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representations at least, the goddess of all kinds of nocturnal ghastliness, such as spectral sights, the howlings of dogs, haunted spots, the graves of the murdered, witches at their incantations.

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139. "The nice Morn on the Indian steep." In this exquisite picture "nice" means dainty" or "fastidious as to what she saw"; and the word must have come with a touch of sarcasm from Comus.

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141. descry": reveal, describe; a common Spenserian sense of the word.

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153, 154. Thus I hurl," etc. At this point imagine the actor who personated Comus flinging from his hand, or making a gesture of flinging, a magical powder, with the result, by some stage-device, of a flash of coloured light. 166-169. "I shall appear," etc. It is rather difficult to decide what should be the text of this passage. In the edition of 1645 it stood

"I shall appear som harmles Villager

Whom thrift keeps up about his Country gear,

But here she comes, I fairly step aside

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In the Edition of 1673 the passage stood thus :

"I shall appear some harmles Villager
And hearken, if I may, her busines here.
But here she comes, I fairly step aside."

But there is a direction among the Errata of this edition to
leave out the comma after " may " in the second of these
lines and to change "here" in the same line into "hear."-
I rather think the reading of the Second edition as amended
was what Milton finally resolved on, as it ends Comus's
speech abruptly with a line left unrhymed; but, as the
omission of a line would disturb uniformity of numbering
with all extant editions, I retain the reading of the First
edition, only giving that edition the superfluous benefit of
the Erratum in the Second.

175. "granges," granaries, farm-steads (granum, grain). 188-190. "when the grey-hooded Even,

Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed, Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phœbus' wain." If this fine image is optically realized, what we see is

Evening succeeding Day as the figure of a venerable greyhooded mendicant might slowly follow the wheels of some rich man's chariot.

205-209. "A thousand fantasies begin to throng into my memory, of calling shapes," etc. As the Lady here expressly says that she began to think of all the weird stories of supernatural sights and sounds she had ever read or heard of, so Milton too may be supposed to draw on his memory of books in the description. Mr. Browne's remark that "the Tempest may well have suggested the whole imagery" is to the point.

225. "And casts." We should now write "And cast." See Essay on Milton's English, p. 196.

231. "thy airy shell," the hollow vault of the atmosphere. 232. "Meander's margent green." Mr. Keightley suggests. that Mæander, the river in Asia Minor so celebrated for its windings, may have been here selected as one of Echo's haunts for that very reason.

237. "thy Narcissus": the youth for whose love Echo pined away till only her voice was left, and who was afterwards punished for his insensibility by being made to fall in love with his own image in a fountain, and at length turned into the flower that bears his name.

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241. Daughter of the Sphere." Music, i. 2.

Compare At a Solemn

244-248. "Can any mortal mixture," etc. In the performance at Ludlow this, besides its relation to the story, would come as a compliment to the Lady Alice's singing.

248. "his hidden residence." One of the most striking possible instances of Milton's abstinence from the mongrel word its. The antecedent to which "his" refers is " something holy"; and we should inevitably have written its.

252-257. "I have oft heard," etc. In the Odyssey the Sirens or Singing Maidens who lured mariners to their destruction are not companions of Circe. But Circe sang herself, and had Naiads, or fountain-nymphs, among her handmaidens, who helped her to cull her herbs.

257-259. "Scylla. . . and fell Charybdis," etc. Homer places the island of the Sirens to the south-west of Italy, not far from Scylla and Charybdis.

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258. "barking waves. A translation of Virgil's "latrantibus undis" (Æn. vII. 588).

267, 268. "Unless the goddess that in rural shrine

Dwell'st here."

Two deviations from normal English syntax here; for the regular construction would be "Unless thou be the goddess that in rural shrine dwells here."

271. "ill is lost": a Latin idiom, as Mr. Keightley points out, -"male perditur": "there is little loss in losing."

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287. "Imports their loss, beside the present need?" Apart from the present inconvenience, would their loss be of importance ?"

293. "swinked," laboured, fatigued.

297-304. "Their port was more than human," etc. Note in this passage the cleverly-introduced compliment to the two boys, Lord Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, who were about to come on the stage.

299. "the element," i.e. the sky or air. Twelfth Night, I. I, has—

"The element itself, till seven years' heat,

Shakespeare,

Shall not behold her face at ample view."

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In the same play (III. 1) the Clown says to Viola, "Who you are and what you would are out of my welkin; I might say 'element,' but the word is over-worn.' 301. "dwe-strook." See note, Ode Nat. 95. 317, 318. "or the low-roosted lark

From her thatched pallet rouse.' On this passage Mr. Keightley comments thus :-"The ideas here belong rather to a hen-house than to the restingplace of the lark, which has no thatch over it, and in which, as it is on the ground, he does not roost. Milton, whose mornings were devoted to study rather than to rambles in the fields, does not seem to have known much of the habits of the lark. Compare L'Allegro, v. 41." Now, as we have seen that the charge of incorrect description, and ignorance of the habits of the lark, deduced from the passage in L'Allegro so referred to, arises from a gross misreading of the passage and neglect of its obvious syntax (see note on the passage), so here we believe the repeated charge springs equally from a misapprehension. Roost, though it has come to mean to rest on trees or on timberjoists, contains in it not the less the general sense of “rest”;

and by "the low-roosted lark" Milton means simply "the lark in her low resting-place." The very phrase calls attention to the fact that the lark does not roost on trees like other birds, but has a nest on the ground. As for "thatched" applied to this nest or "pallet," surely the texture of the nest itself, or the corn-stalks or rushes over it, might be called "the thatch." Few birds, except those in the "hen-house," have a thatch over them in any other

sense.

323-327. "courtesy, which oft is sooner found," etc. Though the word courtesy is derived from court, yet, says the Lady, the thing is not always so readily found now in courts as in humbler places. Here she differs from Spenser, as quoted by Newton :

"Of Court it seems men Courtesie do call,

For that it there most useth to abound."

F. Q., VI. i. I.

341, 342. "our star of Arcady, or Tyrian Cynosure." For Cynosure see note, L'Alleg. 80. It was the Phoenician mariners that steered by that constellation, and hence it is called Tyrian. The Greek mariners steered by the adjacent constellation of the Greater Bear, and "star of Arcady" here means any conspicuous star in that constellation. it was the nymph Callisto, daughter of the Arcadian king Lycaon, that was turned into the Great Bear, and called Arctos, while it was her son Arcas that was whirled up beside her as the Lesser Bear or Tyrian Cynosure.

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370. "(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not.)" In very strict syntax "not being" would cling to "want as its substantive; but the phrase passes for the Latin ablative absolute.

380. "all to-ruffled." In Milton's own texts this phrase is printed without any hyphen as three distinct words, "all to ruffl'd": and, as that does not make sense in our present printing, the question has arisen whether the reading should be all too ruffled (i.e. "all too much ruffled," as in such phrases as "all too sad to tell "), or "all-to ruffled" (where all-to would be an old adverb meaning completely), or "all to-ruffled" (where "to-ruffled" would be taken as the participle of a verb compounded of the simple verb and the intensifying prefix to, and meaning "to ruffle greatly "). Something

may be said for each reading; but, on the whole, the last may be chosen. In the authorised English Bible of 1611 (Judges ix. 53) we read "And a certain woman cast a millstone upon Abimelech's head and all to-brake his skull" (i.e. smashed, broke to pieces); and other instances are found of verbs with the intensifying prefix to. See Dr. Aldis Wright's Bible Word-Book, Art. "All-to"; and Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, pars. 280, 436.

382. "i' the centre," i.e. as if at the centre of the Earth, which, according to the old Ptolemaic astronomy, was also the central and one steady point of the whole Universe. The idea came easily to Milton; but centre in this sense, or in the sense of the Earth itself, was a common one. Thus, in Hamlet, 11. 2, Polonius says:

"I will find

Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the centre."

393-395. "the fair Hesperian tree," etc.

The golden

apples of Juno were in charge of the nymphs called the Hesperides, and were watched in their gardens by the sleepless dragon Ladon. It was one of the labours of Hercules to slay the dragon and obtain the apples.

395. "unenchanted" in the sense of " incapable of being enchanted." See note, L'Allegro, 40.

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401. Danger will wink on Opportunity." A quaint metaphor. The image suggested is that of a sentry, who has been set to prevent people from going a particular road, winking to some friend of his who breaks the prohibition, and letting him pass as if he did not see him.

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420. 'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity." The passage which begins here and ends at line 475 is a concentrated expression of the moral of the whole Masque, and an exposition also of a cardinal idea of Milton's philosophy.

421. "complete steel." The accent is on the first syllable of complete, as it also is in the line from Hamlet, I. 4, where the same phrase occurs.

426. "bandite or mountaineer." Bandite, so spelt in Milton's editions, and probably rather a new word about Milton's time, is from the Italian bandito, an outlaw (literally "declared under ban"). Mountaineer: Warton notes the fact that this word had a bad sense, like bandit. See

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