^ 
 Yet thou art higher /ar descended : 
 Thee bright-haired Wsta long of yore 
 To solitary. Saturn bore ; 
 His daughter she ; in Saturn's reign 25 
 
 1 Help. 
 
72 / Milton's Minor P#em$ 
 
 Such mixture was not held a stain. oiLm.^ >afi-*'^ 
 
 Oft in glimmering Wwersand glades ^^.^^ ^JL^^t-^-u^-^c^ 
 \] He met her, and in secret shades 
 Of woody T^Vmmost grove, 
 Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. 3^ 
 
 -i Come, pensive Nun, aevoufand pure, 
 (V'^'>^ Sober, ste^^^, and demure, ^-i-vv^M"**--'^' 
 All in a robe of darkest grain,^ 
 Flowing vyith majestic train, -..ci^ 
 
 And '^aWe 'stole ^ of cypress lawn'^^^'^^ 35 
 
 Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
 Come ; but keep thy wonted state, 
 With even step and mysing gait,-^»^^i-K.e>tJu.UAj/V-^ 
 And looks commercing'^ with the skies, 
 /lAyyJl'^^ Thy rapt ^ soul sitting in thine eyes : 40 
 
 There, held in holy passion still, 
 Forget thyself to marble,^ till 
 With a sad leaden downward cast ^ 
 Thou fix them on the earth as fast. 
 And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet,^-^ 45 
 Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, 
 And hears the Muses in a ring 
 Aye round about Jove's altar sing ; 
 And add to these retired Leisure, 
 That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ; 50 
 
 But, first and chiefestj with thee bring 
 Him that yon ^ s'Sar^f on golden wing, 
 
 1 Colour. 2 Mantle. * Communing, * Absorbed. 
 
 ^ Turn to marble. ^ Look. "^ Yonder. 
 
11 Pensemso Ja. 73 
 
 Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, . , 
 
 The Cherub Contempla^Knt^^i^r:^!,^^^^'"^ 
 ^^And the mute Silenc^hist^ along, V^ 
 
 J^^^^^Lv^'^ess - Philomel will deign-iarsong — - 
 1^ iS ^ In her sweetest, saddest plight, j^ 
 
 Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, S^^^^JL^ ^^f^^ 
 
 While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke 4 V^^^ 
 
 Gently o'er the accustomed oak. """^r 60 
 
 Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 
 
 Most musical, most melancholy ! 
 
 Thee, cnaui^ress, oft the woods among 
 
 I woo, to hear thy even-song; 
 
 And, missing thee, I walk unseen \^ 
 
 On the dry smooth- shaven gree n, 
 
 To behold the wandering moon, 
 
 Riding near her highest noon,^ v.^^'v-^ 
 
 Like one that had been led astray 
 
 Through the heaven's wide pathless way, 70 
 
 And oft, as if her head she bowed, 
 
 Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 
 
 Oft on a plat of rising ground, 
 
 I hear the far-off curfew sound 
 
 Over some wide- watered shore, 75 
 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar ; i^'*''^'''*^ 
 
 Or, if the air will not permit, i] 
 
 Some still removed place will fit, 
 
 Where glowing emEers through the room t/^-^^ 
 
 Teach light to c3fffi^pit a gloom, 80 
 
 1 Stilled, hushed. ^ Unless. ^ Point, power, prime. 
 
4 
 
 i;^ 
 
 74 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Far from all resort of mirth, 
 
 Save the cricket on the hearth, 
 
 Or the bellm an's ^ drowsy charm V; 
 
 To bless the doors from nightly harm 
 
 Or let my lamp at midnight hour 
 
 Be seen in some high lonely tower 
 
 Where I may oft outwatch the B 
 
 With thrice-great Hermes, or un 
 
 The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
 
 What worlds or what vast regions hold 90 
 
 The. immortal mind that hath forsook 
 
 Her mansion in this fleshly nook j3p-=i>'^-^ 
 
 And of those demons that are founa 
 
 In fire, air, flood, or underground. 
 
 Whose power hath a true consent 95 
 
 With planet or with element. 
 
 Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 
 
 In sceptred paU * come sweeping by, 
 
 Presenting Thebes or Pelops' line, 
 
 Or the tale of Troy divine, 100 
 
 Or what — though rare — of later age 
 
 Ennobled hath the buskined ^ stage. "^ 
 
 But, O sad Virgin ! that thy power 
 
 Might raise Musseus from his bower ; 
 
 Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
 
 Such notes as, warbled to the string, 
 
 Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 
 
 ^ Watchman's. ^ Bring back. ^ place. 
 
 * Royal mantle. ^ From the high boot worn in tragedy. 
 
m\( 
 
 II Penseroso 75 
 
 And made Hell grant what love did seek ; 
 
 Or call up him that left half-told 
 
 The story of Cambuscan bold, no 
 
 Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
 
 And who had Canace ^to wife, 
 
 That owned the vir^u^s ^ ring and glass, 
 
 And of the wondrous horse of brass 
 
 On which the Tartar king did ride ; 115 
 
 And if aught else great bardsbeside )^iLJ^<9^^<^^- 
 
 In ^age and solem.n tunes have sung, (/ 
 
 Of turneys and of trophies hung. 
 
 Of forests, and enchantments drear, 
 
 Where more is meant than meets the ear. \> G^ 
 
 Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career. 
 
 Till civil-suited ^ Morn appear, 
 
 Not tricked aiyi frounced ^ as she was wont 
 
 With the Attic boy to hunt, ^^.^^^^d^i^ 
 
 But kerchieft in a comely cloud, (] '•^ 125 
 
 While rocMi^vinds are piping loud, 
 
 Or ushered with a shower still, 
 
 When the gust hath blown his fill. 
 
 Ending on the rustling leaves, . ' 
 
 With minute "^-rlrnp s from off the eaves, ^^'^^■^'ijo 
 
 And when the sun begins to fling 
 
 His flaring beams, me. Goddess, bring 
 
 To arched walks of twilight groves, . 
 
 And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, yj'jrC^ ^ ^'^'^'^'^'^t, 
 
 1 Magic. 2 Plain-dressedJ 
 
 ^ Flounced. * Slow. 
 
76 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Of pine or monumental oak, 135 
 
 Where the rude axe with heaved stroke i 
 
 Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt,^ J^^ 
 Or fright them from their hallowed haunt^ ^^*^^ 
 There in close covert by some brook, 
 Where no profaner eye may lookj^^>^,„.,^ 140 
 Hide me from day's garish ^ eyep^^ii«»-i,^'^ ^ 
 
 While the bee with honeyed thigh, 
 That at her flowery work doth sing, 
 And the waters murmuring. 
 
 With such consort^ as they keep, 145 
 
 "^^^gfiitice the dewy-feathered Sleep. 
 >^^^ And let some strange mysterious dream 
 
 Wave at his wings, in airy stream • ^ 
 
 Of lively portraiture displayed, -^^ cM^^-'v-n"^ , 
 
 Softly on my eyelids laid; 150 
 
 And, as I wake, sweet music breathe 
 
 Above, about, or underneath, 
 
 Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, ^^ 
 
 Or the unseen Genius of the wood. ftx/u"-^ 
 
 But let my due * feet never fail y,^"^^^ ^55 
 
 To walk the studious cloister's pale,*^ 
 
 And love the high e9r?wwea ^ roof. 
 
 With antique pillars massy-proof,^ 
 
 And storied windows richly dight,^ 
 
 Casting a dim religious Hght. 160 
 
 There let the pealing organ blow 
 
 1 Lofty. 2 Glaring, staring. ^ Company, * Punctual. 
 
 6 Limit. ^ Arched. "^ Strong. « Adorned. 
 
II Penseroso 77 
 
 To the full-voiced quire below, 
 
 In service high and anthems clear, 
 
 As may with sweetness, through mine .ear. 
 
 Dissolve me into ecstasies, i/f'tJZ.^iy^^O'T^Po^ 165 
 
 And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. ^ '\i 
 
 ^e^ i^nd may at last my weary age 
 
 Find out the peaceful hermitage, 
 ^kc'The hairy gown and mossy cell, 
 
 Where I may sit and rightly spell 170 
 
 Of every star that Heaven doth show, 
 And every herb that sips the dew. 
 Till old experience do attain 
 To something like prophetic strain. 
 These pleasures, Melancholy, give, 175 
 
 I And I with thee will choose to live. 
 
78 Milton*s Minor Poems 
 
 ARCADES 
 
 Part of an Entei-tainment presented to the Countess Doivager of 
 Derby, at Harefield, by some Noble Persojis of her Family ; 7uho 
 appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toivard the seat of 
 state, with this song: 
 
 I. SONG 
 
 Look, Nymphs and Shepherds, look ! 
 What sudden blaze of majesty 
 Is that which we from hence descry,^ 
 Too divine to be mistook? 
 
 This, this is she 5 
 
 To whom our vows and wishes bend ; - 
 Here our solemn search hath end. 
 
 Fame, that her high worth to raise 
 
 Seemed erst^ so lavish and profuse, 
 
 We may justly now accuse lo 
 
 Of detraction from her praise ; 
 
 Less than half we find expressed ; 
 
 Envy bid conceal the rest. 
 
 Mark what radiant state she spreads 
 In circle round her shining throne, 15 
 
 Shooting her beams like silver threads ; 
 This, this is she alone. 
 
 Sitting hke a goddess bright 
 
 In the centre of her light. 
 1 See. 2 xurn, 3 Once. 
 
Arcades 79 
 
 Might she the wise Latona be, 20 
 
 Or the towered Cybele, 
 
 Mother of a hundred gods? 
 
 Juno dares not give her odds ; 
 
 Who had thought this chme had held 
 
 A deity so unparalleled? 25 
 
 As they come forward the Genius of the Wood appears, 
 and, turning toward them, speaks. 
 
 Genius. Stay, gentle Swains, for though in this disguise, 
 I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes ; 
 Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung 
 Of that renowned flood so often sung, 
 Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice 30 
 
 Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse ; 
 And ye, the breathing roses of the wood. 
 Fair silver-buskined ^ Nymphs, as great and good, 
 I know this quest of yours and free intent 
 Was all in honour and devotion meant 35 
 
 To the great mistress of yon princely shrine, 
 Whom with low reverence I adore as mine, 
 And with all helpful service will comply 
 To further this night's glad solemnity, 
 And lead ye where ye may more near behold 40 
 
 What shallow-searching - Fame hath left untold ; 
 Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone. 
 Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon : 
 
 1 Silver-shod. 2 Careless. 
 
8o Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 For know, by lot from Jove, I am the power 
 
 Of this fair wood, and Hve in oaken bower, 45 
 
 To nurse the saphngs tall, and curP the grove 
 
 With ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove ; 
 
 And all my plants I save from nightly ill 
 
 Of noisome ^ winds and blasting vapours chill ; 
 
 And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, 50 
 
 And heal the harms of thwarting ^ thunder blue, 
 
 Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites, 
 
 Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites. 
 
 When evening grey doth rise, I fetch'* my round 
 
 Over the mount and all this hallowed ground ; 55 
 
 And early, ere the odorous breath of morn 
 
 Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasselled horn 
 
 Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, 
 
 Number my ranks, and visit every sprout 
 
 With puissant^ words and murmurs made to bless. 60 
 
 But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness 
 
 Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I 
 
 To the celestial Sirens' harmony, 
 
 That sit upon the nine infolded spheres. 
 
 And sing to those that hold the vital ^' shears, 65 
 
 And turn the adamantine spindle round 
 
 On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 
 
 Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie. 
 
 To lull the daughters of Necessity, 
 
 And keep unsteady Nature to her law, 70 
 
 1 Adorn. 2 Harmful. ^ Opposing. 
 
 ^ Complete. ^ Powerful. ^ Cutting the thread of life. 
 
Arcades 8 1 
 
 And the low world in measured motion draw, 
 
 After the heavenly tune, which none can hear 
 
 Of human mould with gross unpurged ear ; 
 
 And yet such music worthiest were to blaze ^ 
 
 The peerless height of her immortal praise 75 
 
 Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit. 
 
 If my inferior hand or voice could hit 
 
 Inimitable sounds. Yet, as we go, 
 
 Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show 
 
 I will assay, her worth to celebrate, 80 
 
 And so attend ye toward her glittering state ; 
 
 Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,^ 
 
 Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem. 
 
 II. SONG 
 
 O'er the smooth enamelled^ green 
 
 Where no print of step hath been, 85 
 
 Follow me, as I sing 
 
 And touch the warbled string. 
 Under the shady roof 
 Of branching elm star-proof,* 
 
 Follow me. 90 
 
 I will bring you where she sits, 
 Clad in splendour as befits 
 
 Her deity. 
 Such a rural Queen 
 All Arcadia hath not seen. 95 
 
 ^ Celebrate. ^ Descent. ^ Glossy. * Stars can not pierce it. 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 6 
 
Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 III. SONG 
 
 Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more 
 
 By sandy Ladon's UHed banks ; 
 On old Lycseus or Cyllene hoar 
 
 Trip no more in twihght ranks ; 
 Though Erymanth your loss deplore, loo 
 
 A better soil shall give ye thanks. 
 From the stony Maenalus 
 Bring your flocks, and live with us ; 
 Here ye shall have greater grace, 
 To serve the Lady of this place. 105 
 
 Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were, 
 Yet Syrinx well might wait on her. 
 ' Such a rural Queen 
 
 All Arcadia hath not seen. 
 
C O M U S 
 
 A MASK 
 PRESENTED AT LUDLOW CASTLE, 1634 
 
 BEFORE 
 
 JOHN, EARL OF BRIDGEWATER 
 THEN PRESIDENT OF WALES 
 
THE PERSONS 
 
 t 
 
 The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the habit of Thyrsis. 
 
 Com us with his Crew. 
 
 The Lady. 
 
 First Brother. 
 
 Second Brother. 
 
 Sabrina, the Nymph. 
 
 The Chief Persons which presented were: — 
 
 The Lord Brackley. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother. 
 
 The Lady Alice Egerton. 
 
COMUS 
 
 The First Scene discovers a wild wood 
 The Attendant Spirit descends or enters 
 
 Spirit, Before the starry threshold of Jove's court 
 My mansion is, where those immortal shapes 
 Of bright aerial spirits live, insphered 
 In regions mild of calm and serene air, 
 Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 5 
 
 Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care, 
 Confined and pestered in this pinfold^ here. 
 Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, 
 Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, 
 After this mortal change, to her true servants lo 
 
 Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats. 
 Yet some there be that by due steps aspire 
 To lay their just hands on that golden key 
 That opes the palace of eternity. 
 
 To such my errand is ; and but for such 15 
 
 I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds ^ 
 With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.^ 
 
 But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway 
 Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream, 
 
 1 Pound for cattle. 2 Heavenly clothes. ^ Defiling earth. 
 85 
 
86 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Took in^ by lot, 'tvvixt high and nether^ Jove, 20 
 
 Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles 
 
 That, like to rich and various gems, inlay 
 
 The unadorned bosom of the deep ; 
 
 Which he, to grace his tributary gods, 
 
 By course commits to several government, 25 
 
 And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns 
 
 And wield their httle tridents. But this Isle, 
 
 The greatest and the best of all the main, 
 
 He quarters to his blue-haired deities ; 
 
 And all this tract that fronts the falling sun 30 
 
 A noble Peer of mickle - trust and power 
 
 Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide 
 
 An old and haughty nation proud in arms : 
 
 Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore, 
 
 Are coming to attend their father's state, 35 
 
 And new-intrusted sceptre.^ But their way 
 
 Lies through the perplexed "* paths of this drear wood. 
 
 The nodding horror of whose shady brows 
 
 Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger ; 
 
 And here their tender age might suffer peril, 40 
 
 But that, by quick command from sovran Jove 
 
 I was dispatched for their defence and guard ; 
 
 And hsten why ; for I will tell you now 
 
 \Miat never yet was heard in tale or song. 
 
 From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. 45 
 
 Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape 
 Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine, 
 
 1 Lower. 2 Great. ^ Power. ■* Tangled. 
 
Comus 87 
 
 After the Tuscan mariners transformed, 
 
 Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,* 
 
 On Circe's island fell. — Who knows not Circe, 50 
 
 The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup 
 
 Whoever tasted lost his upright shape. 
 
 And downward fell into a grovelling swine ? — 
 
 This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks 
 
 With ivy berries wreathed and his blithe youth, 55 
 
 Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son 
 
 Much like his father, but his mother more, 
 
 Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named j 
 
 Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age. 
 
 Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60 
 
 At last betakes him to this ominous ^ wood, 
 
 x\nd, in thick shelter of black shades embowered. 
 
 Excels his mother at her mighty art ; 
 
 Offering to every weary traveller 
 
 His orient^ liquor in a crystal glass, 65 
 
 To quench the drouth "* of Phoebus ; which as they taste — 
 
 For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst — 
 
 Soon as the potion works, their human countenance, 
 
 The express resemblance of the gods, is changed 
 
 Into some brutish form of wolf or bear, 70 
 
 Or ounce ^ or tiger, hog, or bearded goat. 
 
 All other parts remaining as they were. 
 
 And they, so perfect is their misery. 
 
 Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, 
 
 1 Pleased. 2 Enchanted. ^ Bright. * Thirst. 
 
 ^ Snow leopard or mountain panther. 
 
88 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 But boast themselves more comely than before, 75 
 
 And all their friends and native home forget, 
 
 To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty. 
 
 Therefore, when any favoured of high Jove 
 
 Chances to pass through this adventurous ^ glade, 
 
 Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star 80 
 
 I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy,^ 
 
 As now I do. But first I must put off 
 
 These my sky-robes spun out of Iris' woof, 
 
 And take the weeds and likeness of a swain ^ 
 
 That to the service of this house belongs, 85 
 
 Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song, 
 
 Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar. 
 
 And hush the waving woods ; nor of less faith, 
 
 And in this office of his mountain watch 
 
 Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90 
 
 Of this occasion. But I hear the tread 
 
 Of hateful steps ; I must be viewless now. 
 
 CoMUS enters with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass 
 in the other ; with him a rout of monsters, headed like 
 sundry sorts of ivild beasts, but othei'wise like men and 
 women, their apparel glistering ; they come in making 
 a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hafids. 
 
 Conms. The star that bids the shepherd fold 
 Now the top of heaven doth hold ; 
 And the gilded car of day 95 
 
 1 Dangerous. ^ Guidance. * Servant, 
 
Comus 89 
 
 His glowing axle doth allay ^ 
 
 In the steep ^ Atlantic stream ; 
 
 And the slope sun his upward beam 
 
 Shoots against the dusky pole, 
 
 Pacing toward the other goal 100 
 
 Of his chamber in the east. 
 
 Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast. 
 
 Midnight shout and revelry, 
 
 Tipsy dance and jolhty ! 
 
 Braid your locks with rosy twine,^ 105 
 
 Dropping odours, dropping wine. 
 
 Rigour now is gone to bed ; 
 
 And Advice with scrupulous head, 
 
 Strict Age, and sour Severity, 
 
 With their grave saws,^ in slumber lie. no 
 
 We, that are of purer fire. 
 
 Imitate the starry quire. 
 
 Who, in their nightly watchful spheres. 
 
 Lead in swift round the months and years. 
 
 The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,* 115 
 
 Now to the moon in wavering morrice ^ move ; 
 
 And on the tawny ^ sands and shelves ^ 
 
 Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. 
 
 By dimpled brook and fountain-brim 
 
 The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim 120 
 
 Their merry wakes and pastimes keep : 
 
 What hath night to do with sleep? 
 
 J Temper. 2 Bright. ^ Garland. * Proverbs. ^ Fishes. 
 * Dance. "^ Yellow. ^ Beaches, 
 
90 
 
 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Night hath better sweets to prove ; 
 
 Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. 
 
 Come, let us our rites begin ; 125 
 
 'Tis only daylight that makes sin, 
 
 Which these dun ^ shades will ne'er report. 
 
 Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, 
 
 Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame 
 
 Of midnight torches burns ! mysterious dame, 130 
 
 That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb 
 
 Of Stygian darkness spets - her thickest gloom, 
 
 And makes one blot of all the air ! 
 
 Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, 
 
 Wherein thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend 135 
 
 Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end 
 
 Of all thy dues be done, and none left out ; 
 
 Ere the blabbing" eastern scout. 
 
 The nice'* Morn on the Indian steep. 
 
 From her cabined loophole peep, 140 
 
 And to the tell-tale Sun descry^ 
 
 Our concealed solemnity. 
 
 Come, knit hands, and beat the ground 
 
 In a light fantastic round. 
 
 The Measure 
 
 Break off, break off, I feel the different pace 145 
 
 Of some chaste footing near about this ground. 
 Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees; 
 
 1 Dark. 2, Spits. ^ Revealing. * Accurate, modest. 
 ^ Make plain. 
 
Comus 91 
 
 Our number may affright. Some virgin sure — 
 
 For so I can distinguish by mine art — 
 
 Benighted in these woods ! Now to my charms, 150 
 
 And to my wily trains ; ^ I shall ere long 
 
 Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed 
 
 About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl 
 
 My dazzling spells into the spongy air, 
 
 Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, 155 
 
 And give it false presentments, lest the place 
 
 And my quaint^ habits breed astonishment. 
 
 And put the damsel to suspicious flight ; ., 
 
 Which must not be, for that's against my course. 
 
 I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, 160 
 
 And well-placed words of glozing ^ courtesy 
 
 Baited with reasons not unplausible, 
 
 Wind me into the easy-hearted man, 
 
 And hug him into snares. When once her eye 
 
 Hath met the virtue ^ of this magic dust, 165 
 
 I shall appear some harmless villager 
 
 Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.* 
 
 But here she comes ; I fairly*^ step aside, 
 
 And hearken, if I may her business hear. 
 
 T/ie Lady enters 
 
 Lady. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, i;o 
 My best guide now. Methought it was the sound 
 
 1 Enticements. 2 Unusual. ^ Deceptive. * Power. 
 ^ Work. 6 Promptly. 
 
92 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Of riot and ill-managed merriment, 
 
 Such as the jocund^ flute or gamesome pipe 
 
 Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds/ 
 
 When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, 175 
 
 In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan, 
 
 And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth 
 
 To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence 
 
 Of such late wassailers ^ yet, oh ! where else 
 
 Shall I inform my unacquainted feet 180 
 
 In the Wind mazes of this tangled wood ? 
 
 My brothers, when they saw me wearied out 
 
 With this long way, resolving here to lodge 
 
 Under the spreading favour * of these pines. 
 
 Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket side 185 
 
 To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit 
 
 As the kind hospitable woods provide. ,, N^ 
 
 jThey left me then when the grey-hooded EvenV^v 
 
 l ^ke a sad votarist^ in palmer's weed, j^ 
 
 Roselrom the hindmost wheels of Phcebus' wain. 190 
 
 But where they are, and why they came not back, 
 
 Is now the labour of my thoughts. Tis Hkeliest 
 
 They had engaged their wandering steps too far ; 
 
 And envious darkness, ere they could return. 
 
 Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night, 195 
 
 Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious ® end, 
 
 In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars 
 
 That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps 
 
 ^ Joyous. 2 Country folk. ^ Revellers. * Shade. 
 * Devotee. ^ Wicked. 
 
Comus 93 
 
 With everlasting oil to give due light 
 To the misled and lonely traveller ? 200 
 
 This is the place, as well as I may guess, 
 Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth 
 Was rife,^ and perfect in my listening ear ; 
 Yet nought but single ^ darkness do I find, 
 ^hat might this be? A thousand fantasies 205 
 
 Begin to throng into my memory. 
 Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, 
 And airy tongues that syllable men's names 
 On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. 
 These thoughts may startle well, but not astound 210 
 
 The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended 
 By a strong^ siding champion. Conscience. — 
 O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, 
 Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings. 
 And thou unblemished form of Chastity ! 215 
 
 I see ye visibly, and now believe 
 That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 
 Are but as slavish officers of vengeance. 
 Would send a glistering guardian, if need were, 
 To keep my life and honour unassailed. — . ' 220 
 
 Was I deceived, or did a sable * cloud v!^ 
 Turn forth her silver lining on the night?, '^v 
 I did not err : there does a sable cloud ^^ 
 Turn forth her silver lining on the night, ^ 
 ' And casts a gleam over this tufted grove^ 225 
 
 I cannot hallo to my brothers, but 
 
 1 Full. 2 Complete. ^ Helpful. * Dark. 
 
94 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest 
 I'll venture ; for my new-enlivened spirits 
 Prompt me, and they perhaps are not far off. 
 
 Song. 
 
 Sweet Echo, sweetest 7iymph, that liv'st unsee^i 230 
 
 Within thy airy shell 
 By sloiv Meander's margent ^ green, 
 And in the violet- embroidered vale 
 Where the love-lorn, nightiiUgale 
 
 Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well ; 235 
 
 Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair 
 That likest thy Narcissus^ are ? 
 
 O, if thou have 
 
 Hid them in some flowery cave, 
 
 Tell me but where, 240 
 
 ^^xjeet Queen of Parley? Daughter of the Sphere I 
 So mafst th jPSe traits la ted to the skies, 
 And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies. 
 
 Enter Comus 
 
 Comus, Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould 
 Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? 245 
 
 Sure something holy lodges in that breast, 
 And with these raptures moves the vocal air 
 To testify his hidden residence. 
 How sweetly did they float upon the wings 
 Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, 250 
 
 1 Bank. 2 Speech. 
 
Comus 95 
 
 At every fall smoothing the raven down 
 
 Of darkness till it smiled ! I have oft heard 
 
 My mother Circe with the Sirens three, 
 
 Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, 
 
 Culling ^ their potent herbs and baleful drugs, 255 
 
 Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul 
 
 And lap it in Elysium ; Scylla wept. 
 
 And chid her barking waves into attention. 
 
 And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause. 
 
 Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, 260 
 
 And in sweet madness robbed it of itself; 
 
 But such a sacred and home-felt delight. 
 
 Such sober certainty of waking bliss, 
 
 I never heard till now. I'll speak to her, 
 
 And she shall be my queen. — Hail, foreign wonder ! 265 
 
 Whom, certain these rough shades did never breed. 
 
 Unless the goddess that in rural shrine 
 
 Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song 
 
 Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog 
 
 To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood. 270 
 
 Lady, Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise 
 That is addressed to unattending ears. 
 Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift ^ 
 How to regain my severed company, 
 Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo 275 
 
 To give me answer from her mossy couch. 
 
 Comus, What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus? 
 
 Lady. Dim darkness and this leavy labyrinth.'^ 
 1 Picking. '^ Effort. ^ Maze, a puzzle of paths. 
 
96 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Comus. Could that divide you from near-ushering^ 
 guides? 
 
 Lady. They left me weary on a grassy turf. 280 
 
 Comus, By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why? 
 
 Lady. To seek i' the valley some cool friendly spring. 
 
 Comus. And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady?. 
 
 Lady. They were but twain, and purposed quick 
 return. 
 
 Comus. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them. 285 
 
 Lady. How easy my misfortune is to hit ! 
 
 Comus. Imports^ their loss; beside^ the present 
 need? 
 
 Lady, No less than if I should my brothers lose. 
 
 Comus. Were they of manly prime, or youthful 
 bloom ? 
 
 Lady. As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips. 290 
 
 Comus. Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox 
 In his loose traces from the furrow came. 
 And the swinked^ hedger at his supper sat. 
 I saw them under a green manthng vine. 
 That crawls along the side of yon small hill, 295 
 
 Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots ; 
 Their port^ was more than human, as they stood. 
 I took it for a faery vision 
 Of some gay creatures of the element,^ 
 That in the colours of the rainbow live, 300 
 
 And play i' the plighted ^ clouds. I was awe-strook,^ 
 
 1 Going close before. ^ Means. ^ More than. ^ Tired. 
 
 5 Carriage. ® Heavens. ^ Woven, plaited, folded. ^ Struck. 
 
Comus 97 
 
 And as I passed I worshipped. If those you seek, 
 It were a journey Hke the path to Heaven 
 To help you find them. 
 
 Lady. Gentle villager, 
 
 What readiest way would bring me to that place ? 305 
 
 Comus. Due west it rises from this shrubby point. 
 
 Lady. To find that out, good shepherd, I suppose, 
 In such a scant allowance of starlight, 
 Would overtask the best land-pilot's art, 
 Without the sure guess of well-practised feet. 310 
 
 Comus. I know each lane, and every alley green. 
 Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood, 
 And every bosky bourn from side to side, 
 My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood ; 
 And if your stray attendance be yet lodged 315 
 
 Or shroud ^ within these limits, I shall know 
 Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted ^ lark 
 From her thatched pallet rouse. If otherwise, 
 I can conduct you. Lady, to a low 
 
 But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 320 
 
 Till further quest. 
 
 Lady. Shepherd, I take thy word, 
 
 And trust thy honest-offered courtesy. 
 Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds. 
 With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls 
 And courts of princes, where it first was named, 325 
 
 And yet is most pretended. In a place 
 Less warranted ^ than this, or less secure, 
 
 1 Sheltered, 2 Low-resting or dwelling. ^ Answered for. 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 7 
 
98 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 I cannot be, that I should fear to change it. 
 Eye ^ me, blest Providence, and square ^ my trial 
 To my proportioned strength ! Shepherd, lead on. 330 
 
 \_Exeunf\ 
 
 Enter the two Brothers 
 
 Elder Brother. Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou, 
 fair moon. 
 That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,^ 
 Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud, 
 And disinherit ^ Chaos, that reigns here 
 In double night of darkness and of shades ; 335 
 
 Or if your influence be quite dammed up 
 With black usurping mists, some gentle taper, 
 Though a rush candle from the wicker hole 
 Of some clay habitation, visit us 
 
 With thy long levelled rule ^ of streaming light, 340 
 
 And thou shalt be our Star of Arcady 
 Or Tyrian Cynosure ! 
 
 Second Brother. Or if our eyes 
 Be barred that happiness, might we but hear 
 The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes,^ 
 Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, 345 
 
 Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock 
 Count the night watches to his feathery dames, 
 'Tvvould be some solace yet, some little cheering 
 In this close dungeon of innumerous ^ boughs. 
 
 1 Watch. 2 Suit. ^ Blessing. * Deprive of rights. 
 ^ Beam. ^ Twig cots. "^ Innumerable. 
 
Comus 
 
 99 
 
 But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister ! 350 
 
 Where may she wander now, whither betake her 
 
 From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles? 
 
 Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now. 
 
 Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm 
 
 Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. 355 
 
 What if in wild amazement and affright, 
 
 Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp 
 
 Of savage hunger, or of savage heat ! 
 
 Elder Brother. Peace, brother : be not over-exquisite ^ 
 To cast the fashion of uncertain evils ; 360 
 
 For grant they be so, while they rest unknown, 
 What need a man forestall his date of grief. 
 And run to meet what he would most avoid ? 
 Or if they be but false alarms of fear, 
 How bitter is such self-delusion ! 365 
 
 I do not think my sister so to seek,^ 
 Or so unprincipled in virtue's book, 
 And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, 
 As that the single want of light and noise — 
 Not being in danger, as I trust she is not — 370 
 
 Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts. 
 And put them into misbecoming plight. 
 iSVirtue could see to do what Virtue would 
 ^ By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 
 5 Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self 375 
 
 ^ Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, 
 
 Where, with her best nurse Contemplation, 
 1 Over-careful. 2 Incapable. 
 
 LofC. 
 
lOO Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, 
 
 That, in the various bustle of resort, 
 
 Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired. . y 380 
 '''irHe that has light within his own clear breast 
 ^j^May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day : 
 .•^ • But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts 
 
 Benighted walks under the mid- day sun ; 
 
 Himself is his own dungeonj^ 
 
 Secofid Brother. 'Tis most true 385 
 
 That musing Meditation most affects 
 
 The pensive secrecy of desert cell, 
 
 Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, 
 
 And sits as safe as in a senate-house ; 
 
 For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 
 
 His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, 
 
 Or do his grey hairs any violence? 
 
 But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree 
 
 Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard 
 
 Of dragon- watch with unenchanted eye, 395 
 
 To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit 
 
 From the rash hand of bold Incontinence. 
 
 You may as well spread out the unsunned heaps 
 
 Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den. 
 
 And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope 400 
 
 Danger will wink ^ on Opportunity, 
 
 And let a single helpless maiden pass 
 
 Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste. 
 
 Of night or loneliness it recks me not ; 
 1 Shut its eyes to. 
 
Comus loi 
 
 I fear the dread events that dog ^ them both, 405 
 
 Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person 
 Of our unowned ^ sister. 
 
 Elder Brother. I do not, brother, 
 
 Infer as if I thought my sister's state 
 Secure without all doubt or controversy ; 
 Yet, where an equal poise " of hope and fear 410 
 
 Does arbitrate the event, my nature is 
 That I incline to hope rather than fear, 
 And gladly banish squint ^ suspicion. 
 My sister is not so defenceless left 
 
 As you imagine ; she has a hidden strength 415 
 
 Which you remember not. 
 
 Second Brother. What hidden strength, 
 
 Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that ? 
 
 Elder Brother. I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength 
 Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own. 
 'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity : 420 
 
 She that has that is clad in complete steel. 
 And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen. 
 May trace ^ huge forests and unharboured ^ heaths. 
 Infamous '^ hills, and sandy perilous wilds, 
 Where, through the sacred rays of chastity, 425 
 
 No savage fierce, bandite,^ or mountaineer 
 Will dare to soil her virgin purity. 
 Yea, there where very desolation dwells, 
 By grots and caverns shagged ^ with horrid shades, 
 
 1 Follow. 2 Deserted. ^ Chance. ^ Looking sidewise, sinister. 
 ^ Traverse. ^ Inhospitable. '^ Strange. ^ Robber. ^ Made scrubby. 
 
^ 
 
 I02 Milton^s Minor Poems 
 
 She may pass on with unblenched^ majesty, 430 
 
 Be it not done in pride or in presumption. 
 
 Some say no evil thing that walks by night, 
 
 In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen. 
 
 Blue meagre- hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost 
 
 That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, 435 
 
 No goblin or swart ■" faery of the mine. 
 
 Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity. 
 
 Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call 
 
 Antiquity from the old schools of Greece 
 
 To testify the arms of chastity ? 440 
 
 Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow, 
 
 Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste, 
 
 Wherewith she tamed the brinded'* lioness 
 
 And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought 
 
 The frivolous ^ bolt of Cupid ; gods and men 445 
 
 Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. 
 
 What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield 
 
 That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin. 
 
 Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, 
 
 But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 
 
 And noble grace that dashed brute violence 
 
 With sudden adoration and blank awe? 
 
 So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity 
 
 That, when a soul is found sincerely so, 
 
 A thousand liveried angels lackey ^ her, 455 
 
 Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 
 
 1 Unharmed. 2 Thin. 3 Dark. 
 
 * Streaked, brindled. ^ Light. ' ^ Serve. 
 
Comus 103 
 
 And in clear dream and solemn vision 
 
 Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear ; 
 
 Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
 
 Begin to cast a beam ^ on the outward shape, 460 
 
 The unpolluted temple of the mind, 
 
 And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, 
 
 Till all be made immortal. But when lust, 
 
 By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, 
 
 But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 465 
 
 Lets in defilement to the inward parts. 
 
 The soul grows clotted by contagion, 
 
 Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose 
 
 The divine property of her first being. 
 
 Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp 470 
 
 Oft seen in charnal^ vaults and sepulchres, 
 
 Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave. 
 
 As loth to leave the body that it loved. 
 
 And linked itself by carnal sensualty 
 
 To a degenerate and degraded state. 475 
 
 Second Brother. How charming is divine Philosophy ! 
 Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose. 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute. 
 And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets. 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns. 
 
 Elder Brother. List ! list ! I hear 4S0 
 
 Some far-off hallo break the silent air. 
 
 Seco7id Brother. Methought so too ; what should it be ? 
 
 Elder Brother. For certain, 
 
 1 Light. ^ Containing corpses. 
 
I04 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Either some one, like us, night-foundered ^ here. 
 
 Or else some neighbour woodman, or, at worst, 
 
 Some roving robber calling to his fellows. 4S5 
 
 Second Brother. Heaven keep my sister ! Again, again, 
 and near ! 
 Best draw, and stand upon our guard. 
 
 Elder Brother. I'll hallo : 
 
 If he be friendly, he comes well ; if not, 
 Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be for us ! 
 
 E?iter the Attendant Spirit, habited like a Shepherd 
 
 That hallo I should know. What are you ? speak. 490 
 Come not too near ; you fall on iron stakes else. 
 
 Spirit. What voice is that? my young Lord? speak 
 again. 
 
 Second Brother. O brother, 'tis my father's Shepherd, 
 sure ! 
 
 Elder Brother. Thyrsis ! whose artful strains have oft 
 delayed 
 The huddling - brook to hear his madrigal,^ 495 
 
 And sweetened every musk-rose of the dale. 
 How camest thou here, good swain? hath any ram 
 Shpped from the fold, or young kid lost his dam. 
 Or stragghng wether the pent flock forsook? 
 How couldst thou find this dark sequestered ^ nook ? 500 
 
 Spirit. O my loved master's heir, and his next joy, 
 I came not here on such a trivial toy ^ 
 As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth 
 1 Disabled. 2 Hurrying. ^ Song. * Lonely. ^ Pretext. 
 
Com 
 
 us 
 
 105 
 
 Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth 
 
 That doth enrich these downs is worth a thought 505 
 
 To this my errand, and the care it brought. 
 
 But oh ! my virgin Lady, where is she? 
 
 How chance she is not in your company ? 
 
 Elder B?'other. To tell thee sadly, Shepherd, without 
 blame 
 Or our neglect, we lost her as we came. 510 
 
 Spirit. Ay me unhappy ! then my fears are true. 
 
 Elder Brother. What fears, good Thyrsis? Prithee 
 briefly show. 
 
 Spi7'it. I'll tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous, — 
 Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance, — 
 What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly Muse, 515 
 Storied of old in high immortal verse 
 Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles. 
 And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell ; 
 For such there be, but unbelief is blind. 
 
 Within the navel ^ of this hideous wood, 520 
 
 Immured " in cypress shades a sorcerer dwells. 
 Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus, 
 Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries ; 
 And here to every thirsty wanderer 
 By sly enticement gives his baneful ^ cup, 525 
 
 With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison 
 The visage quite transforms of him that drinks. 
 And the inglorious Ukeness of a beast 
 Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage "* 
 
 1 Middle. 2 ghut up. ^ Harmful. * Inscription. 
 
io6 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Charactered in the face. This have I learnt 530 
 
 Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly crofts ^ 
 
 That brow- this bottom glade ; whence night by night 
 
 He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl 
 
 Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey, 
 
 Doing abhorred rites to Hecate 535 
 
 In their obscured haunts of inmost bowers. 
 
 Yet have they many baits and guileful spells 
 
 To inveigle ^ and invite the unwary sense 
 
 Of them that pass unweeting ^ by the way. 
 
 This evening late, by then the chewing flocks 540 
 
 Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb 
 
 Of knot-grass dew-besprent/^ and were in fold, 
 
 I sat me down to watch upon a bank 
 
 With ivy canopied and interwove 
 
 With flaunting honeysuckle, and began, 545 
 
 Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy. 
 
 To meditate^ my rural minstrelsy, 
 
 Till fancy had her fill. But ere a close 
 
 The wonted roar was up amidst the woods. 
 
 And filled the air with barbarous dissonance ; 550 
 
 At which I ceased, and listened them a while. 
 
 Till an unusual stop of sudden silence 
 
 Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds, 
 
 That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep. 
 
 At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 555 
 
 Rose Hke a steam of rich distilled perfumes, 
 
 1 Small fields. 2 Overhang. ^ Lure. ^ Unthinking. 
 ^ Besprinkled. ^ Practise. 
 
Comus 107 
 
 And stole upon the air, that even Silence 
 
 Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might 
 
 Deny her nature, and be never more, 
 
 Still to be so displaced. I was all ear, 560 
 
 And took in strains that might create a soul 
 
 Under the ribs of Death ; but oh ! ere long 
 
 Too well I did perceive it was the voice 
 
 Of my most honoured Lady, your dear sister. 
 
 Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear ; 565 
 
 And * O poor hapless nightingale,' thought I, 
 
 * How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare ! ' 
 
 Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste. 
 
 Through paths and turnings often trod by day, 
 
 Till guided by mine ear, I found the place, 570 
 
 Where that damned wizard, hid in sly disguise — 
 
 For so by certain signs I knew — had met 
 
 Already, ere my best speed could prevent. 
 
 The aidless innocent lady, his wished prey ; 
 
 Who gently asked if he had seen such two, 575 
 
 Supposing him some neighbour villager. 
 
 Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed 
 
 Ye were the two she meant ; with that I sprung 
 
 Into swift flight, till I had found you here ; 
 
 But further I know not. 
 
 Second Brother. O night and shades, 580 
 
 How are ye joined with Hell in triple knot. 
 Against the unarmed weakness of one virgin. 
 Alone and helpless ! Is this the confidence 
 You gave me, brother? 
 
io8 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Elder Brother. Yes, and keep it still ; 
 
 Lean on it safely : not a period 585 
 
 Shall be unsaid for me. Against the threats 
 Of malice or of sorcery, or that power 
 Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm : 
 Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt. 
 Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled ; 590 
 
 Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm 
 Shall in the happy trial prove most glory : 
 But evil on itself shall back recoil, 
 And mix no more with goodness, when at last, 
 Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, 595 
 
 It shall be in eternal restless change 
 Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail. 
 The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on ! 
 Against the opposing will and arm of Heaven 600 
 
 May never this just sword be lifted up ; 
 But for that damned magician, let him be girt 
 With all the grisly^ legions that troop 
 Under the sooty ^ flag of Acheron, 
 
 Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms 605 
 
 'Twixt Africa and Ind, I'll find him out. 
 And force him to return his purchase ^ back. 
 Or drag him by the curls to a foul death. 
 Cursed as his life. 
 
 Spirit Alas ! good venturous youth, 
 
 I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise ; ^ 610 
 
 1 Grim. "^ Black, smoky. ^ Prey, ^ Adventure. 
 
L.omus 109 
 
 But here thy sword can do thee httle stead.^ 
 Far other arms and other weapons must 
 Be those that quell the might of hellish charms. 
 He with his bare wand can unthread thy joints, 
 And crumble all thy sinews. .. 
 
 Elder Brother. Why, prithee, Shepherd, 615 
 
 How durst thou then thyself approach so near 
 As to make this relation? 
 
 Spirit. Care and utmost shifts 
 
 How to secure the Lady from surprisal 
 Brought to my mind a certain shepherd lad, 
 Of small regard to see to,^ yet well skilled 620 
 
 In every virtuous plant and healing herb 
 That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray. 
 He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing ; 
 Which when I did, he on the tender grass 
 W^ould sit and hearken even to ecstasy, 625 
 
 And in requital ^ ope his leathern scrip. 
 And show me simples ■* of a thousand names, 
 TeUing their strange and vigorous faculties. 
 Amongst the rest a small unsightly root. 
 But of divine effect, he culled me out. 630 
 
 The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, 
 But in another country, as he said. 
 Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil : 
 Unknown, and Hke esteemed, and the dull swain 
 Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon / 635 
 
 And yet more raed'cinal is it than that Moly 
 
 1 Good. 2 Look upon. ^ Return. * Herbs. ^ Patched shoes. 
 
no Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. 
 
 He called it Hsemony, and gave it me, 
 
 And bade me keep it as of sovran use 
 
 'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp, 640 
 
 Or ghastly Furies' apparition. 
 
 I pursed^ it up, but little reckoning made. 
 
 Till now that this extremity compelled ; 
 
 But now I find it true, for by this means 
 
 I knew the foul enchanter, though disguised, 645 
 
 Entered the very Hme-twigs - of his spells. 
 
 And yet came off. If you have this about you — 
 
 As I will give you when we go — you may 
 
 Boldly assault the necromancer's'^ hall; 
 
 Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood 650 
 
 And brandished blade rush on him : break his glass, 
 
 And shed the luscious Hquor on the ground : 
 
 But seize his wand. Though he and his curst crew 
 
 Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high. 
 
 Or, like the sons of Vulcan, vomit smoke, 655 
 
 Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink.'* 
 
 Elder Brother. Thyrsis, lead on apace ; I'll follow thee. 
 And some good angel bear a shield before us ! 
 
 The Scene chattges to a stately palace^ set out with all 
 maimer of deliciousness ; soft music ^ tables spread with 
 all dainties. CoMUS appears ivith his rabble, and the 
 Lady set in an eiichanted chair ; to whom he offers his 
 glass, which she puts by, and goes about to rise. 
 
 1 Treasured. ^ Twigs smeared with birdlime for catching birds. 
 * Magician's. * Retreat. 
 
Comus III 
 
 Comus. Nay, Lady, sit ; if I but wave this wand, 
 Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, 660 
 
 And you a statue, or as Daphne was. 
 Root-bound, that fled Apollo. 
 
 Lady. Fool, do not boast ; 
 
 Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind 
 With all thy charms, although this corporal rind ^ 
 Thou hast immanacled ^ while Heaven sees good. 665 
 
 Comus. Why are you vexed. Lady ? why do you frown ? 
 Here dwell no frowns nor anger ; from these gates 
 Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures 
 That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, 
 When the fresh blood grows lively and returns 670 
 
 Brisk as the April buds in primrose season. 
 And first behold this cordial julep ^ here. 
 That flames and dances in his ciystal bounds. 
 With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed. 
 Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone 675 
 
 In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena 
 Is of such power to stir up joy as this, 
 To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst. 
 Why should you be so cruel to yourself, 
 And to those dainty hmbs which Nature lent 680 
 
 For gentle usage and soft delicacy ? 
 But you invert the covenants of her trust. 
 And harshly deal, hke an ill borrower. 
 With that which you received on other terms ; 
 Scorning the unexempt * condition 685 
 
 ^ Bodily form. ^ Enchained. ^ Sweet drink. * Universal. 
 
112 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 By which all mortal frailty must subsist, 
 Refreshment after toil, ease after pain, 
 That have been tired all day without repast, 
 And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin, 
 This will restore all soon. 
 
 Lady. 'Twill not, false traitor ! 690 
 
 'Twill not restore the truth and honesty 
 That thou hast banished from thy tongue with hes. 
 Was this the cottage and the safe abode 
 Thou told'st me of ? What grim aspects are these. 
 These oughly ^-headed monsters ? Mercy guard me ! 695 
 Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver ! 
 Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence 
 With visored- falsehood and base forgery? 
 And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here 
 With liquorish baits, fit to ensnare a brute ? 700 
 
 Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets, 
 I would not taste thy treasonous offer. (None / '■ 
 But such as are good men can give good things ; 
 And that which is not good is not delicious 
 To a well-governed and wise appetite. 705 
 
 Comus. O foolishness of men ! that lend their , ears 
 To those budge ■' doctors of the Stoic fur. 
 And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub. 
 Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence ! 
 Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth ^\o 
 
 With such a full and unwithdrawing hand. 
 Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks, 
 
 1 Ugly. '^ Armed, masked. ^ Pampered, solemn. 
 
Comus 113 
 
 Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, 
 But all to please and sate ^ the curious taste ? 
 And set to work millions of spinning worms, 715 
 
 That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk 
 To deck her sons ; and that no corner might 
 Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins 
 She hutched - the all- worshipped ore and precious gems 
 To store her children with. If all the world 720 
 
 Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse, 
 Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,^ 
 The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised. 
 Not half his riches known, and yet despised ; 
 And we should serve him as a grudging master, 725 
 
 As a penurious niggard of his wealth, 
 And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons. 
 Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, 
 And strangled with her waste fertility : 
 The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with 
 plumes, 730 
 
 The herds would over-multitude their lords, 
 The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought dia- 
 monds 
 Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, 
 And so bestud with stars, that they below 
 Would grow inured ^ to light, and come at last 735 
 
 To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. 
 List, Lady ; be not coy, and be not cozened ^ 
 With that same vaunted name, Virginity. 
 
 1 Satisfy. 2 Hoarded. ^ Coarse cloth. ^ Used. ^ Cheated. 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 8 
 
114 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 r Beauty is Nature's coin ; must not be hoarded, 
 But must be current ; and the good thereof 740 
 
 Consists in mutual and partaken bHss, 
 Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself. 
 If you let slip time, Hke a neglected rose 
 It withers on the stalk with languished head. 
 Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown 745 
 
 In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities. 
 Where most may wonder at the workmanship. 
 It is for homely features to keep home ; 
 They had their name thence : coarse complexions 
 And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply 750 
 
 The sampler and to tease the huswife's wool. 
 What need a vermeil ^-tinctured Hp for that, 
 Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn? 
 There was another meaning in these gifts : 
 Think what, and be advised ; you are but young yet. 755 
 
 Lady. I had not thought to have unlocked my lips 
 In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler 
 Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes, 
 Obtruding false rules pranked ^ in reason's garb. 
 I hate when Vice can bolt ^ her arguments, 760 
 
 And Virtue has no tongue to check her pride. 
 Impostor ! do not charge most innocent Nature, 
 As if she would her children should be riotous 
 With her abundance. She, good cateress,* 
 Means her provision only to the good, 765 
 
 That live according to her sober laws 
 
 1 Crimson. ^ Dressed up. ^ Make fast. * * Provider. 
 
Comus 115 
 
 And holy dictate of spare Temperance. 
 If every just man that now pines with want 
 Had but a moderate and beseeming share 
 Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury 770 
 
 Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, 
 Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed 
 In unsuperfluous even proportion, 
 And she no wit ^ encumbered with her store : 
 And then the Giver would be better thanked, 775 
 
 His praise due paid ; for swinish Gluttony 
 Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast, 
 But with besotted base ingratitude 
 Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on? 
 Or have I said enow? To him that dares 780 
 
 Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words 
 Against the sun-clad power of chastity. 
 Fain would I something say — yet to what end ? 
 Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend 
 The sublime notion and high mystery 785 
 
 That must be uttered to unfold the sage 
 And serious doctrine of Virginity ; 
 And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know 
 More happiness than this thy present lot. 
 Enjoy your dear wit and gay rhetoric, 790 
 
 That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence ; 
 Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced. 
 Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth 
 Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits 
 1 Whit. 
 
ii6 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 To such a flame of sacred vehemence 795 
 
 That dumb things would be moved to sympathize, 
 And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake. 
 Till all thy magic structures reared so high 
 Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head. 
 
 Co7nus. She fables not. I feel that I do fear 800 
 
 Her words set off by some superior power ; 
 And, though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew 
 Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove 
 Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus 
 To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble, 805 
 
 And try her yet more strongly. — Come, no more ! 
 This is mere moral babble, and direct 
 Against the canon ^ laws of our foundation. 
 I must not suffer this : yet 'tis but the lees 
 And setthngs of a melancholy blood. 810 
 
 But this will cure all straight ; one sip of this 
 Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight 
 Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and taste. — 
 
 The Brothers rush in with swords drawn, wrest his glass 
 out of his hand, and break it against the ground; his 
 rout fnake sigji of resistance, but are all driven in. 
 The Attendant Spirit co^nes in. 
 
 Spii'it. What ! have you let the false enchanter scape ? 
 O, ye mistook ! ye should have snatched his wand, 815 
 And bound him fast. Without his rod reversed 
 
 1 Fundamental, 
 
Comus 117 
 
 And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
 
 We cannot free the Lady that sits here 
 
 In stony fetters fixed and motionless. 
 
 Yet stay, be not disturbed : now I bethink me, 820 
 
 Some other means I have which may be used. 
 
 Which once of MeUboeus old I learnt, 
 
 The soothest ^ shepherd that e'er piped on plains. 
 
 There is a gentle nymph not far from hence, 
 That with moist curb^ sways the smooth Severn stream : 825 
 Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure ; 
 Whilome ^ she was the daughter of Locrine, 
 That had the sceptre from his father Brute. 
 She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit 
 Of her enraged stepdame Guendolen, 830 
 
 Commended her fair innocence to the flood 
 That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course. 
 The water-nymphs that in the bottom played 
 Held up their pearled wrists and took her in, 
 Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall ; 835 
 
 Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head. 
 And gave her to his daughters to imbathe 
 In nectared lavers ■* strewed with asphodil. 
 And through the porch and inlet of each sense 
 Dropped in ambrosial oils, till she revived, 840 
 
 And underwent a quick immortal change. 
 Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains 
 Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve 
 Visits the herds along the twihght meadows, 
 
 1 Wisest. 2 Watery rein. ^ Once. ^ Basins. 
 
Ii8 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Helping all urchin blasts ^ and ill-luck signs 845 
 
 That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, 
 
 Which she with precious vialed ^ liquors heals ; 
 
 For which the shepherds at their festivals 
 
 Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, 
 
 And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream S50 
 
 Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.^ 
 
 And, as the old swain said, she can unlock 
 
 The clasping charm and thaw the numbing spell. 
 
 If she be right invoked in warbled song ; 
 
 For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift 855 
 
 To aid a virgin, such as was herself, 
 
 In hard-besetting need. This will I try, 
 
 And add the power of some adjuring verse. 
 
 Song. 
 Sab7'ina faii% 
 Listen where thou art sitting . 860 
 
 Under the glassy ^ cool, translucent^ wave, 
 
 In twisted braids of lilies k7iitting 
 The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair ; 
 Listen for dear honoui-'s sake^ 
 Goddess of the silver lake, 865 
 
 Listen and save ! 
 
 Listen, and appear to us, 
 
 In name of great Oceanus ; 
 
 By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace, 
 
 ^ Goblin blights. ^ Kept or stored up in a vial. ^ Asphodels. 
 * Transparent. 
 
Comus 
 
 119 
 
 And Tethys' grave majestic pace ; 870 
 
 By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look, 
 And the Carpathian wizard's hook ] 
 By scaly Triton's winding shell, 
 And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell ; 
 By Leucothea's lovely hands, 875 
 
 And her son that rules the strands ; 
 By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet. 
 And the songs of Sirens sweet ; 
 By dead Parthenope's dear tomb, 
 And fair Ligea's golden comb, 880 
 
 Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks 
 Sleeking her soft alluring locks ; 
 By all the nymphs that nightly dance 
 Upon thy streams with wily glance ; 
 Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head 885 
 
 From thy coral-paven bed. 
 And bridle in thy headlong wave, 
 Till thou our summons answered have. 
 Listen and save ! 
 
 Sabrina rises^ attended by Water-nymphs, and sings 
 
 By the rushy-fringed bank, 890 
 
 Where grow the willow and the osier dank, 
 
 My sliding chariot stays, 
 Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen ^ 
 Of turkis blue, and emerald greeii, 
 
 1 Blue gloss. 
 
I20 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 That in the channel strays ; 895 
 
 Whilst from off the waters fleet 
 Thus I set my prititless feet 
 O'er the cowslip's velvet head. 
 That bends not as I tread. 
 
 Gentle swain, at thy request 900 
 
 / am here. 
 
 Spirit. Goddess dear, 
 We implore thy powerful hand 
 To undo the charmed band 
 
 Of true virgin here distressed, 905 
 
 Through the force and through the wile 
 Of unblessed enchanter vile. 
 
 Sabrina. Shepherd, 'tis my office best 
 To help ensnared chastity. 
 
 Brightest Lady, look on me. ' 910 
 
 Thus I sprinkle on thy breast 
 Drops that from my fountain pure 
 I have kept of precious cure ; 
 Thrice upon thy finger's tip. 
 
 Thrice upon thy rubied lip : 915 
 
 Next this marbled venomed ^ seat, 
 Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, 
 I touch with chaste palms moist and cold. 
 Now the spell hath lost his hold ; 
 And I must haste ere morning hour 920 
 
 To wait in Amphitrite's bower. 
 
 1 Poisoned. 
 
Comus 121 
 
 Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of her seat 
 
 Spif-it. Virgin, daughter of Locrine, 
 Sprung of old Anchises' line, 
 May thy brimmed waves for this 
 Their full tribute never miss 925 
 
 From a thousand petty rills 
 That tumble down the snowy hills ; 
 Summer drouth or singed air 
 Never scorch thy tresses fair, 
 
 Nor wet October's torrent flood 930 
 
 Thy molten^ crystal fill with mud ; 
 May thy billows roll ashore 
 The beryl and the golden ore ; 
 May thy lofty head be crowned 
 With many a tower and terrace round, 935 
 
 And here and there thy banks upon 
 With groves of myrrh and cinnamon. — 
 
 Come, Lady, while Heaven lends us grace. 
 Let us fly this cursed place, 
 
 Lest the sorcerer us entice 940 
 
 With some other new device. 
 Not a waste or needless sound 
 Till we come to holier ground ! 
 I shall be your faithful guide 
 
 Through this gloomy covert ^ wide ; 945 
 
 And not many furlongs thence 
 Is your father's residence, 
 
 1 Fluid. 2 Grove. 
 
122 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Where this night are met in state 
 
 Many a friend to gratulate ^ 
 
 His wished presence, and beside 950 
 
 All the swains that there abide 
 
 With jigs and rural dance resort. 
 
 We shall catch them at their sport, 
 
 And our sudden coming there 
 
 Will double all their mirth and cheer. 955 
 
 Come, let us haste ; the stars grow high. 
 
 But Night sits monarch yet in the mid sky. 
 
 The Scene changes, presentmg Ludlow Town and the 
 President's Castle; the?i come in Country Dancers, 
 after the?n the Attendant Spirit, with the two Brothers 
 and the Lady. 
 
 Song 
 Spirit. Back, shepherds, back I enough yotir play 
 Till next sunshine holiday. 
 
 He7'e be, without duck or nod, 960 
 
 Other trippings to be trod 
 Of lighter toes, and such court guise 
 As Mercury did first devise 
 With the mi7icing Dryades 
 On the lawns and on the leas. 965 
 
 This second Song presents them to their Father and 
 Mother 
 Noble Lord and Lady bright, 
 I have bi'ought ye new delight: 
 1 Greet with joy. 
 
Comus 113 
 
 Here behold so goodly grown 
 
 Three fair branches of your oivn. 
 
 Heaven hath timely tried their youth, 970 
 
 Their faith, their patience, and their truth, 
 
 And sent them here through hard assays ' 
 
 With a crown of deathless pj-aise. 
 
 To triumph in victorious dance 
 
 O'er sensual folly and intemperance. 975 
 
 The da f ices elided, the Spirit epiloguizes 
 
 Spirit. To the ocean now I fly, 
 And those happy climes that lie 
 Where day never shuts his eye, 
 Up in the broad fields of the sky. 
 There I suck the liquid air 980 
 
 All amidst the gardens fair 
 Of Hesperus and his daughters three 
 That sing about the golden tree 
 Along the crisped ^ shades and bowers 
 Revels the spruce and jocund Spring ; 9S5 
 
 The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours 
 Thither all their bounties bring. 
 There eternal Summer dwells, 
 And west winds with musky wing 
 About the cedarn alleys fling 990 
 
 Nard and cassia's balmy smells. 
 Iris there with humid bow 
 Waters the odorous banks, that blow 
 1 Crinkled edged. 
 
124 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Flowers of more mingled hue 
 
 Than her purfled ^ scarf can shew, 995 
 
 And drenches with Elysian dew — 
 
 List, mortals, if your ears be true ! — 
 
 Beds of hyacinth and roses, 
 
 Where young Adonis oft reposes, 
 
 Waxing well of his deep wound 1000 
 
 In slumber soft, and on the ground 
 
 Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. 
 
 But far above in spangled sheen 
 
 Celestial Cupid her famed son advanced 
 
 Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced 1005 
 
 After her wandering labours long, 
 
 Till free consent the gods among 
 
 Make her his eternal bride, 
 
 And from her fair unspotted side 
 
 Two blissful twins are to be born loio 
 
 Youth and Joy ; so Jove hath sworn. 
 
 But now my task is smoothly done : 
 
 I can fly, or I can run 
 
 Quickly to the green earth's end. 
 
 Where the bow'd welkin - slow doth bend, 1015 
 
 And from thence can soar as soon 
 
 To the corners of the moon. 
 
 /■' Mortals, that would follow me, 
 1' Love Virtue ; she alone is free. 
 \ She can teach ye how to climb 1020 
 
 1 Embroidered or worked. 2 Heaven. 
 
Comus 125 
 
 Higher than the sphery chime ; ^ 
 Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
 Heaven itself wpuld stoop to her. 
 
 '^J/V'-^ " 1 Music of the spheres. 
 
\Mx£XL^^-^^^-^- 
 
 LYCIDAS 
 
 In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend^ unfortunately 
 drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and 
 by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in their 
 height. 
 
 Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 
 
 Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere/ 
 
 I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 
 
 And with forced fingers rude 
 
 Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 5 
 
 Bitter constraint and sad occasion de:ar 
 
 Compels me to disturb your season due ; 
 
 For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime^ 
 
 Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.^ 
 
 Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew 10 
 
 Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. 
 
 He must not float upon his vvatory bier 
 
 Unwept, and welter ^ to the parfcWg^ wind. 
 
 Without the meed of some melodious tear. 
 
 Begin, then. Sisters of the sacred well«,„^ 15 
 
 That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring ; 
 Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. 
 Hence with denial vain and coy excuse ; 
 So may some gentle Muse 
 
 1 Withered. 2 Equal. 3 RqH about. 
 
 126 
 
Lycidas-/ 127 
 
 With lucky words favour my destined urn,^ 20 
 
 And as he passes turn, 
 
 And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud ! 
 
 For we were ilursed upon the self-same hill, 
 Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill ; ' 
 
 Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 25 
 
 Under the opening eyehds of the Morn, 
 We drove a-field, and both together heard 
 What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn. 
 Battening - our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 
 Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 30 
 
 Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. 
 Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute ; 
 Tempered^ to the oaten flute 
 Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel 
 From the glad sound would not be absent long, 35 
 
 And old Damoetas loved to hear our song. 
 
 But, oh ! the heavy change, now thou art gone, 
 Now thou art gone and never must return ! 
 Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, 
 With wild thyme and the gadding* vine o'ergrown, 40 
 And all their echoes mourn. 
 The willows and the hazel copses green 
 Shall now no more be seen 
 Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
 As killing as the canker to the rose. ' 45 
 
 Or taint-worm to the weanHng^ herds that graze, 
 
 1 Appointed grave. 2 Feeding. ^ In time. 
 
 * Wandering. 5 Newly weaned. 
 
il8 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear 
 
 When first the white-thorn blows ; 
 
 Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.,:' 
 
 Where were ye. Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 50 
 Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
 For neither were ye playing on the steep 
 Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie. 
 Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high. 
 Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. 55 
 
 Ay me, I fondly dream ! 
 
 Had ye been there — for what could that have done ? 
 What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore. 
 The Muse herself, for her enchanting son. 
 Whom universal nature did lament, 60 
 
 When by the rout that made the hideous roar 
 His gory visage down the stream was sent, 
 Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? 
 
 Alas ! what boots it with incessant care 
 To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 65 
 
 And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? 
 Were it not better done, as others use. 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade. 
 Or with the tangles of Nesera's hair? 
 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise — 70 
 That last infirmity of noble mind — 
 To scorn delights and live laborious days; 
 But the fair guerdon^ when we hope to find. 
 And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
 1 Reward. 
 
^ 
 
 Lycidas » 129 
 
 Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, 75 
 
 And slits the thin-spun life. * But not the praise,' 
 
 Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears ; 
 
 * Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
 
 Nor in the glistering foil ^ 
 
 Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, 80 
 
 But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 
 
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 
 
 As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 
 
 Of some much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.' 
 
 O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, 85 
 
 Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, 
 That straii-fl heard was of a higher mood; 
 But now my oat proceeds, 
 And listens to the Herald of the Sea 
 That came in Neptune's plea. 90 
 
 He asked the waves, and asked the felon ^ wind?. 
 What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain? 
 And questioned every gust of rugged wings 
 That blows from off each beaked promontory. 
 They knew not of his story ; 95 
 
 And sage Hippotades their answer brings. 
 That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed : 
 The air was calm, and on the level brine 
 Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. 
 It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 100 
 
 Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark, ; . 
 That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 
 
 1 Leaf, as in gold or tin foil. 2 Thievish. 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 9 
 
ijo Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 ^ Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing ^ slow, 
 His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, 
 Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 105 
 
 Like to that sanguine ^ flower inscribed with woe. 
 
 * Ah ! who hath reft,' quoth he, ' my dearest pledge? ' 
 Last came, and last did go. 
 
 The Pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
 
 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain — no 
 
 The golden opes, the iron shuts amain. ^JaA) 
 
 He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : 
 
 * How well could I have spared for thee, young swain. 
 Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
 
 Creep and intrude and cHmb into the fold ! 115 
 
 Of other care they little reckoning make 
 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
 
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 
 
 Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 
 A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least 120 
 
 That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! 
 
 What recks it them? What need they? They are 
 
 sped ; 
 And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 Grate on their sprannel ^ pipes of wretched straw. 
 The hungry^i^fe|) look up, and are not fed, 125 
 
 But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, 
 Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
 Besides what the grim wolf with privy'' paw 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said. 
 
 1 Walking. ^ Purple. ^ Hoarse, worthless. * Secret. 
 
Lycidas 131 
 
 But that two-handed ^ engine at the door 130 
 
 Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.* 
 ■- Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past 
 That shrunk tliy streams ; return, Sicihan Muse, 
 And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
 Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. ' 135 
 
 Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
 Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
 Oi\vhose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, 
 Throw hither all your quaint enamelled " eyes, 
 That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers 140 
 
 And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
 Bring the rathe ^ primrose that forsaken dies, 
 The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, 
 The white pink and the pansy freaked ^ with jet. 
 The glowing violet, 145 
 
 The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine, 
 With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head. 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
 Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed. 
 And dafladillies fill their cups with tears, 150 
 
 To strew the laureate ^ hearse where Lycid lies. 
 For so, to interpose a little ease. 
 Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise, 
 Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
 Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled : 155 
 
 Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
 
 1 Requiring two hands to wield it. 2 Variegated. ^ Early. 
 * Marked. ^ Worthy of the laurel wreath, or laurel crowned. 
 
132 Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 Where thou perhaps under the wheUning tide 
 
 Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
 
 Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, , • - 
 
 Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, "^ ' '160 
 
 Where the great Vision of the guarded mount 
 
 Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold. 
 
 Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth. 
 
 And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth I 
 
 Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 165 
 For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
 Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
 So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
 And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore ^ 170 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky : 
 So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
 Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,. 
 Where, other groves and other streams along, 
 With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 175 
 
 And hears the unexpressive ^ nuptial song 
 In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
 There entertain him all the saints above. 
 In solemn troops and sweet societies, 
 That sing, and singing in their glory move, 180 
 
 And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 
 Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more ; 
 Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, 
 In thy large recompense,^ and shalt be good 
 
 1 Metal. 2 Inexpressible. ' Reward. 
 
Lycidas *'*' 1^3 
 
 To all that wander in that perilous flood. ^ 185 
 
 Thus sang the uncouth ^ swain to the oaks and rills, 
 While the still morn went out with sandals grey. 
 He touched the tender stops of various quills, 
 With eager thought warbling his Doric lay; -*>*/ 
 
 And now the sun had stretched out^ all the hills, '^-^ 190 ^ 
 And now was dropt into the western bay. 
 At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue : 
 To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 
 
 1 Unknown. 2 Lengthened by shadow. 
 
NOTES 
 
 L'ALLEGRO 
 
 1. Loathed Melancholy. Milton had read and thought much 
 on this subject. The student should notice that there is a genuine 
 energy in the order and characterization that compensates for the 
 conventionally languid associations of the words. See Milton's 
 Paradise Lost, xi. 485, 486: "moping melancholy, And moon- 
 struck madness." 
 
 See also quotation from Bullein in More's Utopia, tr. by Robin- 
 son, ii. 7, note, " Melancholy, that cold, dry, wretched, saturnine 
 humour, creepeth in with a leane, pale, or swartysh colour, which 
 reigneth upon solitarye, carefull-musyng men." 
 
 See further. Burton's Anatomy of MelancJwly (Bohn's ed., vol. i. 
 p. 9), The Author's Abstract, last stanza: 
 
 " I'll change my state with any wretch, 
 Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch ; 
 My pain's past cure, another Hell, 
 I may not in this torment dwell ! 
 How desperate I hate my life, 
 Lend me a halter or a knife ; 
 
 All my griefs to this are jolly, 
 Naught so damn'd as Melancholy." 
 
 2. Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born. The natural his- 
 tory of excessive Melancholy is presented with Milton's customary 
 independence in the use of borrowed suggestion. Classical mythol- 
 ogy makes Erebus the husband of Night. Cerberus was the dog of 
 Pluto and guardian of Hades. 
 
 135 
 
136 
 
 Notes 
 
 3. Stygian. An adjective used again by Milton, Paradise Lost, 
 X. 453, meaning, of course, pertaining to the river Styx, and carry- 
 ing the force of all the related associations of darkness, the under- 
 world, and compulsion. See Spenser, Virgil's Gftat, 1. 437 : 
 
 " Bold sure he was, and worthie spirite bore, 
 That durst those lowest shadowes goe to see, 
 And could beleeve that aiiie thing could please 
 Fell Cerberus, or Stygian powres appease." 
 
 5. Uncouth. The literal meaning of the word is indicated by 
 its grammatical form — the negative of a past participle, meaning 
 known, of an Old English verb. Here it means remote, secret. In 
 other connections it means awkward, rude. The verb appears in 
 Modern English only in this form. 
 
 6. Jealous wings. The cause is here used for the effect. The 
 brooding wings keep out intruders, even light and cheer. 
 
 7. Night-raven. The night-heron or night-crow. See Shake- 
 speare, Mtich Ado, ii. 3. 83 : "I pray God his bad voice bode no 
 mischief. I had as hef have heard the night-raven, come what 
 plague could have come after it." 
 
 8. 9. And low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks. See 
 the Century Dictionary for discussion of rag, ragged, rough, and 
 rug. Are voices, clothes, sails, clouds, and roc/es all ragged in the 
 same sense? 
 
 10. Cimmerian. In Homer's Odyssey, xi. 14 (see Chapman's 
 tr.), the people of the Cimmerians are described as dwelling in 
 eternal cloud and darkness. In Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 
 Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2, occurs, "Neither is it sufficient to 
 keep them blind and in Cimmerian darkness." See Spenser, Vir- 
 gil's Gnat, 1. 370 : 
 
 " I carried am into waste wildernesse, 
 Waste wildernes, amongst Cyinerian shades, 
 Where endless paines and hideous heavinesse 
 Is round about me heapt in darksome glades." 
 
L'Allegro 137 
 
 12. Yclept Euphrosyne. Yclept is used only once by Milton. 
 It is the past participle of the Middle English verb clepen, to call. 
 The Old English form of the verb was cleopian. The 7 is a variant 
 spelling for the ge of the past participle, as in German. Milton 
 uses the y incorrectly in his epitaph on Shakespeare, " Star- 
 ypointing pyramid. " Euphrosyne (Mirth) was one of the three 
 graces. Aglaia (Brightness) and Thalia (Bloom) were the others. 
 They presided over the kind offices of life. 
 
 14. Whom lovely Venus, etc. Milton here deserts the classic 
 mythology and invents a genealogy more to his mind than the one 
 that makes Mirth the daughter of Zeus. 
 
 14. At a birth. See the Century Dictionary and Nesfield's 
 English Gratju/iar for the use of a, the, an, one. 
 
 17. As some sager sing. The use of the letter s should be 
 noticed through this verse. For sager see // Penseroso, 1. 117. The 
 order of words in the phrase gives sager something of the force of 
 an adverb. The student should consider whether it is a permissible 
 prose form. 
 
 20. A-Maying. See the Century Dictionary and Nesfield's Eng- 
 lish Grammar for this use of a. Compare a-fishing, a-courting, 
 a-field, a- bed. 
 
 24. So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Note the relation of 
 vowels and consonants in this phrase. Buxom is used only twice 
 by Milton. See Paradise Lost, ii. 842, but it was used in the sense 
 of lively or brisk by Shakespeare in Hen. V., iii. 6. 28; in the 
 sense of obedient by Gower, Confessio Amantis, ii. 221. In the 
 Ancren Riwle it is spelled buksum. The Old English verb from 
 which it is formed is bugan, to bow. This form does not appear 
 in Old English, but is common in Middle English. Compare glad- 
 sojue, ivinsome, darksome. Blithe means happy, through the orig- 
 inal force of the adjective in Old English, Compare with blink 
 and the associated idea in blican, to shine. See Burton's Anatomy 
 of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 5, Subs. 5, for similar phrase, " I 
 am a fatherless child, and want means, I am blithe and buxom, 
 
138 Notes 
 
 young and lusty, but I have never a suitor." . . . See also Spen- 
 ser's Prosopopoia : 
 
 " So v^^ilde a beast so tame ytaught to bee, 
 And buxome to his bands, is joy to see." 
 
 Debonair is simply the French phrase in common use at the time, 
 de bonne air, meaning, first, of good appearance; later, of pleasant 
 manners, courteous, gay. The fashion of the time permitted a wide 
 use of the idea in grammatical forms that have since become obso- 
 lete, i.e. debonarity, debonairness. Debonairly still occurs now and 
 then. Study this combination of words in connection with fair 
 and free, 1. ii. 
 
 27. Quips and Cranks. Quip seems to be of Welsh derivation, 
 and means to move quickly, to whip. Lyly, Alexander and Cam- 
 paspe, iii. 2 has, " Why, what's a quip ? Wee great girders call it 
 a short saying of a sharp wit, with a better sense in a short word." 
 Crank is probably from the Old English verb crincan, to bow, to 
 fall, to bend. In the sense of a bending of speech, a conceit, it 
 appears in all stages of English. Spenser's Prosopopoia has : 
 
 " And with sharp quips joy'd others to deface. 
 Thinking that their disgracing did him grace." 
 
 28. Nods and becks. Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 2, Subs. 4, quotes and translates from 
 
 Musseus : 
 
 " With becks and nods he first began 
 To try the wench's mind ; 
 With becks and nods and smiles again 
 An answer he did find." 
 
 33. Trip it. Compare lord it and similar expressions. 
 44. Dappled dawn. A word manufactured before Milton from 
 dapple, a spot. The verb appears in Shakespeare's Much Ado, v. 
 
 3-27. 
 
 62. Dight. See Latin dictare, to prescribe. The Old EngHsh 
 form is dihtan, to set in order. The full form of the participle is 
 
L'Allegro 139 
 
 dighted. Beaumont and Fletcher use the abbreviated fomti of the 
 verb, "And have a care you dight things handsomely." Ben Jonson 
 and Edmund Spenser also use it. 
 
 67. Tells his tale. This is Milton's, as vs^ell as many another 
 writer's, way of saying, " counts his flock." Tells is from the Old 
 English verb tellan, a weak verb formed from ialu^ a number, a 
 tale. Compare "sings his song," "work the works," etc. See 
 also // Penseroso, 1 70. 
 
 6g. Straight. Compare straightaway. 
 
 70. Landskip round. Compare " the country round." Skeat's 
 note to the effect that Blount's Glossary, 1674, makes it clear that 
 it was originally a painter's term to express 'all that part of a pic- 
 ture which is not of the body or argument,' answering somewhat 
 to the modern term background, is an error as far as Milton's use 
 of the word is concerned. In the Old English paraphrase of the 
 Scriptures, attributed to Csedmon, occurs the following, in the 
 speech of Satan in Hell, " ic a ne geseah lathran landscipe," never 
 have I looked upon a more hideous landscape. Neither the author 
 of these words nor the supposed speaker could have had any inter- 
 est in painter's slang. See also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 
 Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 4 : " with many pretty landskips and perspective 
 pieces." 
 
 71. Lawns and fallows. Lawns is a word of uncertain origin. 
 It is perhaps a decorative variant of land. Old English fealu 
 means yellow, applied to the colour of untilled ground, then became 
 the name for the ground itself. 
 
 75- Pied. Party-coloured, spotted. Does pied belong to 
 " daisies " or to " meadows trim " ? 
 
 80. Cynosure. Latin cynosura. The last of the three stars in 
 the tail of the Lesser Bear is the pole star, the centre of attraction 
 to the magnet. In the Greek word, the meaning is dogh tail. 
 
 83. Corydon and Thyrsis. Conventional names for the conven- 
 tional shepherds of pastoral poetry, taken, with other machinery of 
 poetry, from the Greeks and Romans. 
 
140 Notes 
 
 85. Phyllis. See note to 83, above. 
 
 87. Bower. In the Old English this meant simply a woman's 
 apartment. 
 
 88. Thestylis, See note to 83, above. 
 
 94. Jocund rebecks. Means merry Jiddles. Jocund is of French 
 derivation and rebeck of French, or Italian, from the Persian. 
 
 96. Chequered shade. The force peculiar to chequered here is 
 felt probably, but is most interestingly accounted for in the history 
 of the word. It is formed from check, a term used in the game of 
 chess to call attention to the danger of the king. The Persian 
 form, shah-mat, meant the king is dead. The English check comes 
 through Old French. 
 
 98. Sunshine holiday. Milton used this phrase again in the 
 spirits' song in Comus. See also Shakespeare's Richard IF., iv. i. 
 221, "And send him many years of sunshine days." Also Whit- 
 tier's My Soul and /, "Summon thy sunshine bravery back, O 
 wretched sprite ! " 
 
 102. How Faery Mab the junkets eat. Fairy Mab is in folk 
 and fairy lore the fairies' midwife. Shakespeare calls her Queen, 
 and is the first to do so. Her duty is also to deliver the fancies of 
 men and to make dreams by driving in her chariot over the sleeper. 
 The form fairy Mab is the result of a misuse established long 
 before Milton. Fairy means enchantment, as in Piers Plowman 
 and in Chaucer. The term for elf is fay. Junkets were cream 
 cheeses served on rushes. See Old French jonchec, a bundle of 
 rushes. Finally it was any kind of sweetmeats, or a feast or merry- 
 making. See Ben Jonson's The Satyr : 
 
 " This is Mab, the Mistress-Faery, 
 That doth nightly rob the dairy, 
 And can hurt or help the cherning, 
 As she please, without discerning. 
 
 She that pinches country wenches, 
 If they rub not clean their benches, 
 
L' Allegro 141 
 
 And with sharper nails remembers 
 When tliey rake not up their embers : 
 But if so they chance to feast her, 
 In a shoe she drops a tester." 
 
 104, 105. Friar's lantern . . . drudging goblin. There is 
 really no difficulty in this connection between the Friar's lantern 
 and the drudging goblin. Friar's lantern was one of the names 
 by which Goodfellow went, but it was also a name for the ignis 
 faitiiis by which devils misled men. The whole passage is a poet- 
 ical paraphrase of the elaborate classification and description of 
 spirits in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. i, Sec. 2, Mem. i, 
 Subs. 2, from which the following interesting passages bearing on 
 Milton's poem are quoted: "Fiery spirits or devils are such as 
 commonly work by blazing stars, firedrakes, or ignes fatui ; which 
 lead men often in fiumina aiit praecipitia, . . . Terrestrial devils 
 are those Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs, Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fai- 
 ries, Robin Goodfellows, Trulli, etc., which as they are most con- 
 versant with men, so they do them most harm. . . . Some put our 
 fairies Into this rank, which have been in former times adored with 
 much superstition, with sweeping their houses, and setting of a pail 
 of clean water, good victuals, and the like, and then they should 
 not be pinched, but find money in their shoes, and be fortunate in 
 their enterprises. ... A bigger kind there is of them, called with 
 us Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that would in those super- 
 stitious times grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood or do any 
 manner of drudgery work. . . . Cardan holds, 'They will make 
 strange noises in the night, howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh 
 again, cause great flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle chains, 
 shave men, open doors and shut them, fling down platters, stools, 
 chests, sometimes appear in the likeness of hares, crows, black dogs, 
 etc' . . . And so Hkewise those which Mizaldus calls Ambulones, 
 that walk about midnight on great heaths and desert places, which 
 (saith Lavater) * draw men out of the way, and lead them all night 
 a bye-way, or quite bar them of their way; these have several 
 
142 Notes 
 
 names in several places; we commonly call them Pucks." See also 
 The Pranks of Puck, ascribed to Ben Jonson, cited by W. J. Rolfe. 
 no. Lubber fiend. The form lobur occurs in Pie7-s Plowman. 
 The word is probably of Celtic origin and meant drooping, ineffi- 
 cient, clumsy. 
 
 111. Chimney's length. The rhyme requires length; literally 
 the word should be width. 
 
 112. Basks. The interesting thing about this word is the 
 doubt whether it is the reflexive of a verb meaning to hake or to 
 bathe. The evidence seems stronger for the derivation from bathe. 
 
 120. In weeds of peace. Weed means a garment. The 
 Teutonic base is wad, to bind. 
 
 120. High triumphs. The doublet of triumph is trump. Why 
 did Milton use triumph ? 
 
 122. Rain influence. The term influence is astrological in ori- 
 gin. Note the use of rain in this connection. Cotgrave gives, 
 Old French influence, " a flowing in, and particularly an influence, 
 or influent course, of the planets; their virtue infused into, or their 
 course working on, inferior creatures." 
 
 125. Hymen. The god of marriage. See Jonson's /(yw^/m(?t. 
 
 132. Jonson's learned sock. The sock was the low-heeled shoe 
 worn in comedy. Jonson was noted for almost pedantic learning. 
 See Spenser, An Hymne in Honour of Beautie : 
 
 " What time this world's great workmaister did cast 
 To make al things such as we now behold, 
 It seemes that he before his eyes had plast 
 A goodly Paterne, to whose perfect mould 
 He fashioned them as comely as he could. 
 That now so faire and seemely they appeare, 
 As nought may be amended any wheare. 
 
 " That wondrous Paterne, wheresoere it bee, 
 Whether in earth layd up in secret store, 
 Or else in heaven, that no man may it see 
 With sinfuU eyes, for feare it do defiore, 
 
L'Allegro 143 
 
 Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore ; 
 Whose face and feature doth so much excel! 
 All mortall sence, that none the same may tell, 
 
 Thereof as every earthly thing partakes, 
 
 Or more or lesse, by influence divine 
 
 So it more faire accordingly it makes "... 
 
 135. Eating cares. Horace, Ode I. 18. 4, has mordaces sollici- 
 tudineSy and Dde II. ii. l8, curas edaces. Burton's Anatomy of 
 Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 6, Subs. 2, " When the patient of 
 himself is not able to resist or overcome these heart-eating pas- 
 sions." . . . 
 
 136. Lydian airs. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 
 2, Mem. 6, Subs. 3, says : " But to have all declamatory speeches 
 in praise of divine Musick, I will confine myself to my proper sub- 
 ject; besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other 
 diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against Despair and Melancholy, 
 and will drive away the Devil himself . . . Lewis the Eleventh, 
 when he invited Edtvard the Fourth to come to Paris, told him 
 that, as a principal part of his entertainment, he should hear sweet 
 voices of children, lonick and Lydian tunes." 
 
 139. Bout. Another spelling is bought. The word means a 
 turning. The Gothic verb biugan, to bow or bend, gives the original 
 sense. 
 
 147. Elysian flowers. The Elysian fields were the abode of the 
 blessed after death. Milton uses the term probably to suggest the 
 blessing, beauty, and deathless charm of flowers not plucked on 
 earth. 
 
 151, 152. It is customary to point out the comparison that may 
 be made between this concluding couplet and Marlowe's The Pas- 
 sionate Shepherd to his Love : 
 
 " If these delights thy mind may move, 
 Then live with me and be my Love." 
 
 Both are certainly fine poetry. 
 
144 Notes 
 
 IL PENSEROSO 
 
 I. Hence, vain deluding Joys. The opening verses of // Pen- 
 seroso should be compared with those of V Allegro. The purpose 
 artistically is the same, the means employed, similar; but the sug- 
 gestions and associations are utterly different. 
 
 3. Bested. This word, of Scandinavian origin, is usually in the 
 participial form. Here it means assist, kelp. 
 
 6. Fond. Here me^ns foolish. 
 
 12. Divinest Melancholy. See Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly, The Author's Abstract : 
 
 " Methinks I hear, methinks I see, 
 Sweet musick, wondrous melody. 
 Towns, Palaces, and Cities fine ; 
 Here now, tlien there ; the world is mine, 
 Rare beauties, gallant Ladies shine, 
 Whate'er is lovely or divine; 
 All other joys to this are folly, 
 None so sweet as Melancholy." 
 
 14. To hit the sense. See Shakespeare's Antojiy and Cleo- 
 patra, ii. 2. 217 : "A strange invisible perfume hits the sense." 
 
 18. Prince Memnon's sister. The beautiful Ethiopian prince 
 who came to help Priam was Memnon. Milton extends his fame to 
 his sister — for what poetic ends? 
 
 19. That starred Ethiop. Cassiope, the rival of the Nereids 
 in beauty. Raised to heaven, she was made a constellation. 
 
 23. Bright-haired Vesta. The virgin goddess of the hearth, 
 one of the twelve great Olympians. 
 
 24. Solitary Saturn. The Italic deity of social order and civili- 
 zation. Ops, goddess of wealth, was the wife assigned him by 
 classic mythology. Here again Milton has arranged a genealogy 
 to suit himself and the purposes of his poem. 
 
 30. While yet there was no fear of Jove. Milton evidently 
 
II Penseroso 145 
 
 identifies Saturn with Cronus, thus suggesting the dethronement of 
 the father by the son. Mythology makes Zeus the rebellious son 
 of Cronus. Milton identifies Zeus with Jupiter. See Burton's 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 3: "Saturn a 
 man . . . did eat his own children, a cruel tyrant driven out of his 
 kingdom by his son Jupiter, as good a god as himself." 
 
 33. Grain. Colour. Kermes, like cochineal, were supposed to 
 be berries or grains, and colours dyed with them were said to be 
 grained, or ingrained. See the Century Dictionary. 
 
 35. Stole. Scarf. 
 
 35. Cypress lawn. The word cypress is of unknown origin. 
 Lawn is perhaps a corruption of linon, an imported P'rench name 
 of fine linen. 
 
 42. Forget thyself to marble. Notice Milton's fondness for 
 certain descriptive expressions. Cf. On Shakespeare, 14, and Comus, 
 660. See also Ben Jonson's Underwoods, An Elegy on the Lady 
 Jane Pawlet : 
 
 " I am almost a stone ! 
 , . . Alas, I am all marble! write the rest 
 Thou wouldst have written, Fame, upon my breast: 
 It is a large fair table, and a true." 
 
 53. Fiery-wheeled throne. See Ezekiel x. 
 
 54. Contemplation. See Comus, 377. See Burton's Anatomy 
 of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 2, Subs. 6: "A most incom- 
 parable dehght it is so to melancholize and build castles in the 
 air. ... So delightsome those toys are at first, they could spend 
 whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years alone in 
 such contemplations. ... I may not deny but that there is some 
 profitable meditation, contemplation, and kind of solitariness to be 
 embraced, which the Fathers so highly commended ... a Para- 
 dise, an Heaven on earth, if it be used aright, good for the body 
 and better for the soul : as many of those old Monks used it, to 
 divine contemplations." . . . 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — lO 
 
146 Notes 
 
 55. Hist. Probably the interjection enjoining silence used as a 
 past participle. Notice the order of the so-called *' parts of speech " 
 in this passage. 
 
 59. Cynthia. A name for Artemis or Diana, the moon goddess, 
 from her birthplace, Mount Cynthus in Delos. 
 
 59. Dragon yoke. The reference here is astrological, not mytho- 
 logical. The nodes of planets, especially of the moon, or the two 
 points in which the orbits of the planets intersect the ecliptic, were 
 called Dragon's head and tail, because the figure representing the 
 passage of a planet from one node to the other was thought to 
 resemble that of a dragon. Furthermore, there was an old northern 
 constellation called Draco in the space now occupied by the Little 
 Bear. Yoke is any bond of connection as well as the specific con- 
 trivance for fastening draught animals together. The phrase is 
 learned poetry for the moon lingers. 
 
 74. Curfew. French, couvre-feu, fire cover. The bell calling 
 for the covering of fires and the putting out of lights near eight 
 o'clock. 
 
 83. The bellman's drowsy charm. The old cry of the London 
 bellman (or watch) at night was, Lanthorne and candle light. 
 See Heywood's Edward IV., First Part, 1. circa 508, " no more 
 calling of lanthorn and candle light." 
 
 87. Outwatch the Bear. The constellation of the Bear does 
 not set in the latitude of England. 
 
 88. Thrice-great Hermes. A translation of the name Hermes 
 Trismegistus given to the Egyptian Thoth. 
 
 88. Or unsphera. Bring back to earth. 
 
 go. What worlds or what vast regions hold, etc. Burton's 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I, Sec. I, Mem. 2, Subs. 9: "Others 
 grant the immortality thereof (the soul), but they make many fabu- 
 lous fictions in the meantime of it, after the departure from the 
 body, like Plato's Elysian Fields and that Turkey Paradise." 
 
 93. And of those demons. Burton quotes and translates Aus- 
 tin: ** They are confined until the day of judgment to this sublunary 
 
II Penseroso 147 
 
 v/orld, and can work no farther than the four elements, and as God 
 permits them. Wherefore of these sublunary Devils, though others 
 divide them otherwise according to their several places and offices, 
 Psellus makes Six kinds, fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery, and subter- 
 ranean Devils, besides those Fairies, Satyrs, Nymphs, etc." Again 
 Burton cites in the Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. i. Sec. 2, Mem. i, 
 Subs. 2 : " Gregorius Tholosanus makes seven kinds of aetherial 
 Spirits or Angels, according to the number of the seven Planets, 
 Saturnine, Jovial, Martial, etc. The four elements were earth, air, 
 fire, water." 
 
 103. But, sad Virgin ! Tragedy. 
 
 104. Musagus. An Attic poet whose name meant servant of 
 the Muses, and who was fabled to have presided over the mysteries 
 of Demeter at Eleusis, and to have written poems concerning them. 
 
 109. Or call up him. Chaucer is meant here. He left the 
 Squire's Tale unfinished. 
 
 120. When more is meant than meets the ear. Allusion is 
 here made to the allegory of Spenser's Faerie Queene. 
 
 122. Civil-suited. Not starred or decorated. 
 
 124. Attic boy. Cephalus. 
 
 132. Goddess. What is the reference here? 
 
 134. Sylvan. Sylvanus, the god of woodlands. 
 
 161. Then let the pealing organ blow, etc. See Burton's 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 6, Subs. 3 : " In a 
 word, it (music) is so powerful a thing that it ravisheth the soul, 
 the Queen of the senses, by sweet pleasure (which is an happy cure) ; 
 and corporal tunes pacify our incorporal soul . . . and carries it 
 beyond itself, helps, elevates, extends it." See Spenser's Epithala- 
 fnion, 1. 218: 
 
 " And let the roring Organs loudly play 
 The praises of the Lord in lively notes ; 
 The whiles, with hollow throates, 
 The Choristers the joyous Antheme sing, 
 That al the woods may answere, and their eccho ring." 
 
148 Notes 
 
 Also Amoreiii, xxxix. : 
 
 "A melting pleasance ran through evry part, 
 And me revived witli hart-robbing gladnesse. 
 Whylest rapt with joy resembling heavenly madnes, 
 My soul was ravisht quite as in a traunce ; 
 And feeling thence, no more her sorowes sadnesse, 
 Fed on the fulnesse of that chearefuU glaunce." 
 
 170. And rightly spell Of. This is a construction not uncom- 
 mon in Burton's and in Milton's prose. It may be compared with 
 tell of . It should further be noted that ^/and off zxo. variants, thus 
 giving the form spell of a breadth of grammatical suggestion that 
 was characteristic of Milton. See Burton's Anatojny of Melancholy y 
 Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, Sub. 13, . . . "brings him to Gnipho, the 
 usurer's house at midnight, and after that to Eucratis ; whom they 
 found both awake casting up their accounts, and telling of their 
 money, lean, dry, pale, and anxious." . . . See Spenser's VirgiVs 
 Gnat, 1. 273 : 
 
 " For there huge Othos sits in sad distresse, 
 Fast bound with serpents that him oft invades; 
 Far of beholding Ephialtes tide, 
 Which once assai'd to burne this world so wide." 
 
 ARCADES 
 
 20. The wise Latona. Latona was the mother of Apollo and 
 Diana. The adjective 7vise may be by way of discrimination, since 
 Latona was not the supreme consort of Zeus. It may also be a 
 transferred epithet indicating her relation to the Delphic oracle. 
 
 21. The towered Cybele. Wife of Saturn and mother of the 
 gods. Her diadem had three towers. 
 
 30. Divine Alpheus. A river of Arcadia which ran underground 
 through part of its course. When the nymph Arethusa fled from 
 
Arcades 149 
 
 the hunter Alpheus to Ortygia in Sicily, he was transformed into a 
 river that followed her under the sea and rose again in Ortygia to 
 mingle with the waters of a fountain named after her. 
 
 63. To the celestial Sirens' harmony. The suggestion for this 
 phrase is clearly the passage in the tenth book of Plato's Republic, 
 616 (Jowett's translation) : " Now when the spirits that were in the 
 meadow had tarried seven days, on the eighth day they were 
 obliged to proceed on their journey, and on the fourth day from 
 that time they came to a place where they looked down from 
 above upon a line of light, hke a column extending right through 
 the whole heaven and earth, in colour not unhke the rainbow, only 
 brighter and purer ; another day's journey brought them to the 
 place, and there, in the midst of the light, they sav/ reaching from 
 heaven the extremities of the chains of it : for this light is the belt 
 of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe, like the 
 undergirders of a trireme. And from the extremities of the chains 
 is extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions 
 turn. The shaft and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and 
 the whorl is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials. 
 Now the whorl is in form like the whorl used on earth; and you 
 are to suppose, as he described, that there is ,one large hollow 
 whorl which is scooped out, and into this is fitted another lesser 
 one, and another, and another, and four others, making eight in 
 all, like boxes which fit into one another ; their edges are turned 
 upwards, and all together form one continuous whorl. This is 
 pierced by the spindle, which is driven home through the centre of 
 the eighth. The first and outermost whorl has the rim broadest, and 
 the seven inner whorls narrow, in the following proportions: — the 
 sixth is next to the first in size, the fourth next to the sixth ; then 
 comes the eighth ; the seventh is fifth, the fifth is sixth, the third is 
 seventh, last and eighth comes the second. The largest [or fixed 
 stars] is spangled, and the seventh [or sun] is brightest ; the 
 eighth [or moon] colored by the reflected light of the seventh ; the 
 second and fifth [Mercury and Saturn] are like one another, and of 
 
150 Notes 
 
 a yellower colour than the preceding ; the third [Venus] has the 
 whitest light ; the fourth [Mars] is reddish ; the sixth [Jupiter] is 
 in whiteness second. Now the whole spindle has the same motion ; 
 but as the whole revolves in one direction, the seven inner circles 
 move slowly in the other, and of these the swiftest is the eighth; 
 next in swiftness are the seventh, sixth, and fifth, which move 
 together ; third in swiftness appeared to them to move in reversed 
 orbit the fourth ; the third appeared fourth and the second fifth. 
 The spindle turns on the knees of Necessity ; and on the upper 
 surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round with them, hymning 
 a single sound and note. The eight together form one harmony ; 
 and round about, at equal intervals, there is another band, three in 
 number, each sitting upon her throne : these are the Fates, daugh- 
 ters of Necessity, who are clothed in white raiment and have gar- 
 lands upon their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos, who 
 accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens — Lachesis 
 singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future ; 
 Clotho now and then assisting with a touch of her right hand the 
 motion of the outer circle or whorl of the spindle, and Atropos with 
 her left hand touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis 
 laying hold of either in turn, first with one hand and then with the 
 other." See also Ben Jonson's Entertaiiunetit of King James and 
 Queen Anne at Theobalds, 1. 15 : 
 
 " Daughters of Night and Necessity attend : 
 You that draw out the chain of destiny, 
 Upon whose threads, both lives and times depend, 
 And all the periods of mortality ; 
 The will of Jove is, that you straight do look 
 The change and fate unto this house decreed, 
 And spinning from your adamantine hook, 
 Unto the Genius of the place it read." 
 
 97. Ladon's. Ladon was a river of Arcadia. 
 
 98. Lycasus or Cyllene. Mountains of Arcadia. See Ben Jon- 
 son's The Penates, "This place whereon you are now advanced (by 
 
Comus 151 
 
 the mighty power of poetry, and the help of a faith that can remove 
 mountains) is the Arcadian hill Cyllene, the place where myself 
 [Mercury] was both begot and born, and of which I am frequently 
 called Cyllenius." 
 
 100. Erymanth. Erymanthus, a mountain range on the border 
 of Arcadia, the haunt of the boar killed by Hercules. 
 
 102. Mgenalus. A mountain of Arcadia. 
 
 106. Syrinx. A nymph pursued by Pan. She was changed 
 into a reed, and out of it Pan made his pipe, famous in pastoral 
 poetry. 
 
 COMUS 
 
 4. In regions mild of calm and serene air. See Spenser's 
 Amorettif Ixxii. : 
 
 " Oft, when my spirit doth spred her bolder winges, 
 In mind to mount up to the purest sky, 
 It down is weighd with thoght of earthly things, 
 And clogd with burden of mortality." 
 
 7. Pestered. From the Latin through the French. It means 
 burdened, clogged. In and pastorium (see Century Dictionary 
 for etymology), a clog upon a pastured horse. 
 
 7. Pinfold. Variant for pindfold or ponndfold. The word 
 occurs in King Lear and in Piers Plowtnan. It means a pound for 
 stray cattle. 
 
 13. Golden key. See Lycidas^ in, for another description of 
 this mark of virtuous attainment. 
 
 20. High and nether Jove. Jupiter and Pluto. The distinction 
 is Homeric, and the dividing of the world among Neptune, Jupiter, 
 and Pluto after the overthrow of Saturn was a " stock property " 
 in literature. Milton, however, had more than a conventional 
 interest in it. It appealed to his imagination as a statesman and 
 as a moralist. 
 
152 Notes 
 
 26. Their sapphire crowns. See Isaiah liv. 1 1, "O thou afflicted, 
 tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy 
 stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires." 
 
 27. And wield their little tridents. An excellent example of 
 Milton's dry satire. 
 
 29. Blue-haired deities. Milton's Mansus has " Oceani glau- 
 cos profundit gurgite crines," 1. ^iVi t)ut the usual colour given by 
 Ben Jonson to the hair of Oceanus is grey or " mixed." This would 
 support the notion that Milton was using *' blue " in its old vague 
 sense of dark and that he made the bright or golden hair the mark 
 of the more powerful gods. 
 
 31. Mickle. Old form of much. It survives in Scotch. See 
 also Spenser's jSIuiopotinos : 
 
 . . . "till mickle woe 
 Thereof aiose, and manie a rufull teare." 
 
 33. Old and haughty. Wales. See Ben Jonson's For the Hon- 
 our of Wales. 
 
 43. And listen why. See Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 
 iv. 14. 88 : 
 
 " Eros. My sword is drawn, 
 Aiit. Then let it do at once 
 
 The thing why thou hast drawn it." 
 
 48. The Tuscan mariners transformed. Tyrrhenian pirates 
 intended to sell Bacchus as a slave. The god changed them into 
 dolphins, the masts and oars into snakes. Compare the words 
 Tuscan, Etruscan, Tyrrhenian. 
 
 49. As the winds listed. Listed is part of a verb formed by 
 vowel change from lust, pleasure. 
 
 50. Circe. See Odyssey, x, Chapman's tr. 
 
 58. Comus. Milton invents a genealogy and outlines a charac- 
 ter for what is hardly more than a name in classic mythology. He 
 seems, however, to have in mind the passage in Ben Jonson's lines 
 To Sir Robert Wroth : 
 
Comus 
 
 ' Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites, 
 Comus puts in for new delights." 
 
 S3 
 
 60. Celtic and Iberian fields. France and Spain are meant. 
 
 65. Orient liquor. Orient means clear, translucent. 
 
 71. Ounce is a kind of lynx. The word is of uncertain origin. 
 
 74. Not once perceive. Again Milton varies from the Homeric 
 story. The companions of Ulysses v^^ere conscious of their dis- 
 figurement. 
 
 77. In a sensual sty. See Ben Jonson's Pleasure Recojuiled to 
 Virtue : 
 
 " Hercules. What rites are these ? breeds earth more monsters yet ? 
 (Help virtue,) these are sponges and not men ; 
 
 Whose feast the Belly's ? Comus ! and my cup 
 Brought in to fill the drunken orgies up, 
 And here abus'd ; that was the crowned reward 
 Of thirsty heroes, after labour hard 1 
 Burdens and shames of nature, perish, die I 
 For yet you never lived, but in the sty. 
 
 Can this be pleasure, to extinguish man, 
 Or so quite change him in his figure ? 
 
 These monsters plague themselves and fitly too, 
 For they do suffer what and all they do." 
 
 See Spenser's An Hytmte of Heavenly Love: 
 
 " Then rouze thy selfe, O Earth ! out of thy soyle, 
 In which thou wallowest like to filthy swyne, 
 And doest thy mynd in durty pleasures moyle." . . . 
 
 83. Iris' woof. A rainbow weave. 
 
 84. A swain. The musician, Henry Lawes, who played the part. 
 87. Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar. 
 
1 54 Notes 
 
 See Ben Jonson's Forest: Epistle to Elizabeth^ Countess of Rutland^ 
 
 1.74: 
 
 " I have already used some happy hours, 
 
 To her remembrance ; which when time shall bring 
 
 To curious light, to notes I then shall sing, 
 
 Will prove old Orpheus' act no tale to be : 
 
 For I shall move stocks, stones, no less than he." 
 
 97. Steep Atlantic. Steep here means bright, glittering. 
 
 105. Rosy twine. Means rosy strand. 
 
 no. Saws. See Old English sagu. A maxim or saying. 
 
 116. Morrice. A dance brought by John of Gaunt to England. 
 Called also Morisco. 
 
 129. Cotytto. Thracian goddess of debauchery. 
 
 132. Spets. Variant of spits. 
 
 135. Hecat'. Presiding genius of magic and witchcraft. 
 
 151. Trains. See Middle English traynen, to entice. See 
 Spenser's Virgil's Gnat, 1. 241 : " Of trecherie or traines nought 
 tooke he keep." 
 
 154. Spongy air. Note the use of sponges in the passage 
 quoted from Ben Jonson, 77, above. 
 
 175. Granges. Barns for corn, granaries. 
 
 176. Praise the bounteous Pan. See the mask of Ben Jon- 
 son's called Fan's Anniversary. The whole is a point of departure 
 for this first speech of the Lady, but the second Hymn affords par- 
 ticular occasion for thank the gods amiss. It is : 
 
 " Pan is our All, by him we breathe, we live. 
 We move, we are ; 'tis he our lambs doth rear, 
 Our flocks doth bless, and from the store doth give 
 The warm and finer fleeces that we wear. 
 He keeps away all heats and colds, 
 Drives all diseases from our folds ; 
 Makes everywhere the spring to dwell, 
 The ewes to feed, their udders swell ; 
 But if he frown, the sheep, alas ! 
 The shepherds wither, and the grass," 
 
Comus 155 
 
 207. Calling shapes. See Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess, i. I. 
 117: 
 
 " Or voices calling me in dead of night 
 To make me follow." 
 
 See also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. i, Sec. 2, Mem. i, 
 Subs. 2 : "In the deserts of Lop in Asia, such illusions of walking 
 spirits are often perceived . . . these devils will call him by his 
 name, and counterfeit voices of his companions to seduce him." 
 
 215. Chastity. Compare with Ben Jonson's " Untouched Vir- 
 ginity " in The Barriers. 
 
 221. Was I deceived? These questions and answers were a 
 feature of conventional ballad and pastoral poetry. See the later 
 use made of this device by Coleridge in Christabel. 
 
 232. Meander. A winding river of Asia Minor. 
 
 237. Narcissus. The love of Echo. He was changed into a 
 flower. She pined away until nothing was left but her voice. 
 
 245. Breathe such divine enchanting. Note the difference 
 between Milton's conception of Comus as having still a soul of 
 good in a thing evil and all similar presentations by Ben Jonson 
 and other mask writers. Only Shakespeare is Milton's master 
 here. 
 
 253. The Sirens three. This episode is invented by Milton. 
 
 257. Scylla. A sea-monster in Greek mythology represented 
 as dwelHng in the rock Scylla, in the Strait of Messina. 
 
 259. Charybdis. See Virgil's ^w^/V, iii. 551-560. 
 
 262. But such a sacred and home-felt delight. This is most 
 beautiful poetry, but the student should consider whether it is 
 suited to the speaker or the character of a mask. See Ben 
 Jonson's The Barriers, 1. 68 : 
 
 " A settled quiet, freedom never checked." 
 
 275. The courteous Echo. See Ben Jonson's Pan^s Anni- 
 versary, Hymn iii : 
 
 " If yet, if yet, 
 Pan's orgies you will further fit, 
 
156 Notes 
 
 See where the silver-footed fays do sit, 
 The nymphs of wood and water; 
 Each tree's and fountain's daughter 1 
 
 Echo the truest oracle on ground, 
 Though nothing but a sound. 
 Echo. Though 7iothing but a sound. 
 
 And often heard, though never seen." 
 
 290. Hops. Goddess of youth. 
 
 293. Swinked. See Old English, swincauy to toil. See 
 Spenser's Prosopopoia, 1. i6l : 
 
 " Free men some beggers call, but they be free, 
 And they which call them so more beggers bee ; 
 For they doo swinke and sweate to feed the other." 
 
 297. Their port was more than human. See Spenser's 
 Prothalainion^ 1. 168: 
 
 " Above the rest were goodly to bee seene 
 Two gentle Knights of lovely face and feature, 
 Beseeming well the bower of anie Queene, 
 With gifts of wit, and ornaments of nature. 
 Fit for so goodly stature, 
 
 That like the twins of Jove they seem'd in sight. 
 Which decke the Bauldricke of the Heavens bright." 
 
 299. Element. Here used in the most general sense compatible 
 with the idea of the occult or of magic. 
 
 313. Bosky. See busky, bushy, boscaye. 
 
 315. Attendance. Attendants. Compare with visitor and 
 visitant. 
 
 317. Low-roosted. Low-Jiestitig is the real meaning. 
 
 322. Courtesy. Contrast the undoubted expression of Milton's 
 opinions on this subject with Ben Jonson's on Chivalry, in Prince 
 Henrys Barriers : 
 
Comus 157 
 
 '"Tis CHIVALRY 
 Possessed with sleep, dead as a lethargy: 
 If any charm will wake her, 'tis the name 
 Of our Meliadus, I'll use his fame. 
 Lady, Meliadus, lord of the isles, 
 Princely Meliadus, and whom fate now styles 
 The fair Meliadus, hath hung his shield 
 Upon his tent, and here doth keep the field, 
 According to his bold and princely word ; 
 And wants employment for his pike and sword. 
 
 " Break, you rusty doors, 
 That have so long been shut, and from the shores 
 Of all the world come knighthood, like a flood 
 Upon these lists, to make the field here good, 
 And your own honours, that are now called forth 
 Against the wish of men to prove your worth ! " 
 
 341. Star of Arcady. Allusion is here made to the constella- 
 tion of the Great Bear by which Greek sailors steered. Arcadia 
 was the home of Callisto and her son Areas, who were transformed 
 into the Great and Little Bear. 
 
 344. Wattled cotes. Cot of twigs, from Old English waiel, a 
 hurdle and cote, a variant of cot. 
 
 391. Or maple dish. See Burton's Anatomy of Melmicholy, Pt. 
 2, Sec. 3, Mem, 3 : "A poor man drinks in a wooden dish, and 
 eats his meat in wooden spoons, wooden platters, earthen vessels, 
 and such homely stuff; the other in gold, silver, and precious 
 stones; but with what success ? . . . fear of poison in the one, 
 security in the other." 
 
 393. Hesperian tree. Allusion to one of the labours of Hercules 
 in killing the dragon set to watch the golden apples in the garden 
 of the Hesperides. 
 
 413. Squint suspicion. See Ben Jonson's The Mask of 
 
 Queens, 1. 53 : 
 
 " First then advance 
 My drowsy servant, stupid Ignorance, 
 
158 Notes 
 
 Known by thy scaly vesture ; and bring on 
 Thy fearful sister, wild Suspicion, 
 Whose eyes do never sleep." 
 
 See also Spenser's Faerie Queene, iii. 12. 15: 
 
 " His rolling eies did never rest in place." 
 
 434. Blue meagre hag. See.'Bev\'^or\%on^s The Masque of Black- 
 ness, " Since death herself (herself being pale and blue)." 
 
 463. But when lust. This and the remainder of the speech 
 are a poetic paraphrase of the analysis made by Burton, in The 
 Anato77iy of Melancholy, of sensual degradation and the resulting 
 melancholy. 
 
 475. How charming is divine Philosophy ! 
 
 Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose. 
 The popular attitude toward philosophy is well enough presented 
 in the satire of Ben Jonson's The Fortunate Isles, where Jophiel, an 
 airy spirit, and, according to the Magi, the intelligence of Jupiter's 
 sphere, discourses with Merefool after the following fashion : 
 
 " Joph. Where would you wish to be now, or what to see, 
 Without the Fortunate Purse to bear your charges, 
 Or Wishing Hat ? I will but touch your temples, 
 The corners of your eyes, and tinct the tip. 
 The very tip o' your nose, with this collyrium. 
 And you shall see in the air all the ideas, 
 Spirits, and atoms, files that buz about 
 This way and that way, and are rather admirable, 
 Than any way intelligible. 
 Mere. O, come, tinct me. 
 
 But shall I only see ? 
 Joph. See, and command. 
 
 Mere. Let me see Pythagoras. 
 Joph. Good. 
 Mere. Or Plato. 
 
Comus 159 
 
 Joph. Plato is framing some ideas 
 
 Are now bespoken at a groat a dozen, 
 Three gross at least : and for Pythagoras, 
 He has rashly run himself on an employment 
 Of keeping asses from a field of beans. 
 And cannot be stav'd off"; 
 
 or again in The Metajnorphosed Gipsies, of the same author, Jackman 
 says: ** If we here be a little obscure, 'tis our pleasure; for rather 
 than we will offer to be our own interpreters, we are resolved not to 
 be understood; yet if any man doubt of the significancy of the lan- 
 guage, we refer him to the third volume of Reports, set forth by the 
 learned in the laws of canting, and published in the gipsy tongue." 
 
 See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 4 : "Or 
 let him that is melancholy peruse subtle Scolns^ and Sauj-ez' Meta- 
 physicks, or School Divinity, Occam, Thomas, Entisberus, Durand, 
 etc. ... If such voluntary tasks, pleasures and delight, or crabbed- 
 ness of these studies will not yet divert their idle thoughts, and 
 alienate their imaginations, they must be compelled . . ." 
 
 494. Thyrsis. Theocritus makes Thyrsis a herdman, Virgil 
 makes him a shepherd. 
 
 502. Such a trivial toy. This nov/ unusual use of the word toy 
 is found in a similar connection of ideas in Burton. See Anatomy 
 of Melancholy, Pt. I, Sec. 3, Mem. i, Subs. 4: '''He may thus con- 
 tinue peradventure many years by reason of a strong temperature, 
 or some mixture of business which may divert his cogitations ; but 
 at the last, ll^sa imaginatio, his phantasy is crazed, and now habit- 
 uated to such toys, cannot but work still like a fate ; the scene alters 
 upon a sudden. Fear and Sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, 
 suspicion, discontent, and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places ; 
 so by little and little, by that shoeing born of idleness and volun- 
 tary solitariness. Melancholy, this feral fiend is drawn on . . .it was 
 not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh . . ." Also 
 he cites from Lucian, " Contemn the world and count that is in it 
 vanity and toys." From Calenus, ..." amidst thy serious studies 
 
i6o Notes 
 
 and business, use jests and conceits, plays and toys." . . . See also 
 Spenser's The Teares of the Muses (Terpsichore), 1. 325 : 
 
 " All places they doo with their toyes possesse, 
 And raigne in liking of the multitude." 
 
 513. ril tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous. Milton evidently 
 had in mind Burton's discussion of the nature of devils, Anatomy of 
 Melancholy, Pt. i. Sec. 2, Mem. i, Subs. 2, Part of this is as fol- 
 lows: . . . "that they can represent castles in the air, palaces, 
 armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal 
 men's eyes, cause smells, savours, etc., deceive all the senses; 
 most writers of this subject credibly believe, and that they can fore- 
 tell future events and do many strange miracles. Juno's image 
 spake to Camillus, and Fortune's statue to the Ro7)ian matrons, 
 with many such, Zanchius, Bodine, Spondanus, and others are of 
 opinion that they cause a true Metamorphosis, as Nebuchadnezzar 
 was really translated into a beast, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, 
 Ulysses' companions into hogs and dogs by Circe^s charms. . . . 
 Many will not believe they can be seen, and if any man shall say, 
 swear, and stiffly maintain, though he be discreet and wise, judicious 
 and learned, that he hath seen them, they account him a timorous 
 fool, a melancholy dizzard, a weak fellow, a dreamer, a sick or a 
 mad man, they contemn him, laugh him to scorn, and yet Marcus 
 of his credit told Psellus that he had often seen them. . . . Many 
 deny it, saith Lavater . . . because they never saxv them themselves ; 
 but as he reports at large all over his book . . . they are often seen 
 and heard and familiarly converse with men, as Lad. Vives assureth 
 us, innumerable records, histories, and testimonies evince in all 
 ages, times, places, and all travellers besides . . . have infinite vari- 
 ety of such examples of apparitions of spirits, for him to read that 
 farther doubts, to his ample satisfaction." 
 
 517. Chimeras. See Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, 
 Sec. 4, Mem. 2, Subs. 6 . . . "they smell brimstone, talk familiarly 
 with Devils, hear and see Chimeras, prodigious and uncouth shapes, 
 
Comus i6i 
 
 Bears, Owls, Anticks, black dogs, fiends, hideous outcries, fearful 
 noises, shrieks, lamentable complaints." . . . 
 
 520. Navel. This is the diminutive of nave. The original 
 meaning of nave is associated with the idea of bursting, and the 
 immediate application is to the central or body part of an instru- 
 ment or building. The nave of a wheel, of a church. 
 
 526. Murmurs. This is an imitative word used, doubtless, allu- 
 sively, to suggest spells and charms employed by a magician. 
 
 542. Knot-grass. Possibly the florin grass. 
 
 546. Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy. See Burton's 
 Anatomy of Melaticholy, Pt. I, Sec, 3, Mem. i. Subs. 4. Ups and 
 Dozuns of Melajicholy : " Generally thus much we may conclude 
 of melancholy; that it is most pleasant at first, I say, ffiends gratis- 
 simus error, a most delightsome humour, to be alone, dwell alone, 
 walk alone, meditate, lie in bed whole days, dreaming awake as it 
 were, and frame a thousand fantastical imaginations unto them- 
 selves. They are never better pleased than when they are so doing, 
 they are in paradise for the time, and cannot well endure to be 
 interrupt; . . . 'tis so pleasant, he cannot refrain." See also 
 John Fletcher, The Oxford Book of English Verse, ip. 24O: 
 
 " Hence, all you vain delights, 
 As short as are the nights 
 Wherein you spend your folly ! 
 There's naught in this life sweet, 
 If men were wise to see't, 
 But only melancholy — 
 O sweetest melancholy ! 
 Welcome, folded armes and fix^d eyes, 
 A sight that piercing mortifies ; 
 A look that's fasten'd to the ground, 
 A tongue chain'd up without a sound ! 
 
 " Fountain-heads and pathless groves ; 
 Places which pale passion loves ! 
 Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS ~H 
 
1 62 Notes 
 
 Are warmly housed, save bats and owls ! 
 ^ A midnight bell, a parting groan — 
 
 These are the sounds we feed upon : 
 Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley, 
 Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy." 
 
 552. Till an unusual stop. See 1. 145. Is this reference a 
 good dramatic device? 
 
 589. Virtue may be assailed. See the songs in Ben Jonson's 
 Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue : 
 
 " These, these are hours by Virtue spared, 
 Herself, she being her own reward. 
 But she will have you know, 
 
 That though 
 Her sports be soft, her life is hard. 
 
 "You must return unto the Hill, 
 And there advance 
 With labour, and inhabit still 
 That height and crown, 
 From whence you ever may look down 
 Upon triumphed chance. 
 
 " She, she it is in darkness shines, 
 'Tis she that still herself refines. 
 By her own light to every eye ; 
 More seen, more known, when Vice stands by; 
 And though a stranger here on earth, 
 In heaven she hath her right of birth." 
 
 604. Sooty flag of Acheron. This is one of Milton's liberties 
 with words. The idea to be conveyed is that of a black flag. 
 Acheron was a river, and the under-world, thus typified, was logi- 
 cally wet, not sooty, as would have been natural had the reference 
 been to the fires of Hell. But pictures of pirates, associations with 
 black as the colour of doom, combine to make this one of the most 
 successful of Milton's verbal adventures. 
 
Comus 163 
 
 605. Harpies. Virgil's JEneid, iii. 212, 213. 
 
 605. Hydras. The nine-headed dragon of Lake Lerna. The 
 destruction of the Hydra was one of the twelve labours of Hercules. 
 
 614. Unthread tliy joints. See Shakespeare's The Tempest, iii. 
 I. 26. "I had rather crack my sinews, break my back." See also 
 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. i, Sec. 2, Mem. i, Subs. 3, 
 on the effects of spells and curses. 
 
 619. Certain shepherd lad. The effort of some editors to find 
 here a reference to Milton's friend, Charles Diodati, illustrates the 
 excess of zeal likely to overtake commentators. There is not only 
 no need of specific reference in this passage, but the character of 
 the alleged reference does not suit with either Milton's literary 
 methods or Charles Diodati's relations with him. 
 
 627. Simples. Medicinal herbs or medicines obtained from an 
 herb, in view of its supposed possession of some particular virtue. 
 The term is really an abbreviation for simple herbs, simple sub- 
 stances. See the form whites, yellows, etc. 
 
 635. Clouted shoon. Patched shoes. Clouted is a form of Old 
 English clut, a rag. See Hajnlet, iv. 5. 22,.: 
 
 " How should I your true love know 
 From another one ? 
 By his cockle hat and staff, 
 
 And his sandal shoon." 
 
 636. Moly. See Odyssey, x. 305. The plant that protected 
 Ulysses from the magic of Circe. See Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly, Pt. 2, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 4, " Bernardus Penottus prefers 
 his Herba solis, or Dutch sindaw, before all the rest in this disease, 
 and will admit of no herb upon the earth to be compared to it. It 
 excels Homer's Moly." . . . 
 
 638. Haemony. See Spenser's Astrophel, 1. i : 
 
 " A gentle shepheard borne in Arcady, 
 Of gentlest race that ever shepheard bore, 
 About the grassie bancks of Haemony 
 Did keepe his sheep, his litle stock and store." 
 
1 64 Notes 
 
 The spirit of Milton's passage seems to be taken from Burton in 
 his defense of native against exotic simples, Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly^ Pt. 2, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2: "For as there be divers dis- 
 tinct infirmities, continually vexing us, . . . so there be several 
 remedies, as he saith,7^r each disease a medicine, for every hwnour, 
 and, as some hold, every clime, every country, and more than that, 
 every private place, hath his proper remedies grovi'ing in it, peculiar 
 almost to the domineering and most frequent maladies of it. . . . 
 I know that many are of opinion our Northern simples are vixak, 
 imperfect, not so well concocted, of such force, as those in the 
 Southern parts, not so fit to be used in physick, and will therefore 
 fetch their drugs afar off ! ... Many times they are over curious 
 in this kind, whom, Fiichsiiis taxeth, . . . thet they think they do 
 nothing except they rake all over India, Arabia, y^thiopia, for 
 reviedies, and fetch their Physick fro7n the three quarters of the 
 world, and from beyond the Garasnantes. Many an old wife or 
 country woman doth often more good with a few knoivn and common 
 garden herbs than our bombast Physicians with all their prodigious, 
 sumptuous, far-fetched, rare, conjectural medicines.^'' 
 
 The effect of Hcemony was probably suggested to Milton by 
 the treatment of herbs, as a cure for Despair, found in Burton, 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. 2, Subs. 6 : "Of 
 herbs, he reckons as Pennyroyal, Rue, Mint, Angelica, Piony: 
 ... St. John's wort . . . which by a divine virtue drives away 
 Devils, ... all which rightly used by their suffitus expel Devils 
 themselves, and all devilish illusions. . . . The ancients used 
 therefore to plant it (Betony) in churchyards, because it was held 
 to be an holy herb, and good against fearful visions, did secure 
 such places it grew in, and sanctified those persons that carried it 
 about them. 
 
 646. Lime-twigs. Literally twigs daubed with bird lime. 
 Hence snares. See Spenser's Muiopotmos, 1. 428 : 
 
 " Himselfe he tide, and wrapt his winges twaine 
 In lymie snares the subtill loupes among." 
 
Comus 165 
 
 653. But seize his wand. See Ben Jonson's The Fortunate 
 
 Isles: 
 
 ..." you shall be 
 Principal secretary to the stars : 
 Know all the signatures and combinations, 
 The divine rods and consecrated roots: 
 What not ? " 
 
 655. Sons of Vulcan. Virgil's Aineid, viii. 252. The giant 
 Cacus, son of Vulcan, is alluded to. 
 
 660. Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster. See 
 Spenser's An Hymne hi Ho7ioiir of Love, 1. 138: 
 
 " And otherwhyles, their dying to delay, 
 Thou doest emmarble the proud hart of her 
 Whose love before their life they doe prefer." 
 
 672. Julep. Means here a sweet drink, otherwise rose water. 
 
 675. Nepenthes. Odyssey^ iv. 221. See Burton's Anatomy of 
 Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 6, Subs. 2 : "A gentle speech is 
 the true cure of a wounded soul, as Plutarch contends out of 
 vEschylus and Euripides ... a charm, . . . that true Nepenthes 
 of Homer, which was no Indian plant or feigned medicine, which 
 Polydamna, Thongs wife, sent Helen for a token, as Macrohins 7, 
 . . . and others suppose, but opportunely of speech : for Helen's 
 bowl, Media's unction, Venus' girdle, Circe's cup, cannot so en- 
 chant, so forcibly move or alter, as it doth. ... Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 
 6, Subs. 4: Pleasant discourse, jests, conceits, merry tales, as 
 Petronius . . . and many good Authors plead, are that sole A^epen- 
 thes of Horner, Helen's bowl, Venus' girdle, so renowned of old to 
 expel grief and care, to cause mirth and gladness of heart, if they 
 be rightly understood, or reasonably applied. Pt. 2, Sec. 4, Mem. 
 I, Subs. 3: Pliny much magnifies this plant (Bugloss). It may be 
 diversely used ... an herb indeed of such sovereignty that as Dio- 
 dorus, Plutarch . . . suppose it was that famous Nfepenthes of Ho77ier, 
 which Polydamna, Thon's wife (then king of Thebes in ALgypt) 
 sent Helen for a token, of such rare virtue, that if taken steept in 
 
1 66 Notes 
 
 wine, if wife and children, father and mother, brother and sister, 
 and all thy dearest friends, should die before thy face, thou couldst 
 not grieve or shed a tear for them. ... Pt. 2, Sec. 5, Mem. i, 
 Subs. 5 : Amongst this number of Cordials and Alteratives I do not 
 find a more present remedy than a cup of wine or strong drink, if 
 it be soberly and opportunely used. . . . It glads the heart of tnan^ 
 Helenas bowl, the sole Nectar of the Gods, or that true Nepenthes 
 in Horner^ which puts away care and grief, as Orebasius and some 
 others will, was naught else but a cup of good wine." . . . 
 
 707. Budge doctors of the Stoic fur. Halliwell has, " budge, 
 lambskin with the wool dressed outwards, often worn on the edges 
 of capes, as gowns of bachelors of arts are still made." See bag 
 and budget. 
 
 707. Stoic. See Burton's Anatomy of Melajzcholy, Symptoms of 
 Love, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, Subs, i: "Your most grim Stoicks, 
 and severe Philosophers will melt away with this passion, and if 
 Athenseus bely them not, Aristippus, Apollodorus, etc., have made 
 love-songs and commentaries of their Mistress' praises. Orators 
 wrote Epistles, Princes given Titles, Honours, what not ? " 
 
 708. Cynic tub. Allusion to Diogenes. 
 
 719. Hutched. Means put in a box or chest. The origin of the 
 word is uncertain. 
 
 721. Pulse. See Latin /zitA, beans, pease. 
 
 739. Beauty is Nature's coin. See Shakespeare's Sonnets, 
 i. vi. See also Ben Jonson, The Barriers. *""**''*^ 
 
 745. Brag. Probably of Celtic origin, meaning to boast. 
 Spenser uses an adjective bragy. 
 
 750. Sorry. Old English, sarig, wounded, afflicted, miserable. 
 See stony, bony, gory. 
 
 760. Bolt. To sift through cloth; hence to quibble. 
 
 779. Crams. Middle English, crammen. Old English, cram- 
 mian,\.o stuff. See Spenser's Visions of the IVorld's Vanitie, iii. 3: 
 " A mightie Crocodile, 
 That, cram'd with guiltles blood and greedie prey." 
 
Comus 167 
 
 787. Serious doctrine of Virginity. See, for the opposite, the 
 verses of Ben Jonson in The Barriers. 
 
 800. She fables not. See Ben Jonson's Love Restored : 
 
 " I have my spirits again, and feel my limbs. 
 Away with this cold cloud that dims 
 My light! Lie there, my furs, and charms." . . . 
 
 803. Wrath of Jove. Alludes to the overthrow of the Titans. 
 
 804. Erebus. '$)Q.q Paradise Lost/\\. %%t^. See Spenser^ s Virgi/'s 
 Gnat, 1. 213: 
 
 " By this the Night forth from the darksome bowre 
 Of Herebus her teemed steedes gan call." 
 
 809. *Tis but the lees. This is a poetic paraphrase of Burton 
 in his treatment of melancholy arising from humours and spirits of 
 the body. 
 
 816. Rod reversed. See Ovid, Met. xiv. 300. See Spenser's 
 The Rttines of Rome, xxii : 
 
 " So, when the compast course of the universe 
 In sixe and thirtie thousand yeares is ronne. 
 The bands of th' elements shall backe reverse 
 To their first discord, and be quite undonne." 
 
 817. Backward mutters. See Shakespeare's Much Ado, iii. i. 
 
 59: 
 
 I never yet saw man, 
 
 How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured, 
 But she would spell him backward." 
 
 See Spenser's Prosopopoia, 1. 832 : 
 
 " Then he would scoffe at learning, and eke scorne 
 The Sectaries thereof, as people base 
 And simple men, which never came in place 
 Of worlds affaires, but, in darke corners mewd, 
 Muttred of matters as their bookes them shewd." 
 
 822. Melibceus. Conventional name for a shepherd. The 
 literary allusion here is to Geoffrey of Monmouth, author of the 
 
1 68 Notes 
 
 History of the Britons, from which the story of Sabre or Sabrina is 
 taken. 
 
 826. Sabrina is her name. See Spenser's Daphnaida, 1. 99 : 
 
 " Whilome I usde (as thou right well doest know) 
 My little flocke on westerne downes to keepe 
 Not far from whence Sabrinaes streame doth flow." 
 
 835. Nereus. A sea god, son of Pontus and Gaea, husband of 
 Doris, and father of the fifty Nereids. 
 
 838. Asphodil. One of the flowers of the Elysian fields. 
 
 845. Urchin blasts. Elvish or impish blights. See King Lear, 
 i. 4. 321 : "Blasts and fogs upon thee." Job iv. 9: "By the blast 
 of God they perish." 'Ly\y, Enphues : . . . " Some blossoms, some 
 blasts." 
 
 868. Great Oceanus. In ancient geography, a swift and un- 
 bounded stream. The outer sea or Atlantic Ocean, The husband 
 of Tethys. 
 
 869. Neptune. A sea god. See Ben Jonson's Neptune's 
 Triumph : 
 
 " The mighty Neptune, mighty in his styles, 
 And large command of waters and of isles ; 
 Not as the ' lord and sovereign of the seas,' 
 But ' chief in the art of riding,' late did please, 
 To send his Albion forth, the most his own. 
 Upon discovery to themselves best known, 
 Through Celtiberia; and, to assist his course, 
 Gave him his powerful Manager of Horse, 
 With divine Proteus, father of disguise. 
 To wait upon them with his counsels wise, 
 In all extremes." 
 
 872. Carpathian wizard. See Virgil's Georgics, iv. Proteus 
 is alluded to. He was a sea god, the son of Oceanus and Tethys, 
 and had the power of assuming different shapes. He was also a 
 sea shepherd, with sea calves for his flock. 
 
 873. Triton. Son of Neptune, or Poseidon, and Amphitrite, or 
 
Comus 169 
 
 Celseno. He had a shell trumpet which he blew to quiet the 
 waves and he rode the sea horses, 
 
 874. Soothsaying Glaucus. A fisherman of Boeotia, trans- 
 formed into a sea god with prophetic powers. 
 
 875. Leucothea's lovely hands. Ino, the white goddess, 
 daughter of Cadmus, mother of the sea god, PaliJemon, god of ports 
 and harbours. See Odyssey, v. 461-462. 
 
 877. Thetis. Daughter of Nereus, mother of Achilles. Homer 
 makes her "silver-footed." 
 
 878. Sirens sweet. Three sea nymphs whose home was an 
 island near Cape Pelorus in Sicily. They lured sailors ashore by 
 their songs and then killed them. The three are Parthenope, 
 Ligeia, and Leucothea. 
 
 894. Turkis. Turquoise. The real meaning of the word is 
 simply Turkish. 
 
 921. Amphitrite's bower. Chamber of Amphitrite, wife of 
 Neptune. 
 
 922. Daughter of Locrine. Sabrina's father, son of Brutus, the 
 second founder of Britain. His wife was Gwendolen of Cornwall. 
 Sabrina's mother was Estrildis, a German princess. 
 
 923. Anchises' line. Anchises was father of ^neas; Brutus 
 was descended from Anchises. 
 
 964. Dryades. Wood nymphs whose lives were bound up with 
 those of their trees. 
 
 991. Nard and cassia. Skeat says, "Nard, an unguent from an 
 aromatic plant . . . the name is Aryan, from Sanskrit nal, to smell." 
 Cassia is a species of laurel. 
 
 999. Adonis. The beloved of Venus. He died gored by a wild 
 boar. 
 
 1002. Assyrian queen. Astarte. The Phoenician moon god- 
 dess. See Paradise Lost, i. 438. 
 
 1004. Cupid. The story of Cupid and Psyche is given in The 
 Golden Ass of Apuleius. For versions of the episode, see Lafon- 
 taine, Moliere, William Morris, Walter Pater. The story is briefly 
 
lyo Notes 
 
 that Cupid loved Psyche, a mortal maiden. He visited her at 
 night with strict instructions that she should make no effort to dis- 
 cover who he was. Her curiosity led her to disobey, and in hold- 
 ing a lamp over his body, she dropped hot oil on his shoulder, 
 woke him; and he fled. Psyche wandered through all lands, search- 
 ing for her lover, and was cruelly persecuted by Venus. At last she 
 was made immortal and united to Cupid. The treatment given to 
 this story by Walter Pater in Marius the Epictcreaiz is remarkably 
 close to the spirit of that by Apuleius. 
 
 1019. Love Virtue; she alone is free. See Ben Jonson's 
 Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue : 
 
 " There, there is Virtue's seat : 
 Strive to keep her your own ; 
 'Tis only she can make you great, 
 Though place here make you known." 
 
 Also Spenser's Tlie Teares of the Mtises (Calliope), 1. 457: 
 
 " Therefore the nurse of vertue I am hight, 
 And golden Trompet of eternitie, 
 That lowly thoughts lift up to heaven's hight, 
 And mortall men have powre to deifie; 
 Bacchus and Hercules I raisd to heaven, 
 And Charlemaine amongst the Starris seaven." 
 
 LYCIDAS 
 
 I. Yet once more. There seems little reason for finding any 
 peculiar or biographical significance in this phrase. The reference 
 is quite as much to the fact that Milton is another in the long list 
 of aspirants to the laurel as that it is three years since he had 
 written Comus. The student should compare the phrase and verse 
 structure of this opening with that of Spenser's Astrophel. 
 
 8. Lycidas. A name used in pastorals by Virgil, Ovid, Theoc- 
 ritus, 
 
Lycidas 171 
 
 10. He knew. King wrote Latin verses, but the compliment 
 implied seems somewhat empty at the hands of Milton. 
 
 11. Rhyme. This spelling does not appear before 1550. The 
 Old English rim meant number. See also Spenser's Kuines of 
 Rome, XXV : 
 
 " I would assay with that which in me is 
 To builde, with levell of my loftie style 
 That which no hands can evermore compyle." 
 
 13. Welter. Old English wealtan, to roll around. See walky 
 waltz. 
 
 14. Melodious tear. See Spenser's title to his poem, The 
 Tea?-es of the Muses. 
 
 15. Sisters of the sacred well. The Pierian Spring at the 
 foot of Olympus in Thessaly, the birthplace and home of the nine 
 muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Milton was mindful of 
 Spenser's The Teares of the Muses, 1. i : 
 
 " Rehearse to me, ye sacred Sisters nine, 
 The golden brood of great Apolloes wit, 
 Those piteous plaints and sorrowful sad tine 
 Which tale ye powred forth as ye did sit 
 Beside the silver Springs of Helicone, 
 Making your musick of hart-breaking mone. " 
 
 28. Greyfly. The horse-fly, or cleg. 
 
 34. Satyrs . . . Fauns. Satyr, a monster, half man, half goat. 
 Faun, a rural deity, sometimes confused with satyrs. Originally 
 the faun had a human form, but with short goat's tail, pointed ears, 
 and small h^rns; later they were represented with the hind legs of 
 a goat. 
 
 36. DamcEtas. A herdsman figuring in the Pastorals of Theoc- 
 ritus and of Virgil. 
 
 40. Gadding. Rambling idly. See Romeo and Juliet, iv. 2. 16. 
 See also gad-fly. 
 
 46. Taint-worm. Possibly a small red spider, hurtful to cattle. 
 
 52. The steep. The hill. 
 
172 Notes 
 
 53. Druids. Priests or ministers of Celtic religion in Gaul, 
 Ireland, and Britain. Their chief seats were in Wales, Brittany, 
 and France. 
 
 If 54. Mona. The Roman name for the island of Anglesey. See 
 Leconte de Lisle's Le Massacre de Mona. 
 
 55. Deva. Chester, on the river Dee, was the port from which 
 Edward King sailed. Spenser and Drayton describe the river as 
 the home of magicians. 
 
 58. What could the Muse. Orpheus, son of the muse Calliope, 
 offended the Thracian women by his stubborn grief for Eurydice. 
 They tore him to pieces in their Bacchanalian rites. The Muses 
 buried his body at the foot of Olympus, his head was thrown into 
 the Hebrus, which carried it to Lesbos, where it rested. See Para- 
 dise Lost, vii. 32-39. 
 
 64. Alas ! what boots it with incessant care. See Spenser's 
 The Teares of the Muses (Calliope), 1. 445 : 
 
 " What bootes it then to come from glorious 
 Forefathers, or to have been nobly bredd ? 
 What oddes twixt Irus and old Inachus, 
 Twixt best and worst, when both alike are dedd ; 
 If none of neither mention should make, 
 Nor out of dust their memories awake ? 
 Or who would ever care to doo brave deed, 
 Or strive in vertue others to excell, 
 If none should yeeld him his deserved meed, 
 Due praise, that is the spur of dooing well ? 
 For if good were not praised more than ill. 
 None would choose goodnes of his owne free will." 
 
 66. And strictly meditates the thankless Muse. This use of 
 verbs commonly intransitive as transitive is by no means peculiar 
 to Milton. Freedom in this respect is a poetic privilege. Shake- 
 speare and Spenser take all sorts of liberties with the " parts of 
 speech." Examples from Spenser are : 
 
Lycidas 1 73 
 
 The Teares of the Muses (Calliope), 1. 436: " That doth degenerate 
 the noble race." 
 
 1. 463 : " But now I will my golden Clarion rend, 
 1. 464: " And will henceforth immortalize no more." 
 1. 421 : " To whom shall I my evill case complaine." 
 
 The Teares of the Muses (Polyhymnia), 1. 582: "That her eternize 
 with their heavenlie writs ! " 
 
 Ruines of Rome, xiv : 
 
 "And as at Troy most dastards of the Greekes, 
 Did brave about the corpes of Hector colde." 
 
 68. Amaryllis. A shepherdess in the Idyls of Theocritus and 
 the Eclogues of Virgil. 
 
 69. Neaera. A maiden of classic pastoral poetry. See Burton's 
 translation of Marullus, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, 
 Mem. 3, Subs, i : 
 
 " So thy white neck, Neaera, me poor soul 
 Doth scorch, thy cheeks, thy wanton eyes that roll: 
 Were it not for my dropping tears that hinder 
 I should be quite burnt up forthwith to cinder." 
 
 See ibid., Ariosto, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, 
 Subs. I : 
 
 " He that commends Phyllis, or Neaera, 
 Or Amaryllis, or Galatea, 
 Tityrus, or Melibasa, by your leave, 
 Let him be mute, his Love the praises have." 
 
 75. The blind Fury. Atropos. See Spenser's Ruines of 
 Rome, xxiv : 
 
 " If the blinde Furie, which warres breedeth oft." 
 
 78. Fame is no plant. See Spenser's The Teares of the Muses 
 (Urania), 1. 524: 
 
 " How ever yet they mee despise and spight, 
 I ieede on sweet contentment of my thought, 
 
174 Notes 
 
 And please my selfe with mine owne selfe-delight, 
 In contemplation of things heavenlie wrought; 
 So, loathing earth, I looke up to the sky, 
 And, being driven hence, I thether fly." 
 
 79. Nor in the glistering foil. See Burton's use of the word 
 
 glistering, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 3, Mem. 3 : " Some 
 he doth exalt, prefer, bless with worldly riches, honours, offices, 
 and preferments, as so many glistering stars he makes to shine 
 above the rest." The Old English verb glisnian is the form that 
 should regularly give a verb glisen, but the word is spelled with an 
 excrescent /. This t, however, is not sounded, unless its influence 
 in keeping the s hard may be considered a sound by courtesy. See 
 Spenser's Virgil's G^zat, 1. 99, 100: 
 
 " Ne glistering of golde, which underlayes 
 The summer beames, doe blinde his gazing eye." 
 
 85. fountain Arethuse. The Muse of pastoral poetry had 
 her home by the fountain of Arethusa in Sicily. Allusion is also to 
 Theocritus as a writer of pastorals. 
 
 86. Smooth-sliding Mincius. A river in Italy near which 
 Virgil was born. See Virgil's Eclogue, vii. See also Spenser's Vir- 
 gil's Gnaty 1. 1 7 : 
 
 " He shall inspire my verse with gentle mood, 
 Of Poets Prince, whether he woon beside 
 Faire Xanthus sprincled with Chimseras blood, 
 Or in the woods of Astery abide ; 
 Or whereas Mount Parnasse, the Muses brood, 
 Doth his broad forhead like two homes divide. 
 And the sweete waves of sounding Castaly 
 With liquid foote doth slide downe easily." 
 
 87. But now my oat. Old English ate, pi. atan. A cereal 
 plant. In secondary sense, a musical pipe of oat straw; figuratively, 
 pastoral song. 
 
 89. The Herald of the Sea. Triton. 
 
Lycidas 175 
 
 96. Hippotades. ^olus, the wind god, son of Hippota. 
 
 99. Panope. One of the Nereids. 
 
 loi. Built in the eclipse. See Paradise Lost, ii, 66^, 666: 
 
 ..." the labouring moon 
 Eclipses at their charms." 
 
 Also Paradise Lost, i. 597 : 
 
 ..." from behind the moon, 
 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
 On half the nations, or with fear of change 
 Perplexes monarchs." 
 
 103. Next Camus. The genius of the river Cam and of Cam- 
 bridge University. 
 
 106. Sanguine flower inscribed with woe. The hyacinth. 
 On the petals appear marks interpreted by the Greeks as ai, ai, 
 alas 1 alas ! 
 
 109. The Pilot of the Galilean lake. St. Peter. See Ruskin's 
 Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 112. Mitred locks. The mitre is the symbol of episcopal 
 authority. St. Peter is the head and chief bishop of the church. 
 
 113. How well could I have spared. See on this general sub 
 ject Spenser's The Shepheards Calender (Maye, Julye, September) 
 See also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i 
 Subs. 3: "In our days v/e have a new scene of superstitious Im 
 posters and Hereticks, a new company of Actors, of Antichrists 
 that great Antichrist himself ; a rope of Popes, that by their great 
 nes= and authority bear down all before them ; who from that time 
 they proclaimed themselves universal Bishops, to establish their 
 own kingdom, sovereignty, greatness, and to enrich themselves 
 brought in such a company of human traditions . . ." Pt. 3, Sec. 4, 
 Mem. 2, Subs. 2 : " All their study is to please, and their god is their 
 commodity, their labour to satisfy their lusts, and their endeavours to 
 
176 Notes 
 
 their own ends. . . . They have Esau's hands, and Jacob's voice; 
 yea and many of those holy Friars, sanctified men . . . They are 
 wolves in sheep's clothing. . . ." 
 
 Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2: "His ordinary instruments or 
 factors which he useth, as God himself did good Kings, lawful Mag- 
 istrates, patriarchs, prophets, to the establishing of his Church, are 
 Politicians, Statesmen, Priests, Hereticks, blind guides. Impostors, 
 pseudo-prophets to propagate his superstition. . . . 
 
 " Now for their authority, what by auricular Confession, satisfac- 
 tion, penance, Peter's keys, thunderings, excommunications, etc. . . . 
 
 "And if it were not yet enough by Priests and Politicians to 
 delude mankind, and crucify the souls of men, he hath more actors 
 in his Tragedy, more Irons in the fire, another Scene of Hereticks, 
 factions, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, Schismaticks, Impostors, 
 false Prophets, blind guiles, that out of pride, singularity, vain 
 glory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in uproar by 
 their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divi- 
 sions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, 
 commit Prince and subjects, brother against brother, father against 
 son, to the ruin and destruction of a common-wealth, to the dis- 
 turbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates." 
 
 1 22. What recks it them ? The impersonal use of the verb from 
 the Old English recan, to care. Here it means, as in Comus, 1. 404, 
 concerns. 
 
 123. List. This was in general use by Spenser, Burton, and 
 other writers familiar to Milton in his reading. 
 
 124. Scrannel. This word is clearly dialectical. See scrawny. 
 128. The grim wolf. Th-re seems little need of forcing the 
 
 interpretation closely here. Milton is describing the evils of care- 
 less herding. The wolf was one of the traditional enemies of the 
 flock and was a danger whether in the guise of a Pope or of an Arch- 
 bishop Laud. There might also have been a literary reminiscence 
 of the Kidde and the Foxe in Spenser's Shepheards Calender (May). 
 Irresponsibility is always an enemy of true religion. 
 
Lycidas 177 
 
 130. But that two-handed engine. The inspiration of this 
 passage is clearly found in Burton's Attaiomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, 
 Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2: "Now the means by which, or advan- 
 tages the Devil and his infernal Ministers take, so to delude and 
 disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false doctrines, super- 
 stitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear, ignorance, sim- 
 plicity, Hope and Fear, those two battering Canons, and principal 
 Engines, with their objects, reward and punishment. Purgatory, 
 Limbus Patrw7i, etc. ... To these advantages of Hope and 
 Fear, ignorance and simplicity, he hath several engines, traps, 
 devices, to batter and enthrall. ..." 
 
 131. Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more. See 
 Burton's Anatomy of MelancJioly, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 3: 
 " P'or it is that great torture, that infernal plague of mortal man, 
 omnium pestium pestilentissi77ia superstitio, and able of itself to 
 stand in opposition to all other plagues, miseries, and calamities 
 whatsoever; far more cruel, more pestiferous, more grievous, more 
 general, more violent, of a greater extent. Other fears and sorrows, 
 grievances of body and mind, are troublesome for the time; but 
 this is for ever, eternal damnation, hell itself, a plague, a fire; an 
 inundation hurts one Province alone, and the loss may be recovered; 
 but this superstition involves all the world almost, and can never be 
 remedied. Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious 
 soul hath no rest ; ... no peace, no quietness. True religion and 
 Superstition are quite opposite, longe diversa carnificina et pietas, 
 as Lactantius describes, the one erears, the other dejects ; ... the 
 one is ah easy yoke, the other an intolerable burden, an absolute 
 tyranny; the one a sure anchor, an haven; the other a tempestuous 
 Ocean; the one makes, the other mars; the one is wisdom, the 
 other is folly, madness, indiscretion; the one unfeigned, the other 
 a counterfeit; the one a diligent observer, the other an ape; one 
 leads to heaven, the other to hell." 
 
 Milton was an extreme individualist in religion, and the picture 
 he draws of the misguided flock has a long and wide historical 
 
 MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 12 
 
178 Notes 
 
 application. No true religion is intended by it, and all false doc- 
 trine, envy, and schism, wherever met, is covered by it. 
 
 132. Return, Alpheus. The lover of Arethusa. This alludes, 
 figuratively, to the almost forgotten claims of pastoral poetry. 
 
 138. Swart star. Sirius, the dog star. Szvart is the Old 
 English sweart, black. Compare sordid. 
 
 142. The rathe primrose. See Ruskin, Modern Painters, ii., for 
 an interesting criticism on this passage. The proper form should 
 preserve an initial //, hrath, quick, ready, swift. Here the word 
 means early. 
 
 150. Daffadillies. Asphodil. The corrupt form has a certain 
 pathos that the classic name might lack. 
 
 151. Laureate hearse. Hearse meant originally a kind of 
 pyramidal candlestick used in the services of holy week. Then 
 it became the name of the funeral carriage. Laureate means 
 crowned with laurel. See Spenser's Daphnaida, 1. 526: 
 
 " And ye, faire Damsels ! Shepheards dere delights, 
 That with your loves do their rude hearts possesse, 
 When as my hearse shall happen to your sightes, 
 Vouchsafe to deck the same with Cyparesse." 
 
 151. Lycid. Lycidas. 
 
 156. Stormy Hebrides. Islands west of Scotland, the Ebudse 
 of Ptolemy, or the Hebrides of Pliny. 
 
 160. Bellerus old. A legendary Cornish giant. His home was 
 supposed to be Land's End. 
 
 161. The guarded mount. See Spenser's The Shepheards 
 Calender (Julye) : 
 
 " In evill houre thou hentest in hond 
 
 Thus holy hylles to blame, 
 For sacred unto saints they stond, 
 
 And of them han theyr name. 
 St. Michels Mount who does not know, 
 
 That wardes the Westerne coste ? " 
 
Lycidas 179 
 
 162. Namancos. Aumantia, a town in Old Castile, Spain. 
 
 162. Bayona. Bayonne. 
 
 173. Of Him that walked the waves. See Matthew xiv. 22 
 et seq. 
 
 176. Unexpressive. Used here in the sense of inexpressible. 
 
 181. And wipe the tears. See Revelation vii. 17; xxi. 4. 
 
 186. Uncouth. Old English un, not, and cuth, known; past 
 participle of cunrtan, to know. See Lowland Scotch utico. The 
 meaning is variously : strange, unusual, odd, lonely, solitary. 
 
 188. Stops of various quills. Quills, a cane or reed pipe, such 
 as were used in Pan's pipes. See Spenser's The Shepheards Cal- 
 ender (June), "homely shepheards quill," and Daphna'ida, iii, "Ne 
 ever shepheard sound his oaten quill." . . . 
 
 189. Doric lay. A song or poem in the language of the Dorians. 
 This dialect was characterized by broadness and hardness and was 
 contrasted with Lydian and Ionian. It was also the pastoral dialect. 
 
 190. And now. It was customary to close pastorals with some 
 reference to time and seasons in nature. See Virgil's Eclogues. 
 Also Spenser's The Shepheards Calender (Januarie) : 
 
 *' By that, the welked Phoebus gan availe 
 His weary waine ; and nowe the frosty Night 
 Her mantle black through heaven gan overhaile; 
 Which seene, the pensife boy, halfe in despight, 
 Arose, and homeward drove his sonned sheepe, 
 Whose hanging heads did seeme his carefull case to weepe.' 
 
 But the energy of Milton's reference to the future is character- 
 istic rather than conventional. Although Phineas Fletcher, in The 
 Purple Island, vi. 78, has : 
 
 " Home, then, my lambs; the falling drops eschew; 
 To-morrow shall ye feast in pastures new." 
 
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(^ 
 
 V 
 
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JUN 2 1904 
 
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