Chapter 10
586. Shall be unsaid for me: it is not necessary for me to make any change in my opinion to make it harmonize with this new aspect of affairs.
595. Gathered like scum, and settled to itself. The two metaphors thus combined make a rather strange mixture.
598. The pillared firmament. By the _firmament_ is usually understood the sphere of the fixed stars. How to introduce the conception of _pillars_ is not clear.
604. Acheron. See Par. Lost II 578.
605. The Harpies were monstrous birds with women's heads. Their doings are described Æneid III. The Hydra was a monster serpent with a hundred heads.
607. his purchase: his acquisition.
610. I love thy courage yet, though thou hast spoken most unwisely.
611. can do thee little stead: can avail thee but little.
617. utmost shifts: most carefully devised precautions.
620. Of small regard to see to: of very insignificant appearance.
621. A virtuous plant is a plant which has virtues, i.e. powers or qualities.
624. Which when I did. The modern English has lost the power of beginning a sentence thus, with two relatives.
626. scrip, a word in no way connected with _script_.
627. And show me simples of a thousand names. Compare Hamlet IV 7 145, "no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon."
634. Unknown and like esteemed: neither known nor esteemed.
635. Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon. See 2 Henry VI. IV 2 195,--"Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon," and Hamlet IV 5 26,--"By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal shoon."
636. The story of Hermes' giving Ulysses the Moly read in Odyssey X. "Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from the ground, and he showed me the growth thereof. It was black at the root, but the flower was like to milk. Moly the gods call it, but it is hard for mortal men to dig; howbeit with the gods all things are possible."
638. He called it Hæmony. _Hæmony_ is a nonce-word of Milton's own coining. He may have derived it from a Greek word meaning _skilful_ or from another meaning _blood_.
640. mildew blast, or damp. _Blast_ is defined by Dr. Murray: "A sudden infection destructive to vegetable or animal life (formerly attributed to the blowing or breath of some malignant power, foul air, etc.)"; and _damp_: "An exhalation, a vapor or gas, of a noxious kind."
641. Or ghastly Furies' apparition: or the appearance of terrifying ghosts.
646. Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells. _Lime_ was a viscous substance, spread upon the twigs of trees and bushes to entangle the feet of birds. The figure is frequent in Shakespeare. See Hamlet III 3 68, "O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, Art more engaged."
657. apace: quickly.
In the stage directions, goes about means, makes a movement.
661. as Daphne was, Root-bound, that fled Apollo. The great god, Apollo, pursuing the nymph Daphne, Diana saved her by transforming her into a laurel tree.
672. this cordial julep. _Julep_ is a word of Persian origin, meaning rose-water. Note the poet's skill in culling words of delicious sound.
675. Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena. See Odyssey IV: "Then Helen, daughter of Zeus, cast a drug into the wine whereof they drank, a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow.... Medicines of such virtue and so helpful had the daughter of Zeus, which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, had given her, a woman of Egypt."
685. the unexempt condition: the condition from which no one is exempt.
695. These oughly-headed monsters. Perhaps by this peculiar spelling, _oughly_, Milton meant to add to the word _ugly_ a higher degree of ugliness.
698. With vizored falsehood: falsehood with its vizor, or face-piece, down, to conceal its identity.
700. With liquorish baits. _Liquorish_, now usually spelled _lickerish_, is allied to _lecherous_, and has no connection with _liquor_ or with _liquorice_.
703. The goodness of the gift lies in the intention of the giver.
707. those budge doctors of the stoic fur. _Budge_ is defined by Dr. Murray: "Solemn in demeanor, important-looking, pompous, stiff, formal." Cowper, in his poem Conversation, has the couplet: "The solemn fop; significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge." _A doctor of the Stoic fur_ is a teacher of the Stoic philosophy, who wears a gown of the fur to which his degree of doctor entitles him.
708. fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub: teach doctrines learned from the Cynic Diogenes, who is reputed to have lived in a tub.
719. hutched: stowed or laid away, as in a chest or hutch.
721. pulse; conceived as the simplest kind of food.
722. frieze; to be pronounced _freeze_.
724. and yet: and what is yet more.
728. Who refers back to Nature.
734. they below: the people of the lower world.
737. coy. See Lycidas 18. cozened. See Merchant of Venice II 9 38.
744. It refers back to beauty.
748. homely; in the modern disparaging sense.
750. grain: color.
751. To ply, or make, a sampler, as a proof of her skill with the needle, was, until very modern times, the duty of every young girl. The old samplers are now precious heirlooms in families. to tease the huswife's wool. To _tease wool_, or to card it, was to use the teasle, or a card, to prepare it for spinning. Carding and spinning were common duties of the huswife and her daughters.
753. In what respect can tresses be said to be like the morn?
760. when vice can bolt her arguments. There are two verbs, spelled alike, _bolt_. One means to sift, and is used often of arguments and reasonings. To bolt arguments is to construct them with logical care and precision. The other _bolt_ means to shoot forth or blurt out. We may take our choice of the two words.
773. How is the line to be scanned?
780. Or have I said enow? In the edition of Comus published in 1645 this passage reads, _Or have I said enough?_ In the edition of 1673, the latest that he revised, Milton changed _enough_ to _enow_. Grammatically, _enough_ is the better form, as the Elizabethan usage favored _enough_ for the form of the adjective with singular nouns and for the adverb, and _enow_ as the adjective with plurals. It would seem that the poet must have had some motive of euphony for the change he made.
788. thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know. A Latinism: _dignus es qui non cognoscas_.
793. the uncontrolled worth Of this pure cause: the invincible power inherent in the cause by virtue of its nature.
804. Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus To some of Saturn's crew: pronounces sentence upon his foes, condemning them to the punishments named. _Erebus_--Darkness--is one of the numerous names of the lower world, the kingdom of Pluto.
808. the canon laws: the fundamental laws, or the Constitution. Canon law, generally speaking, is ecclesiastical law, or the law governing the church.
817. And backward mutters of dissevering power. The "many murmurs" with which his incantations have been mixed must be spoken backward in order to undo their effect. This backward repetition of the charm has the power to break the spell which the charm has wrought.
822. Meliboeus is yet another of the stock names of pastoral poetry.
823. The soothest shepherd. The ancient adjective _sooth_ means essentially nothing more than _true_.
826. Sabrina is her name. The story of Sabrina is told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose history is included in the volume of Bohn's Antiquarian Library, entitled _Six Old English Chronicles_. The book is easily accessible.
827. Whilom is derived from the dative plural _hwílum_ of the Old English noun _hwíl_, and originally meant _at times_.
831. What does Sabrina do in this line?
835. aged Nereus was one of the numerous Greek deities of the water. He and his wife Doris had fifty or a hundred daughters, who are called Nereids.
838. In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel. The _nectar_ of the gods, which we usually think of as their drink, was also applied to other purposes, as when Thetis anoints with it the body of Patroclus, to prevent decay. _Asphodel_ is a flower in our actual flora; but in the poets Asphodel is an immortal flower growing abundantly in the meadows of Elysium.
840. ambrosial here means, _conferring immortality_.
845. Helping all urchin blasts; _i.e._ helping the victims of the blasts against their baleful influence. See note on line 640. See Merry Wives of Windsor IV 4 49.
851. The word daffodil is directly derived from asphodel, with a _d_ unaccountably prefixed. The English daffodil is the narcissus.
858. adjuring: charging or entreating solemnly and earnestly, as if under oath.
868. Oceanus is the personified Ocean, a broad, flowing stream encircling the earth.
869. Earth-shaking is a Homeric epithet of Neptune. The mace of Neptune must be his trident.
870. Tethys is wife of Oceanus and mother of the Oceanids. She reared the great goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter. Her pace is suitable to her dignity.
871. hoary Nereus. See note on line 835.
872. the Carpathian wizard's hook. Proteus, son of Oceanus and Tethys, herded the sea-calves of Neptune on the island of Carpathus. As a herdsman he bore a crook, or _hook_. He had the gift of prophecy, and so is called a _wizard_.
873. Scaly Triton's winding shell. _Triton_ was herald of Neptune and so carried a shell, which he was wont to _wind_ as a horn. His body was in part covered with scales like those of a fish.
874. The soothsaying Glaucus was a prophet, and gave oracles at Delos. He is represented as a man whose hair and beard are dripping with water, with bristly eyebrows, his breast covered with sea-weeds, and the lower part of his body ending in the tail of a fish.
875. By Leucothea's lovely hands, And her son that rules the strands.
Ino, after she had slain herself and her son Melicertes, by leaping with him into the sea, became a protecting deity of mariners under the name Leucothea, or the white goddess. So she came to the aid of Ulysses when he was passing on his raft from Calypso's isle to Phæacia. She there appears "with fair ankles," and when she receives back from him her veil, which she had lent him, she does it with "_lovely hands_."
Melicertes becomes a protecting deity of shores, under the name Palæmon. The Romans identified him with their god Portunus.
877. By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet. Thetis was the wife of Peleus, and the mother of Achilles. In Homer she has the epithet _silver-footed_.
878. the songs of Sirens. See note on line 253.
879. By dead Parthenope's dear tomb. Parthenope was one of the Sirens. At Naples her tomb was shown.
880. And fair Ligea's golden comb. Ligea was probably also a siren. In Virgil, Georgics IV 336, we find a nymph of this name, spinning wool with other nymphs, "their bright locks floating over their snowy necks." The name Ligea means shrill-voiced.
887. In the reading make in an adverb.
892. My sliding chariot stays. Compare this use of _stay_ with that found in lines 134, 577, 820.
893. the azurn sheen. With _azurn_ compare _cedarn_, line 990.
908-909. Be careful what inflection you give these lines in the reading.
913. of precious cure: of precious power to cure.
921. To wait in Amphitrite's bower. _Amphitrite_ was a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. She was goddess of the sea, had the care of its creatures, and could stir up the waves in storm.
923. Sprung of old Anchises' line. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Brutus the Trojan was the grandson of Æneas and founder of London. Anchises, in the Homeric story, is the father of Æneas. This fable plays an important part in the ancient British myth.
924. thy brimmed waves. A river is happiest when full to its brim.
930. Of what parts of speech are torrent and flood?
933. It is very curious that our word beryl and the German _Brille_ come directly from the same source.
937. And yet this river is the English Severn!
957. Note the impressive effect of the five-foot line ending the scene.
The shepherds have their dance in rustic fashion. The words describing this dance are the familiar peasant words, jig, duck, nod. The playful tone in which the spirit calls upon the swains to give place to their betters is charming.
964. With the mincing Dryades. "The _Dryades_ were nymphs of woods and trees, dwelling in groves, ravines, and wooded valleys, and were fond of making merry with Apollo, Mercury, and Pan."
980. I suck the liquid air: I inhale the upper air,--the _æther_ _liquidus_ of the poets. So Ariel, Tempest V 1 102, "I drink the air before me."
981. the gardens fair Of Hesperus and his daughters three. The number of the Hesperides and their parentage are differently given in various legends. The story of their garden in some mysterious place in the far west, where they guarded the tree that bore the golden apples, assisted by the dragon Ladon, is one of the best known in the classic mythology.
984. Along the crisped shades and bowers. Milton applies _crisped_ to brooks, Par. Lost IV 237. Herrick has,--"the crisped yew," and the American Thoreau,--"A million crisped waves."
985. spruce. A very interesting account of the origin of this word is given by Skeat in his Etymological Dictionary.
986. The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours. See note on L'Allegro 15. "The _Graces_ were guardians of the vernal sweetness and beauty of nature, friends and protectors of everything graceful and beautiful." The _Hours_ were goddesses of the seasons, daughters of Zeus and Themis. They were the door-keepers of Olympus, whose cloud-gate they open and shut: thus they preside over the weather.
990. About the cedarn alleys: about the pathways through cedar groves. Coleridge, in Kubla Khan, has the line, "Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover"; and Tennyson, Geraint and Enid, the line,--"And moving toward a cedarn cabinet." So also William Barnes, in his Rural Poems, uses the expression, "stonen jugs."
992. Iris is the messenger of the gods: her path is the rainbow.
993. Dr. Murray gives other instances of blow as a transitive verb.
999. Adonis was a young shepherd, the special favorite of Venus. His death was caused by a wild boar. The story is told in various forms. Observe that Milton makes him wax well of his deep wound.
1002. the Assyrian queen. The worship of Aphrodite (Venus) was brought into Greece from Assyria.
1005. Holds his dear Psyche. Psyche--the personification of the human soul--was a mortal maiden, beloved of Cupid. Venus, in her jealousy of Psyche, compelled her to pass through a long series of hardships and toils. Cupid at last succeeded in reconciling his mother and his beloved, and in having _Psyche_ advanced to the dignity of an immortal.
1015. Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend: where the curvature of the vault of the sky seems less than higher up toward the zenith.
1021. the sphery chime. See notes, Hymn on the Nativity 48 and 125.
LYCIDAS.
Lycidas is Milton's contribution to a volume of elegiac verses, in Greek, Latin, and English, composed by many college friends of Edward King, who was drowned in the wreck of the vessel in which he was crossing the Irish Channel.
In its main intention, Lycidas is an elegy, because it professes to mourn one who is dead and extols his virtues. In its form it is almost wholly pastoral, because it feigns an environment of shepherds, allegorizing college life as the life of men tending flocks, and the occupations of earnest students as the careless diversions of rustic swains.
Four times the pastoral note is rudely interrupted by the intervention of majestic beings who speak in awful tones from another world, and whose voices instantly check all familiar rustic speech, compelling it to wait till they have announced their messages from above. The supernal powers who thus descend to take their parts in the office of mourning are Phoebus, Apollo, Hippotades, god of the winds, Camus, god of the river Cam, and St. Peter. This mingling of classic, Hebrew, and Christian conceptions is a marked characteristic of all Milton's poetry.
Thus Lycidas is neither wholly elegiac nor wholly pastoral. From the lips of St. Peter, typifying the church, comes a speech of violent denunciation, in the true later Miltonic manner. In strange contrast to this grim invective is the famous flower-passage, the sweetest and loveliest thing of its kind in our literature.
1-5. To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather laurels,--is to make a new venture as a poet,--to compose a poem. The berries are harsh and crude,--he shatters their leaves before the mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man, or because he feels in himself a lack of "inward ripeness" to treat his theme worthily,--perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own choosing.
6-7. A sad duty is imposed upon him, forbidding further delay on any personal grounds.
8. Lycidas is one of the stock names of pastoral poetry. The poem, though most serious in its main motive and intention, is to have a pastoral coloring throughout. Note the impressive repetitions, dead, dead, and the recurrences of the name Lycidas in the next two lines.
11. he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. Edward King had, in accordance with the college custom of his time, written verses, apparently all in Latin. Of these verses Masson, in his life of Milton, gives specimens. They seem to be commonplace.
13. and welter to the parching wind. See Par. Lost II 594, I 78.
15. Sisters of the sacred well. Ancient tradition connects the origin of the Muses with Pieria, a district of Macedonia at the foot of Olympus. But the springs with which we associate the Muses are Aganippe and Hippocrene on Mount Helicon.
19. So may some gentle muse. A peculiar use of the word _muse_ as masculine, and meaning _poet_.
23-31. We pursued the same studies, at the same college, and we studied from early morning sometimes till after midnight. The metaphors are all pastoral.
32-36. We wrote merry verse, bringing in the college jollities, in wanton student-fashion, and the good-natured old don who was our tutor affected to be pleased with our work.
34. Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel. The _Satyrs_, represented as having human forms, with small goat's horns and a small tail, had for their occupation to play on the flute for their master, Bacchus, or to pour his wine. The _Fauns_ were sylvan deities, attendants of Pan, and are represented, like their master, with the ears, horns, and legs of a goat.
37-49. Nature herself sympathizes with men, and mourns thy loss.
50. Nymphs: deities of the forests and streams.
52. on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie. The shipwreck in which King was lost took place off the coast of Wales. Any one of the Welsh mountains will serve to make good this allusion.
54. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high. _Mona_ is the ancient and poetical name of the island of Anglesea.
55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. The Dee (Deva) below Chester expands into a broad estuary. In his lines spoken At a Vacation Exercise, Milton, characterizing many rivers, mentions the "ancient hallowed Dee." The country about the Dee had been specially famous as the seat of the old Druidical religion. In the eleventh Song of his Polyolbion, Drayton eulogizes the medicinal virtues of the salt springs in the valley of the river Weever, which attract Thetis and the Nereids:--
And Amphitrite oft this Wizard River led Into her secret walks (the depths profound and dread) Of him (supposed so wise) the hid events to know Of things that were to come, as things done long ago. In which he had been proved most exquisite to be; And bare his fame so far, that oft twixt him and Dee, Much strife there hath arose in their prophetic skill.
56-63. Even the Muse Calliope could do nothing for her son Orpheus, whom the Thracian women tore to pieces under the excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies. The gory visage floated down the Hebrus and through the Ægean Sea to the island of Lesbos.
64. what boots it: of what use is it?
64-66. What good are we going to derive from this unremitting devotion to study?
67-69. Would it not be better to abandon ourselves to social enjoyment, and to lives of frivolous trifling? Amaryllis and Neæra are stock names of shepherdesses.
70-72. Understand clear, as applied to spirit, to mean "pure, guileless, unsophisticated." Sir Henry Wotton, in his Panegyric to King Charles, says of King James I.,--"I will not deny his appetite of glory, which generous minds do ever latest part from." Love of fame, according to the poet, is the motive that prompts the scholar to live as an ascetic and to persevere in toilsome labor. This love of fame is an infirmity, but not a debasing one: it leaves the mind noble. Remember, however, that the author of the Imitation of Christ prayed, _Da mihi nesciri_.
75. the blind Fury with the abhorred shears. Milton here seems to ascribe to the Furies (Erinyes) the function belonging to the Fates (Parcæ, Moiræ). The three Fates were Klotho, the Spinner; Lachesis, the Assigner of lots; and Atropos, the Unchanging. It was the duty of Atropos to cut the thread of life at the appointed time.
A querulous thought comes to the poet's mind. Our lives are obscure and laborious, sustained only by the hope of future fame; but before we attain our reward, comes death, and our ambition is brought to naught.
76-77. But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears. The Fury cannot destroy the praise, which necessarily belongs to doing well. Praise here means the essential praise, which naturally inheres in excellence, and not the being talked about by men.
The speaker is now Phoebus, the august god Apollo, the pure one, who protects law and order, and promotes whatever is good and beautiful; who reveals the will of Zeus, and presides over prophecy.
Phoebus has now an admonition to give and he touches the poet's ears; as in Virgil, Eclogue IV 3,--_Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit_, "The Cynthian twitched my ear and warned me."
79. in the glistering foil Set off. See Shakespeare, Richard III. V 3 250,--"A base foul stone, made precious by the foil of England's chair."
85-86. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius. Arethusa was a fresh-water fountain at Syracuse in Sicily, and the Mincius is a river in north Italy, on which is situated Mantua, the birthplace of the poet Virgil. The great pastoral poet Theocritus is said to have been born at Syracuse. Thus Arethusa and the Mincius typify the pastoral tone in which Milton conceives and constructs his poem. But the intervention of the great god Apollo has frighted the bucolic muses, to whom therefore the poet explains it, line 87.
88. Now I am on good terms again with the deities of lower rank. Oat is a common designation of the shepherd's pipe, or syrinx.
89-90. Neptune, through his herald, Triton, pleads his freedom from all complicity in the drowning of Lycidas. Triton sends to Æolus, god of the winds, requesting him to cross-question all his subjects as to what they were doing on the day of the wreck.
95-99. The winds prove their innocence, and Æolus himself comes to report to Triton that at the time of the disaster they were all at home and the air was perfectly calm. Even Panope and all her sisters were out playing on the tranquil water.
96. sage Hippotades. Æolus was the son of Hippotes. See all about him in Odyssey, book X. Read also Ruskin, Queen of the Air, section 19.
99. Panope was a Nereid, one of the numerous daughters of Nereus.
103. Now comes another grand personage to make inquiry about the death of Lycidas. Camus, the deity of the river Cam, stands for the University of Cambridge.