Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/427

 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

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��104. MUSCEUS ; a Greek poet of the mythical age to which Orpheus also belonged.

110-115. The story of Cambuscan bold ; Chau- cer's Squire's Tale. The names which fol- low are persons of the story. The " Tartar king" is Cambuscan or Cambynskan, a corrup- tion of Gengis Khan, the Grand Khan of Tar- tary.

113. Virtuous ring ; ring endowed with magic powers.

120. Where more is meant than meets the ear ; such poems as those of Spenser, where an alle- gorical meaning underlies the story.

122. Civil-suited; soberly dressed.

124. The Attic Boy; Cephalus, the lover of Aurora.

134. Sylvan ; Sylvanus, god of fields and for- ests.

147-150. The meaning is, " Let some myste- rious dream move to and fro at the wings of Sleep, unrollingits pictures, until they fall upon my eyelids." The expression is so hurried that the idea is slightly obscured.

15(5. Cloister's pale ; pale = enclosure. For a long time cloister's was written without the apostrophe, and pale taken as an adjective.

Page 30. To THE NIGHTINGALE.

4. Jolly, from French joli, had not its present connotation of rollicking fun. The meaning was rather " gay " or " blithe " in appearance.

(i. First heard, i. e. if heard before the cuckoo.

Page 30. ON TIME.

3. The heavy-plummet'' s pace ; i.e. the slow de- scent of the weights in an old-fashioned clock.

12. Individual; not to be divided or broken, so eternal.

Page 30. AT A SOLEMN Music.

'2. Sphere-born sisters: this is Milton's own mythology. Cf. Comus, 1. 241, where Echo is called " Daughter of the sphere."

6. Consent ; harmony.

23. Diapason ; octave covering all the notes of the scale.

27. Consort ; probably " society," from Latin consortium.

Page 31. UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

1. Ye .flaminy Powers^, i. e. the Seraphim, whose name in Hebrew signifies " burning."

6-9. Masson explains these obscure lines by paraphrasing thus : " if it is impossible for your Angelic constitutions, formed as they are of fire, to yield tears, yet, by burning as you sigh, you may borrow the water of our tears, turned into vapor." The process still remains a trifle vague.

Page 38. ARCADES.

14-15. Older members of the family or friends may have been grouped about the chair of state.

20-22. The comparison of the Dowager to Latona, or Leto, mother of Apollo and Arte- mis, conveyed a double compliment to her and to her offspring. Likewise the comparison to the " great mother " Cybele, or Rhea, mother of Jove, Juno, Neptune, etc., is appropriate be- cause of the Dowager's large family. The tur- reted crown of Cybele would have its counter- part in the duchess's coronet.

��23. Juno dares not give her odds ; Juno could compete with her only on equal terms.

26, 27. Lawes, in the character of the Genius of the Wood, addresses the male members of the duchess's family, who form part of the pageant. "For" must be taken not with "swains " but with " gentle," which is used in the sense of " nobly-born."

33. Fair silver-buskined Nymphs ; the ladies of the pageant.

44. Lot; allotment, appointment.

51. Thwarting thunder blue; thwarting may be used in its early sense, " going athwart," i. e. zigzag ; or perhaps in its derived sense of hin- dering, harming. Thunder is of course put here for lightning, as often in Elizabethan liter- ature.

52. Cross dire-looking planet ; cross means here rather "adverse," "bringing trouble," than "ill-uatured_."

62-69. These difficult lines can best be made clear by quoting from Plato's account of the Myth of Er, in the tenth book of the Republic, as translated by Davies and Vaughan :

' ' They looked down upon a straight pillar of light, stretching across the whole heaven and earth, more like the rainbow than anything else, only brighter and clearer. . . . Arriving at the centre of the light, they saw that its ex- tremities were fastened by chains to the sky. For this light binds the sky together, like the hawser that strengthens a trireme, and thus holds together the whole revolving universe. To the extremities is fastened the distaff of Ne- cessity, by means of which all the revolutions of the universe are kept up. . . . The nature of the whorl may be thus described : In shape it is like an ordinary whorl ; but from Er's ac- count we must picture it to ourselves under the form of a large hollow whorl, scooped out right through, into which a similar, but smaller, whorl is nicely inserted, like those boxes which fit into one another. In the same way a third whorl is inserted within the second, a fourth within the third, and so on to four more. For in all there are eight whorls, inserted into one another,. . . and all together forming one solid whorl embracing the shaft, which is passed right through the centre of the eighth. . . . The distaff spins round upon the knees of Ne- cessity. Upon each of its circles stands a siren, who travels round with the circle, uttering one note in one tone ; and from all the eight notes there results a single harmony. At equal dis- tances around sit three other personages, each on a throne. These are the daughters of Ne- cessity, the Fates, Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos ; who, clothed in white robes, with garlands on their heads, chant to the music of the sirens, Lachesis the events of the past, Clotho those of the present, Atropos those of the future."

The Myth of Er was very popular with seven- teenth-century writers, especially with the masquer-writers, and in adapting the above pas- sage Milton did not run much risk of mystify- ing his audience. The " nine infolded spheres " are the concentric sphere of the Ptolemaic

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