SPIRIT. Alas! good vent❜rous Youth, I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise ; Be those that quell the might of hellish charms: 610 the same image in the Fox, act the same, Paradise Lost, xi. 642. iii. s. 8. -O that his well driv'n sword Had been so covetous to have cleft me down Unto the navel. Spenser uses the word, Faery -whose warlike name Is far renown'd through many a bold emprise. And Shakespeare in Macbeth, And Fairfax, cant. ii. st. 77. act i. s. 2. Till he unseam'd him from the nave to th' chops. If you achieve renown by this em prisc. 611. But here thy sword can do I know Mr. Warburton reads thee little stead; &c.] Virgil, Æn. here -from the nape to th' chops, and supports it very ingeniously; but if any alteration were necessary, I should rather read Till he unseam'd him from the chops to th' nave. Nay Shakespeare carries it so far as to make Coriolanus cleave men down from head to foot. Coriolanus, act ii. s. 6. -his sword, (death's stamp) ii. 521. Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus See Æn. vi. 290. Tasso, cant. xv. Before the poet had corrected this line, he had written, But here thy steel can do thee small avail. 613. Be those that quell the might of hellish charms:] Com Where it did mark, it took from face pare Shakespeare's K. Richard to foot. But notwithstanding these instances, I believe every reader will agree that Milton altered the passage much for the better in the edition of 1645. III. act iii. s. 4. With devilish plots Of damned witchcraft; and that have prevail'd Upon my body with their hellish charms. T. Warton. Or drag him by the curls to a foul 614. He with his bare wand death, Curs'd as his life. can unthread thy joints, And crumble all thy sinews.] 610. —and bold emprise ;] See He had written at first, ELDER BROTHER. Why prythee, Shepherd, 615 How durst thou then thyself approach so near, As to make this relation? SPIRIT. Care and utmost shifts How to secure the Lady from surprisal, He with his bare wand can unquilt And crumble every sinew. 614. So in Prospero's commands to Ariel, Temp. act iv. s. ult. Go, charge my goblins, that they With dry convulsions, shorten up T. Warton. 623. He lov'd me well, &c.] I cannot help thinking that Milton designed here a compliment to his schoolfellow and friend Charles Deodati, who was bred to the study of physic, and had an exceeding love for our author, Pectus amans nostri, tamque fidele caput. Eleg. prim. ad Deodatum. and used to hear him repeat his 620 Tu mihi, cui recitem, judicis instar Eleg. sext. ad Deodatum. and sometimes explained to him Tu mihi percurres medicos, tua gra- Helleborumque, humilesque crocos, Epitaph. Damonis. 623. and oft would beg me He sitting me beside in that same Provoked me to play some pleasant fit: And when he heard the musick which I made, He found himself full greatly pleas'd Such parallels are of little more N Which when I did, he on the tender grass The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, Bore a bright golden flow'r, but not in this soil: 625 630 But then on the other hand it must be said, that such redundant or hypercatalectic verses sometimes occur in Milton. We had one a little before, ver. 605. Harpies, and hydras, or all the And for like esteemed I think it 682. It is true that "such re"dundant verses sometimes oc"cur in Milton," but the redundant syllable is never, I think, found in the second, third, or fourth, foot. The passage before us is certainly corrupt, or at least inaccurate, and had better been given thus, But in another country, as he said, Unknown, though light esteem'd. Mr. Seward's emendation is Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain very plausible and ingenious. But to say nothing of the editions under Milton's own inspection, I must object, that if an argument be here drawn for the alteration from roughness or redundancy of verse, innumerable instances of the kind occur in our author. See P. R. i. 175. and 302. and the notes there. T. Warton. 634. -dull] Unobservant. T. Warton. 635. -clouted shoon;] So Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act iv. s. 3. Cade speaks, We will not leave one lord, one gentleman; Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon. 635. Add the following passage from Cymbeline, act iv. s. 2. which not only exhibits but contains a comment on the phrase in question. -I thought he slept, and put My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness Answer'd my steps too loud. 635 of this poem very much upon the episode of Circe in the Odyssey; and here he himself plainly points out the parallel between them. The characters of Circe and her son Comus very much resemble each other. They have both of them a potent wand and inchanting cup, and the effects of both are much the same: and they are both to be opposed in the same manner with force and violence. Mercury bids Ulysses to rush upon Circe with his drawn sword, as if he would kill her. Odyss. x. 294. Δη τοτε συ ξιφος οξυ ερυσσάμενος παρα μηρού Κιρκη επαίξαι, ώστε κταμεναι μενεαίων. and the attendant Spirit exhorts the two Brothers to assault Comus in the same manner, -with dauntless hardihood, And brandish'd blade rush on him &c. And they are both overcome in the same manner, Circe by the virtues of the herb moly, which Mercury gave to Ulysses, and Clouts are thin and narrow plates Comus by the virtues of hæmony, of iron affixed with hob nails to the soles of the shoes of rustics. These made too much noise. The word brogues is still used for shoes among the peasantry of Ireland. T. Warton. 636. And yet more med'cinal is it &c.] At first he had thus written these two lines, And yet more med'cinal than that ancient moly Which Mercury to wise Ulysses gave. Our author hath formed the plan which the attendant Spirit gives to the two Brothers. But the author varied here from his oriparallel holds no farther. Our ginal with great judgment. The decent and modest manner than Lady is released in a much more the companions of Ulysses, 636. Drayton introduces a shepherd "his sundry simples sorting," who, among other rare plants, produces moly. Mus. Elys. Nymph. v. vol. iv. p. 1489. That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave; He call'd it hæmony, and gave it me, Compare Sandys's Ovid, p. 256. 479. edit. 1632. And Drayton's Nymphid. vol. ii. p. 463. And Polyolb. s. xii. vol. iii. p. 919. In Tasso, Ubaldo, a virtuous magician, performs his operations, by the hidden powers of herbs and springs. Gier. lib. xiv. 42. Qual in se virtù celi d l'herba d 1' fonte. In the Faerie Queene, the Palmer has a vertuous staffe, which, like Milton's moly and hæmony, defeats all monstrous apparitions and diabolical illusions. And Tasso's Ubaldo carries a staff of the same sort, when he enters the palace of Armida, xiv. 73. xv. 49. T. Warton. 637. That Hermes once &c.] Ovid, Metam. xiv. 289. -Nec tantæ cladis ab illo Pacifer huic dederat florem Cyllenius Moly vocant superi, &c. From Homer, Odyss. K. v. 305. 638. He call'd it hæmony, &c.] V I conceive this to be neither the anemone nor the hemionion de scribed by Pliny, though their names are something alike: and it is in vain to enquire what it is; which it is compared) a plant I take it to be (like the moly to that grows only in poetical ground. It cannot be the hemionion particularly, because Pliny says that this bears no flower. Hemionion vocant, spargentem juncos tenues, folia parva, asperis locis nascentem, austero sapore, nunquam florentem. Lib. xxv. sect. 20. nec caulem, nec florem, nec semen habet. Id. lib. xxvii. s. 17. And yet Mr. Thyer imagines it to be the same, and what in English we call spleenwort: and if his conjecture |