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Culling their potent herbs, and baleful drugs,

Who as they sung, would take the prison'd soul,
And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept,

255

And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause:

Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense,
And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself;
But such a sacred, and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss

I never heard till now.

I'll speak to her,

260

And she shall be my queen. Hail, foreign wonder, 265

256. —would take the prison'd soul,

And lap it in Elysium ;] Sublimely expressed to imply the binding up its rational faculties, and is opposed to the sober certainty of waking bliss. But the imagery is taken from Shakespeare, who has employed it, in praise of music, on twenty occasions. Warburton.

In the old play, the Return from Parnassus, 1606, act i. s. 2. Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear,

And lays it up in willing prisonment. In L'Allegro, 136. Lap me in soft Lydian aires. We have

lapped in delight" in Spenser, Faery Q. v. vi. 6. Prisoned was more common than imprisoned. See B. and Fletcher's Philaster, and Shakespeare, passim. T Warton. 257. And chid &c.] He had first writen,

Scylla wept,

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See Paradise Lost, ii. 660. and 1019. and the notes there.

257. Silius Italicus, of a Sicilian shepherd tuning his reed, Bell. Pun. xiv. 467.

Scyllæi tacuere canes, stetit atra
Charybdis.

The same situation and circum. stances dictated a similar fiction or mode of expression to either poet. But Silius avoided the boldness, perhaps impropriety, of the last image in Milton. T. Warton.

265.Hail, foreign wonder, Whom certain these rough shades did never breed, Thus Fletcher, Faith. Shep. act Unless the goddess, &c.] v. s. 1. vol. iii.

p.

188.

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Whom certain these rough shades did never breed,
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine

Dwell'st here with Pan, or Silvan, by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog

To touch the prosp'rous growth of this tall wood. 270
LADY.

Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is address'd to unattending ears;

Not
any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my sever'd company,
Compell'd me to awake the courteous Echo
To give me answer from her mossy couch.
COMUS.

What chance, good Lady, hath bereft

-My prime request,

you thus?

275

268. Dwell'st here with Pan,

Which I do last pronounce, is, O you &c.] In the Manuscript he had

wonder,

If you be maid or no?

Where maid is created being, a
woman in opposition to goddess.
Comus is universally allowed to
have taken some of its tints
from the Tempest. Compare the
Faerie Q. iii. v. 36. ii. iii. 33. and
B. and Fletcher's Sea-voyage,
act ii. s. 1. And Ovid, where
Salmacis first sees the boy Her-
maphroditus, Metam. iv. 320.

-Puer, O dignissime credi
Esse Deus; seu tu deus es, potes esse
Cupido, &c.

And Browne's Britannia's Pas-
torals, b. i. s. 4. p. 70. Homer,
in the address of Ulysses to Nau-
sicaa, the father of true elegance
as well as of true poetry, is the
original author of this piece of
gallantry, which could not escape
the vigilance of Virgil. See Ar-
cades, v. 44. T. Warton.

written at first Liv'st here with Pan, &c. and see what he says of the Genius of the wood in Arcades, and compare it with this passage.

270. To touch the prosp'rous growth of this tall wood.] We see by the Manuscript with what judgment Milton corrected. And in this view the publication of it by the learned and ingenious Mr. Birch was very useful. In this line the Manuscript had prospering, which Milton with judgment altered to prosperous; for tall wood implies full grown, to which prosperous agrees, but prospering implies it not to be full grown. Warburton.

277, &c. Here is an imitation of those scenes in the Greek Tragedies, where the dialogue proceeds by question and answer, a single verse being

LADY.

Dim darkness, and this leafy labyrinth.

COMUS.

Could that divide you from near-ushering guides?

LADY.

They left me weary on a grassy turf.

COMUS.

By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why?

LADY.

To seek i' th' valley some cool friendly spring.

COMUS.

And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady?

LADY.

They were but twain, and purpos'd quick return.

COMUS.

Perhaps forestalling night prevented them.

LADY.

280

285

How easy my misfortune is to hit!

allotted to each. The Greeks, doubtless, found a grace in this sort of dialogue. As it was one of the characteristics of the Greek drama, it was natural enough for our young poet, passionately fond of the Greek tragedies, to affect this peculiarity. But he judged better in his riper years; there being no instance of this dialogue, I think, in his Samson Agonistes. Hurd.

279. -from near-ushering guides? He had written at first from their ushering hands; and in the next verse, They left me wearied. The first alteration seems to be better than the last.

VOL. IV.

282. To seek i' th' valley some cool friendly spring.] This is a different reason from what she had assigned before, ver. 186.

To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit, &c.

They might have left her on both accounts.

285. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them. So in Shakespeare, Cymbal. act iii. s. 4.

-may

This night forestall him of the coming day.

See the notes, P. L. x. 1024. T. Warton.

E

COMUS.

Imports their loss, beside the present need?

LADY.

No less than if I should my Brothers lose,

COMUS.

Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom?

LADY.

As smooth as Hebe's their unrazor'd lips.

COMUS.

Two such I saw, what time the labour'd ox In his loose traces from the furrow came,

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290

Aspice, aratra jugo referunt suspensa juvenci:

and in Horace, Od. iii. vi. 41.

-sol ubi montium Mutaret umbras, et juga demeret Bobus fatigatis.

The Greeks have a single word that expresses the whole very happily, Bouλutos tempus quo boves solvuntur, as in Homer, Iliad xvi. 779.

Ημος δ' ηελίος μετενεισσε το βουλυτονδί.
291.
-the labour'd ox
In his loose traces from the fur-
row came.]

This is classical. But the return 'of oxen or horses from the plough, is not a natural circumstance of an English evening. In England the ploughman always quits his work at noon. Gray, therefore, with Milton, painted from books and not from the life, where in describing the departing day-light he says,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.

The swink'd hedger's supper, in

And the swink'd hedger at his supper sat;
I saw them under a green mantling vine
That crawls along the side of yon small hill,
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots;
Their port was more than human, as they stood:
I took it for a faëry vision

Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,

And play i' th' plighted clouds.

the next line, is from nature; and hedger, a word new in poetry, although of common use, has a good effect. T. Warton.

293. And the swink'd hedger] The swink'd hedger is the same as the labour'd ox, tired, fatigued. To swink is to work, to labour, as in Spenser's Faery Queen, b. ii. cant. vii. st. 8.

For which men swink and sweat incessantly.

297. Their port was more than human, as they stood:] We have followed the pointing of Milton's two editions in 1645 and 1673, which indeed we generally follow. The edition of 1637 points ít otherwise,

Their port was more than human; as they stood, &c.

and this is followed by Dr. DalMilton's Manuscript has no pointing here to direct us.

ton.

297. We have much the same

form of expression in the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester,

v. 21.

And in his garland, as he stood,
Ye might discern a cypress bud.
See Acts Apost. xxii. 13, 14.
"One Ananias came unto me,

I was awe-struck,

295

300

"and stood, and said unto me, " &c.".

Comus thus describes to the Lady the striking appearance of her Brothers; and after the same manner, in the Iphigenia in Tauris of Milton's favourite Greek tragedian Euripides, a shepherd describes Pylades and Orestes to Iphigenia the sister of the latter, as preternatural beings and objects of adoration, v. 246.

Ενταύθα δισσους είδε τις νεανιας
Βουφορβος ήμων, καπεχώρησεν παλιν,
Ακροισι δακτυλοισι πορθμενων ιχνος·
Ελεξε δ· Ουκ ὁρατε ; δαίμονες τινες
Θάσσουσιν οιδε. Θεοσεβης δ' ήμων τις ων
Ανέσχε χειρα, και προσευξατ' εισίδων·
Ω ποντιάς και Λευκοθέας, νέων φύλαξ,
Δεσποτα Παλαιμων,-

Είτ' ουν επ' ακταις βασσετον Διοσκόρω,
&c.

Compare note on v. 265. T.

Warton.

299. Of some gay creatures of the element,] In the north of England this term is still made use of for the sky. Thyer.

301. And play i' th' plighted clouds.] By using plighted here, instead of the more common word plaited, an unpleasant consonance was avoided-and play i' th' plaited clouds. Spenser

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