accurately, suggests the dog-rose (Rosa canina). The name is from the French (eglantine or eglantier, formed from aiguille, a needle), and implies prickliness. The sound of the word, as well as the associations with it, has made it a favourite with English poets from Chaucer downwards. Chaucer has the forms eglatere and eglentere. Popularly, several of the smaller-flowered kinds of wild-rose, besides the sweet-briar, are still called eglantine.

53. "Oft listening," &c. Here the poet passes on to a new pleasure, or a prolongation of the former. He has been looking round about the cottage or farmhouse, listening to the cock crowing or watching him strutting to the stack or barn-door; and now, sauntering in its neighbourhood, he hears, from the hill-side, and echoing through the wood, the horn of the early huntsman, out with the hounds.

57. "Sometime walking." Here, distinctly, L'Allegro is away from his cottage, and out on his morning walk.-"not unseen.” “ Happy men love witnesses of their joy" is Hurd's acute note on this expression.

59. "eastern gate": an expression found in Shakespeare, William Browne, elsewhere in Milton, and in the poets generally.

60. "state": i.e. "his stately progress," as Mr. Keightley expresses it. 62. "dight," arrayed: from the A.-S. dihtan, to arrange, furbish, set in order; still extant in the Scottish dicht, to wipe or clean. Deck is probably the same word." The clouds in thousand liveries dight." Almost a translation, as Warton has remarked, of a phrase in Milton's own description of Morning in the first of his Latin Prolusiones Oratoriæ or Cambridge Academical Exercises: "Ipsa quoque tellus in adventum Solis cultiori se induit vestitu, nubesque juxta variis chlamydata coloribus pompâ solenni longoque ordine videntur ancillari surgenti Deo." Compare the whole description of morning phenomena there with that of L'Allegro. Warton also quotes a passage from Browne's Britannia's Pastorals (Book I. Song 4), in which there is an enumeration of morning phenomena not unlike that of a portion of Milton's poem: eg. "Chanticler, the village-cock," the "swart ploughman," the "re-echoes of the deep-mouthed hound," and "the shepherd's daughter with her cleanly pail."

67. "tells his tale." Warton, on a suggestion from a friend, proposed to understand this to mean "telling the tale" of his sheep, i.e. counting them; and this is certainly one of the meanings of the word tale from A.-S. talian, to reckon,-e.g. "the tale of the bricks" which the Israelites had to make in Egypt (Exod. v. 8). Browne, in his Shepherd's Pipe, Ecl. v., as Warton pointed out, has this passage :

It may be that Warton's reading is right, the rather because, as in this passage from Browne, counting the sheep was a morning occupation for each shepherd, whereas one can hardly fancy shepherds met under a hawthorn and telling stories to each other so early in the day. Still the other, and more popular and pleasing, interpretation may be defended.

69. "Straight mine eye," &c. By this rapid turn of phrase Milton skilfully indicates a new paragraph in his description. Hitherto he has been delighting in the phenomena of early morning; now his eye catches "new pleasures"- -i.e. he is still out on his walk, but some time has elapsed, and it is farther on in the day. Straight" means "instantaneously," not in the actual succession of sights in the walk, but in the poem, or what of the walk he chooses, as L'Allegro, to remember or fancy.

66

70. "landskip;" spelt "lantskip" in the First and Second Editions. 71. "Russet lawns, and fallows grey." Lawn now commonly means a stretch of green grass in front of a mansion; but the epithet "russet" (reddish) shows that Milton, here as in the five other places where he has used the word in his poetry, understood it rather in its original sense of land or laund, any open space, even of a moory look, among woods. Over such, and over the "grey fallows," the sheep might be seen nibbling. As "fallow" (German falb, and Latin fulvus, yellow) means ploughed land left unsown, grey" may here have the sense of tawny, rather than ash-coloured. But the colour would vary with the soil. 73, 74. "Mountains," &c. See Introd. p. 206.

75. "with daisies pied." Almost certainly a recollection of Shakespeare's "When daisies pied and violets blue" in the last song in Love's Labour Lost. "Pied," a common word with the old poets, means variegated in colour: thus pie or magpie, and piebald. Perhaps the root is in pingo, to paint; whence picture. Drayton speaks of the "py'd kingfisher"; Shakespeare is supposed to have invented the word "piedness” in a passage about flowers (Winter's Tale, IV. 3); but Hakluyt has the same word. See Richardson's Dict. under Pie.

77-80. “Towers and battlements," &c. See Introd. pp. 205, 206. 79. lies," lodges, resides: not an uncommon old meaning. A passage in point, quoted by Mr. Browne, is "When the Court lay at Windsor" (Merry Wives, II. 2).

star.

80. "cynosure" (literally "the dog's tail," Kuroc ovpa) was the Greek name for the constellation of the Lesser Bear, which contains the poleThe Phoenician mariners directed their eyes to this constellation in steering their course, while the Greeks steered by the Greater Bear. Thus Ovid, Fasti III. 107-8 :

"Esse duas Arctos, quarum Cynosura petatur

Sidoniis, Helicen Graia carina notet."

By metaphor from this "cynosure" of Phoenician navigation any thing or person on whom eyes were fastened for any reason might be called their "cynosure." Mr. Browne quotes an apt passage from Hacket's Life of Williams, where the Countess of Buckingham is spoken of as "the Cynosura that all the Papists steered by."

82-87. "Corydon and Thyrsis ... Phillis . . . Thestylis." Stocknames in pastoral poetry, here applied by Milton to English rustics. Their being at dinner indicates that it is now about mid-day.

91, 92.

"Sometimes, with secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite."

So Milton again notes a paragraph in the poem, changing the scene. It is now past mid-day, and into the afternoon; and we are invited to a rustic holiday among the "upland hamlets" or little villages among the slopes, away from the river-meadows and the hay-making.-"secure," not here in its derivative meaning of "safe," but in its original meaning of "careless or "free from care" (securus). Mr. Browne happily quotes a discrimination, and even opposition, of the two meanings from Ben Jonson

"Men may securely sin, but safely never."

94. "rebecks." The rebeck was a kind of fiddle, supposed to be the same as Chaucer's ribibe; which again is the Arabic rebeb, a two-stringed instrument played with a bow, which the Arabs are said to have brought into Spain (Warton, and Richardson's Dict.). Warton notes that the name of the fiddler in Romeo and Juliet (IV. 4) is Hugh Rebeck.

96. "chequered shade." So, as the commentator Richardson noted, in Titus Andronicus, II. 3 :

"The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind

And make a chequered shadow on the ground."

98. "On a sunshine holiday." The word "sunshine" used adjectively, for "sunshiny." Milton repeats the exact phrase in Comus, 959. Shakespeare had the adjective before him (Richard II., IV. 1); Spenser has "sunshiny" (F. Q. 1. xii. 23).

100. "Then," i.e. as it grows dark.

102. "How Faery Mab the junkets eat.” See the famous description of the Fairy Queen Mab in Romeo and Juliet, I. 4; also another, more prosaic, in Ben Jonson's masque, The Satyr (1603). The beginning of the latter may be quoted :

"This is Mab, the mistress Fairy,

That doth nightly rob the dairy,

And she can hurt or help the churning,
As she please, without discerning;

-"junkets," from Low Lat. juncata, Ital. giuncata, meaning creamcheese, or the like country delicacy made from milk, and so called because such things were wrapt in rushes (Ital. giunco, a rush).

103, 134.

"She was pinched and pulled, she said;

And he," &c.

She in the first line and he in the second are two of the persons who are telling the stories round the nut-brown ale. One, a girl, tells about Queen Mab, and can vouch, from her own experience, that all is true that is said of the pranks of that Fairy; for "she was pinched and pulled" by her, exactly as in the legends. Then, another colloquist, a man, follows with his story.

104, 105.

"And he, by Friar's lantern led,

Tells how the drudging goblin," &c.

So in the First Edition; but in the Second the first line runs 66 And by the Friar's lantern led." This seems to be a misprint; for, though the construction is difficult with the other reading, it would be hopeless with this. The construction with the other seems to be "And he [the male speaker], by Friar's lantern led [i.e. who had had an experience of Friar Rush as distinct as the girl had had of Queen Mab], tells how the drudging goblin," &c.— "By Friar's lantern led": i.e., who had once been led into a marsh at night by that mysterious flickering light which philosophers call the Ignis Fatuus, and try to explain by physical causes, but which is known in English and Scottish popular mythology as the fiendish being Jack-o'-the-Lantern, or Will-o'-the-Wisp, or Spunkie, who flits in luminous form over marshy lands, to deceive travellers and lure them to their destruction. Milton here calls the same "Friar's lantern," meaning, it is supposed, "Friar Rush's lantern"; and, if so, Mr. Keightley insists that he is wrong, inasmuch as the "Friar Rush" of the popular Fairy mythology is a domestic spirit, who haunts houses, and not the same being at all as the out-of-doors "Jack-o'-the-Lantern." Whether it was the Friar's lantern or Jack's lantern, however, it had once misled the rustic who was now talking over the nut-brown ale. He was therefore an authority in this class of subjects, and any story of his would be heard with attention. The story he does tell, after his qualifying personal preface about his encounter with Jack-o'-the-Lantern, refers to quite another member of the Fairy brotherhood, viz. "The Drudging Goblin."

105-114.

"how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl," &c.

The "drudging goblin" is Robin Goodfellow, alias Hobgoblin, alias (by high promotion) Shakespeare's Puck.-Although the word "Robin Goodfellows" is sometimes found in the plural as a name for an order of goblins (Goblin, Kobold in the German mythology, perhaps the same as the Greek кoßaλoç, a rogue), there was one pre-eminent Robin Goodfellow. He was a kind of masculine Queen Mab, performing among the ploughmen and farm-labourers the same offices of mischievous interference and occasional good service that her fairy ladyship did among the housemaids and dairymaids. In the rustic imagination, and usually in books, he was represented as a huge, loutish fellow, of great strength, but very lazy, who could be roused, by kind treatment, and especially by a bowl of cream or the like set out for him, to do an immense stroke of work in the barn during the night. He figures a good deal in Elizabethan popular literature; eg. he is one of the characters in Ben Jonson's masque, Love Restored. Coming in there among the Court masquers, he says: "Are these "your court sports? Would I had kept me to my gambols o' the "country still, selling of fish, short service, shoeing the wild mare, or roasting of robin-redbreast! These were better than, after all this "time, no masque. You look at me: I have recovered myself now "for you. I am the honest plain country spirit and harmless, Robin "Goodfellow he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles "for the country maids, and does all their drudgery." If, after this, the reader will pass to the Puck of Midsummer Night's Dream, expressly introduced there (Act II. sc. 1) as identical with Robin Goodfellow and also called Hobgoblin, it will be seen how Shakespeare, keeping some of his lineaments, has refined and idealized him. Milton's "drudging goblin," however, is the genuine uncultured Robin Goodfellow of the rustics themselves, more Jonson's than Shakespeare's. He is the "lubber fiend" (lob, looby, an old word, both Celtic and Germanic, meaning a lout, though it must be in another sense that Shakespeare calls Puck "thou lob of spirits "); the cream-bowl tempts him to exert himself and do ten men's work with his flail in the night; and, this work done, and the cream in his crop, he lies basking his hairy strength at the kitchen fire till morning.

117. "Towered cities please us then": i.e. when the rustics, with their early habits, are asleep, and the pall of darkness comes over the country fields, the mood of L'Allegro, the educated youth who would still prolong his waking hours with fit employment, transfers itself to cities and their objects of interest. Observe, it is the mood that is transferred; not the youth in person. The rest of the poem, from this point onward, may be taken as describing the evening reveries, readings, and other recreations, of the imaginary youth in his country-cottage,