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May trace huge forests, and unharbour'd heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,
Where through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer
Will dare to soil her virgin purity:

Yea there, where very desolation dwells

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By grots, and caverns shagg'd with horrid shades,

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424. Infamous hills,] Expressed

from Horace, Od. i. iii. 20.

Infames scopulos Acroceraunia.

425

Manners, nor smooth humanity,

whose heats

Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,

Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there's a power

In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast

All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites That break their confines: then, strong Chastity, &c.

T. Warton. 426.-bandite, or mountaineer] A mountaineer seems to have conveyed the idea of something very savage and ferocious, In the Tempest, act iii. s. 3.

Who would believe that there were
mountaineers
Dewlapp'd like bulls, &c.

In Cymbeline, act iv. s. 2.

Yield, rustic mountaineer.

Again, ibid.

Who call'd me traitor, mountaineer.

425. Where through the sacred Again, act iv. s. 2.

rays of chastity,

No savage fierce, bandite, or

mountaineer,

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That here by mountaineer lies slain. In Drayton, Mus. Elys. vol. iv. 1454.

p.

This Cleon was a mountaineer,
And of the wilder kind.

T. Warton.

428. Yea there,] In the Manuscript it is, Yea ev'n where &c.

429. By grots, and caverns shagg'd with horrid shades,] This

She may pass on with unblench'd majesty,
Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.
Some
say no evil thing that walks by night,

verse Mr. Pope has adopted in his Eloisa to Abelard.

V.

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429. Again, in the same poem, 24.

I have not yet forgot myself to stone. Almost as evidently from our author's Il. Pens. v. 42.

There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble.
Pope again, ibid. v. 244.

And low-brow'd rocks hang nodding
o'er the deeps.

From Il. Pens. v. 244.

There under ebon shades, and lowbrow'd rocks.

And in the Messiah, v. 6.

-Touch'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips with fire.

So in the Ode, Nativ. v. 28.

Touch'd with hallow'd fire.

See supr. at v. 26.380. And infr. at v. 861. And Essay on Pope, p. 307. s. vi. edit. 2.

This is the first instance of any degree even of the slightest attention being paid to Milton's smaller poems by a writer of note since their first publication. Milton was never mentioned or acknowledged as an English poet till after the appearance of Paradise Lost and long after that time these pieces were totally forgotten and overlooked. It is strange that Pope, by no means of a congenial spirit, should be the first who copied Comus or Il Penseroso. But Pope was a gleaner of the old

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430

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430. unblench'd] Unblinded, unconfounded. See Steevens's note on blench, in Hamlet, at the close of the second act. And Upton's Gloss. Spenser, v. Blend. And Tyrwhitt's Gloss. Ch. v. Blent. In B. and Fletcher's Pilgrim, act iv. s. 3. vol. v. p. 516.

-Men that will not totter
Nor blench much at a bullet.

T. Warton. Unblenched, not disgraced, not injured by any soil. Johnson.

432. Some say no evil thing that walks by night, &c.] There are several such beautiful allusions to the vulgar superstitions in Shakespeare; but here Milton had his eye particularly on Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, act i. He has borrowed the sentiment, but raised and improved the diction.

Yet I have heard, my mother told it me,

And now I do believe it, if I keep My virgin flow'r uncropp'd, pure, chaste, and fair,

No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,

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In fog, or fire, by lake, or moorish fen,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,
No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine,

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Wherein our Saviour's birth is cele brated, &c.

435

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But then they say no spirit walks The metaphorical expression is

abroad, &c.

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beautiful, of breaking his magic chains, for " being suffered to "wander abroad." And here too the superstition is from Shakespeare, K. Lear, act iii. s. 4. "This is the foul Flibertigibbet: "he begins at curfew, and walks "till the first cock." Compare also Cartwright, in his play of the Ordinary, where Moth the antiquary sings an old song, act ii. s. 1. p. 36. edit. 1651. He wishes, that the house may remain free from wicked spirits,

From curfew time To the next prime. Compare note on Il Pens. 82. and the Tempest, act v. s. 1. where Prospero invokes the elves -that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew.

That is, they rejoice because they are then allowed to be at large till the cock-crowing. See Macbeth, act ii. s. 3. T. Warton.

436. -swart fairy of the mine,] Swart or swarthy. See the note on Paradise Lost, i. 684.

Hath hurtful pow'r o'er true virginity.

Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call
Antiquity from the old schools of Greece
To testify the arms of chastity?

Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow,
Fair silver-shafted queen, for ever chaste,

436. In the Gothic system of pneumatology, mines were supposed to be inhabited by various sorts of spirits. See Olaus Magnus's Chapter de Metallicis Dæ monibus, Hist. Gent. Septentrional, vi. x. In an old translation of Lavaterus de Spectris et Lemuribus, is the following passage. "Pioners or diggers "for metall do affirme, that in "many mines there appeare

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straunge shapes and spirites, "who are apparelled like unto "the laborers in the pit. These "wander up and downe in caves "and underminings, and seeme "to besturre themselves in all "kinde of labor; as, to digge "after the veine, to carrie together the oare, to put into basketts, and to turne the winding wheele to draw it up, "when in very deed they do "nothing lesse, &c."" Of "ghostes and spirites walking by night, &c." Lond. 1572. bl. lett. ch. xvi. p. 73. And hence we see why Milton gives this species of fairy a swarthy or dark complexion. Georgius Agricola, in his tract De Subterraneis Animantibus, relates among other wonders of the same sort, that these spirits sometimes assume the most terrible shapes ; and that one of them, in a cave or pit in Germany,

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440

killed twelve miners with his pestilential breath. Ad calc. De Re Metall. p. 538. Basil. 1621. fol. Drayton personifies the Peak in Derbyshire, which he makes a witch skilful in metallurgy. Polyolb. s. xxvi. vol. iii. p. 1176.

The sprites that haunt the mines she
could correct and tame,
And bind them as she list in Saturne's
dreaded name.

Compare Heywood's Hierarchie of Angels, b. ix. p. 568. edit. 1635. fol.

This passage of G. Agricola is quoted by Hales of Eton, in a Sermon on Rom. xiv. 1. And by Bishop Taylor, in his second Sermon on Tit. ii. 7. By both, with the same humorous application to theological controvertists. And in the quarto edition of Hales's Golden Remains, published by Bishop Pearson, there is a frontispiece in three divisions: in the lowest, a representation of Agricola's mine, with a reference to the citation, and this explanation, Controversers of the times, like spirits in the mineralls, with all their labor, nothing is done. T. Warton.

441. Hence had the huntress
Dian her dread bow,
Fair silver-shafted queen, for
ever chaste.]

So Jonson to Diana. Cynth. Rev. act v. s. 6.

Wherewith she tam'd the brinded lioness
And spotted mountain pard, and set at nought
The frivolous bolt of Cupid; Gods and men

445

Fear'd her stern frown, and she was queen o'th' woods.
What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield,

That wise Minerva wore, unconquer'd virgin,
Wherewith she freez'd her foes to congeal'd stone,
But rigid looks of chaste austerity,

And noble grace that dash'd brute violence
With sudden adoration, and blank awe?
So dear to heav'n is saintly chastity,

Queene, and huntresse, chaste and

faire.

T. Warton.

Milton, I fancy, took the hint of this beautiful mythological interpretation from a dialogue of Lucian's betwixt Venus and Cupid, where the mother asking her son how, after having attacked all the other deities, he came to spare Minerva and Diana, Cupid replies, that the former looked so fiercely at him, and frightened him so with the Gorgon head which she wore upon her breast, that he durst not meddle with her- και όρα δε δριμυ, και επί του ςήθους έχει προσα ωπον τι φοβερον, εχιδναις κατακόμον, όνπερ εγω μαλιστα διδια μορμολυτ τεται γαρ με, και φευγω όταν ίδω avto. p. 84. ed. Bourdelot-and that as to Diana she was always so employed in hunting, that he could not catch her -- ουδε καταλαβειν αυτην οἷοντε, φεύγουσαν αει δια Twv igav. Ibid. Thyer.

445. The frivolous bolt of Cupid;] Bolt was anciently a very common term for arrow. Witness the old proverb, The fool's bolt is soon shot. Peck.

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450

This reminds one of the "drib- O bling dart of love," in M. for Measure. Bolt, I believe, is properly the arrow of a crossbow. Fletcher, Faithf. Sheph. act ii. s. 1. p. 134.

With bow and bolt,
To shoot at nimble squirrels in the
holt.
T. Warton.

448.-unconquer'd virgin,] He wrote at first eternal, then unvanquish'd, at last unconquer'd; and with great propriety, for in Greek authors Minerva is often

called αδάμαστος θεα, and παρθενος adjens.

450, 451. Rigid looks refer to the snaky locks, and noble grace to the beautiful face, as gorgon is represented on ancient gems. Warburton.

452. With sudden adoration, and blank awe?] It was at first,

With sudden adoration of her pure

ness:

this he altered to of bright rays, and then to and blank awe.

453. So dear to heav'n is saintly chastity, &c.] So Spenser, relating how Florimel, in danger of

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