was called the hermetical art, from his supposed invention of it. The books now extant under his name are forgeries by the Neo-Platonists, who wished to make the Egyptian religious system appear more venerable than the Christian mysteries. Cp. note in the edition of Hooker, Bk. i. in this series. Bacon speaks (Advancement of Learning, i.) of the triplicity which in great veneration was ascribed to the ancient Hermes; the power and fortune of a king, the knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher.' 1. 88. unsphere, draw down from the station assigned to him. Cp. Comus 3.

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

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

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

And here allow them place, beneath this lower sphere
Of the inconstant moon; to tempt us daily here.
Some earthly mixture take; as others, which aspire,
Their subtler shapes resume, of water, air, and fire:
Being those immortals long before from heaven that fell,
Whose deprivation thence, determined their hell.’

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

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

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

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

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

Pelops' line, allusion to the trilogy of Æschylus on the subject of

the murder of Agamemnon, a descendant of Pelops, King of Pisa in Elis, who has given his name to Peloponnesus.

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

ll. 101, 102. This couplet is probably intended to include the tragedies of Shakespeare.

1. 104. Musæus, a mythical bard of Thrace, according to some legends the son of Orpheus. The yearning after the long-lost past is here forcibly expressed in language that, by dwelling on the dim fragments yet remaining, gives the beauty of the feeling without its pain. 1. 106. Cp. Arcades 87.

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

1. 116. And if aught else, &c. Referring to Spenser, in whose great poem all the enumerated circumstances may be found.

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

1. 122. Juliet calls civil Night' a

'Sober-suited matron all in black.'

(Romeo and Juliet, iii. 2.)

1. 123. trickt, adorned. Only used once by Shakespeare,

'Horridly tricked

'With blood of fathers.' (Hamlet, ii. 2. Speech of the Player.) frounc't, applied to the dressing of the hair.

'Some frounce their curled hair in courtly guise.'

(Faery Queene, i. 4. 14.)

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

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

1.130. minute-drops; as we say 'minute-guns,' indicating a gentle shower of fine rain.

1. 134. Milton uses brown, the Italian bruno, for dark.' (Keightley.) 1.135. monumental, i. e. a monument of other times, like the Talking Oak of Tennyson. Monument' is used for 'memorial' by Spenser and Shakespeare.

1.141. garish (from O. E. gare or gaure, to stare) is Juliet's epithet for the sun (iii. 2), which is called 'the eye of heaven' in Faery Queene, i. 3. 4. Cf. Lycidas 26 (note), and Glossary to Faery Queene, ii. (garre). L 145. In Spenser's Faery Queene (i. I. 41) the noise of waters, bees, and rain lull Morpheus in his slumber soft.' Cf. Virgil, Eclogue i. 55.

1. 148. Of the spirit (Faery Queene, i. 1. 44) we read that

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

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

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

Where should this music be? i' th' air, or the earth?
It sounds no more

I hear it now above me.'

1. 156. Pale, enclosure. With studious cloister, cp. 'studious universities' (Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. 3).

1. 158. massy-proof, able to resist the incumbent weight. So starproof is used in Arcades 89.

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

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

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

Arcades.

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

On the night of Feb. 3, 1634, the Inns of Court, indignant at the publication of the Histriomastix, by Prynne, gave a grand mask at Whitehall. Whitelock declares it to have been the most splendid show that ever was beheld in England. A fortnight after, Carew, Lawes, and Inigo Jones, presented at Whitehall their mask Cælum Britannicum, in which acted Viscount Brackley and his brother Thomas Egerton, sons of the Earl of Bridgewater. The Earl had been raised to the peerage as a mark of respect to his father, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. Both father and son married about the same time. The former, while still Sir Thomas Egerton, wedded, as his third wife, Alice, daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, and widow of the fifth Earl of Derby. The latter married the daughter of the Countess by her former marriage. After the Chancellor's death, his lady retained her old title of Countess

of Derby, and resided at Harefield. To her Spenser dedicated The Tears of the Muses, and he bewailed the Chancellor's death in Colin Clout's Come Home Again. In 1607, John Marston wrote a mask in her honour, containing some verses resembling those of Arcades.

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

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

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

1. 9. erst. Cp. Circumcision 2.

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

countess sat.

1. 20. Latona, the Latin name of Leto, the first wife of Zeus, or, in later legend, his mistress persecuted by Hera. She wandered about till she came to Ortygia, a floating island, whereon, after Zeus had fixed it by adamantine chains to the bottom of the sea, she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis. Cf. Paradise Lost, x. 296; and Faery Queene, ii. 12. 13.

1. 21. Cybele was an ancient Asiatic goddess, bearing the title of the Mother of the Gods. The Greeks identified her with their Rhea, daughter of Uranos and Ge (Heaven and Earth), wife of Chronos (Time), and mother of Zeus and Hera. She was worshipped with wild orgies and enthusiastic dances by armed priests. The epithet towered ' is explained by these lines of Spenser (Faery Queene, iv. 11. 28): 'Old Cybele, arrayed with pompous pride, Wearing a diademe embattild wide

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

That was to weet the famous Troynovant (London)

In which her kingdomes throne is chiefly resiant.'

1. 23. i. e, Juno durst not meet her on equal terms, by setting aside

her own divinity; as Falstaff was desired to lay his knighthood and his soldiership aside' (2 Henry IV, i. 2). Cp. Wither's expression

And without respect of odds,

Vie renown with demigods.' (Mistress of Philarete.)

1. 26. gentle, here emphatic, ' of gentle blood.'

1. 27.

Disguised glory shineth in his eyes.'

(Sylvester, Du Bartas.)

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

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

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

1. 49. Cp. Comus 269.

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

(Spanish Tragedy.)

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

1. 51. thunder, here for thunderbolt' or 'lightning,' both which meanings are taken by fulmen.' Thwarting twisting, zig-zag. Cp. cross blue lightning' (Julius Cæsar, i. 3).

1. 58. Cp. L'Allegro 56. The Squire's horn in Spenser (Faery Queene, i. 8. 3) hangs in twisted gold and tassels gay.'

1. 60. Cp. Comus 526. In both passages the word murmurs is used as equivalent to charms.' See note on Sonnet iii. 5.

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

1. 69. daughters of Necessity, the Fates, so called by Plato (Republic, x. ad fin.). Necessity holds a spindle of adamant, and with her daughters she presides over the courses of the heavenly bodies. Nine Muses sit above the spheres, which in their revolutions produce the most ravishing harmony. To this harmony sing the Fates. Meanwhile, the spindle placed on the lap of Necessity is also turning. The music of the spheres, inaudible to men, consists of eight melodies, of which the music of the ninth sphere is the diapason or concentus. (Warton.) Cp. Solemn Music 6 (note).

1. 73. Cp. Lorenzo's speech, immediately before the entrance of the musicians (Merchant of Venice, v. 1), and Solemn Music 26.