Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown In courts, in feasts, and high solemnities, They had their name thence; coarse complexions 1 745. Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shewn In courts, in feasts, and high solemnities, &c.] So Fletcher, Faith. Sheph. a. i. s. 1. vol. iii. p. 124. Give not yourself to loneness, and those graces Hide from the eyes of men, that were intended To live among us swains. But this argument is pursued more at large in Drayton's Epistle above quoted. I will give some of the more palpable resemblances. Fie, peevish girl, ungratefull unto nature, Did she to this end frame thee such a creature, That thou her glory should increase thereby, And thou alone should'st scorne society? Why, heaven made beauty, like herself, to view, Not to be shut up in a smoakie mew. A rosy-tinctur'd feature is heaven's gold, Which all men joy to touch, and to behold, &c. Here we have at least our author's "What need a vermeil"tinctured lip for that?" And again, All things that faire, that pure, that glorious beene, 745 ކ 750 And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply I had not thought to have unlock'd my lips 751. The sampler, and to tease The sample, or to tease the huswife's The word tease is commonly Whoso beholds her sweet love- T. Warton. Think what, and look upon this and then followed the verses 756. I had not thought &c.] 754 760 759.-prank'd in reason's garb.] Dressed, clad. So Shakespeare, -your high self, The gracious mark o' th' land, you With a swain's wearing, and me, fected Prank implies a false or af- N To prank old wrinkles up in new But I ne cannot boulte it to the brenne. Warburton. In the construction of a mill, a part of the machine is called the boulting-mill, which separates the flour from the bran. Chaucer, Nonnes Pr. T. 1355. But I ne cannot bolt it to the brenne, As can that holy doctor saint Austen. That is, "I cannot argue, and And virtue has no tongue to check her pride. 765 That live according to her sober laws, And holy dictate of spare temperance: If every just man, that now pines with want, And she no whit incumber'd with her store, 770 775 reasons are as two grains of "wheat hid in two bushels of "chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them, &c." The meaning of the whole context is this, "I am offended when vice pretends to dispute and reason, "for it always uses sophistry." T. Warton. understands the word, to darl, to Bp. Newton indeed rather shoot, from the substantive bolt for arrow. And Dr. Johnson explains to bolt, "to blurt out "or throw out precipitantly," citing the passage before us. See his Dictionary. But he has not less than six quotations which exhibit, in fact, the meta In boulted language, meal and bran phorical sense of the word here together He throws without distinction. It is the same allusion in the contended for by Warburton and Warton, and which tend to confirm their interpretation of it. E. His praise due paid; for swinish gluttony Crams, and blasphemes his feeder. Shall I go on? 780 785 And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric, 790 That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence, Yet should I try, the uncontrolled worth Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits 779.- -Shall I go on?] From hence to ver. 806. in Comus's speech, that is twenty-seven verses, are not in the Manuscript, but were added afterwards. 785. The sublime notion, and high mystery, &c.] That Milton's notions about love and chastity were extremely refined and delicate, not only appears from this poem, but also from many passages in his prose-works, particularly in the Apology for Smectymnuus, where he is defending himself against the charge of lewdness which his adversaries had very unjustly laid against him. Thyer. Compare v. 453. et seq. 795 That dumb things would be mov'd to sympathize, Were shatter'd into heaps o'er thy false head. She fables not, I feel that I do fear 800 Her words set off by some superior power; And though not mortal, yet a cold shudd'ring dew Speaks thunder, and the chains of Erebus Against the canon laws of our foundation; 797. And the brute earth, &c.] The unfeeling earth would sympathise and assist. It is Horace's "Bruta tellus," Od. i. xxxiv. 11. T. Warton. 800. She fables not, &c.] These six lines too are aside. Sympson. 807. This is mere moral babble, &c.] These lines were thus at first in the Manuscript. This is mere moral stuff, the very lees 808. Against the canon laws of our foundation.] Canon laws, a joke! Warburton. Here is a ridicule on establishments, and the canon law now greatly encouraged by the church. Perhaps on the Canons of the Church, now rigidly enforced, and at which Milton frequently glances in his prose tracts. He calls Gratian "the "compiler of canon-iniquity." 805 an Pr. W. i. 211. In his book on |