9. 96. Observe s sharp and s flat, according to our present pronunciation, rhyming together. 97. noise. Comp. Faerie Queene, I. xii. 39: "During the which there was an heavenly noise Or perhaps here in its not uncommon Elizabethan sense of "a set or company of musicians. (Nares.) See" Sneak's noise," 2 Henry IV. II. iv. 12. Ben Jonson's Masq. of Gyps.: "The King has his noise of gypsies as well as of bear-wards and other minstrels," &c. 99. loth in oldest English, hateful, our "loathed." Comp. loathsome. So loathly, Shakspere, &c. 100. close. So Dryden, Fables: "At every close she made, th' attending throng Shakspere, Richard II. II. i. 12. So Herrick, The Church: "Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie, My music shows you have your closes, 102. As if the moon was but a bright spherical shell. 103. Cynthia. See Proth., Il Pens., &c. 106. here = hereupon; or = at this point of time, now. Unwin : "Thy needles, once a shining store, Comp. there in Shakspere, Lover's Complaint: "Even there resolved my reason into tears." See Cowper's lines to Mary its. This passage, Paradise Lost, i. 254, and iv. 814, are said to be the only places where Milton uses this word. See note, l. 140. 107. [What are the two forces "alone" might have here? and which has it ?] 108. [What is the force of the comparative here?] 109. their sight them as they look. Comp. "I pursue thy lingering" in Paradise Lost, ii. 702. So "thy wiseness," Hamlet, V. i. 286. 110. globe = a mass, a body; or "circular" is tautological. Comp. Hamlet's "distracted globe" (I. v. 96). III. shame-fac't. See note to stedfast, l. 70. 112. Cherubim. In his translation of Psalm 1xxx. 5, Milton uses the English plural form. Shakspere generally uses cherubim for the singular (as in Othello, IV. ii. 63); but cherub occurs in Hamlet, IV. iii. 50. Knight reads cherubims in Merchant of Venice, V. i. 62. The Authorized Version of the Bible uses cherubims. Cherubs and cherubims now differ in meaning. Perhaps he does not mean to characterize, when he speaks of the helms of the cherubim and the swords of the seraphim. It was cherubims "with a flaming sword" that guarded the gates of Eden. Both orders are differently represented in the lines At a Solemn Music. Or he may mean that the cherubim were the more purely defensive spirits, the seraphim more active. Their "sword" may mean "the sword of the Spirit." (Comp. Isaiah vi. 6.) 113. Seraphim. "The great seraphic lords," Paradise Lost, i. 794. 9. 114. with wings displaied. See Il Penseroso, 149; Faerie Queene, I. xi. 20. 116. unexpressive. So in Lyc. 176. Shakspere, As You Like It, III. ii. 28. 10. 117. See Paradise Lost, vii. 565 et seq. 119. See Job xxxviii. 4–7. = support. See Faerie Queene, I. xi. 21: "Then gin the blustring brethren boldly threat To move the world from off his steadfast henge." Hinge is properly something to hang anything on, as a hook. Comp. Dutch hengel, a hook; German, angel The verb to hang has the form hing in the Scotch dialect. The explanation of the two strong preterite forms which hang and many other verbs have in modern English is that originally one was the singular, the other the plural form. (See Latham.) This is exactly illustrated in this line from Chaucer's Legende of Good Women: "And thus by reporte was hir name yshove That as they woxe in age, wax hir love." 123. Comp. the Lat. jacere fundamenta. Comp. Faerie Queene: "And shooting in the earth casts up a mount of clay." 2 Kings xix. 32; Luke xix. 43. 124. weltring. Lyc. 13; Paradise Lost, i. 78; Shelley's In the Euganean hills. Ascham uses the forms walter and waulter in his Scholemaster. Welter is radically connected with wallow, waltz, Latin volvere, &c.; perhaps also with walk. (See Wedgwood.) V. i. 151: oozy. Lyc. 175; Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. Comp. oozy bed," Tempest, 125. If the "music of the spheres " may ever be heard, the poet would it now should be. On this music see Arcad. 62-7; Paradise Lost, v. 618; Com. 112-4, 241-3, 1,021. Comp. At a Solemn Music, sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse." See also Merchant of Venice, V. i. 61: 66 "There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins," &c. Twelfth Night, III. i. 120; Antony and Cleopatra, V. ii. 83; Pericles, V. i. 230. In Hudibras, Part II. i. 617, the widow says a poet compares his mistress' voice to "the music of the spheres, So loud it deafens mortal ears, And that's the cause we hear it not.' Dryden, in his Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew, declares that Thy brother-angels at thy birth n Strung each his lyre and tuned it high, That all the people of the sky Might know a poetess was born on earth; And then, if ever, mortal ears Had heard the music of the spheres." Shelley, in his lines To a Lady with a Guitar: "It had learnt all harmonies Of the plains and of the skies: it knew That seldom-heard mysterious sound This fancy is said to have originated with Pythagoras. For a minute account see the last book of Plato's Republic. The whorl of the distaff of necessity, as there described, consists of eight concentric whorls. These whorls represent respectively the sun and moon, the five planets known to the ancients, and the fixed stars. On each whorl sits a siren singing. Their eight tones make one exquisite "harmony." Milton here speaks of "your ninefold harmony;" he adds a ninth sphere-the primum mobile—“ that swift nocturnal and diurnal rhomb" (Paradise Lost, viii. 134). See also Plato, Rep. vii. 530. Cicero, in his Nature of the Gods, refers to the belief "ad harmoniam canere mundum," and again in his Republic, vi. 18. 10. 127. Comp. Merchant of Venice, V. i. 76: 66 Or any air of music touch their ears." 128. See Paradise Lost, xi. 559. 130. organ. See Paradise Lost, i. 708-9, xi. 560-3; Song for St. Cecilia's Day. "A moment while the trumpets blow Comp. beat in that same song. 132. Consort. He sees his brood about thy knee." So At a Solemn Music, 27; Il Penseroso, 145; Faerie Queene, III. i. 40. (In Solemn Music, 6, "concent" occurs.) Elsewhere in Milton, as always in Shakspere, the word occurs in its ordinary sense. to. See Prothal. 135. fetch. See Smith's Marsh's Lectures on English Language. age of Gold. See Ovid's Metam. i. 89-112. 136. speckl'd, from speck. So handle, &c. &c. The le is also a diminutival termination. Speckled probably may mean here variegated, gaudy; just as Spenser, Dryden, and Pope use it of a serpent and of snakes; but it may mean "plague-spotted." Comp. Horace's losum nefas" (Od. IV. iv. 23). 66 macu 137. sicken. Nearly always neuter in Shakspere, as here. It is transit, in Henry VIII. I. i. 81. 138. mould is very commonly used by itself for the earth in the old romances, &c. See Piers Ploughman, 67, ed. Skeat: "The most mischiefe on mold is mountyng wel faste." 140. Obs. herself answering to "Hell itself." Its had not yet won a place in the written language. His originally served for both the masculine and neuter genders. When the old gender system decayed, and it became usual to decide on a word's gender by its sense, not by its form, or by some tradition of the language, then this his was felt to be inadequate. It was sometimes used in its place. But it was objectionable that the nominative and possessive should not differ in form. Hence arose the form its. This form was in Milton's time struggling for admission into the written language. He lived to see it established in it; but in his earlier days that event seemed dubious. From this unsettled state of things arose confusions like the present. Men were not content with his as a neuter; they did not yet accept its. Perhaps he uses her because amongst the Latins words for lands and countries were feminine. Hell is, however, fem. in Anglo-Saxon. 10. 140. Comp. Homer's Iliad, v. 61; Virgil's Eneid, viii. 245; Ovid's Met. ii. 560; Pope's Rape of the Lock, cant. v. 142. See the Story of Astræa. 143. Orb'd in a rainbow, i.e. of course semi-orbed. Rev. x. 1. See Paradise Lost, vii. 247; This is the reading of the 1673 edition. That of 1645 reads: "The enamelled arras of the rainbow wearing." 144. set. So Coriolanus, I. ii. 27: "If they set down before us, for the remove 146. [What does stearing mean here ?] 147. as is radically but a contracted form of als = also = all so. 148. her. The Anglo-Saxon heofon is feminine. 11. 152. bitter cross. See Shakspere's 1 Henry IV. I. i. 27. 153. redeem our loss = recover what we have lost, as in Ruth iv. 6; or perhaps, less well, = ransom us lost ones. Comp. "their sight" above. Redeem has a personal object in Paradise Lost, iii. 281, &c. ; in iii. 214, it means to pay the penalty of." 66 155. ychain'd. So yclept in L'Allegro. So in Chaucer-yblessed, ybete, yburied, ybrent, ycoupled, yfalle, yfonden, ygeten, yglewed, yhalved, yheered (= haired), yshove, ysette, &c. &c.; in Spenser-yclad, yfraught, ybore, ymolt, &c. This y is a corruption of the part. ge, which still survives in German. Another form of this corruption is i, as in ifallen, ihorsed (Roman of Partenay), iarmed, ibene (= been), icorve (= carved), idight (= prepared), ifed, imaked (William of Palerne, ed. Skeat), &c. &c. Another, according to some scholars, is a, as in ago, (Spenser has the forms ygo, ygoe); but the prefix in that word is perhaps a corruption of of. In the very oldest stages of our language the prefix ge was not confined to the part.; e.g. in William of Palerne yknowe occurs as an inf. "yshrilled' in Spenser's Colin Clout's come Home again, 62, is the pret. But latterly it was so confined. Milton therefore shows an imperfect knowledge of the older language when he writes y-pointing in his Epitaph on Shakspere. 156. wakefull. Here active. See 1 Thess. iv. 16. " thunder. See Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, First Series. Allowing all that is said there, the root t-n may be itself onomatopoeic. 158. See Exod. xix. et seq. 159. brake. See note on hung, l. 122. 160. The aged Earth. Comp. " the old beldam earth," 1 Henry IV. III. i. 32. "And he hem told tightly whiche tvo white beres In the Faerie Queene the word occurs as a preterite : "He met a dwarf that seemed terrifyde With some late perill which he hardly past, Or other accident which him agast.” The participial form agasted is found. The main part of the word is the Anglo-Saxon gast; comp. German Geist, Old English gost, as in Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, 521, 529, 590 (ed. Skeat). There occur the forms agased and agazed, evidently the results of a false derivation. (See Wedgwood.) See 1 Henry VI. I. i. 126, and Chester Plays (apud Halliwell): "The [they] were so sore agased." And Bishop Percy's Folio MS. iii. 154 (ed. Hales and Furnivall): "Whereatt this dreadfull conquerour Theratt was sore agazed." An adjective gastful occurs in the Shep. Cal., and elsewhere. 11. 161. terrour. This spelling is better than our modern way, as more significant of the channel through which the word came to us. So honour below. 162, the center. So Com. 382. Hamlet, II. ii. 159: "If circumstances lead me I will find Where truth is hid. though it were hid indeed So Troilus and Cressida, III. ii. 186. In "the surface" and "the centre" the necessity of using either "his" or "its" is avoided. Comp. Fardle of Facions, 1555: "A certaine sede which groweth there of the owne accorde." (Apud Marsh.) 163. session. Though in appearance so different, "assize" and "session" are etymologically connected. Comp. royal, regal; French, serment, sacrement; acheter, accepter; naïf, native; chose, cause; etroit, strict, &c. &c. We have also the word "sitting" in a cognate sense with session. 164. spread his throne. If we compare the Latin, lectum sternere, then the original notion would be the same as in our phrase "to spread a table ;" that is, it would be to deck. the throne with fit coverings: hence, to prepare, to set his throne. We may compare Faerie Queene, I. xii. 13: "And all the floore was underneath their feet Bespredd with costly scarlott of great name, Comp. "his [Chaos'] dark pavilion spread" (Paradise Lost, ii. 960). 168. Th' old Dragon. See Rev. xii. 9. 170. casts his usurped sway-as if it were a net; as in 1 Cor. vii. 35, &c. so that a modern writer would hardly use it in a grave passage. It has now become vulgar, Comp. "nor nothing near," 171. wroth. Wrath in 1645 Ed. The form "wroth" is the substantive in Shakspere's Merchant of Venice, II. ix. 78: = "I'l keep my oath Patiently to bear my wroth." swings about, agitates violently. Comp. Faerie Queene, I. xi. 23: "His hideous tayle then hurled he about." 172. Swindges Comp. also Ib. 26: "The scorching flame sore swinged all his face." Our verb swing is cognate with the German schwingen, &c. Swinge in the sense of to beat, to strike ("an act that is done with a swinging movement"-Wedgwood), occurs frequently in Old English (as in Measure for Measure, V. i. 130), and still survives in the North English |