And singing, startle the dull night ", Through the high wood echoing shrill; Both in "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" there seem to be two parts; the one a day | piece, and the other a night piece. Here, or with three or four of the preceding lines, our 1 author begins to spend the day with mirth.-T. WARTON. ■ Startle the dull night. So in "King Henry V." a. iv. Chorus : Piercing the night's dull ear.-STEEVENS. • Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, Sweet-briar and eglantine are the same plant: by the "twisted-eglantine" he therefore means the honeysuckle. All three are plants often growing against the side or walls of a house.-T. WARTON. The rear of Darkness thin. Darkness is a person above, v. 6: and in “Paradise Lost," b. iii. 712: and in Spenser, "Fa. Qu." 1. vii. 23: Where Darknesse he in deepest dongeon drove. And in Manilius, i. 126:— mundumque enixa nitentem, But, if we take in the context, he seems to have here personified Darkness from "Romeo and Juliet," a. ii. s. 3: The grey-eyed Morn smiles on the frowning night, For here too we have by implication Milton's " dappled dawn," v. 44: but more expressly in "Much Ado about Nothing," a. v. s. 3 :— And look, the gentle day Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray. So also Drummond, "Sonnets," edit. 1616: Sith, winter gone, the sunne in dapled skie a Rouse the slumbering morn. The same expression, as Mr. Bowle observes, occurs with the same rhymes, in an elegant triplet of an obscure poet, John Habington, "Castara," edit. 1640, p. 8: The nymphes with quivers shall adorne With the shrill musicke of the horne.-T. WARTON. I do not know why Warton calls William Habington, whom he misnames John, "an obscure poet :" he was a very elegant one, and has latterly been again brought into notice and praise. Milton was here indebted to Guarini, "Pastor Fido," where the "slumbering morn is roused," a. i. s. 1.—Todd. In the "Penseroso," he walks "unseen," v. 65. Happy men love witnesses of their joy the splenetic love solitude.-HURD. Right against the eastern gate, Where the great sun begins his state, &c. Gray has adopted the first of these lines in his "descent of Odin." See also "Paradise Lost," b. iv. 542. Here is an allusion to a splendid or royal procession. We have the eastern gate again, in the Latin poem "In Quintum Novembris," v. 133. Shakspeare has also the eastern gate, which is most poetically opened, "Midsummer Night's Dream," a. iii. s. 9: Ev'n till the eastern gate, all fiery red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turds into yellow gold his salt green streams.-T. WARTON. The clouds in thousand liveries dight. Literally from a very puerile poetical description of the morning in one of his academic Prolusions: Ipsa quoque tellus, in adventum solis, cultiori se induit vestitu; nubesque juxta, variis chlamydata coloribus, pompa solenni, longoque ordine, videntur ancillari surgenti Deo." "Pr. Works," vol. ii. 586. And just before we have "The cock with lively din," &c.-" At primus omnium adventantem solem triumphat insomnis gallus." An ingenious critic observes, that this morning landscape of "L'Allegro" has served as a repository of imagery for all succeeding poets on the same subject: but much the same circumstances, among others, are assembled by a poet who wrote above thirty years before, the author of “ Britannia's Pastorals," b. iv. s. iv. p. 75. I give the passage at large:By this had chanticlere, the village clocke, Bidden the good wife for her maides to knocke: And the swart plowman for his breakfast staid, That he might till those lands were fallow laid: The hills and valleys here and there resound With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound: Each sheapherd's daughter with her cleanly peale, Was come afield to milke the mornings meale ; And ere the sunne had clymb'd the easterne hils, To guild the muttring bournes and petty rills; Before the laboring bee had left the hiue, And nimble fishes, which in riuers diue, Began to leape, and catch the drowned flie, I rose from rest.-T. WARTON. And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale. It was suggested to me by the late ingenious Mr. Headly, that the word "tale" does not here imply stories told by shepherds, but that it is a technical term for numbering sheep, which is still used in Yorkshire and the distant counties: This interpretation I am inclined to adopt, which I will therefore endeavour to illustrate and enforce. "Tale" and " tell," in this sense, were not unfamiliar in our poetry, in and about Milton's time for instance, Dryden's Virgil," Bucol." iii. 33: And once she takes the tale of all my lambs. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures", Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Bosom'd high in tufted treesTM, And in W. Browne's " Shepheard's Pipe,” Egl. v. edit. 1614. 12mo. He is describing the dawn of day When the shepheards from the fold All their bleating charges told; Of all the flock was hurt, or gone, &c. But let us analyse the context." The poet is describing a very early period of the morning; and this be describes by selecting and assembling such picturesque objects as accompany that period, and such as were familiar to an early riser. He is waked by the lark, and goes into the fields: the sun is just emerging, and the clouds are still hovering over the mountains: the cocks are crowing, and with their lively notes scatter the lingering remains of darkness: human labours and employments are renewed with the dawn of the day: the hunter (formerly much earlier at his sport than at present) is beating the covert, and the slumbering morn is roused with the cheerful echo of hounds and horns: the mower is whetting his scythe to begin his work: the milk-maid, whose business is of course at daybreak, comes abroad singing: the shepherd opens his fold, and takes the "tale" of his sheep, to see if any were lost in the night, as in the passage just quoted from Browne. Now for shepherds to tell tales, or to sing, is a circumstance trite, common, and general, and belonging only to ideal shepherds; nor do I know, that such shepherds tell tales, or sing, more in the morning than at any other part of the day: a shepherd taking the "tale" of his sheep which are just unfolded, is a new image, correspondent and appropriated, beau tifully descriptive of a period of time, is founded in fact, and is more pleasing as more natural.-T. WARTON. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures. There is, in my opinion, great beauty in this abrupt and rapturous start of the poet's imagination, as it is extremely well adapted to the subject, and carries a very pretty allasion to those sudden gleams of vernal delight, which break in upon the mind at the sight of a fine prospect.—THYER. Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees. This was the great mansion-house in Milton's early days, before the old-fashioned archi tecture had given way to modern arts and improvements. Turrets and battlements were conspicuous marks of the numerous new buildings of the reign of king Henry VIII., and of some rather more ancient, many of which yet remained in their original state, unchanged and undecayed: nor was that style, in part at least, quite omitted in Inigo Jones's first manner. Browne, in "Britannia's Pastorals," has a similar image, b. i. s. v. p. 96 :— Yond pallace, whose brave turret tops Ouer the statelie wood suruay the copse. of Browne is a poet now forgotten, but must have been well known to Milton. Where only a little is seen, more is left to the imagination. These symptoms of an old palace, espe cially when thus disposed, have a greater effect than a discovery of larger parts, and even a full display of the whole edifice. The embosomed battlements, and the spreading top the tall grove, on which they reflect a reciprocal charm, still farther interest the fancy from the novelty of combination while just enough of the towering structure is shown, to make an accompaniment to the tufted expanse of venerable verdure, and to compose a picturesque association. With respect to their rural residence, there was a coyness in our Gothic an cestors: modern seats are seldom so deeply ambushed: they disclose all their glories at 19 Where perhaps some beauty lies, To many a youth and many a maid, Dancing in the chequer'd shade; 80 85 90 95 once and never excite expectation by concealment, by gradual approaches, and by interrupted appearances.-T. WARTON. * Where perhaps some beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. Most probably from Burton's " Melancholy," as Peck observes: but in Shakspeare we have "your eyes are lodestarres," "Mids. Night's Dream," a. i. s. 1. And this was no uncommon compliment in Chaucer, Skelton, Sidney, Spenser, and other old English poets, as Mr. Steevens has abundantly proved. Milton enlivens his prospect by this unexpected circumstance, which gives it a moral charm.-T. WARTON. y The upland hamlets. In opposition to the hay-making scene in the lower lands.—THYER. z When the merry bells ring round. See Shakspeare," Henry IV." P. 11. a. iv. s. 4 : And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear.-T. WARTON. And the jocund rebecks sound. The rebeck was a species of fiddle; and is, I believe, the same that is called in Chaucer, Lydgate, and the old French writers, the rebible. It appears from Sylvester's "Du Bartas," that the cymbal was furnished with wires, and the rebeck with strings of catgut, ed. 1621, p. 221. "But wyerie cymbals, rebecks sinewes twined." Du Cange quotes a middle-aged barbarous Latin poet, who mentions many musical instruments by names now hardly intelligible :-" Gloss. Lat. v. Baudosa." One of them is the rebeck. "Quidam rebeccam arcuabant:" where by arcuabant, we are to understand that it was played upon by a bow, arcus. The word occurs in Drayton's "Eclogues," vol. iv. p. 1391. "He tuned his rebeck to a mournful note." And see our author's "Liberty of Unlicensed Printing: ""The villages also must have their visitors to inquire, what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads even to the gammuth of every municipal [town] fidler," &c. If, as I have supposed, it is Chaucer's "ribible," the diminutive of "rebibe used also by Chaucer, I must agree with Sir John Hawkins, that it originally comes from "rebeb," the name of a Moorish musical instrument with two strings played on by a bow. Sir John adds, that the Moors brought it into Spain, whence it passed into Italy, and obtained the appellation of ribeca. Hist. Mus. ii. 86. Perhaps we have it from the French rebec and rebecquin. In the Percy household book, 1512, are recited, "mynstralls in houshold iij, viz. a tabarett, a luyte, and a rebecc." It appears below queen Elizabeth's reign, in the music establishment of the royal household.-T. WARTON. b Chequer'd shade. So, in "Titus Andronic." a. ii. s. 3: The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground.-RICHARDSON. And going and t some forth to play The Freikor daylight fail": And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, And crop-fall out of doors he flings, And the basy hum of men, • the liveling daylight fail. 109 105 113 113 Here the poet begins to pass the night with mirth; and he begins with the night or evening of the ** sunshine kiyday,” whose merriments he has just celebrated.—T. WARTON, 4. Then to the spicy nut-brown ale. This was Shakspeare's "gossip's bowl,"-" Midsummer Night's Dream," a i. s. l. The composition was de, zime, segar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples: it was called lamb's-wool. Our old dramas have frequent allusions to this delectable beverage. In Fletcher's - Faithful Shepherdess" it is styled the spiced wassel-boul.”—T. WARTON. * She was pinch'i and pulï'd, the sed, &c. "He" and " she” are persons of the company assembled to spend the evening, after a country wake, at a rural junket: all this is a part of the pastoral imagery which now prevailed in our poetry.-T. WARTON. í And he, by friar's lantern led, &c. "Friar's lantern,” is the Jack-and-lantern, which led people in the night into marshes and waters. Milton gives the philosophy of this superstition, "Paradise Lost," b. ix. 634-642. In the midst of a solemn and learned enarration, his strong imagination could not resist a romantic tradition consecrated by popular credulity.-T. WARTON. Tells how the drudging goblin swet, To earn his cream-bowl duly set, &c. This goblin is Robin Goodfellow. His cream-bowl was earned, and he paid the punetuality of those by whom it was duly placed for his refection, by the service of threshing with his invisible fairy flail, in one night, and before the dawn of day, a quantity of corn in the barn, which could not have been threshed in so short a time by ten labourers. He then returns into the house, fatigued with his task; and, overcharged with his reward of the cream-bowl, throws himself before the fire, and, stretched along the whole breadth of the fire-place, basks till the morning.-T. WARTON. h Tower'd cities please us then. “Then," that is at night. The poet returns from his digression, perhaps disproportionately prolix, concerning the feats of fairies and goblins, which protract the conversation over the spicy bowl of a village supper, to enumerate other pleasures or amusements of the night or evening. "Then" is in this line a repetition of the first " Then," ver. 100. After 66 |