170. "spell": read, construe, get at the sense of, by putting together the letters. 174, 175. "These pleasures,” etc. 151, 152. See note to L'Allegro, ARCADES. 8-13. "Fame, that . . . erst," etc. For the antecedents of the aged Countess Derby see Introd. pp. 20-25. 20-25. "the wise Latona... or the towered Cybele," etc. Latona or Leto preceded Juno as the wife of Jupiter, and was the mother of Apollo and Diana. Cybele, otherwise Rhea or Berecynthia, was the wife of Saturn, and mother of the great gods, Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Pluto, Vesta, and Ceres. She was called "the great Idæan mother of the gods," and in her images she wears a diadem from which three towers rise over the forehead. Observe how gracefully, in his choice of goddesses to be named, Milton alludes to the age of the Countess of Derby. Observe also the implied compliment, that even the handsomest of her daughters could hardly keep up with her. 26. "GEN. Stay, gentle swains," etc. It is a fair surmise that THE GENIUS OF THE WOOD was personated by Henry Lawes. (See Introd.) He first addresses the or young gentlemen of the masque. swains," 30, 31. "Divine Alpheus," etc. Alpheus or Alpheius was a river in Arcadia. The legend was that a youthful hunter of that name had been in love with the nymph Arethusa, and that, when she fled from him to the island of Ortygia, on the coast of Sicily, he was turned into a river, pursued her in that guise by a secret channel under the sea, and, rising again in Ortygia, became one with her in a well or fountain there, called Arethusa after her. 33. "silver-buskined Nymphs": the lady-performers, wearing buskins, like Diana and her wood-nymphs. 66 47. wanton windings wove." Notice the alliteration. 52. "the cross dire-looking planet." Saturn. See note to Pens. 43. 57. "tasselled horn": the horn of the huntsman, which had tassels hung to it. 63-73. "the celestial Sirens' harmony,” etc. Another of those passages in which Milton employs the language of the Ptolemaic system of the Cosmos, and shows also his delight in the Pythagorean sub-notion called the Music of the Spheres. See Introd. to P. L. pp. 37-43, and Od. Nat. 125132, with note there. In the present passage, as in that, he is content with nine of the spheres; but the reason is now plain. It is only "the nine infolded spheres" that are concerned in the production of the music of the universe, the tenth, outmost, or Primum Mobile, having apparently a sufficient function in containing them all and protecting them from Chaos. On each of the inner nine sits a Muse or Siren; and these nine Sirens are singing harmoniously on their revolving spheres all the while that the three Fates are turning the spindle of Necessity. This very spindle of Necessity goes round to the tune of the music that lulls the Fates as they turn it. In all this description, Milton, as Warton pointed out, had in view an extraordinary passage in Plato's Republic (Book x. ch. 14). In Plato, of course, there are only eight spheres. 72, 73. "which none can hear of human mould with gross unpurgèd ear." So in Shakespeare's well-known speech of Lorenzo to Jessica on the same "music of the spheres " (M. of Ven., v. I) :— "But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it." 75. "height"; so spelt here in the First and Second editions, though usually "highth" in Milton. The "her" following probably made the sound of highth objectionable. 81. "glittering state." "State" here in its old sense of "chair of state." 96-109. Ladon was a river in Arcadia; Lycæus, Cyllene, and Manalus, were mountains in the same; and Erymanthus was an Arcadian river-god. Of Pan and his Syrinx all have heard. 2. AT A SOLEMN MUSIC. "Sphere-born." In Comus (241) Echo is called "Daughter of the Sphere."- -6. "concent," from the Latin concentus, "singing together," or harmony.phire-coloured throne," etc. Ezek. i. 26; —7—16. "sapRev. v. II and vi. 9. -20. "nature's chime." Warton quotes the exact phrase from Ben Jonson.- -23. "perfect diapason." Diapason (literally "through all") is, in music, "the octave or interval which includes all the notes of the scale."-28. "Consort": the word is so spelt in both Milton's own editions, and not "concert" as in some modern ones. Consortium, in Latin, means "society." ON TIME. 3. "Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace," i.e. the slow rate of descent of the leaden weights in a clock. The lines, as the draft of them among the Cambridge MSS. shows, were written "to be set on a clock-case." Compare Shakespeare's Sonnet lxxvii.- -12. "individual" means here "indivisible," never to be separated. See Par. Lost, IV. 486, VII. 382, and XII. 85.- -18. " happy-making sight": "the plain English," says Newton, "of Beatific Vision.". 21. "Attired with stars." Either "clothed with stars," or, as Mr. Keightley suggests, "crowned with stars. He produces instances of "attire" meaning head-dress. 66 UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. I-5. Ye flaming Powers," etc. The "flaming Powers” are the Seraphim (which name in Hebrew implies “burning"); the "wingèd Warriors" may be the Cherubim. Gabriel is styled the "wingèd warrior," Par. Lost, IV. 576. Todd quotes from Tasso the very phrase "winged warriors" ("guerrieri alati”). -6—9. “if... your fiery essence can distil no tear, burn in your sighs," etc.: i.e. "if it is impossible for your Angelic constitutions, formed as they are of fire, to yield tears, yet, by burning as you sigh, you may borrow the water of our tears, turned into vapour.""whilere": a little while ago.- -15, 16. “O more exceeding love," etc. This begins the second stanza of the piece; but the stanzas are not separated in the original editions. COMUS. -IO. 9, 10. "the crown that Virtue gives, after this mortal change." See Rev. iv. 4. The meaning of "mortal change" is a little obscure. Hastily it may be read as if it meant "death"; but rather it seems to mean "this mortal state of life." II. "Amongst the enthroned gods": spelt enthron'd in the First and Second editions, and therefore to be pronounced as a dissyllable and not enthroned. 16. "ambrosial weeds." Though, from the special use of ambrosia as the name for the food of the gods, we are apt to confine the adjective ambrosial to the sense of "delicious," it really means "immortal"; whence "celestial." 20, 21. "Took in, by lot 'twixt high and nether Jove, imperial rule," etc. Homer calls Hades or Pluto Ζεύς καταχθόνιος, οι underground Jove" (Iliad, ix. 457); and Ovid has the phrase "Jupiter Stygius." The distribution of rule among Jupiter, Pluto, and Neptune, after Saturn's overthrow, is described by Neptune himself in the Iliad (xv. 190 et seq.). 23. 27. "unadornèd": for "otherwise unadorned." 29. "He quarters to his blue-haired deities." There seems to be some emphasis on the phrase "blue-haired deities," as if these were a special section of the "tributary gods" of line 24. Can there be a recollection of "blue" as the British colour, inherited from the old times of the bluestained Britons who fought with Cæsar ? 30. "this tract that fronts the falling sun." West Britain. 66 Wales or 31-33. A noble Peer," etc. The Earl of Bridgewater. See Introd. 33. "An old and haughty nation," i.e. the Welsh. Milton, like Shakespeare, had a kindness for this people. 45. "hall or bower," a frequent phrase with Spenser and the minstrel-poets : "hall" being the great general room in princely residences, and "bower" the private apart ment. 46-50. "Bacchus," etc. The story of the voyage of Bacchus along the Tyrrhene shore, and of the seizure of him by pirates there, who were transformed into dolphins for this act of impiety, is told in the Homeric hymn to Bacchus and in Ovid's Metam. iii. The bringing of Bacchus, after this adventure, to Circe's island of Ææa, off the Latian coast, is Milton's invention, with a view to the parentage he had resolved on for Comus. The visit of Ulysses to the island is a famous incident of the Odyssey. 50-53. "Who knows not Circe?" etc. She was the daughter of Helios (the Sun) by an ocean-nymph; and the Odyssey tells how, by her enchantments, she turned mortals into bestial shapes and kept them on her island. 54-58. "This Nymph...had by him. . . a son... Comus named." On referring to L'Allegro, 14-16, it will be seen that, if Milton adheres to the first of his two alternative genealogies for Euphrosyne, or Innocent Mirth, then Comus, the god of sensual Delirium, was her half-brother. Bacchus was the father of both; but the respective mothers were the good-tempered Queen Venus and Circe the island-witch. Milton may have had a meaning in this. 60. "the Celtic and Iberian fields." Gaul and Spain. 61. "this ominous wood," i.e. this wood in Shropshire, on the Welsh border, full of omens, or magical appear ances. 65. "orient liquor": literally "eastern," but derivatively "bright," "splendid," as in Par. Lost, 1. 546. 66. "drouth": so in Milton's own editions, not "drought," as in some later. Here 72. "All other parts remaining as they were." Milton deviates from the representation in the Odyssey, where the whole bodies of Circe's victims are changed into brute-forms. It is an acute remark of Newton that the deviation served stage-purposes. 73-77. And they. not once perceive their foul disfigurement, but," etc. Another deviation, as Newton noted, from the Homeric account. There Circe's victims "had the heads, and voice, and hairs, and body of swine, but their understandings were firm as before." In making the effect of Comus's transformations different in this respect from his mother's Milton had a meaning. Once he had adopted the difference, however, Homer's description of the Lotos-eaters (Od., ix. 94 et seq.) and Plato's ethical application of the same (Rep., viii. 13) may have helped him in the rest of the passage. "Whoever ate of the pleasant fruit of the lotos no longer wished to bring back news, nor to return home, but preferred to remain there with the Lotophagi, eating lotos, and to be forgetful of return." So says Homer; and Plato speaks of the moral lotophagus, or youth |