8. 75. Comp. Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii. 61: = "Venus in her glimmering sphere." 76. bespake spake. So Lycid. 112; Paradise Lost, i. 43. Sometimes the prefix be has its transitive-making force, as e.g. when Dryden writes: "Then staring on her with a ghastly look And hollow voice, he thus the queen bespake.” Paradise Lost, ii. 849: "No less rejoiced His mother bad, and thus bespake her sire," Comp. bewail, bemoan, &c. So Paradise Lost, In the case of the bid. The weak preterite is here preferred to the strong form. ii. 514. The form bidde occurs in The Vision of Piers Ploughman. preterite of bite the weak form has with us altogether superseded the strong form. In Piers Ploughman we have boot, Ed. Wright, l. 2642: 66 That he boot hise lippes." In that same poem both the forms sitte and sat are found. 77. Comp. Spenser's Shep. Cal. April. 78. her may refer either to shady gloom, i.e. night, or to day. 79. withheld. Comp. withdraw. 81. as. So commonly in modern English we should say as if; but in older English, when the force of the subjunctive was livelier, the if was not needed. 84 axle-tree. Comp. Comus, 95-7. Tree in Old English dore-tree door-post, Piers Ploughman, roof-tree, &c. = = wood, beam, &c. So Lawn seems to denote So launde in Piers 9. 85. lawn pasture; commonly any open grassy space. radically a clear or cleared space, where the view is unobstructed. Ploughman. Comp. lane, an opening, a passage between houses or fields (see Wedgewood), Comp. Paradise Lost, iv. 252, where the groves of Eden are described; Pope: "Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks Interspersed in lawns and opening glades, Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades." With the sense here, comp. L'Allegro, 1. 71. 86. or ere before ever. See Daniel vi. 24; Hamlet, I. ii. 147; Psalm xc. 2. From the same root as or come our ere, erst, early. Or is common enough in Old English, as in Mirror for Magistrates: "And, or I wist, when I was come to land." This same form occurs in Tempest, I. ii. 11; King John, IV. iii. 20 (Ed. 1623), &c. As for ere, in or ere, it probably stands for ever: it increases the force of the adverbial clause of time in which it appears; thus in King Lear, II. iv. : "I have full cause of weeping; but this heart where the ere gives intensity. Ere in this and such cases has the same grammatical value as twice, in Measure for Measure, IV. iii. 92: "Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting To the under generation, you shall find Or yet in Paradise Lost, x. 584: "Ere yet Dictæan Jove was born." 99.66 66 ere I.e. ever is an adverb of time. Hence the phrase or ere, = our mod. "ere ever," is nearly invariably used with a clause, and not as a preposition. We could say 'ere long," now," but not "ere ever long,' ere ever now." The phrase in our text is to be explained as parallel to "for all the morning light," "against their bridal day ;” where the full construction would demand a verb. (See notes, l. 73, and Prothal. 1. 17.) It is, so far as we know, unique. Others interpret the ere in or ere as, in fact, a mere reiteration, the ere added as a sort of gloss, when the meaning of or had ceased to be generally known. In Greek, piv and rpôtepov are found in the same sentence, rporepov antecedent; but this is obviously no parallel. Nor can the phrase 'an if," which appeared for a time in our language, be said to justify the above explanation. Moreover, can we not say, "before ever," as "before ever he knew him, he acted nobly"? Does "ever" translate "before"? 9. 86. point of dawn. French, point du jour. 90. Warton quotes Spenser's Shep. Cal. May: "When great Pan account of shepheards shall ask.” 92. was. The idea of the subject is singular, though the form is plural. wages of sin is death," &c. So "the silly. A.-S. salig, happy; then simple, then foolish. Cf. German selig. form seely is found in the Faerie Queene, &c.; sely in Chaucer, Leg. of Fair W.: O sely woman, full of innocence: " and in Piers Ploughman. For the degradation of meaning, comp. simple, innocent. Trench's Study of Words, and Select Gloss. Comp. evn@ns. The See 95. strook, i.e. strook out. Of course, the word more properly applies to the notes of stringed instruments, as in Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 99: "Now strike the golden lyre again." Other forms of the participle are stricken, strucken, struck. The form strook is found in Piers Ploughman, &c. Comp. the participial forms, took, forsook, &c. as, though seemingly, is not really the relative, nor yet the subject, in this and such phrases. The relative is in fact omitted, as is not uncommon. The full phrase would be "as (music) which never was, &c." 96. divinely warbled voice. Voice = something uttered by the voice, as often Latin vox. Or perhaps, better, warbled = trilled, made to trill or quaver. Comp. Arcad. 87: "Follow me, as I sing, And touch the warbled string.". In Com. 854 it means trilled forth, sung: “ If she be right invoked in tuarbled song." So, in the active form, in Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii. 206: "Both warbling of one song." 9. 96. Observe s sharp and s flat, according to our present pronunciation, rhyming together. 97. noise. Comp. Faerie Queene, I. xii. 39: "During the which there was an heavenly noise Heard sownd through all the Pallace pleasantly." Or perhaps here in its not uncommon Elizabethan sense of "a set or company of musicians." (Nares.) See" Sneak's noise," 2 Henry IV. II. iv. 12. Ben Jonson's Masq. of Gyps.: "The King has his noise of gypsies as well as of bear-wards and other minstrels," &c. 99. loth = in oldest English, hateful, our "loathed." Comp. loathsome. So loathly, Shakspere, &c. 100. close. So Dryden, Fables: "At every close she made, th' attending throng Replied, and bore the burden of the song." Shakspere, Richard II. II. i. 12. So Herrick, The Church: "Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses, My music shows you have your closes, 102. As if the moon was but a bright spherical shell. 103. Cynthia. See Proth., Il Pens., &c. hereupon; or = at this point of time, now. See Cowper's lines to Mary 66 'Thy needles, once a shining store, For my sake restless heretofore," &c. Comp. there in Shakspere, Lover's Complaint: "Even there resolved my reason into tears." its. This passage, Paradise Lost, i. 254, and iv. 814, are said to be the only places where Milton uses this word. See note, 1. 140. 107. [What are the two forces "alone" might have here? and which has it ?] 108. [What is the force of the comparative here?] 109. their sight them as they look. Comp. "I pursue thy lingering" in Paradise Lost, ii. 702. So "thy wiseness," Hamlet, V. i. 286. 110. globe ?= a mass, a body; or circular" is tautological. Comp. Hamlet's distracted globe" (I. v. 96). 111. shame-fac't. See note to stedfast, 1. 70. 112. Cherubim. In his translation of Psalm 1xxx. 5, Milton uses the English plural form. Shakspere generally uses cherubim for the singular (as in Othello, IV. ii. 63); but cherub occurs in Hamlet, IV. iii. 50. Knight reads cherubims in Merchant of Venice, V. i. 62. The Authorized Version of the Bible uses cherubims. Cherubs and cherubims now differ in meaning. Perhaps he does not mean to characterize, when he speaks of the helms of the cherubim and the swords of the seraphim. It was cherubims "with a flaming sword" that guarded the gates of Eden. Both orders are differently represented in the lines At a Solemn Music. Or he may mean that the cherubim were the more purely defensive spirits, the seraphim more active. Their "sword" may mean "the sword of the Spirit." (Comp. Isaiah vi. 6.) 113. Seraphim. "The great seraphic lords," Paradise Lost, i. 794. accept its. Perhaps he uses her because amongst the Latins words for lands and countries were feminine. Hell is, however, fem. in Anglo-Saxon. 10. 140. Comp. Homer's Iliad, v. 61; Virgil's Eneid, viii. 245; Ovid's Met. ii. 560: Pope's Rape of the Lock, cant. v. 142. See the Story of Astræa.. 143. Orb'd in a rainbow, i. e. of course semi-orbed. Rev. x. 1. See Paradise Lost, vii. 247 ; This is the reading of the 1673 edition. That of 1645 reads: 144. set. “The enamelled arras of the rainbow wearing." So Coriolanus, I. ii. 27: "If they set down before us, for the remove 146. [What does stearing mean here?] 147. as is radically but a contracted form of als also all so. 148. her. The Anglo-Saxon heofon is feminine. 11. 152. bitter cross. See Shakspere's 1 Henry IV. I. i. 27. 153. redeem our loss = recover what we have lost, as in Ruth iv. 6; or perhaps, less well, = ransom us lost ones. Comp. "their sight" above. Redeem has a personal object in Paradise Lost, iii. 281, &c.; in iii. it means 214, to pay the penalty of." 155. ychain'd. So yclept in L'Allegro. So in Chaucer-yblessed, ybete, yburied, ybrent, ycoupled, yfalle, yfonden, ygeten, yglewed, yhalved, yheered (= haired), yshove, ysette, &c. &c.; in Spenser-yclad, yfraught, ybore, ymolt, &c. This y is a corruption of the part. ge, which still survives in German. Another form of this corruption is i, as in ifallen, ihorsed (Roman of Partenay), iarmed, ibene (= been), icorve (= carved), idight (= prepared), ifed, imaked (William of Palerne, ed. Skeat), &c. &c. Another, according to some scholars, is a, as in ago, (Spenser has the forms ygo, ygoe); but the prefix in that word is perhaps a corruption of of. In the very oldest stages of our language the prefix ge was not confined to the part.; e.g. in William of Palerne yknowe occurs as an inf. in Spenser's Colin Clout's come Home again, 62, is the pret. 'yshrilled Milton therefore shows an imperfect knowledge of the older language when he writes y-pointing in his Epitaph on Shakspere. 156. wakefull. Here active. See 1 Thess. iv. 16. But latterly it was so confined. thunder. See Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, First Series. Allowing all that is said there, the root t-n may be itself onomatopoeic. 158. See Exod. xix. et seq. 159. brake. See note on hung, l. 122. 160. The aged Earth. Comp. "the old beldam earth," 1 Henry IV. III. i. 32. "And he hem told tightly whiche tvo white beres In the Faerie Queene the word occurs as a preterite : "He met a dwarf that seemed terrifyde With some late perill which he hardly past, Or other accident which him agast." " The participial form agasted is found. The main part of the word is the Anglo-Saxon gast; comp. German Geist, Old English gost, as in Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, 521, 529, 590 (ed. Skeat). There occur the forms agased and agazed, evidently the results of a false derivation. (See Wedgwood.) See 1 Henry VI. I. i. 126, and Chester Plays (apud Halliwell): "The [they] were so sore agased." And Bishop Percy's Folio MS. iii. 154 (ed. Hales and Furnivall): "Whereatt this dreadfull conquerour Theratt was sore agazed." An adjective gastful occurs in the Shep. Cal., and elsewhere. 11. 161. terrour. This spelling is better than our modern way, as more significant of the channel through which the word came to us. So honour below. 162. the center. So Com. 382. Hamlet, II. ii. 159: "If circumstances lead me I will find Where truth is hid. though it were hid indeed So Troilus and Cressida, III. ii. 186. In "the surface" and "the centre" the necessity of using either "his" or "its" is avoided. Comp. Fardle of Facions, 1555: A certaine sede which groweth there of the owne accorde." (Apud Marsh.) 163. session. Though in appearance so different, "assize" and "session" are etymologically connected. Comp. royal, regal; French, serment, sacrement; acheter, accepter; naïf, native; chose, cause; etroit, strict, &c. &c. We have also the word "sitting" in a cognate sense with session. 164. spread his throne. If we compare the Latin, lectum sternere, then the original notion would be the same as in our phrase "to spread a table;" that is, it would be to deck the throne with fit coverings: hence, to prepare, to set his throne. We may compare Faerie Queene, I. xii. 13: "And all the floore was underneath their feet Bespredd with costly scarlott of great name, 'Comp. "his [Chaos'] dark pavilion spread" (Paradise Lost, ii. 960). 168. Th' old Dragon. See Rev. xii. 9. 170. casts his usurped sway-as if it were a net; as in 1 Cor. vii. 35, &c. not half so far. A very common phrase in Shakspere. It has now become vulgar, so that a modern writer would hardly use it in a grave passage. in Spenser's Prothal.; "something like,' Il Penseroso, 173. Comp. nor nothing near," 171. wroth. Wrath in 1645 Ed. The form "wroth" is the substantive in Shakspere's ·Merchant of Venice, II. ix. 78: "I'l keep my oath Patiently to bear my wroth." 172. Swindges = swings about, agitates violently. Comp. Faerie Queene, I. xi. 23: "His hideous tayle then hurled he about." 'Comp. also Ib. 26: "The scorching flame sore swinged all his face." Our verb swing is cognate with the German schwingen, &c. Swinge in the sense of to beat, to strike ("an act that is done with a swinging movement "--Wedgwood), occurs frequently in 'Old English (as in Measure for Measure, V. i. 130), and still survives in the North English |