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part. formed from the secondary verb wont. Spenser has also an adj. wontless = unwonted, Hymne in Honour of Beautie;

4. 140.

"What wontlesse fury dost thou now inspire

Into my feeble breast when full of thee?"

"Of all English writers Spenser shows himself most independent of the laws of position." (Marsh.)

freendles. The privative termination les is more correctly spelt, as here, with only one s. It is quite distinct from the word less. It is a modernised form of Ang.-Sax. -leas. Thus friendless = Ang.-Sax. freondleas. "Here fits not tell.

141. fits. So Faerie Queene, II. ii. 11;

where it is expressed:

"How evil fits it me to have such a son.'

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In methinks, them seemed, &c. the it is omitted, as here.

146. Observe the alliteration.

Comp. Sidney's Arcad.,

147. See in Knight or Lingard an account of Essex's expedition against Spain in 1596. There are contemporary accounts by Camden, Stowe, Strype, Raleigh. It was a splendid feat of arms. Macaulay calls it, in his Essay on Bacon, "The most brilliant military exploit that was achieved on the Continent by English arms during the long interval which elapsed between the battle of Agincourt and that of Blenheim." There is a contemporary ballad on it given in Percy's Reliques from the Editor's "Folio MS." entitled "The Winning of Cales,” i.e. of Cadiz.

148. Hercules two pillors: i.e. Calpe on the European, Abyla on the African coast, at the Fretum Gaditanum, our Straits of Gibraltar. This name for these facing projections is found first in Pindar (Olymp. 3, 77; Nem. 3, 35), who calls them variously the onλai and the kioves of Hercules. They were said to have been erected by Hercules to mark the limit of his westward wanderings.

5. 154. Does he mean that Devereux "promises" he shall be heureux?

"Few noblemen of his age were more courted by poets [than was Robert, Earl of Essex]. From Spenser to the lowest rhymer he was the subject of numerous sonnets or popular ballads. I will not except Sidney. I could produce evidence to prove that he scarce ever went out of England, or even left London, on the most frivolous enterprise without a pastoral in his praise, or a panegyric in metre, which were sold or sung in the streets.' (Warton.)

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158. Thy wide Alarmes the wide alarms excited by you. So the Wycliffite translation of Gen. ix. 2: 66 And youre feer and youre trembling be upon all the beestis of the earth." Comp. the current version. See above on 1. 99. So in Latin, as Ovid. Her. v. 149–50:

"Ipse repertor opis vaccas pavisse Phereas
Fertur, et a nostro saucius igne fuit."

So in Greek, as in Aristotle's Ode to Arete:

σοῖς δὲ πόθοις ̓Αχιλλεὺς Αἴας τ' Αίδαο δόμους ἦλθον. Alarmes orig. a French cry = 'to arms." Alarum is the tional syllable in it having sprung perhaps from the full sound of the r. vv. 2408-9 (Ed. Skeat):

"And smot him thoru the rith arum;

Therof was ful litel harum."

same word, the addiComp. in Havelok,

159. muse = a poet; as in Faerie Queene, IV. xi. 34; Lycid. 19. Shaksp. Sonn. 21:

"So is it not with me as with that muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse.'

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174. bauldricke = belt. Lat. balteus. O. Fr. baudré. O. H. G. balderick. "A belt, girdle, or sash, of various kinds : sometimes a sword-belt." (Halliwell.) It was sometimes merely a collar or strap passing round the neck; but most commonly it passed over one shoulder and under the arm on the other side. It was frequently used for a bugle-horn sash: as in Chaucer, Prol. 116, of the yeoman :

"An horn he bar, the bawdrik was of grene."

Much Ado about Nothing, I. i. 242: "But that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, the ladies shall pardon me." The Bauldricke of the

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177. which is commonly used of persons in Older English, as in the Lord's Prayer, &c It is quite wrong to suppose it to be the neuter of who. See above, l. 12.

JOHN MILTON.

MILTON'S life may be divided into three parts: (1) 1608-1639; (2) 1639-1660; (3) 1660-1672 (1) He was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, towards the close of the year 1608. Bread Street is close by Friday Street, in which was the Mermaid Tavern, where Shakspere and Jonson, and the other great wits of the day, used to meet together; so that Milton may be said to have been born within sound of their famous merriments. His father seems to have been a man of a grave earnest nature, of high views on the subject of education and of the end of life, of strong religious convictions, himself well educated and accomplished, being a skilful and eager musician. Of his mother little is known. In very many respects he inherited his father's character.

He was very carefully educated at home under a private tutor, Thomas Young (his initials form part of Smectymnuus), at St. Paul's School, at Christ's College, Cambridge, at home again (Horton, Buckinghamshire), and lastly by a tour upon the Continent (in France, Italy, and Switzerland). Thus his formal education lasted down to his thirty-first year. The great number of the years thus occupied is to be accounted for by the fact that after he had once chosen his vocation of poetry, which he appears to have done at an early age, it seemed both to him and to his father above all things important that he should earnestly prepare himself for it. This first period of his life, then, may be called the period of preparation. During it he did not attempt any great work; he only prepared himself to attempt one. At Christmas 1629 he wrote his Hymn on the Morning of the Nativity, his first considerable work; seven years afterwards he wrote Lycidas, his last considerable minor work; between these he wrote L'Allegro and Il Penseroso and Comus, besides some sonnets and other short pieces.

(2) It might seem that in 1639 Milton was at last ready to address himself to his great task : that "the mellowing year" (Lycid. 5) had come; or to use another phrase (see Sonnet On arriving to his Three-and-twentieth Year), that he was sufficiently "endued" with that "inward ripeness" after which he had so sincerely and ardently aspired; but he was now to be drawn away, perhaps for ever, from the object of his devotion. Poetry was to be abandoned for politics. Such was the condition of the times, that other services than those of a poet were required of him. He obeyed this call, and for more than twenty years he gave himself up to the urgent political and social questions of the day. He wrote on the Freedom of the Press, on Church Government, on Divorce, on Education, in defence of the English people when assailed by Saumase for the execution of their king. During all this period he wrote no poetry except a few sonnets. Of these sonnets several deal with the same matters which form the subjects of his prose works; others give some insight into his social and personal life: the last one, written in 1658, reflects his profound grief for the loss of his second wife. By his first wife he had been made the father of three daughters. His incessant studiousness injured his sight, and at last produced blindness: the immediate cause of that affliction being his controversy with Saumase (see Sonnet to Cyriac Skinner on his Blindness).

(3) When the Republic fell and was superseded, Milton was no longer able to serve his country as a political writer. He could now once more, after an interval of some twenty-one

years, entertain and pursue the great idea of his life: he now set himself to compose his great epic poem. The subject which had once attracted him-King Arthur-now gave place to a strangely different one-the Fall of Man. That former subject was not consonant with Milton's nature, educed and developed as it had been during the Commonwealth days, nor with the circumstances amidst which he found himself and the spectacles he witnessed. It was not practical and real enough. In 1667 appeared Paradise Lost, in ten books. It was in that same year that Dryden brought out his Annus Mirabilis. Thus in that year the great poetic leader of the setting age and the leader of the rising age stood strikingly contrasted. Four years afterwards were published Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. In 1674 Milton passed away from the evil times and evil tongues upon which his life had fallen.

HYMN ON THE NATIVITY.

INTRODUCTION.

THIS hymn was written by Milton in the year 1629, when he was just twenty-one years of age. Hallam therefore is inaccurate in saying that we have nothing written by Milton earlier than his sonnet on "his being arrived to the age of twenty-three," which would be written in December 1631. The Hymn was written while he was yet an undergraduate. He gives some account of his writing it in one of his elegies-the sixth-which is a letter addressed to his friend Deodati-that same friend the news of whose death met him when he returned from his tour on the Continent, and whom he bewailed in his Epitaphium Damonis:

"At tu siquid agam scitabere, si modo saltem

Esse putas tanti noscere siquid agam.
Paciferum canimus cælesti semine regem,

Faustaque sacratis secula pacta libris ;

Vagitumque Dei et stabulantem paupere tecto
Qui suprema suo cum patre regna colit;
Stelliparumque polum, modulantesque æthere turmas

Et subito elisos ad sua fana deos.

Dona quidem dedimus Christi natalibus illa,

Illa sub auroram lux mihi prima tulit.”

Which passage contains an excellent outline of the poem. Apparently he proposed to celebrate other great Christian events in a similar way. See the fragment on The Passion, and the ode on The Circumcision. With regard to the former he writes :-"This subject the author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished."

The metre of the introductory stanzas is that in which Spenser wrote his Four Hymns. It is a modification of the Italian eight-lined stanza, first made by Chaucer, who composed in it several of the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer modified the Italian stanza by the omission of a line; Spenser in his Faerie Queene by the addition of one, that one of greater length than

the others.

This hymn is the first considerable poem which Milton wrote.

6. 2. Wherein. We should rather say whereon. See Spenser's Prothal. 1. 119.

4. redemption: here in sense, as etymologically, = ransom.

6. our deadly forfeit should release = that he should remit, or rather cause to be

remitted, the penalty of death to which we were liable.

6. 6. deadly forfeit. Comp. " penal forfeit," Samson Agonistes, 508, and Paradise Lost,

xi. 195-8:

66 or to warn

Us, haply too secure of our discharge

From penalty, because from death released
Some days."

See Measure for Measure, V. i. 525:

"Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal

Remit thy other forfeits."

release is etymologically a modified form of relax, coming to us through the French; = let go, quit, remit. See Deut. xv. 2: "Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it." Comp. Esther ii. 18: "He made a release to the provinces, and gave gifts, according to the state of the king."

7. with. Not the Lat. cum, but rather apud, or inter. Comp. Dryden:

"Immortal powers the term of Conscience know,

But Interest is her name with men below."

8. unsufferable. The old usage preferred the English prefix. So unpossible (Ascham, &c.), unproperlie (Ascham), unhospitable (Shakspere), unvulnerable (ib.), uncessant (Milton), &c. &c. In Paradise Lost, x. 256, occurs "unagreeable."

10. wont. See note on Prothal. 1. 139.

"

II. the midst rather "in the midst " than "the midmost one. [What part of speech is midst in Paradise Lost, v. 164-5?

"On earth join, all ye creatures, to extol

Him first, him last, him midst, and without end."]

'The midst " is very common in older English as a substantive. On the "vulgarisms" in our midst, in your midst, see Marsh's English Language, Ed. Smith.

14. darksom. Some is a favourite adjectival termination in older English, = Early English sum, German sam. Thus, we find laboursome, gaysome, ugsome, bigsome, longsome, toothsome, &c. &c. See Trench's English Past and Present. In Paradise Lost, vii. 355, Milton uses unlightsome. This some is radically identical with the adjective same. with us must not be taken in close connexion with the verb, but rather with the [What does with mean here?]

object.

15. vein. See Paradise Lost, vi. 628.

16. afford. Afford is commonly used in Elizab. English for to give, present, without any reference such as it now has to the means of the giver. Paradise Lost, iv. 46:

"What could be less than to afford him praise, &c. ?"

Ib. x. 271; Samson Agonistes, 910 and 1,109; Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 16; Henry VIII. I. But it sometimes seems to have that reference, as in Paradise Lost, v. 316, &c. The stem is said to be the Latin forum.

iv. 17.

19. while =

during which time. When at which time. In modern English we very commonly use when where while would be more exact, and where while would have been used by our forefathers: e.g. in l. 30.

20. took. So Il Penseroso, 91: forsook, &c.

21. spangled, &c. is here an adjective, from the substantive spangle, rather than the participle of the verb spangle.

7. 23. See Paradise Regained, i. 249–54.

Wisards. -Ard had originally an intensive force, as in sweethard (corrupted into sweetheart), drunkard, coward, braggart, laggard, &c. It appears in some person-names,

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