The labouring clouds do often rest; Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes liveries, as if attending the king of day at his coming forth in state procession from the eastern gate. 67. Tells his tale.] This has been supposed to mean tells the number of his flock, counts his sheep; which seems an explanation much more appropriate to the occasion than tells his story. 75 80 85 80. The Cynosure.] The lodestar or pole-star. See Note on l. 341, of the Comus. 83. Corydon and Thyrsis.] These are names of rustic swains; and Phyllis and Thestylis afterwards occurring, names of rustic maids; all borrowed from Virgil's 2nd and 7th Eclogues. Or if the earlier season lead Till the live-long daylight fail. 89. Or if the earlier season, &c.] Here is an example of the perplexed syntax too frequent in Milton. The conjunction or connects the verb leaves with two dissimilar adverbial clauses, one of purpose, another of concession. Phyllis leaves her bower in order to bind the harvest sheaves, or she leaves it if the earlier season lead to the hay-stack in the meadow. 91. Secure delight.] The word secure here means setting care aside; the poet being about to describe the festivities of a sunshine holiday,' probably those of the harvest-home. 94. Rebecks.] The rebeck was a sort of fiddle with three strings, played on with a bow, and adapted chiefly for jocund or merry music; hence Drayton, Eclog. He turned his rebeck to a mournful note. 96. Chequered shade.] Shakspeare in Titus Andronicus, ii. 4, says: She was pinched and pulled, she said; And bid him eat. Spenser's F. Q. V. iv. 49. 103. She was pinched, &c.] One of the wenches told how she was pinched by the fairies; and then one of the swains, having told how he had been drawn out of his way by Friar Rush's lantern, goes on to tell, &c. Keightley, in his Fairy Mythology, p. 347, says of the phrase 'friar's lantern,' 'This is a palpable mistake of the poet's. The Friar is the celebrated Friar Rush, who haunted houses, not fields, and was never the same with Jack-o'-the-Lanthorn. It was probably the name Rush, which suggested rushlight, that caused Milton's error.' Keightley refers to a similar error in Sir Walter Scott's Marmion. See, in the next Note, a quotation from Harsenet, with which Keightley compares this part of L'Allegro. Many of the old poets refer to the circumstance of fairies pinching sluttish maids. 105. The drudging goblin.] The word goblin is derived from kobold, the German name of a house-haunting spirit. The drudging goblin' here mentioned is Puck, or Robin Goodfellow. Shakspeare makes him clown or jester to Oberon the 105 fairy-king, as being sometimes called Lob and Lob-lie-by-the-fire; the word lob signifying clown or fool. From lob is derived lubber, the epithet used by Milton in 7. 110. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, i. 2, speaking of fairies, says: 'A bigger kind there is of them, called with us Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that would, in those superstitious times, grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work.' Harsenet, in his Declaration, ch. 20, says: 'And if that the bowl of curds and cream were not duly set out for Robin Goodfellow, the friar, and Sisse the dairy-maid, why, then either the pottage was burned the next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head.' In Shakspeare's Mids. Night's Dream, ii. 1, a fairy says to Puck: Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern, And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn, And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm, Misleads night wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck. When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, Ere the first cock his matin rings. Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, 110 115 120 125 110. The lubber-fiend.] A lob or lubber is a heavy clownish fellow; but the Puck or Robin Goodfellow of the Midsummer Night's Dream is a small and nimble sprite, though a fairy calls him lob of spirits. As, however, the jester in the old drama was called the clown, Shakspeare may have meant by the word lob to refer to Puck as King Oberon's fool or jester: I jest to Oberon and make him smile,' says Puck to the fairy, Act ii. sc. 2. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, iii. 1, there is mention of a drowsy giant, a witch's son that was called Lob-lie-by-the-fire;' and perhaps Milton may have confounded that lubber-fiend with Robin Goodfellow. 113. And crop-full, &c.] And having filled his crop, he rushes out before cock-crowing. 117. Towered cities, &c.] Then, or at other times, we would seek pleasure in cities. 122. Judge the prize, &c.] Award prizes to the best competitors in literary and martial skill. 126. In saffron robe, &c.] In B. Jonson's Hymenæi, or Solemnities of Mask and Barriers at a Marriage, we have Hymen de And pomp, and feast, and revelry, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs Married to immortal verse; Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out; 130 135 140 scribed as entering' in a saffroncoloured robe,' and bearing 'in his right hand a torch of pinetree.' Milton here refers to such entertainments as are set forth in the Hymenæi of Jonson, and therefore calls them 'such sights as youthful poets dream,' &c. 132. Jonson's learned sock.] The comic actors in ancient times wore a kind of shoe called the sock, the tragic actors a kind of boot called the buskin; hence the sock and buskin are representative names for comedy and tragedy. Jonson, as a dramatist, was distinguished for learning. The superiority of natural genius in Shakspeare's comedy is referred to in lines 133-4; and in the Epitaph on Shakspeare, Milton says, To the shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow. 135. Eating cares.] What Horace, Od. I. xviii. 4, calls mordaces solicitudines.' 136. Lap me, &c.] When eating cares would assail me, lap or absorb my soul in soft Lydian airs. Of the three chief musical modes or measures among the ancients, the Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian, the first was majestic, the second sprightly, the third amorous or tender. 137. Married to immortal verse.] This idea occurs in older poets. Our author, in his ode At a solemn Music, bids Voice and Verse wed their divine sounds. 138. Such as the meeting soul, fc.] Such as may penetrate the soul that encounters it, or is attracted by it. 139. Bout.] The Anglo-Saxon word bought is a fold, something bowed or bent. Spenser, in the Faerie Queene, I. i. 15, says of the monster Error, Her huge long tail her den all overspread Yet was in knots and many boughts upwound. |