1. 215. unshowr'd; there is little or no rain in Egypt, which is fertilised by the overflowing of the Nile. Cowley, in his poem on

Sleep, has the same allusion:

The fate of Egypt I sustain,

And never feel the dew of rain'

1. 232. Cp. Puck's speech to Oberon, My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,' &c. (Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2), and (Hamlet, i. 1, Horatio's last speech but one).

I

1. 244. bright-harnest, in bright armour; cp. 1 Kings xxii. 34, Macbeth, v. 5, last line.

Stanzas 19 and 20 of this Ode are founded on a tradition that at the time of the Passion (the time is here changed to the Nativity), the pilot of a ship sailing from Italy to Cyprus was bidden by a supernatural voice to proclaim, when he came to a certain island, that Pan was dead. On arriving at the place named, the ship was suddenly becalmed, until he cried out that Pan was dead; wherewithal was heard such piteous outcries and dreadful shrieking, as hath not been the like.' This is quoted in the Gloss to Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar (May), and is said to have been understood of the great Sathanas,' for at that time 'all oracles surceased, and enchanted spirites that were wont to delude the people held their peace.'

On the Circumcision.

1. 1. The seraphim are the fiery, the cherubim are the winged spirits. Cp. Solemn Music 10, Il Penseroso 52. 'We find, as far as credit is to be given to the celestial hierarchy of that supposed Dionysius the senator of Athens, the first place or degree is given to the angels of love, which are termed Seraphim; the second to the angels of light, which are termed Cherubim; and the third and so following places to thrones, principalities, and the rest, which are all angels of power and ministry; so as the angels of knowledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination.' (Bacon, Advancement

of Learning, i.) Cp. note on Paradise Lost, v. 750.

1. 2. erst, first, before. A. S. ærest, first, from ær, ere, formerly. (Skeat.)

1. 7. Shakespeare's Isabella imagines that the angels do weep at the fantastic tricks of man (Measure for Measure, ii. 2). Cp. Paradise Lost, x. 23.

1. 10. heraldry, proclamation by heralds. So in Hamlet, i. 1 :

Well ratified by law and heraldry.'

1. 15. The turn resembles that in Virgil, Eclogue viii. 49.

1. 17. remediless occurs in Paradise Lost, ix. 919, and Samson Agonistes 648.

1. 20. Phil. ii. 7, the literal version, 'he emptied himself' (avrÒY ἐκένωσε).

1. 21. still, in the sense of continually.' Paradise Lost, ii. 385, viii. 197, xii. 566; as often in Shakespeare, e. g. ‘still-vext Bermoothes (Tempest, i. 2).

1. 24. excess, transgression, as in Paradise Lost, xi. 111.

On the Passion.

1. 1. ethereal; alluding to the angels' song.
1. 3. The omission of the article is Spenserian.
1. 4. Divide is a musical term used by Spenser :

'And all the while sweet music did divide
Her looser notes with Lydian harmony.'

(Faery Queene, iii. 1. 40.)

Division occurs in this special sense in Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5; 1 Henry IV, iii. 1, and Lear, i. 2.

1.6. The order is inverted. It is like the short'nd night in the wintry solstice.'

1. 13. Carlyle writes (Hero-worship): The greatest Hero is One whom we name not here.'

14. wight, from A. S. wiht, a creature; old word for person male or female, any intelligent being. Chaucer's perfect knight never did villainy to 'no maner wight.'

1. 26. The allusion is to Vida, a poet of Cremona, who published his Christiad in 1535. He also wrote poems on Chess, the Art of Poetry, and Silkworms. (See Hallam, Literature of Europe.)

1. 28. still is applied to gentle sound, as in 1 Kings xix. 12, Il Penseroso, 127 (note).

1. 34. Warton tells us that Steevens had a volume of elegies in which all the title-pages were black, with white letters. To this conceit, and that in v. 49, there are parallels in the poems of Crashaw.

1. 50. viewless, invisible: 'viewless winds,' Measure for Measure, iii. I. Cp. 'sightless couriers of the air,' Macbeth, i. 7. Scott has viewless forms of air,' Lay of Last Minstrel, i. 12.

1. 51. Jer. ix. 10.

1. 54. Cp. Lycidas 56, and Much Ado about Nothing, iv. 1. (Leonato's last speech).

Epitaph on Shakespear.

'On Shakespear, 1630'-edition 1645. The title given in the text is from the second folio of the plays, 1632.

1. 1. Milton spells Shakespear' according to the derivation of the name commemorated in Jonson's lines:

'He seems to shake a lance

As brandish'd at the eyes of Ignorance.'

1. 4. star-ypointing. See note on Nativity Ode 155

1. 11. unvalu'd, that is not, and cannot be valued, invaluable. So Drayton, Polyolbion 13:

With the unvalued prize of Blanch the beauteous crown';' and Shakespeare, Richard III, i. 4 (Clarence's Dream),

'Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels.'

See note on L'Allegro 40.

1. 12. Delphic, for oracular'; so 'Delphian' in Sir H. Wootton's letter before Comus (p. 44, above).

1. 14. Cp. Il Penseroso 42.

1. 15. sepulchre is so accented in Shakespeare (Richard II, i. 3; Lear, ii. 4). For the thought, cp. his Sonnet lxxxi. One of Crashaw's epitaphs concludes

Thomas Hobson was born in 1544. Since 1564, Shakespeare's birthyear, he had weekly made the journey from Cambridge to the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate. He had so thriftily used the property left him by his father, that at his death he was one of the wealthiest citizens of Cambridge. He had combined farming, malting, and innkeeping with his business as a carrier. He was, according to tradition, the first man in England who let out horses to hire.' It would then be his sign that bore in such great letters, Here is good horse to hire'. (Much Ado about Nothing, i. 1.) He compelled each customer to take the steed which stood next the stable-door, 'Hobson's choice.' He died Jan. 1, 1631, leaving an ample fortune. To his bounty is owing the perpetual maintenance of the conduit at Cambridge, with a rivulet of clear water running through the main streets. (From Masson's 'Life.') He is mentioned in the Spectator, No. 509. The line in the second epitaph,

'As he were prest to death, he cried "more weight, alludes to the peine forte et dure,' by which accused persons refusing to plead, were pressed with heavy weights until they complied or expired. The torture sometimes lasted so long that the victims begged for the mercy of a speedy death by 'more weight.'

Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester.

This lady was Jane, one of the daughters of Viscount Savage, and was married to John Paulett, fifth Marquis of Winchester. Her death

(in April, 1631) was caused by accident. An imposthume on her cheek was lanced, and the humour fell down into her throat and quickly despatched her.' Ben Jonson and Davenant also bewailed her early death (Masson). Her husband had his house of Basing sacked after a two years' siege by the Parliament forces. He died in 1674, was buried at Englefield, and had an epitaph by Dryden.

1. 1. Inter can only be correctly used of persons qui in terram ponunt.' (Keightley.) It is here used for entomb.'

Enterr, of the old copies, brings out more prominently than the modern spelling, the derivation from Lat. terra, Fr. terre.

1. 19. Ovid, Met. x. 4.

1. 22. Cp. 'the cypress funeral' (Faery Queene, i. 1. 8).

1. 24. a lovely son; afterwards Charles, first Duke of Bolton.

1. 26. Lucina, the goddess who brings to light,' presiding over the birth of children. Lucina was a surname of Juno and of Diana: its Greek equivalent was Ilithyia. Ilithyia was the servant of Hera (Juno), and the companion of the Fates.

1. 28. Atropos, not to be turned, inflexible. The name of the third Fate, who cut the thread of life. The other two are Clotho (the spinster of the thread of life), and Lachesis (the disposer of human lots). Cp. Arcades 69.

1. 36. Cp. Samson Agonistes 1579.

1. 37. carnation train; the rest of the flowers, apparently using carnation in the sense of Lat. purpureus, brilliant, glowing, for he could hardly have meant the flower of that name (Keightley).

1. 46. funeral, death, like the Lat. funus (Horace, Odes, ii. 18. 18). 1. 47. Though Milton used considerable license in the matter of rhyme, these two endings are often found together, as in the dirge in Cymbeline (iv. 2),

'Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy grave.'

1. 50. Cp. 'Sleep hath seiz'd me wholly' (Cymbeline, ii. 2).

1. 55. Cp. Lycidas 14.

1. 56. Helicon here (as in Spenser's Tears of the Muses) has the last syllable long ('EXIKάv). Although properly the name of a mountain, it is often applied by English writers to the springs (Aganippe and Hippocrene) which flowed from thence. Instances may be found in abundance, from Chaucer, who sings of Elicon's clear well,' to Swift in his Battle of the Books. In Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels, Helicon being named, Crites says, 'O, the Muses' well!'

1. 58. Fore is, I believe, the correct reading, but both editions (1645 and 1673) have for.

1. 59. Came, Camus. Lycidas 103.

1. 63. Gen. xxix. 9, xxxv. 18.

sense.

Sonnet I.

Archbishop Trench, in his Lecture on the Sonnet, thus lays down the canon of its formation :-'It must, in strictness, consist of fourteen lines in two groups: (1) Major group, lines 1-8; (2) Minor group, lines 914. In (1) there should be but two rhymes, a, b, thus distributed—1, 4, 5, 8, a; 2, 3, 6, 7, b. (Arnold, in his English Versification, expresses the same thing thus: lines 1-8 consist of two quatrains with extreme and mean rhymes.) At the close of (1) there should be a pause in the Then in (2) there should again be but two rhymes; and in the most finished specimens of the sonnet these alternate with one another. 'But even the very best sonnetteers have transgressed these rules. The most frequent relaxation is this, viz. that while the strong outer framework of (1) remains unimpaired, the interior is filled with lines which do not rhyme to one another, but only 2 with 3, and 6 with 7; while in (2) three rhymes instead of two are admitted and disposed in almost any order that is most convenient to the writer.' On the merits of this form of composition the Archbishop remarks, ‘The necessity of condensation has often compressed and rounded a nebulous vapour into The sonnet, like a Grecian temple, may be limited in its scope, but like that, if successful, it is altogether perfect.' (Afternoon Lectures, Fourth Series.)

a star.

The canon of the sonnet thus laid down is pretty nearly observed in Wordsworth's lines.

Scorn not the Sonnet: Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakspeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp

It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faeryland

To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains-alas, too few!'

1. 10. still. See note on Circumcision 21.

1. 13. All is, i e. 'in strictest measure even,' &c. He had said, 'It shall be;' now he corrects himself—' nay, all my life is so already, if I have grace to use it as in God's sight.'

1. 14. In the library at Langley, near Horton, the emblematic eye still