But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, And therefore to our weaker view O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue; This was in consequence of Qu. Elizabeth's fashionable establishment of a band of military courtiers by that name. They were young men of the finest figure, and of the best families and fortune. Hence, says Quickly, in the Merry Wives, act ii. s. 2. "And yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, pensioners." T. Warton. Morpheus, the minister of Somnus, or Sleep, so called because he feigns ras uogas, the very countenances, words, manners, and gestures of mankind, and exhibits them in dreams. So Ovid Met. xi. 634. Excitat artificem simulatoremque figuræ Morphea. Peck. See note on L'Allegr. v. 1. Warton. 15 T. 12. Hail divinest Melancholy, &c.] Milton, says Mr. Bowle, has here some traces of Albert Durer's Melancholia. Particularly in the black visage, the looks commercing with the skies, and the stole drawn over her decent shoulders. The painter, he adds, gave her wings, which the poet has transferred to Contemplation, v. 52. I think it is highly probable, that Milton had this personification in his eye: and by making two figures out of one, and by giving Melancholy a kindred companion, to whom wings may be properly attributed, and who is distantly implied in Durer's idea, he has removed the violence, and cleared the obscurity, of the allegory, preserving at the same time the whole of the original conception. Mr. Steevens subjoins, "Mr. Bowle might "have added, that in Durer's Black, but such as in esteem Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove The Sea-Nymphs, and their pow'rs offended: wisdom's hue.] Her countenance appears dark to the grossness of human vision, although in reality of excessive lustre. The bright visage was therefore overlaid with black, according to its visible appearance, by Durer in his portrait of Melancholy. It is the same general idea in Parad. L. iii. 377. -But when thou shad'st The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud Drawn round about thee, &c. But this imagery is there extended and enriched with new sublimity: for God even thus concealed, adds the poet, dazzles heaven, and forces the most exalted seraphim to retire, and cover their eyes with both their wings. T. Warton. 18. Prince Memnon's sister] Memnon, king of Ethiopia, son of Tithonus by Aurora, repairing with a great host to the relief of Priam king of Troy, was there slain by Achilles. Peck. 19. Or that starr'd Ethiop queen &c.] Cassiope, as we learn from Apollodorus, was the wife of Cepheus king of Ethiopia. She boasted herself to be more beautiful than the Nereids, and challenged them to a trial; who VOL. III. 20 in revenge persuaded Neptune to send a prodigious whale into Ethiopia. To appease them, she was directed to expose her daughter Andromeda to the monster: but Perseus delivered Andromeda, of whom he was enamoured, and transported Cassiope into heaven, where she became a constellation. Bibl. ii. c. iv. s. 3. Hence she is called that starred Ethiop queen. See Aratus, Phænom. v. 189. seq. But Milton seems to have been struck with an old Gothic print of the constellations, which I have seen in early editions of the Astronomers, where this queen is represented with a black body marked with white stars. T. Warton. 23. Thee bright-hair'd Vesta, &c.] Mr. Bowle thinks, that this genealogy, but without the poetry, is from Gower's song, in Pericles Prince of Tyre. More especially as the verses immediately follow those quoted from the same song, L'Allegr. v. 25. See edit. Malone, Suppl. Sh. vol. ii. 7. With whom the father liking took, And her to incest did provoke, &c. The meaning of Milton's alle Ee His daughter she (in Saturn's reign, gory is, that Melancholy is the daughter of Genius, which is typified by the bright-haired goddess of the eternal fire. Saturn, the father, is the god of saturnine dispositions, of pensive and gloomy minds. T. Warton. 35. And sable stole, &c.] Here is a character and propriety in the use of the stole, which, in the poetical phraseology of the present day, is not only perpetually misapplied, but misrepresented. It was a veil which covered the head and shoulders; and, as Mr. Bowle observes, was worn only by such of the Roman matrons, as were distinguished for the strictness of their modesty. He refers us to the Le Imagini delle Donne, di Enea Vico. In Vinegia, 1557. p. 77. 4to. See also Albert Durer's Melancholia, where this description is exactly answered. T. Warton. 35.-cyprus lawn,] In Milton's editions it is cipres lawn; but I presume the word is cyprus, as Mr. Sympson observed 25 30 35 likewise, who says it is a common term in Ben Jonson. 35. Undoubtedly cyprus is the true spelling. "Quinque auri 66 frigia, quorum tria sunt opere "cyprensi noblissimo, et unum "est de opere Anglicano." Lib. Anniv. Basilic. Vatican. apud Rubeum in Vit. Bonifacii viii. P. P. p. 345. See also Charpentier, Suppl. Gloss. Cang. tom. i. col. 391. "Unum pluviale de canceo " rubeo, cum aurifrigio de opere "cyprensi." See Life of Sir T. Pope, p. 343. edit. 2. It is a thin transparent texture. So Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act iii. s. 1. -A cyprus, not a bosom, And, what is more immediately Lawn as white as driven snow, Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, Aye round about Jove's altar sing: 40 45 rapt spirits." And in many other passages of our author. See the note on P. L. iii. 522. T. Warton. 41. There held in holy passion still, Forget thyself to marble,] So in the Epitaph on Shakespeare, Epigrams, lxxiii. Dryden, by a most ridiculous misapprehension, in his translation of the first Georgic, has "shroud-like cy'press," v. 25. Here says Milbourne, "Did not Mr. D. think "of that kind of cypress used "often for the scarfs and hat"bands at funerals formerly, or "for widow's vails ?" The last sense seems to explain Milton. See the Puritan, Stage-direction, act i. s. 1. What has been said illustrates a passage in Twelfth Night, perhaps misunderstood, thought is the cause. T. War which also reflects light on our text. Act ii. s. 4. Come away, come away, Death, And in sad cypress let me be laid. That is, in a shroud, not in a coffin of cypress-wood. See also Drummond's Sonnets, Edinb. 1616. P. i. sign. B. T. Warton. 36. decent shoulders,] Not exposed, therefore decent. T. Warton. 40. Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:] Thy ravished soul. So in Comus, 764. "Kindle my In There thou our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble by too much ton. conceiving. excess of 43. With a sad leaden downward cast] The same epithet Shakespeare applies to Contemplation, in his Love's Labour's Lost. For when would you, my liege, or you, or you In leaden contemplation have found out &c. Thyer. 47. And hears the Muses in a And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; Hesiod, Theog. iii. Και τι περι κρηνην ιοειδέα πουσ' απαλοι σιν Ορχουνται, και βωμον ερισθενεος 47. "Hinc quoque Musarum, "circa Jovis altaria dies noctesque saltantium, ab ultima rerum 66 origine increbuit fabula." Milton's Prose Works, ii. 588. So also the learned and elegant L. Gyraldus, to the Muses, Opp. vol. ii. p. 925. ed. Lugd. Bat. 1696. fol. Et Jovis ad solium dulce movetis ebur. T. Warton. 50. That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.] Affectation and false elegance were now carried to the most elaborate and absurd excess in gardening. Lauremburgius, a physician of Rostock in Germany, has described some singular monuments of this extravagance at Chartres in France, and Hampton Court in England, " where in privet are figured va"rious animals, the royal arms "of England, and many other "things." Many gardens of England, he adds, as well as of Italy, were to be praised for a wonderful variety of these verdant sculptures. Horticultura, lib. i. cap. 29. s. iii. The pedantry of vegetation has not yet expired in some of our more remote counties. Milton, I fear, alludes to the 50 trim garden in Arcades, 46. and in Comus, 984, 985, 990. But he had changed his ideas of a garden when he wrote the Paradise Lost. T. Warton. See Mr. Dunster's remarks on Milton's taste in this particular, P. R. ii. 289. E. 52. Him that yon soars on golden wing, &c.] Spenser has likewise given a description of Contemplation, but he describes him under the figure of a venerable old man ; and I cannot but agree with Mr. Thyer, that there is more propriety in this than in the of Milton. gayer personage 52. By contemplation, is here meant that stretch of thought, by which the mind ascends "to the "first good, first perfect, and first "fair;" and is therefore very properly said to soar on golden wing, guiding the fiery-wheeled throne; that is, to take a high and glorious flight, carrying bright ideas of deity along with it. But the whole imagery alludes to the cherubic forms that conveyed the fiery-wheeled car in Ezekiel, x. 2. seq. See also Milton himself, Par. L. vi. 750. So that nothing can be greater or juster than this idea of Divine Contemplation. Contemplation, of a more sedate turn, and intent only on human things, is more fitly described, as by Spenser, under the figure of an old man; time and experience qualifying men best for this office. Hurd. |