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That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge

100

97. His may be for its, referring to blast; or it may refer to Hippotǎdes (Æŏlus), in whose cave the winds were imprisoned. See Eneid, I. 52–63. 98. Level brine, the Latin æquora or æquor, the 'flat sea,' as he calls it in Comus, 1. 375.

99. Panope (Gr. πâv, all, y, the eye; root ỏ, to see, whence Lat. oc-ulus, Goth. augo; A.-S. eage; Ger. auge; Eng, eye; the one all-eye, or far-seeing), mentioned by Homer and Hesiod as one of the fifty sea-nymphs, daughters of Nereus, who lives in a palace at the bottom of the sea. Panope is named among them by Virgil (Eneid, V. 240) and Spenser (Faerie Queene, IV. xi. 49). She is especially named here by Milton, because of her wide lookout over the deep. Sleek, glossy, shining. So the mermaids, like the seal, appear, when emerging from the water.

100. Bark, ship.

101. In the eclipse Milton neatly alludes to the superstition which made an eclipse a time of evil omen. Among the ingredients in the famous caldron of the witches in Macbeth are

'Slips of yew,

Slivered in the moon's eclipse.'

"Than eclipses of the sun and moon nothing is more natural; yet with what superstition they have been beheld since the tragedy of Nicias and his army (B. C. 414) many examples declare." (Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors, I. 11.) Rigged, etc. The rigging is full of curses which cling there.

103. Camus, god of the river Cam, on which Cambridge (bridge over the Cam) was built; and so the tutelary genius of Cambridge University. Of course he would feel a mournful interest in the sad fate of his most hopeful child Lycidas. Footing slow. Spenser uses the epithet 'slow-footing.' The river is very sluggish; and hence the highway-surveyors and civil engineers, when they turn critics, infer that Milton meant to characterize the movement of the water only! The first line of Goldsmith's Traveller is,

'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.'

Slow for slowly; the adjective for the adverb, as often is the case in Shakespeare. Sometimes this coincidence of form arises from dropping the adverbial ending e; sometimes, from the word describing the actor rather than the act. 104. Mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, etc. "The mantle," said Mr.

Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge

105

Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. "Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?" Last came, and last did go

The pilot of the Galilean lake;

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain

110

Plumptre in a Latin note, which appeared in a Greek translation of Lycidas in 1797, "is as if made of the plant 'river-sponge,' which floats copiously in the Cam; the bonnet of the river-sedge, distinguished by vague marks traced somehow over the middle of the leaves, with the edge of the leaves serrated, after the fashion of the at at of the hyacinth." "It is said that the flags of the Cam still exhibit, when dried, these dusky streaks in the middle," and apparently 'scrawled o'er' (as Milton's MS. first had it instead of 'inwrought') with dotted marks on the edge.'

105. Inwrought. What was inwrought? The 'mantle'? or the 'bonnet'? or both?

106. That sanguine flower, the hyacinth, sprung from the blood of the youth of that name, accidentally slain by Apollo. See Milton's Death of a Fair Infant, st. 4: also Ovid, Met., X. 162, et seq., where we have the lines

"Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit; et, ai, ai,
Flos habet inscriptum."

Apollo himself inscribes his own lamentations on the leaves, and the flower has ai, ai (alas, alas!) written thereon. Another tradition makes the hyacinth to have sprung from the blood of Telemonian Ajax. (Pausanias, Itinerary, I. 35, sec. 3; Ovid, Met., XIII. 397, etc.)

107. Pledge, offspring, like Latin pignus. So in Bacon's Essays (Marriage), children are called the 'dearest pledges.' See first line of the verses, At a Solemn Music. Reft (A.-S. reafian, to rob; Old Eng. reave, whence bereave), snatched away. Quoth (A.-S. cwethan, to say, past tense, cwaeth). Used in first and third persons, and the past tense. Stevens and Morris are mistaken in saying, "This verb (cwethan) still survives in our 'quote."" The latter is from Latin quotus, what in number; or quot, how many.

109. Pilot. St. Peter, originally a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee (Matt. iv. 18-22; Luke v. 1–11); and here may be, as Masson thinks, 'occult reference to the fact that Lycidas had perished at sea.' As the earthly head of the church, and the chief shepherd of the flock (John xxi. 15-17), St. Peter regrets the loss of King's services to the cause of pure religion, and is filled with a holy anger at the selfish hirelings that crowd into the ministry.

110. Two massy keys. See Matt. xvi. 19. St. Peter has from very early times been represented as bearing two keys; but the idea of one being of gold and the other of iron is Milton's own. Dante in his Paradiso, V. 57, speaks of the two keys of Holy Church, — ' by either key, the yellow and the white';

The golden opes, the iron shuts amain

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake :

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How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.

115

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least 120 That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!

i. e. the silver key of Knowledge, and the golden key of Authority. So in Dante's Purgatorio, IX. 118, the golden key is the confessor's authority; the silver, his knowledge. See Fletcher's Purple Island (pub. in 1633), VII. 61, 62.

111. Amain (A.-S. maegen, might), forcibly. For the prefix a, see note on 'afield,' line 27. See also a, as a prefix, in Wedgwood's Dict. of Etymology. 112. Mitred. Here Milton, with poetic reverence, assigns to St. Peter the mitre, which he afterwards scorned when worn by popes, bishops, and cardinals. Bespake. Here used intransitively. Note that three complaints against some of the clergy follow: (1) selfishness and corruption, (2) ignorance of doctrine and duty, (3) their Romanizing tendency. King seems to have been expected to enter the ministry.

114. Enow, the old form, usually plural, of enough. Gothic ganohs, enough. Milton's MS. has anough.

115. Climb. See the close of Milton's sonnet on Cromwell; also Par. Lost, IV. 193; John x. 1, etc. The lines 113 to 131 are remarkable as an 'outburst of that feeling about the state of the English Church under Laud's rule, which, four years afterwards (1641 – 42), found more direct and as vehement expression in Milton's prose pamphlets.' "Note," says Masson, “the studied contemptuousness of the phraseology throughout, - "their bellies' sake,' 'shove away,' 'blind mouths'! (a singularly violent figure, as if the men were mouths and nothing else)—and the raspy roughness of the sound in line 124, where 'scrannel' (for 'screeching,' 'ear-torturing') seems to be a word of Milton's own making. The 'rank mist' and 'foul contagion' are unsound and unwholesome doctrines."

118. Worthy bidden guest. Matt. xxii. 3, 8, 9. 120. Sheep-hook. This hook is fastened to a pole. lays hold of the sheep which he may wish to catch. xxiii. 4.

With it the shepherd
The 'rod' of Psalm

121. Herdsman's. Herdman is the usual spelling in the Bible. Gen. xiii. 7.

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw:
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

125

But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

122. Are sped, are despatched, or quickly provided for. So in Shakes. Taming of Shrew, V. ii. 185, “We three are married, but you two are sped." The word when so used passively is usually in an unfavorable sense; as in the Merchant of Venice, II. ix. 72, "So begone, sir; you are spe‹.” (A.-S. spédan, to speed; Old Eng. spedan, to prosper.) Recks. This word is not often found impersonal. In Comus, 1. 404, we have, "Of night or loneliness, it recks me not."

123. Flashy, insipid, vapid; or, possibly, tinsel-like, showy. In Bacon's Essay on Studies we have, "Distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things." When they list. The 'songs'- unsound instruction, poor stuff at best — are doled out to suit the convenience of the pseudo-shepherds. 124. Grate. They grate their songs? or their songs grate? So the infernal doors " grate harsh thunder." (Par. Lost, II. 881.) This line is like Virgil's 'Stridenti miserum stipula disperdere carmen,' to murder a sorry song on a squeaking straw pipe (Eclogue, III. 27). Scrannel is supposed to be related to scrawny. It seems to have been coined by Milton, and to mean thin, meagre. But see Masson's views quoted in note to line 115. Possibly it is connected with cranny (Lat. crena; Fr. cran; provincial Ger. krinne, notch, fissure, cleft, crevice), and so may mean squeaking. (Morley derives it from A.-S. "scrincan, to shrink, past scranc, with diminutive suffix. In Lancashire a 'scrannel' is a lean, skinny person.")

125. Are not fed. Similarly Spenser (Shepherd's Calendar, May Eclogue) complains of the ministers that spend their time in 'wanton merriment,' while "their flocks be unfed." See Milton's quotation of the passage in Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence (1641); also see near the end of Milton's Reason of Church Government (1641).

126. Swollen with wind. Dante (Paradiso, XXIX.) says, 'Si che le pecorelle, che non sanno, tornan dal pasco, pasciute di vento,' so that the lambs, which know not, come back from pasture fed upon the wind. Hamlet's "I eat the air" will be recalled (Ham. III. ii. 99). Rank, strong, offensive.

128. Grim wolf. Who is the 'grim wolf'? Archbishop Laud,' some say. Others make it the wolf in sheep's clothing, of Matt. vii. 15; others, the rapacious shepherd, of Acts xx. 29. Morley thinks it is 'the devil, great enemy of the Christian sheepfold.' Others, and among them Masson, "interpret the grim wolf to mean that system of perversion to Romanism, which seems to have reached its height in or about the year 1637." Possibly here

Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams: return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use

130

135

is a remote allusion to the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. Privy paw, secret or stealthy paw. The alleged intriguing of the Jesuits?

129. Apace, speedily, fast. Nothing said. Does this mean that the unfaithful ministers did not preach? or that they went over to Rome without evoking comment, the court and the clergy ignoring the fact?

130. But that two-handed engine. Either the axe of the Gospel (Matt. iii. 10; Luke iii. 9); or the axe of the executioner about to behead Laud; or the executioner Death with his scythe; or the sword of the archangel Michael alluded to in line 161, etc. (Par. Lost, VI. 251); or the two-edged sword of the Son of Man (Rev. i. 16; ii. 12, 16); or the two houses of Parliament; or, according to Morley, "the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God' (Ephes. vi. 17); 'two-handed,' because we lay hold of it by the Old Testament and the New." The usual explanation makes it the headsman's axe. This would seem, however, to be an afterthought. See a long and learned note on the line in Masson's Milton's Poet. Works, Vol. III. pp. 454–456. Jerram has no doubt that it is 'the axe laid at the root of the tree.' At the door. Matt. xxiv. 33.

131. Smite no more. Newton cites 1 Sam. xxvi. 8.

132. Alpheus, the god of the river Alpheus in Arcadia. Enamored of Arethusa, he pursued her underground (the river runs underground for a long distance) to Sicily, where he overtook her in the fountain called by her name in the island of Ortygia at the entrance of the harbor of Syracuse. See note on line 85. He and she are here supposed to inspire pastoral poets. The pastoral style, having been interrupted, is now resumed.

133. Shrunk. As if the volume of the river were perceptibly diminished through sympathy with the shrinking fear felt by the river god; "a recognition," says Jerram, "of the superior power of Christianity over Paganism." A full stream indicated prosperity and joy. See Comus, 1. 924 to 929. Metaphorical meaning of 'shrunk thy streams'? Sicilian Muse, Arethusa, or the muse that inspired Moschus and Theocritus, Sicilian poets.

135. Bells, the cups or corollas of flowers. Ariel sings in Shakes. Tempest, V. 89, "In a cowslip's bell I lie."

136. Use, frequent, haunt, dwell. So in Faerie Queene, VI. Introd. st. 2, line 17.

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