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of to join in marriage occurs frequently in the Elizabethan and other writers; e.g. in King John, III. i. 228: "Married in league, coupled, and linked." As a substantive in Paradise Lost, iv. 339:

"As beseems

Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league."

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Armado, in Love's Labour Lost (V. ii. 537), addresses the King and Princess as a most royal couplement." Some editions mistakenly read complement in this present passage.

3. 99. All Loues dislike = all dislike felt towards love. The so-called 'possessive case is here used objectively with regard to the substantive on which it depends. "The use of the possessive pronouns," says Marsh, "and of the inflected possessive case of nouns and pronouns was, until a comparatively recent period, very much more extensive than at present, and they were employed in many cases where the preposition with the objective now takes their place.” Comp. King's rebels, King's traitors (Paston Letters), Senecaes translation (Lodge), Sins poison, Graces antidote (Fuller).

100. assoile = = etymologically absolve.
[What is the meaning?]

101. accord. Here used transitively. So in Sidney's Arcadia: "Her hands accordea the lute's music to the voice; her panting heart danced to the music."

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102. wait upon attend. Comp. Psalm cxxiii. 2: "So our eyes wait upon the Lord Psalm xxv. 3.

our God."

bord

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table. See As You Like It, V. iv. 147:

"Wedding is great Juno's crown-
O blessed bond of board and bed."

Comedy of Errors, III. ii. 17, and V. i. 62, where Adriana says of
husband :

"In bed he slept not for my urging it;
At board he fed not for my urging it."

105. Comp. Psalm cxxvii. 5.

4. 110. to her =

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according to, in accordance with her. So Paradise Lost, i. 550:

"Anon they move

In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood

Of flutes and soft recorders."

And Ib. 559-61:

"Thus they,

Breathing united force, with fixed thought,
Moved on in silence to soft pipes."

undersong burden, refrain. So Browne, Brit. Past. ii. :

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112. neighbour neighbouring. So Comus, 484: "Some neighbour woodman." Ib. 576: "Some neighbour villager." Love's Labour Lost, V. ii. "" 94: A neighbour thicket." Hamlet, III. iv. 212: Neighbour room.'

119. in his flood. We should rather say on. So in Faerie Queene: "In fresh

summer's day," &c.

121. shend: Ang.-Sax. "scendan, to confound, shame, shend, reproach, revile, spurn' (Bosworth). Chaucer's Man of Lawes Tale:

"But verrayly thou wolt his body schende."

Persoun's Tale: "He schendeth all that he doth." Faerie Queene, passim.

P

4. 122. enranged. Comp. arranged. See Faerie Queene:

"As fair Diana, in fresh summer's day,

Beholds her nymphs enranged in shady wood."

127. See Spenser's Life.

129. [What is meant by sourse here?}

132. When the order of the Knights Templar was suppressed in Edward the Second's reign, their London estate on the bank of the Thames was given over to the Knights of St. John; by these it was leased to the students of the Common Law, who not finding a home at Cambridge or Oxford were at that time in want of a habitation. At the Dissolution of the Religious Orders this arrangement was continued by the Crown, at least for some two-thirds of the estate; the third-what should have been the Outer Temple-was bestowed on a favourite. At a later time, in the reign of James I., the property was given to the lawyers. 135- whilom, an old dat.

byde

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abide. Comp. bate, abate; maze, amaze; mend, amend; oκaipo, ¿okaiρw; σπαίρω, ἀσπαίρω; στάχυς, ἄσταχυς, στεροπή, ἀστεροπή; stella, ἀστήρ. Comp. also wake, awake; vouch, avouch; wait, await; verus, aver; down, adown; base, abase; but, abut; chief, achieve; Fr. droit, adroit. Comp. further, sperare, espérer; spatium, espace; spiritus, esprit; species, espèce.

137. The mansion here spoken of stood in the gardens of what should have been the Outer Temple. It covered the ground where Essex Street now is. The two pillars which still stand at the bottom of Essex Street-those between which you pass in order to reach the river at the Temple Pier-belonged to some part or appurtenance of it. In this “stately place” the Earl of Leicester was living in 1580; one of Spenser's letters to his friend Harvey in that year is dated from it. Leicester is the "great Lord" mentioned in l. 140. He died in the autumn of 1588. After him the Earl of Essex occupied the house. It was from and in it that, in 1601, he attempted that rash insurrection against the Queen's advisers which involved him in ruin.

next whereunto. It was on the upper or western side of the Temple; not, as might seem from Spenser's description, on the lower.

139. wont. This word, as used here and often elsewhere in older English, is, in fact, the pret. of the old verb won, "Ang.-Sax. wunian; Dan. wonen ; G. wohnen, to dwell, persist, continue" (Wedgewood). So in Waller's lines:

"The eagle's fate and mine are one,

Which on the shaft that made him die

Espy'd a feather of his own,

Wherewith he wont to soar so high.”

And so in t Henry VI. I. ii. 14:

"Talbot is taken, whom we wont to fear."

Comp. the disuse of use in the sense of “am accustomed," while used is common enougħ. This pret. came to be used itself as a quasi-present; so ought-dare-durst-mind-wot-ought-can-may-memini-oida. (See Latham.)

"Through power of that, his cunning thieveries

He wonts to work that none the same espies."-Faerie Queene.

But much more commonly wont is a part., with this peculiarity, that it is used only prediatively, never attributively. We say, "he was wont to be vigorous," but cannot speak t vigour." To pass on to a third sense, wont is sometimes a subst. The 1, which is used in the inverse way to wont the part.-i.e. is always an attributive, licative-is perhaps an adj. derived from this subst. customary; but it may be a

"For she

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part. formed from the secondary verb wont. Spenser has also an adj. wontless = unwonted, Hymne in Honour of Beautie:

4. £40.

"What wontlesse fury dost thou now inspire

Into my feeble breast when full of thee?"

"Of all English writers Spenser shows himself most independent of the laws of position." (Marsh.)

freendles. The privative termination les is more correctly spelt, as here, with only one s. It is quite distinct from the word less. It is a modernised form of Ang.-Sax. -leas. Thus friendless = Ang.-Sax. freondleas.

141. fits. So Faerie Queene, II. ii. 11: "Here fits not tell." Comp. Sidney's Arcad., where it is expressed:

"How evil fits it me to have such a son."

In methinks, them seemed, &c. the it is omitted, as here.

146. Observe the alliteration.

147. See in Knight or Lingard an account of Essex's expedition against Spain in 1596. There are contemporary accounts by Camden, Stowe, Strype, Raleigh. It was a splendid feat of arms. Macaulay calls it, in his Essay on Bacon, The most brilliant military exploit that was achieved on the Continent by English arms during the long interval which elapsed between the battle of Agincourt and that of Blenheim." There is a contemporary ballad on it given in Percy's Reliques from the Editor's "Folio MS." entitled "The Winning of Cales,” i.e. of Cadiz.

148. Hercules two pillors: i.e. Calpe on the European, Abyla on the African coast, at the Fretum Gaditanum, our Straits of Gibraltar. This name for these facing projections is found first in Pindar (Olymp. 3, 77; Nem. 3, 35), who calls them variously the onλai and the Kioves of Hercules. They were said to have been erected by Hercules to mark the limit of his westward wanderings.

5. 154. Does he mean that Devereux "promises" he shall be heureux?

Essex].

"Few noblemen of his age were more courted by poets [than was Robert, Earl of From Spenser to the lowest rhymer he was the subject of numerous sonnets or popular ballads. I will not except Sidney. I could produce evidence to prove that he scarce ever went out of England, or even left London, on the most frivolous enterprise with out a pastoral in his praise, or a panegyric in metre, which were sold or sung in the streets.' (Warton.)

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158. Thy wide Alarmes the wide alarms excited by you. So the Wycliffite translation of Gen. ix. 2: "And youre feer and youre trembling be upon all the beestis of the earth." Comp. the current version. See above on 1. 99. So in Latin, as Ovid. Her. v. 149-50:

"Ipse repertor opis vaccas pavisse Phereas

Fertur, et a nostro saucius igne fuit."

So in Greek, as in Aristotle's Ode to Arete:

σοῖς δὲ πόθοις ̓Αχιλλεὺς Αἴας τ' Αίδαο δόμους ἦλθον.

Alarmes: orig. a French cry

"to arms.

Alarum is the same word, the addi

tional syllable in it having sprung perhaps from the full sound of the r. Comp. in Havelok, vv. 2408-9 (Ed. Skeat):

"And smot him thoru the rith arum;

Therof was ful litel harum."

159. muse a poet; as in Faerie Queene, IV. xi. 34; Lycid. 19. Shaksp. Sonn. 21:

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174. bauldricke = belt. Lat. balteus. O. Fr. baudré. O. H. G. balderick. belt, girdle, or sash, of various kinds : sometimes a sword-belt." (Halliwell.) It was sor times merely a collar or strap passing round the neck; but most commonly it passed over shoulder and under the arm on the other side. It was frequently used for a bugle-horn sa:

as in Chaucer, Prol. 116, of the yeoman :

"An horn he bar, the bawdrik was of grene."

Much Ado about Nothing, I. i. 242: "But that I will have a recheat winded in my forehe or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, the ladies shall pardon me." Heauens bright = the Zodiac.

177. which is commonly used of persons in Older It is quite wrong to suppose it to be the neuter of who.

"The Bauldricke of

English, as in the Lord's Prayer,
See above, 1. 12.

JOHN MILTON.

MILTON'S life may be divided into three parts: (1) 1608-1639; (2) 1639-1660; (3) 1660-1672 (1) He was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, towards the close of the year 1608. Bread Street is close by Friday Street, in which was the Mermaid Tavern, where Shakspere and Jonson, and the other great wits of the day, used to meet together; so that Milton may be said to have been born within sound of their famous merriments. His father seems to have been a man of grave earnest nature, of high views on the subject of education and of the end of life, of strong religious convictions, himself well educated and accomplished, being a skilful and eager musician. Of his mother little is known. In very many respects he inherited his

father's character.

form

He was very carefully educated at home under a private tutor, Thomas Young (his initials part of Smectymnuus), at St. Paul's School, at Christ's College, Cambridge, at home again (Horton, Buckinghamshire), and lastly by a tour upon the Continent (in France, Italy, and Switzerland). Thus his formal education lasted down to his thirty-first year. The great number of the years thus occupied is to be accounted for by the fact that after he had once chosen his vocation of poetry, which he appears to have done at an early age, it seemed both to him and to his father above all things important that he should earnestly prepare himself for it. This first period of his life, then, may be called the period of preparation. During it he did not attempt any great work; he only prepared himself to attempt one. At Christmas 1629 he wrote his Hymn on the Morning of the Nativity, his first considerable work; seven years afterwards he wrote Lycidas, his last considerable minor work; between these he wrote L'Allegro and Il Penseroso and Comus, besides some sonnets and other short pieces.

(2) It might seem that in 1639 Milton was at last ready to address himself to his great task: that "the mellowing year” (Lycid. 5) had come; or to use another phrase (see Sonnet On arriving to his Three-and-twentieth Year), that he was sufficiently "endued" with that "inward ripeness" after which he had so sincerely and ardently aspired; but he was now to be drawn away, perhaps for ever, from the object of his devotion. Poetry was to be abandoned for politics. Such was the condition of the times, that other services than those of a poet were required of him. He obeyed this call, and for more than twenty years he gave himself up to the urgent political and social questions of the day. He wrote on the Freedom of the Press, on Church Government, on Divorce, on Education, in defence of the English people when assailed by Saumase for the execution of their king. During all this period he wrote no poetr except a few sonnets. Of these sonnets several deal with the same matters which form the subjects of his prose works; others give some insight into his social and personal life: the last one, written in 1658, reflects his profound grief for the loss of his second wife. By his first wife he had been made the father of three daughters. His incessant studiousness injured his sight, and at last produced blindness: the immediate cause of that affliction being his controversy with Saumase (see Sonnet to Cyriac Skinner on his Blindness).

(3) When the Republic fell and was superseded, Milton was no longer able to serve his country as a political writer, He could now once more, after an interval of some twenty-one

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