Minor Poems by Milton Part 18

698. With vizored falsehood: falsehood with its vizor, or face-piece, down, to conceal its ident.i.ty.

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 ent.i.tles 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 p.r.o.nounced _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 pa.s.sage 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: p.r.o.nounces 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 Const.i.tution. 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 repet.i.tion 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, ent.i.tled _Six Old English Chronicles_. The book is easily accessible.

827. Whilom is derived from the dative plural _hwilum_ of the Old English noun _hwil_, 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 G.o.ds, 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. Ocea.n.u.s 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 Ocea.n.u.s and mother of the Oceanids. She reared the great G.o.ddess Juno, wife of Jupiter. Her pace is suitable to her dignity.

871. h.o.a.ry Nereus. See note on line 835.

872. the Carpathian wizard's hook. Proteus, son of Ocea.n.u.s 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 sh.e.l.l. _Triton_ was herald of Neptune and so carried a sh.e.l.l, 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 G.o.ddess. So she came to the aid of Ulysses when he was pa.s.sing on his raft from Calypso's isle to Phaeacia. 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 sh.o.r.es, under the name Palaemon.

The Romans identified him with their G.o.d 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.