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But come thou Goddess fair and free,

In heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister graces more
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;

that was now written and studied.
See Fletcher's False One, act v.
s. 4. Titus Andronicus, act ii. s. 3.
Spenser's Teares of the Muses,
and his Virgil's Gnat. But our
Author might have had perhaps
an immediate allusion to the cave
of sleep in Ovid, Met. xi. 592. or
to Homer, whom Ovid copies,
Odyss. xi. 14. See also Statius,
Theb. x. 84. And Chaucer, H.
Fame, v. 70. p. 458. Urr. And
to all or most of these authors
Sylvester has been indebted in
his prolix description of the cave
of sleep. Du Bart. p. 316. ed.
fol. 1621. And in that descrip-
tion we trace Milton, both here
and in the opening of Il Pens.

my

Mr. Bowle compares this line of the text with a passage in Sydney's Arcadia, b. iii. "Let "Cimmerian darkness be "only habitation." The execra tion in the text is indeed a translation of a passage in one of his own Academic Prolusions, Dignus qui Cimmeriis occlusus tenebris longam et perosam vitam transigat. Pr. W. vol. ii. 587. T. Warton.

11. But come thou goddess fair and free.] Compare Drayton, Ecl. iv. vol. 4. p. 1401.

A daughter cleped Dowsabell,

A maiden fair and free.

In the metrical romances these two words thus paired together are a common epithet for a lady.

15

As in Syr Eglamour. We have
also free alone, ibid. See also
Chaucer, March. t. v. 1655. Urr.
And Jonson, Epigram. lxxvi.
T. Warton.

12. In heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne,] Cleaped is called, named; Spenser, Faery Queen, b. iii. cant. xii. st. 19.

The other cleaped Cruelty by name. The letter y is sometimes prefixed to lengthen it a syllable.

B. iii. cant. v. st. 8.

And is ycleaped Florimel the fair.

Euphrosyne is the name of one of the three Graces mentioned by Hesiod, Theog. 909.

Αγλαίην, και Ευφροσύνην, Θαλιηντ' ερα

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Or whether (as some sager sing)

The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a Maying,

There on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,

were the daughters of Jupiter
and Eurynome, and this Spenser
adopts in his Faery Queen, b. vi.
cant. x. st. 22.

They are the daughters of sky-ruling

Jove,

By him begot of fair Eurynome. But Milton with great judgment and a very allowable liberty follows the account of their being sprung from Bacchus and Venus, because the mythology of it suited the nature of his subject better. Thyer.

17. Or whether, &c.] Compare Sophocles, Ed. Tyr. 1098.

τις σε, τέκνον, τις σ' ετικτε

των μακραιωνων, αρα
Πανος ορεσσιβατα που
προσπελασθείσ', η σε γε

τις θυγατηρ, Λοξίου; κ. τ. λ.

and not. ibid. Schaeferi de Eurip. E.

17. Or whether (as some sager sing) &c.] No mythologist either ancient or modern that I can meet with gives this account of the birth of Euphrosyne; nevertheless we must do Milton the justice to own, that he could not possibly have invented better allegorical parents for her than Zephyrus and Aurora, or the gentle western gales of a fine morning in the spring, which, to use his own words in his Paradise Lost, iv. 154.

-to the heart inspire Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair.

20

His pretence of authority in the parenthesis (as some suger sing) is introduced, in my opinion, only to give a more venerable authoritative air to his poem : and I have often suspected, that that passage in the tenth book of Paradise Lost, where the evil angels are described turned into serpents, and as the poet adds,

ver. 575.

Yearly injoin'd, some say, to undergo This annual humbling certain number'd days,

is an instance of the same sort. Thyer.

As some sager sing. It is sages in Mr. Fenton's edition, but the old editions have sager. Both these genealogies were probably of the poet's own invention, but he rather favours the latter.

19. Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a Maying.] The rhymes and imagery are from Jonson, in the Maske at Sir William Cornwalleis's house at Highgate, 1604. Works, ed. fol. 1616. p. 881.

See who here is come a Maying?
Why left we off our playing.

This song is sung by Zephyrus,
and Aurora, and Flora. T. War-

ton.

22. And fresh-blown roses wash'd with dew.] So Shakespeare, Tam. Shr, act ii. s. 1.

Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,

So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful jollity,

Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles,

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23. Fill'd her, &c.] From Gower's song in Pericles Prince of Tyre, act i. s. 1. See Malone's Suppl. Sh. ii. 7.

This king unto him took a phear, Who died, and left a female heir So bucksome, blithe, and full of face, As heav'n had lent her all his grace. See note on Il Pens. 25. Bowle.

25. Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee, &c.] Copied from Buchanan, Opp. ed. 1687. p. 337.

Vos adeste, rursus,
Risus, Blanditiæ, Procacitates,
Lusus, Nequitiæ, Facetiæque,
Joci, Deliciæque, et Illecebræ, &c.
Bowle.

27. Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles.] A quip is a satirical joke, a smart repartee. See Jonson's Cynthia's Revels, act ii. s. 4. Shakespeare, First P. Hen. IV. act i. s. 2. and in other places. By cranks, a word yet unexplained, we are to understand cross-purposes, or some other similar conceit of conversation, surprising the company by its intricacy, or embarrassing by its difficulty. Such were the festivities of our simple ancestors! Cranks, literally taken, in Coriolanus, act i. s. 1. signify the ducts of the human body. In

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Spenser, F. Q. vii. vii. 52. the involutions of the planets. To crank, in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, is to cross, wind, double, &c. The verb crankle, with the same sense, but its frequentative, occurs more than once in Drayton. Our author has cranks, which his context « Το explains, Pr. W. i. 165. "shew us the ways of the Lord, "strait and faithful as they are, "not full of cranks and contra"dictions." T. Warton.

Crank, any conceit formed by twisting or changing the form or meaning of a word. Johnson. 28. Nods and becks,

and

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Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe,

And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;

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Trip and go
On my toe, &c.

30

35

In Love's Labour Lost, is part of another, or the same, Trip and

go, my sweet." A. iv. s. 2. So also in Nashe's Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600. "Trip and go, heave and hoe," &c. T. Warton.

36. The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;] I suppose Liberty is called the mountain nymph, be cause the people in mountainous countries have generally preserved their liberties longest, as the Britons formerly in Wales, and the inhabitants of the mountains of Switzerland at this day.

36. Milton was not so political here. Warmed with the poetry of the Greeks, he rather thought of the Oreads of their mythology, whose wild haunts among the romantic mountains of Pisa are so beautifully described in Homer's hymn to Pan. The allusion is general to inaccessible and uncultivated scenes, such as mountainous situations afford, and which were best adapted to the free and uninterrupted range of the nymph Liberty. So he compares Eve to an Oread, P. L. ix. 387. See also El. v. 127. T. Warton.

And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew

1

To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;.

40. In unreproved pleasures free.] Blameless, innocent, as in P. L. iv. 492.

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40

41. See an elegant little song in Lilly's Alexander and Cam paspe, presented before Queen Elizabeth, a. v. s. 1.

The larke so shrill and cleare,
How at heaven's gate she claps her
wings,

The morne not waking till she sings. See the notes on P. L. v. 198. and P. R. ii. 279. There is a peculiar propriety in startle : the lark's is a sudden shrill burst of song.

Both in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso there seem to be two parts, a day-piece, and a night-piece. Here, or with three or four of the preceding lines, our author begins to spend the day with mirth. T. Warton.

44. the dappled dawn] The word is used and explained in Shakespeare. Much Ado about Nothing, act v. sc. 8.

-and look the gentle day, Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray.

44. So also Drummond, Sonnets, ed. 1616. signat. D. 2.

Sith, winter gone, the sunne in dapled
skie
Now smiles on medowes, mountaines,
hills, and plaines.

T. Warton.

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