But rigid looks of chaste austerity,

And noble grace, that dash'd brute violence
With sudden adoration, and blank awe?
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lacky her,

fevers, not only preventing the infection before it has spread itself, but curing the discase after the infection has seized, for which purpose there is no vegetable, or any other remedy that I know of, equal to it, in the whole course of medicine.” With these praises the language of the poem con

curs.

(458) The very singular, most quaint, and uncouth phrase of angels lackying, used in a com position that abounds so much as Comus does in the beauties of poetry, is sufficient to excite a suspicion that something mysterious is conccaled beneath it. This I take to be another remedy, namely, the angelica root, thus oddly pointed to. This remedy is spoken of as follows in the book cited in the last note, p. 39." It is cordial,

Driving far off each`thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream, and solemn vision,
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,

460

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence 465
Till all be made immortal; but when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,

stomatic, cephalic, aperient, sudorific, vulnerary, resists poison, and is used in the plague and malignant fevers."

(468) I should be less inclined to think that this line and its context allude to the intercourse between the sexes as promoting the fevers in question, (unless it may be supposed to be the poet's intention to point to another particular disease, as having, as well as the fevers mainly in question, its birth-place in America), than that they have a reference to certain appearances exhibited by the outline of the Island of Cuba; and

Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,

Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose.

The divine property of her first being.

470

475

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel vaults, and sepulchres,
Ling'ring and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loath to leave the body that it lov'd
And link'd itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.

2 Bro. How charming is divine philosophy!

that so, that island is pointed to as the principal region of those fevers, of the dreadful malignity of which, the lines that conclude this speech contain a marked description.

(479) In the term divine I think there is an oblique hint at the Isle of Ceylon, otherwise called Selendiva, where an excellent species of camphor grows, though the best is found in the Isle Borneo. This allusion to Ceylon is the more probable, from the likeness which the outlines of that island bear to a lute, (481).

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 480

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,

1

Where no crude surfeit reigns. Eld. Bro, List, list, I hear

Some far-off hallow break the silent air.

2 Bro. I thought so too: what should it be? 485 Eld. Bro. For certain

Either some one like us night-founder'd here, Or else some neighbour wood-man, or, at worst, Some roving robber, calling to his fellows.

2 Bro. Heav'n keep my sister. Again, again,

and near;

Best draw, and stand upon our guard.

Eld. Bro. I'll hallow;

If he be friendly, he comes well; if not,

490

Defence is a good cause, and Heav'n be for us. That hallow I should know; what are you?

speak;

495

Come not too near, you fall on iron stakes else.

(488) There is here another allusion to the piratical Buccaneers of the countries mainly in question.

The Attendant Spirit, habited like a Shepherd.

Spir. What voice is that? my young lord? speak again.

2 Bro. O brother, 'tis my father's shepherd, sure,

Eld. Bro. Thyrsis? whose artful strains have oft

delay'd

The huddling brook to hear his madrigal,

500

And sweeten'd every musk-rose of the dale.
How cam'st thou here, good swain? hath any

ram

Slipt from the fold, or young kid lost his dam?
Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook?
How could'st thou find this dark sequester'd
nook?

505

!

(500) In the word madrigal, there may be a hint at the name of Madeira, or Mateira, one of the names by which the river, which the Attendant Spirit represents, is known; and the musk rose may be intended to convey a like hint at the country of South America, where that river flows, which country has the shape of a rose-bud.