56. "Weept." So in original editions.

56. "Helicon": here used in its proper sense as the name of a mountain-range, or mountainous tract of country in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses, and in one spot of which was the fountain of Aganippe, which inspired those that drank of it. By mistake, Helicon became, with many poets, the name of this fountain, or of a river.

58.

hearse" not in our sense of a carriage for the dead, but in the older sense of a tomb, or framework over a tomb.

59. "Sent thee from the banks of Came": i.e. from Cambridge. The passage suggests that Milton's Elegy was but one of a number written, and perhaps printed, at Cambridge on the occasion; but no such volume is now known. (See Introd.)

62-70. "Next her . . . that fair Syrian Shepherdess," &c. i.e. Rachel, Jacob's wife. See Gen. xxix., xxx., and xxxv. 16—20.

74. "No Marchioness, but now a Queen." Todd detects a reference in this and the preceding three lines to the story of Anne Boleyn's last message to Henry VIII., thanking him for advancing her first to be a Marchioness, then a Queen, and lastly a Saint in Heaven.

ADDITIONAL NOTE.-The only important various reading presented by the interesting contemporary MS. copy of this Poem in the British Museum volume mentioned in the Introduction (Vol. II. p. 202, Note), occurs immediately after line 14. Instead of our present text from line 14 to line 24 the MS. has the following:

"... to her life.

Seven times had the yearlie starre
In everie signe sett upp his carr
Since for her they did request

The god that sitts at marriage feast,
When first the earlie matrons runne
To greet her of her lovelie sonne.
And now," &c.

If this is what Milton originally wrote, we can see how he improved the passage on revision.

L'ALLEGRO.

1-3. "Melancholy, of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born in Stygian cave." In the classic mythology it is Erebos, or Darkness, son of Chaos, that is the original husband of his sister Nyx or Night, their offspring being Aether (Sky) and Hemera (Day). But, in the same mythology, Night, quite apart from Erebos, is made the mother of

many other gruesome or mysterious beings, such as Thanatos (Death), Hypnos (Sleep), Nemesis, &c. Poets, accordingly, have added at will to her progeny by various husbands or without husband. Thus Spenser (Teares of the Muses) makes Ignorance one of her children, by her own son Sloth ::

"Ignorance,

Borne in the bosom of the black Abysse,
And fed with Furies' milk for sustenance
Of his weake infancie, begot amisse

By yawning Sloth on his owne mother Night."

Knowing all this, Milton chose to wed Cerberus to Night for the production of Melancholy. Some commentators have thought the conjunction inappropriate; and Mr. Keightley, to justify it, suggests that Milton "had in view the ordinary derivation of Cerberus, Kip-ẞoρós, heart-devouring." Perhaps ; but, without any such particularizing, was it not poetical enough to think of Melancholy as the child of Night and the Hell-dog?

6. "his jealous wings." To explain the epithet "jealous" here, Warburton supposes an allusion to "the watch which fowls keep when they are sitting."

7. "the night-raven sings." The raven, from its black colour, its solitary habits, and its harsh croaking voice, has always figured as a bird of ill omen; and in the idea of the "night-raven," heard in the darkness, this is intensified. The word occurs in Milton only in this passage; and the similar words "night-hag" and "night-steeds" also occur only once (Par Lost, II. 662, and Od. Nat. 236). Shakespeare has the "night-raven " in one passage : "I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief; I had as lief have heard the night-raven" (Much Ado about Nothing, II. 3). Among the night-fowls and solitary birds in Sylvester's Du Bartas (5th Day of Week I.) are

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"The Skritch Owl, used in falling towers to lodge,

Th' unlucky Night-Raven."

8, 9. "rocks, as ragged as thy locks." Whether "ragged" and "rugged" are only forms of the same word is disputed; some holding that 'rugged" is from the root of the word rough (A.-S. hruh), and that this is distinct from A.-S. hracian, to tear, hracod, torn, whence "rag" and ragged" are derived. The epithet "ragged" for rocks was not unfrequent. See Isaiah ii. 21, and Shaks. 3 Henry VI., V. 4. The word occurs but once in Milton's poetry-i.e. only in this passage; the word "rugged" occurs six times.

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แ

IO. "dark Cimmerian desert." In the Odyssey the Cimmerians are described as a people dwelling "beyond the ocean-stream," in a land of perpetual darkness; and, though they are known afterwards as a historical people, figuring round and near the Black Sea (whence the

name Crimea), this legendary idea of them and their country was perpetuated by the poets, so that the phrase "Cimmerian darkness became hackneyed. The word occurs but in this passage in Milton's poetry.

II, 12. "thou Goddess fair and free, in heaven yclept Euphrosyne.” Warton and Todd quote several examples from our old poets of the conjunction of the epithets "fair" and "free" as denoting grace in women; the most apt of which in this connexion is one from Drayton (Ecl. iv.) :

"He had, as antique stories tell,

A daughter cleped Dowsabell,
A maiden fair and free."

The word "yclept" (the old past participle of the verb clepe "to call,” from the A.-S. clepan) occurs only in this passage in all Milton's poetry, and is spelt yeleap'd in the editions of 1645 and 1673. He uses the old verbal prefix y only twice besides-in the word ychained (Od. Nat. 155), and in the term star-ypointing (On Shakespeare).-EUPHROSYNE (i.e. Mirth or Cheerfulness), in the classic mythology, was one of the three Graces.

14-23. "Whom lovely Venus," &c. The two sister Graces of Euphrosyne were AGLAIA (Brightness) and THALIA (Bloom), and the parentage of the three is given variously in the old mythology. Most commonly they are represented as the daughters of Zeus by Hera, or by one of several other goddesses, among whom Venus or Aphrodite is not mentioned. But Milton is his own mythologist here. He invents an option of two pedigrees for Euphrosyne. Either she is the daughter of Bacchus and Venus, born at one birth with the other Graces, Aglaia and Thalia-i.e. Cheerfulness may spring from Wine and Love; or, preferably, and by an airier and purer origin, she is the child of Aurora (the Dawn) begotten in early summer by Zephyr (the West Wind)-i.e. it is the early freshness of the summer morning that best produces Cheerfulness.

17. "(as some sager sing)." So in the original editions; corrupted into "sages" in some later ones.

18. "frolic wind." Our customary adjective now is frolicsome, and frolic is generally used as a substantive; but Milton's use of frolic here as an adjective is quite correct. It is the same as the German fröhlich (cheerful, gay-like). On the only other occasion on which the word occurs in Milton's poetry (Comus, 59) it is also an adjective.

22. "fresh-blown roses washed in dew." Shakespeare, as Bowle noted, has nearly the same: "morning roses newly washed in dew" (Tam. of the Shrew, II. 1).

24. "So buxom, blithe, and debonair." The combination of two of these adjectives is found by Warton in Shakespeare's line, "So buxom,

blithe, and full of face" (Gower's prologue in Pericles, Act I.); and all three are found by Todd in the Aristippus of Thomas Randolph, published in 1635-"to make one blithe, buxome, and deboneer." Buxom means originally "flexible" or "easily bowed," from A.-S. beogan, to bow; hence " lively," or "lithe," and so to "handsome," though at present the word, by a forgetfulness of its original meaning, rather implies a stout kind of handsomeness. Milton uses it but twice -in its original sense in P. L. II. 842, and here in its nearest derivative sense. Blithe ("merry or gay"), an old English, or A.-S. word, is now mainly provincial or Scottish. Debonair, from the French (de bon air, good-looking), is a favourite word with the old Romancers.

27, 28.

Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,

Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles."

Quip is a smart or cutting saying, and is supposed to be the same etymologically as whip. Richardson, in his Dictionary, quotes a passage much to the point from Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe, III. 2 :—

"Manes. We cynicks are mad fellows; didst thou not find I did quip thee? Psyi. No verily why, what's a quip?

Manes. We great girders call it a short saying of a sharp wit, with a bitter sense in a sweet word."

Shakespeare, who uses the word again and again, has an excellent concrete illustration of it in Merry Wives of Windsor, I. 3 :—

"Falstaff. My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.

Pistol. Two yards, and more.
Falstaff. No quips now,
Pistol !

Crank is literally a crook or bend: hence a "crank" in the sense o an iron rod bent into an elbow as in machinery, or a "crank " in the sense of the word in this passage-i.e. an odd turn of speech.-Wile is a trick, and the same word as guile.-A beck (to beckon) is a sign either with the finger or with the head-in which latter case it includes a nod. See the word Par. Reg., II. 238. Smiles are called wreathed because they curl or wreathe the features.-Warton supposes Milton to have remembered this line in a stanza in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy

33, 34.

"With becks, and nods, and smiles again."

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Come, and trip it, as you go,

On the light fantastic toe."

In The Tempest, Act I. sc. 1, Ariel says to Prospero, who has ordered him to summon the other Spirits of the Island

VOL. III.

"Before you can say 'come' and 'go,'

And breathe twice, and say 'so, so,'

Each one, tripping on his toe,

Will be here with mop and mow."

BB

Newton, pointing out that Milton may have had this passage in his mind, made the guess likelier by misquoting and abbreviating the passage thus, as if it were Ariel's address to the Spirits :

"Come and go,

Each one tripping on his toe."

In this misquotation later commentators have followed Newton.

40. "unreproved" in the sense of unreproveable or innocent. So in other cases in Milton, e.g. "unvalued," for "not to be valued" or priceless, in the lines On Shakespeare.

45-48. Then to come, in spite of sorrow, and at my window,” &c. This passage has been strangely misconstrued by some commentators, and a charge against Milton founded on the misconstruction. The sky-lark, they have told us, never comes to people's windows, to bid them good-morrow through the sweet-briar, the vine, the eglantine, or anything else; and, in making it do so, Milton showed that he did not so much observe nature at first hand as fancy her through books! If the commentators had hesitated a little, they would have avoided this nonsense. It is not the lark at all that Milton makes come to the window and bid good-morrow, and by no possibility could that absurdity fit with the syntax of the passage. By the syntax, as well as by the sense, it is L'Allegro, the cheerful youth (Milton himself, we may suppose), that comes to the window and salutes people. The words "Then to come" in line 45 refer back to, and depend upon, the previous words " Mirth, admit me" of line 38. Milton, or whoever the imaginary speaker is, asks Mirth to admit him to her company and that of the nymph Liberty, and to let him enjoy the pleasures natural to such companionship (38-40). He then goes on to specify such pleasures, or give examples of them. The first (41-44) is that of the sensations of early morning, when, walking round a country cottage, one hears the song of the mounting skylark, welcoming the signs of sunrise. The second is that of coming to the cottage window, looking in, and bidding a cheerful good-morrow through the sweet-briar, vine, or eglantine, to those of the family who are also early astir.“ In spite of sorrow" is this merely a repetition of the opening strain of the poem, meaning generally "in defiance of Melancholy"; or may we suppose a subtle reference to some recent grief that had been in the special cottage in view, from the influence of which the inmates had hardly yet recovered? We have no right to assume the latter meaning; but it would be quite in Milton's way, and it would obviate a certain sense one might feel, on the other supposition, that the phrase had been brought in for the rhyme only.-" Sweet-briar. eglantine." As these are now, with strict botanists, names for the same plant (Rosa rubigenosa), Warton supposes that by "the twisted eglantine" Milton meant the honeysuckle; Mr. Keightley, more

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