which Pan, though of some be understood the great Sathanas, whose kingdom was at that time by Christ conquered, and the gates of hell broken vp, for at that time all oracles surceased, and enchanted spirits that were wont to delude the people thenceforth held their peace," &c. The same legend with minor variations, is recorded by Hakewill and Sandys, who preceded Milton.

179. Trance....spell.-A trance [Lat. trans-eo] is a state in which the mind seems to "go beyond" the body and enter the spiritual world. A spell [A.-S. spell, story, speech, discourse] is now applied to any form of words having a magical power. This use of the word is also Anglo-Saxon. Comp. charm [Lat. carmen, a song]. The words of the spell were usually uttered in a low metrical chant.

186. The parting genius.-The genii were the guardian spirits of men and places: They received the name because they were supposed to watch over human beings from their birth [Lat. gigno, to beget].

189. Consecrated earth.-Places of burial. But these were not consecrated by the ancients, like our church-yards: the phrase is therefore inadmissible.

191. Lars and Lemures.-Lemures was the general designation given by the Romans to all spirits of departed persons; of whom the good were honoured as Lares, and the bad (Larvae) were feared, as ghosts or spectres still are by the superstitious. The Lares (called also Manes and Penates) were divided into two classes-Lares domestici and Lares publici. The former were the souls of virtuous ancestors, set free from the realm of shades by the Acherontic rites, and exalted to the rank of protectors of their descendants. They were, in short, household gods, and their worship was really a worship of ancestors. The latter had a wider sphere of influence. Thus we read of Lares compitales (L. of the cross-roads), Lares vicarum (L. of the streets), Lares rurales (L. of the fields), Lares viales (L. of the highways), Lares permarini (L. of the sea).

194. Flamens were Roman priests dedicated to the service of particular deities, and receiving distinguishing epithets accordingly. Thus we read of the Flamen Dialis, Flamen Martialis, &c. The word flamen is a contraction of filamen, the filletwearer. -Quaint.—The etymology of the word is almost the direct opposite of its meaning. It comes from the Fr. coint, Lat. cognitus, known; yet it denotes what is curious or strange. It had formerly, however, the sense of neat, trim, delicate; in which we seem to see the connecting link between the Latin original and the present signification, for neatness, order, and refinement are products of civilization and knowledge.

197. Peor and Baälim were gods of the Phoenician and Canaanitish nations. The former, called in Scripture (Num. xxv. 3; Ps. cvi. 28; Hos. ix. 10) Baal-peor, was one of the Baalim, and, probably from the circumstances of the Mosaic narrative, was identified with Priapus by the Christian Fathers. The name of the latter (a plural form) may be regarded as a comprehensive designation of all the various conceptions and embodiments of the supreme deity Baal. It frequently occurs in Scripture (Judg. ii. 11; 1 Sam. vii. 4; 1 Kings xviii. 18, &c. ).

199. That twice-batter'd god of Palestine.-Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistine seaports (1 Sam. v. 3, 4).

200. Mooned Ashtaroth.-The Hebrew name of the Phoenician or Syro-phoenician goddess Astarte. She was supposed to be the original of the Grecian Aphrodite (Venus): at any rate, the worship of both exhibited the same characteristics. As Baal was the sun-god of the Syrians, so Astarte was the moon-goddess; hence the epithet in the text, which was coined by Milton in imitation of the Latin lunatus.

201. Heav'ns queen and mother both. — Astarte, whose dignity increased with the extension of her worship, was finally represented as regina coeli and mater deûm. 202. Shine.-Sheen, brightness, or light. So Drummond (Sonnets):

203. The Libyc Hammon.-Ammon (the Amun of the hieroglyphic monuments) was the supreme Egyptian deity; whom, therefore, the Greeks compared or identified with

their own Zeus. Hence the sacred name of his city, Thebes (the No-Ammon of the Old Testament), was translated by them Diospolis. His worship was celebrated all over Nubia and the Libyan Desert, in one of whose oases there was a temple of the god, made famous by the visit which Alexander the Great paid to it.

204. Wounded Thammuz.-Thammuz, the Greek Adonis (Phoen. adon, lord), was so beautiful that Aphrodite and Proserpine quarrelled for the possession of him. Zeus decreed that he should spend eight months in the upper world with Aphrodite, and four in the under world with Proserpine. Adonis being killed by a boar while hunting, Aphrodite, inconsolable at his loss, changed his blood into flowers. The yearly festival in his honour consisted of two parts-a mourning for his death, a rejoicing for his return to Aphrodite. See Ovid, Met., X., 708, et seq. The myth is of Phoenician origin, and appears to symbolize the transitions of the seasons. Nature is alive and bright and beautiful for the greater part of the year on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean: winter has but a brief reign.

205. Sullen Moloch.-Milton may have taken some of the touches in this twenty-third stanza from Sandys' Travels, in which occurs the following passage relating to the Valley of Tophet: "Wherein the Hebrews sacrificed their children to Moloch- an idol of brass, having the head of a calf, the rest of a kingly figure, with arms extended to receive the miserable sacrifice, seared to death with his burning embracements. For the idol was hollow within, and filled with fire. And lest their lamentable shrieks should sad the hearts of their parents, the priests of Moloch did deaf their ears with the continual clangs of trumpets and cymbals." (Ed. 1615, p. 186.) But the vivifying power of the poet is seen in the epithets "sullen Moloch," the grisly king," and in the horrid vision given us of his cruel worshippers "in dismal dance about the furnace blue." The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

211-213. Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

The

Nor is Osiris seen.

brutish gods of Nile" are so called because they were symbolically exhibited under the forms of the lower animals. Osiris ("Many-eyed") was said to have first civilized the Egyptians, and afterwards to have subdued other nations by his persuasive speech. His brother Typhon conspired against him, and, having by stratagem imprisoned him in a chest, threw him into the Nile. After many adventures, his wife Isis recovered the chest; but it again fell into the hands of Typhon, who cut the body of his brother into pieces. Afterwards he became the judge in the Egyptian Hades, and fixed the final fate of human souls. It is not easy to interpret the myth of Osiris ; but we are probably near the truth when we regard it as an embodiment of the dualistic principle of good and evil in the universe, Osiris representing the former, and his brother Typhon the latter. In fact, the worship of Typhon was ultimately abandoned because he had come to be regarded as the Egyptian devil, the god of the waste howling wilderness, of the salt lakes, of drought, and of scorching heat. Osiris was sometimes identified with Apis, the bull-god; and is so conceived by Milton in the text, "trampling the unshowr'd grass with lowings loud." Orus or Horus and Anubis were sons of Osiris. The first was represented with a hawk's head; the second, with that of a jackal, which the Greeks often changed into a dog's.

215. Unshowr'd grass.—Rain seldom falls in Egypt, which is fertilized solely by the inundations of the Nile. Egypt," says Herodotus (B. II., ch. v.), "is the gift of the Nile."

218. Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud. When we remember what the myth of Osiris really means, the absurdity of the view entertained by the early Church, and down through the Middle Ages, that the gods of the pagan world were devils in disguise, becomes very egregious.

223. Dusky eyn.-The phrase is a fine one. It means eyes that are dark, and cannot see. [Eym, or eyne (Sc., een), is the O. Eng. plural of eye. It is a relic of the original plural in an, while the y is the softened form of the original g. Thus-A.-S. edge, an eye; eag-an, eyes.]

226. Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine.-This god was represented in Egyptian symbolism as a crocodile, a hippopotamus, and an ass; but after he had been confounded with the Greek Typhon, or Typhaon, he appears as a hideous dragon, married

to Echidna the snake-goddess, and the father of the Chimaera, the Colchian Dragon, the Sphinx, Cerberus, and other monsters.

232. Flocking shadows are the "fetter'd ghosts." The ghosts are fettered because, at the first moment the sun "pillows his chin upon an orient wave," they must "troop' as prisoners to the infernal jail." Comp. Mids. Night's Dr., Act iii., sc. 2, where Puck says to Oberon :

'My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to church-yards: damned spirits all,
That in cross-ways and floods have burial,

Already to their wormy beds are gone;

For fear lest day should look their shames upon,

They wilfully exile themselves from light,

And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night."

235. Yellow-skirted fays.-Green and gold are the favourite colours of the fairies. Fay (Fr. fée, Lat. fatum) is a name indicative, like many others, of the magic power of words. Comp. spell and charm.

244. Bright-harnest-i.e., in bright armour.

Comp. Ex. xiii. 18,

"The children

of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt;" and Chaucer, Knightes Tale, l. 147, 148:

The French is harnois and harnais; of which only the latter is applied to the armour of horses, except in poetry.

L'ALLEGRO.

PREFIXED to the first edition of Burton's Anatomie of Melancholy is a metrical piece entitled The Author's Abstract of Melancholy, or a Dialogue between Pleasure and Pain." It was composed about the beginning of the seventeenth century, is in the same measure as L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and not only in particular thoughts, turns of expression, and rhymes, but even in its general tone, bears a striking resemblance to these two poems. No one who reads either it or the prose chapter of the Anatomie entitled "Exercise Rectified both of Body and Mind," can fail to notice that Milton has been largely indebted to his quaint and fancifully-garrulous predecessor.

Line 2. Cerberus.—It seems strange that Milton did not avail himself of the classic myth which makes Erebus (Darkness) the husband of Nox (Night). It is difficult to see the appropriateness of such a paternity as is here imagined. Cerberus, the manyheaded dog that guarded the entrance to Hades, is in no special way an embodiment of the gloom of the under-world; but some think Milton had in view the ordinary derivation of the name, kĥp ẞopós, heart-devouring.

3. In Stygian cave forlorn.-The Styx ("The Hateful") was a river of Hades, round which it flowed seven times; over it Charon ferried the ghosts of the dead. The adjective Stygian is used here for "hateful." Comp. Par. Lost, B. II., l. 577:

4. 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.-A vivid picture of the aspect of the under-world as it seemed to Milton, whose classic conceptions of misery and evil are always darkened by the sombre hues of a Puritan faith.

Searcht out

5. Uncouth cell.-Comp. The Valiant Welshman (1615, Act iv., sc. 6): the uncouth cell of thy abode." The word uncouth now means awkward," but originally signified "unknown." Here it has the intermediate sense of wild" or "strange." It is the Anglo-Saxon uncudth (un, not, and cudth, known, from cunnan, to know; also, to be able-hence the modern could), Sc. unco. Comp. Chaucer (Prologue to Canterbury Tales, l. 14):

"To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes."

Cudth, "known," is the same word as the Scotch couthie, "kind, agreeable,”-i.e., behaving, not like a stranger, but like a friend; and kith [A.-S. cudtha], as in the expression "Kith and kin;” lit., friends or acquaintances, and relatives.

66

9. As ragged as thy locks.-Comp. Isa. ii. 21: The tops of the ragged rocks." It is a favourite adjective with our older writers as applied to rocks. Rugged" is now the more common expression. The meaning is almost identical, but the words have a different origin. Ragged is from the A.-S. hracod (what is torn); rugged," from rough [A.-S. hruh, or ruh, hairy, rough]. Wedgewood disputes this, however.

10. Dark Cimmerian desert.-Cimmerian darkness (Cimmeriae tenebrae) was anciently proverbial. The Cimmerians were supposed in Homer's time to inhabit a region of perpetual darkness beyond the ocean stream." The word is thought by some to be connected with glimmer and gloom.

11. Fair and free.-In the metrical romances these are common epithets for a lady. Free does not mean loose, but rather easy and affable, the opposite of awkward and restrained.

12. Yclep'd.-Called. [A.-S. cleopian and clypian, also clepan, to say, name, &c.] Comp. Chaucer's Prologue to Canterbury Tales, l. 121:

66 And sche was clept Madame Eglentyne."

From the same root as clyp-ian comes the word clipe, well known to Scottish schoolboys as the designation of that worthless creature, the talebearer. The first syllable of clap-trap" has the same origin: it is just trashy talk. Euphrosyne-(The Mirthful). The "two sister Graces more" (l. 15) were Aglaia (Brightness) and Thalia (Bloom). Milton first makes them the offspring of Love (Venus) and Wine (Bacchus); but then his pure fancy suggests a less sensual origin for Euphrosyne. She is the daughter of the Dawn (Aurora) and of the fresh morning Breeze (Zephyr), born in the merry month of May, on a bed of violets and fresh-blown roses washt in dew." 17. As some sager sing.-See Hymn on the Nativity, note to l. 5.

20. A-Maying. The phrase points to an English rather than to a classic custom; though the Romans, too, had their Floralia at this season. The picture which the old writers give us of all ranks-from the Court down to the humblest villagers--going out on the morning of the first of May to gather flowers and hawthorn-blossom with which to decorate their houses, forms one of the sweetest aspects of old English life. Whatever may have been the general wretchedness of a peasant's condition in those days, he showed a capacity for simple and picturesque holiday-making which his better-fed descendants have lost. The hawthorn-blossom was called the May," and the expedition to the neighbouring woods a 'going a-Maying." It was an image of everything bright, and innocent, and happy. Coleridge, in his verses on Youth and Age, makes exquisite use of the phrase:

"Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,

Where Hope clung feeding like a bee-
Both were mine: Life went a-Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young.

When I was young! Ah, woeful when!
Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then!"

22. And fresh-blown roses washt in dew.- Comp. Shakspeare, Taming of the Shrew, Act ii., sc. 1:

"She looks as clear

As morning roses newly washed with dew."

24. Buxom, blithe, and debonair.-As a picture of a blooming, gay, and happy nymph, the epithets are faultless. The first two were favourites of the poets. Comp. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act i., sc. 1: "So buxom, blithe, and full of face." A contemporary of Milton, writing about the same time, has, curiously, the whole three (Randolph's Aristippus, first printed in 1635):

"

But somehow the words that are so fine in Milton look insipid here, from the use to which they are put. Buxom now means stout or strong; " in Milton's time it meant gay" or "lively." But its primary and etymological signification is "pliant," 'flexible,' elastic" [A.-S. bocsum, from bugan, to bend]. Debonair [Fr. de bon air --lit., well-mannered] has the sense of "gracious" or courteous," with perhaps the added element of gentleness.

27. Quips and cranks.—A quip is a smart joke, flavoured with satire. A crank is a lively or humorous turn, fitted to puzzle or embarrass: lit., a crank is but a winding, twisting, or crookedness. Compare: "To shew us the ways of the Lord, straight and faithful as they are, not full of cranks and contradictions" (Prose Works, I., 165).

28. Wreathed smiles are smiles that twist the features.-Wreathe [A.-S. wrethian] is but a form of writhe [A.-S. writhan], though the latter verb is exclusively used to denote the contortions of pain. The original of this line is probably a stanza in the Anatomie of Melancholy:

66 With becks and nods he first beganne

To try the wenches minde;

With becks and nods and smiles againe,
An answer did he finde."

29. Hebe.The goddess of Youth, daughter of Zeus and Hera, wife of Hercules, and cup-bearer in Olympus until that office was conferred on Ganymede. Blooming health, even more than beauty, is her leading characteristic.

Comp. Shakspeare, where Ariel says to Prospero, in reference to his power over the spirits (Tempest, Act iv., sc. 1):

Though trip [Du. trippen; Ger. trippeln, to dance] now conveys the sense of gay or mirthful motion, it formerly signified any kind of dancing motion, whether light or serious. Comp. Shakspeare, Henry VIII., Act iv., sc. 2: The Vision. Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six personages."

36. The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.-Liberty is called a mountain nymph, not because mountaineers are lovers of liberty, but rather because Milton was thinking of the fleet Oreads sporting visibly" on the sunny slopes of Grecian hills.

38. Crew. [A.-S. crudth, a crowd or company.] Except when we speak of a ship's crew, this word now conveys a bad impression. Not so, however, in the text. Crew is radically the same word as crowd,' 'curd," "curdle," the root denoting a mass, or lump.

66

39 66

40. Unreproved pleasures-i.e., pleasures that are not subject to reproof; blameless. 42. Startle the dull night.-Comp. Shakspeare, King Henry V., Act iv.: Chorus, "Piercing the night's dull ear."