980.

There; in those "happy climes." liquid, clear, brilliant (Lat. liquidus).

982. Hesperus; see 393-396, note.

983. golden; transferred from the apples to the tree itself.

984. crisped, i.e. by the wind ruffling the leaves; more often applied to a breeze stirring the surface of water, as in Childe Harold IV. 211, "I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream."

985. spruce, dainty, prettily adorned, i.e. with flowers etc.

986. Graces, Lat. Gratiæ, Gk. Xápires; three goddesses (Euphrosyne, Aglaia, Thalia) who personified the refinements and elevated joys of life.

Hours, Lat. Hora, Gk. pai; goddesses personifying the seasons of the year; the course of the seasons was symbolically described as "the dance of the Hora" (cf. Par. Lost, V. 394, 395). Classical writers often mention them along with the Graces. The Graces and Hours were favourite allegorical dramatis persona in Masques.

rosy-bosomed; Gk. podóкoλπos. Cf. Gray, Ode on the Spring, "Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours,

Fair Venus' train, appear";

and Thomson, "the rose-bosomed Spring" (Spring, 1010).

A very notable feature of English poetry from the Restoration to (about) the French Revolution, i.e. during the period beginning with Dryden and ending with Johnson (died 1784), is the great influence of the diction of Milton's poems, especially the minor poems. In Dryden and Pope, Collins and Gray and Thomson, and the minor writers, we are struck by constant echoes of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Lycidas and Comus— thanks, no doubt, to their extreme verbal felicity, their fulfilment of Coleridge's definition of poetry as the right words in the right places.

989. west winds, the 'Zephyrs' of classical poetry; traditionally the fragrance-laden winds; cf. again Gray's Ode on the Spring:

"While, whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,

Cool Zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky
Their gather'd fragrance fling."

990. cedarn alleys, paths bordered by cedar trees. cedarn; formed from the noun, i.e. cedar-n, like silver-n, leather-n.

Now purely poetic; cf. Matthew Arnold, The New Sirens, "The slumb❜rous cedarn shade."

991. Cf. “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia," Psalm xlv. 8.

nard, spikenard (i.e. spiked nard, nardus spicatus), a fragrant Indian root. The word comes from Sanskrit nal, to smell. Probably the Jews got the perfume and its name through the Persians. cassia, a spice of the nature of cinnamon, as in the Bible. Cassia is now used of an extract of laurel-bark.

992. Iris; the goddess of the rainbow (cf. "bow") and messenger of the gods, especially of Juno. Cf. the 'Masque' in The Tempest.

993. blow, make to bloom; rarely transitive. See Lyc. 48. 994-997. On the rhymes see 511, 512, note.

purpled, embroidered; see G.

Elysian, heavenly; see 257. 997. if your ears be true, "i.e. if you have minds fine enough to perceive the real meaning of the legends I am about to cite"-Masson.

These legends of Venus and Adonis, Cupid and Psyche, have often been treated from a mundane, indeed sensual point of view; whereas we ought to see in them an elevated, spiritual significance which is hidden from those whose vision is dimmed by sin. Such seems the general bearing of the passage.

999-1002. The legend of Adonis, the youth beloved by the Greek goddess Aphrodite (=the Roman goddess Venus), was that he was killed in the chase by a wild boar, mourned for by Aphrodite, and at last, in consideration of her sorrow, suffered by the gods of the lower world to spend six months in every year upon earth with her. His yearly return to earth was celebrated by religious rites such as Theocritus describes in the xvth Idyl. Usually the legend is explained as being a symbolisation of the annual return of spring: "in the Asiatic religions Aphrodite was the fructifying principle of nature, and Adonis appears to have reference to the death of nature in winter and its revival in spring-hence he spends six months in the lower and six in the upper world"-Classical Dictionary. In fact Adonis was regarded as the god of the Solar year.

The story is of Phoenician origin, Adonis being the same as Tammuz (Sun of Life') mentioned in Ezekiel viii. 14, “behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz." See the fuller reference

in Par. Lost, I. 446—452, and Nativity Ode, 204, "In vain the Tyrian [Phoenician] maids their wounded Thammuz mourn."

XIX. 4.

His yearly six months on earth were supposed to be spent in the 'Garden of Adonis,' which became a synonym of an exquisitely lovely spot like the Garden of Eden. The chief reference to it in the classics is in Pliny's Natural History, The allusion is a favourite with poets. See Par. Lost, IX. 439, 440; 1 Henry VI. 1. 6. 7; Spenser's Hymne in Honour of Love, 22—28; Keats's Endymion, II.; and above all, The Faerie Queene, III. 6. 29-49, which Milton had undoubtedly in his thoughts here. For like Milton Spenser treats the story as an allegory of the immortality of love and says (I11. 6. 46—48) that after his restoration to life Aphrodite would not let Adonis descend to the nether world but kept him in the 'Garden.'

Milton has not, I believe, any classical authority for associating the Gardens of Adonis and of the Hesperides, but his purpose here is to bring together all the most beautiful things in nature of which classical legend tells, and thus form an ideal region, a paradise of perfect loveliness. And he exercises the privilege of making the classics serve his poetic purpose.

Lines 999-1002 remind us of Tennyson's picture in the Palace of Art of King Arthur after his "passing" to the islandvalley :

"Or mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son

1000.
1002.

In some fair space of sloping greens

Lay, dozing in the vale of Avalon,

And watch'd by weeping queens."

Waxing, growing. Cf. Germ. wachsen, to grow.

the Assyrian queen, i.e. Aphrodite, whose "worship was of Eastern origin, and probably introduced by the Phoenicians to the islands of Cyprus, Cythera and others, from whence it spread all over Greece. She appears to have been originally identical with Astarte, called by the Hebrews Ashtoreth, and her connection with Adonis clearly points to Syria"-Classical Dictionary. Identical with the Assyrian goddess Istar.

1003-1011. He passes to a yet more spiritual love: not on earth, as that of Adonis and Aphrodite, but in heaven itself. The myth of Psyche is an allegory of the human soul (yux) which, after undergoing trials and tortures, is purified by pain and eventually reaches happiness and rest. Milton

wished to emphasize the sanctity of love still more, by showing that there is a place for it among the gods. "Comus," says Masson, "had misapprehended Love, knew nothing of it except its vile counterfeit...had been outwitted and defeated. But there is true Love, and it is to be found in Heaven." The idea is well illustrated by Par. Lost, VIII. 615-629, where Adam questions the archangel Raphael-"Love not the Heavenly Spirits?"and receives the reply-"without Love no happiness."

No doubt Milton was influenced by that conception of Divine Love of which Plato treats in the Phædrus and elsewhere. The story of Cupid and Psyche is applied in much the same way by Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III. 6. 49, 50. See also Keats's Ode to Psyche.

1003. Cf. Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. 1. 29, "By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen." sheen; akin to Germ. schön, beautiful.

1004. advanced, raised aloft.

IOII.

Youth and Joy. Later in life Milton made Virtue and Knowledge the offspring of pure Love; see note on 784 -787. "Editors find a reason for this in the greater gravity of spirit which eight years had brought upon Milton ”—Masson.

1012. A series of reminiscences of Shakespeare; cf. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, IV. 1. 102, 103, where Oberon says: "We the globe can compass soon;" and II. I. 175, Puck's words, "I'll put a girdle round about the earth," i.e. make the circuit of the universe; and Macbeth, III. 5. 23, 24:

"Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound." There and here (1017) corner='horn' (Lat. cornu), as in cornua luna; cf. Vergil's third Georgic, 433.

1014. the green earth's end; meaning probably the Cape Verd Islands-Sympson. Cf. Par. Lost, VIII. 631, "Beyond the Earth's green Cape and verdant Isles." They or the Canaries were commonly identified by the Elizabethans with the classical Hesperidum Insulæ.

1015. bowed, because in any landscape the horizon appears to come down to the earth. welkin; see G. slow, i.e. gradually.

1018-1023. These lines are particularly notable as summing up the whole teaching of the poem. The special aspect of virtue which it has depicted is, of course, "saintly chastity” (453).

And chastity (the Lady) has triumphed over the temptations of intemperance (Comus), through its own "hidden strength" (418), and through supernatural aid (the Attendant Spirit and Sabrina) such as the Elder Brother spoke of (455, 456) and the last line of the Masque promises.

1019. Ben Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (the Masque in which Comus appears) ends with a similar song in praise of Virtue.

1021. sphery clime. An allusion to the notion, said to have originated with Pythagoras and described by Plato in the Republic (x. 616, 617), of the "music of the spheres." As popularly understood and referred to, it was that the rapid revolution of each planet in its "sphere" or orbit (i.e. a circular space round the central earth) produced a sound, and the combination of the sounds a harmony. Poetry is full of allusions to "the great sphere-music of stars and constellations" (Tennyson, Parnassus). It was a favourite idea with Milton, who studied the Ptolemaic theory of the "spheres" deeply, and adopted it for the astronomical system of Par. Lost. Cf. The Nativity Ode, 125–132, Ode At a Solemn Music, and Arcades, 62—73. Perhaps Echo was called "Daughter of the sphere" (241) in allusion to the music of the spheres, i.e. as though she had her origin in it and were part of it.

sphery, belonging to the spheres.

1023, 1024.

Masson notes that an interesting personal anecdote is associated with these lines, viz. that Milton wrote them, and his name, in the autograph-book (still preserved) of a foreigner whom he visited in June 1639 at Geneva, on the way home from his travels in Italy.

The peaceful close of Comus is characteristic of Milton. All his long poems end quietly. Indeed, the end of Paradise Lost is so simple that some critics proposed, wrongly, to omit the last couplet as unauthentic because tame and less impressive than the two previous lines. But it is just like the gentle ending of Paradise Regained. Shakespeare's tragedies usually close on a quiet note.