Page images
PDF
EPUB

97. 1. This queen. Mary, elder sister of

Elizabeth.

13. Praxiteles.

A fondness for citing classical illustrations is one of Lyly's distinguishing characteristics.

67. As she hath lived forty years.
"Ac-
tually, 47.
The following words
allude to the projected Anjou match,
which in the autumn of 1579 she was
known to favor; and reflect the general
anxiety for an heir to the crown." (Bond,
II. 534.)

78. Tickle. Uncertain.

79. Twist. Small thread or piece of silk. 88. Like the bird lbis. Reference to the so-called "unnatural natural history," most of which goes back to Pliny, is characteristic of Lyly and his Euphuistic imitators.

98. 117. Escapes. Mistakes.

66

133. Twice directed her progress unto
the Universities. She spent four days at
Cambridge in Aug. 1564, and five or six
at Oxford in Aug. 1566.
At both she
attended the disputations in the schools
and made speeches in Greek and Latin."
(Bond, II. 534.)

157. Admiration. Wonder.

99. 202. The curses of the Pope. "Pius V.'s bull.of excommunication and deposition, issued Feb. 25, 1570, was found nailed on the Bishop of London's door, May 15." (Bond, II. 535.)

251. Bound the crocodile to the palm tree. "A way of saying made Egypt a field for his victories.'" (Bond, II. 535.)

[blocks in formation]

RALEIGH

THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE

The text is based on Arber's Reprint; spelling and punctuation are modernized. 103. 3. This late encounter. The battle between the Revenge and the Spanish fleet began 10 September, 1591. The pamphlet describing it appeared the same year.

29. The year 1588. The year when the great Armada was destroyed.

41. The last of August. Old style; 10 September, new style.

57. Recover. Obtain.

58. All pestered and rummaging. The ships were encumbered with badly stowed gear.

104. 88. Weigh their anchors. Hoist their
anchors on board. Slip the cables means
to cut loose from the mooring.
94. Recovered the wind. Got to wind-
ward of the Spanish fleet; an advantageous
position for either fighting or running
away.

97. Cut his mainsail and cast about.
Spread his mainsail and "
come about";
i. e., turn in an opposite direction.
100. On his weather bow. Ahead of him,
and to windward.

110. Sprang their luff, etc. Allowed the
Revenge to get to windward of them.
This action on the part of some Spanish
vessels put the Revenge in the middle of
the hostile fleet.

113. Answered. Justified.

Took

122. High carged. Towering.
125. Laid the Revenge aboard.
position alongside the Revenge, the two
ships touching each other.

127. Luffing up. Turning towards the
wind.

134. Out of her chase. The guns in the bows of a ship would be the first used in a pursuit; the noun chase here means the bows.

105. 177. Admiral of the Hulks. Flagship of the transports.

185. Ship of Lime. So the original text;
possibly a misprint for " Ship of the
line," a warship of the first class.
191. A-dressing.

dressed.

Having his wounds

211. Composition. Terms of agreement. 245. But. Nothing but.

106. 356. Approved. Experienced.

372. Fly-boats. Small, swiftly sailing ships.

107. 384. Road. Roadstead; harbor.

BACON

OF TRUTH

107. 1. See John, xviii: 38.

3. There be that. There are those who. 17. One of the later school, etc. Probably a reference to the "New Academy."

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

HERBERT: VIRTUE

120. 15. Coal. I. e., on the Day of Judgment.

THE COLLAR

6. In suit. Suing for the favor of a superior.

8. Me. For me; an example of the socalled ethical dative.

22. The attempt to weave a rope of sand was a typical example of folly.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

CRASHAW: IN THE HOLY NATIVITY OF OUR LORD GOD

She

122. 91 f. She sings Thy tears asleep, etc. The stanza offers a typical example of a conceit." It is thus explained by Schelling (Seventeenth Century Lyrics): The Virgin sings to her babe until, falling asleep, his tears cease to flow. And dips her kisses in Thy weeping eye,' she kisses lightly his eyes, suffused with tears. Here the lightness of the kiss and the over-brimming fullness of the eyes suggest the hyperbole and the implied metaphor, which likens the kiss to something lightly dipped into a stream. spreads the red leaves of thy lips,' i. e., kisses the child's lips, which lie lightly apart in infantile sleep, and which are like rosebuds in their color and in their childish undevelopment. 'Mother-diamonds' are the eyes of the Virgin, bright as diamonds and resembling those of the child. Points' are the rays or beams of the eye, which, according to the old physics, passed, in vision, from one eye to another. Lastly, the eyes of the child are likened to those of a young eagle, and the Virgin tests them against her own as the mother eagle is supposed to test her nestling's eyes against the sun."

VAUGHAN: THE RETREAT

123. The idea of this poem suggests Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality, and it is probable that Wordsworth was influenced by Vaughan.

MARVELL: HORATIAN ODE

124. Written in 1650 after Cromwell had returned from putting down a rising in Ireland.

125. 15. His own side. In 1647 the Puritan party was split between Independents and Presbyterians, the latter advocating the immediate disbanding of the army which was largely made up of Independents; Cromwell led the army to London, and forced the Presbyterians to yield.

17-20. An ambitious man makes no distinction between enemies (of an opposing party) and rivals (in his own party), and in the case of such a man ("with such ") it is more difficult to restrain him than to oppose him.

125. 23. Cæsar's. Charles the First's. 24. Through his laurels. In spite of his royal crown.

29. His private gardens. Until the outbreak of the Civil War Cromwell had lived in retirement.

41. Nature, that hateth emptiness. A
variant of the well known phrase " Nature
abhors a vacuum."

42. Allows of penetration less. Two
bodies cannot occupy the same space.
47. Hampton. It was long believed that
Cromwell connived at the flight of
Charles from Hampton Court to Caris-
brooke Castle in 1647.

57. He. The King. This fine passage
has done much to keep the poem alive.
66. Assured the forced power. Made the
Commonwealth secure.

69. A bleeding head. Pliny tells, in his
Natural History (xxviii. 4), an anecdote
of the finding of a head while workmen
were digging on the Tarpeian hill for the
foundation of a temple to Jupiter; the
omen was interpreted as indicating a
prosperous future for Rome.
82. In the republic's hand.
to the Commonwealth's wishes.
86. A Kingdom. Ireland.

Submissive

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

DORSET: TO ALL YOU LADIES NOW AT LAND

127. "Written in 1665, when the author, at the age of twenty-eight, had volunteered under the Duke of York in the first Dutch war. It was composed at sea the night before the critical engagement in which the Dutch admiral Opdam was blown up, and thirty ships destroyed or taken. It may be considered as inaugurating the epoch of vers-de-societé." (E. Gosse, in Ward's English Poets.)

128. 27. Whitehall stairs. The royal palace of Whitehall was situated on the bank of the Thames.

44. A merry main. To throw a main was to cast dice in a game of chance.

BROWNE HYDRIOTAPHIA

The Urn-Burial sets out to be an historical account of the methods of dealing with the dead, but turns into a meditation upon the brevity and vanity of the life

[merged small][ocr errors]

24. To retain a stronger propension unto them. I. e., such souls clung more strongly to the bodies.

129. 36. Archimedes. The famous Syracusan mathematician and physicist of the third century B. C.

37. The life of Moses his man. The life of man as described by Moses, in the socalled Prayer of Moses, the ninetieth Psalm.

42. One little finger. According to
the ancient arithmetic of the hand,
wherein the little finger of the right hand
contracted, signified an hundred."

(Browne's note).
54. Alcmena's nights. Jupiter, in love
with Alcmena, mother of Hercules, made
one night as long as three.

65. What name Achilles assumed. Thetis,
mother of Achilles, to prevent him from
going on the expedition against Troy,
had him disguised as a girl; Ulysses pene-
trated the stratagem.

69. Ossuaries. Receptacles for bones.
77. Provincial guardians, or tutelary ob-
servators. Guardian spirits of the lo-

cality.

83. Pyramidally extant. tombstone.

Known by a

93. Atropos. The one of the three Fates who cuts the thread of life.

99. Meridian. The noon, or middle point,
of the world's existence.

106. Prophecy of Elias. "That the world
may last but six thousand years."
(Browne's note.)

107. Charles the Fifth ... Hector.
"Hector's fame lasting above two lives of
Methusaleh, before that famous prince
(i. e., Charles) was extant." (Browne's
note.)

115. One face of Janus . . . the other.
The past and the future.
126. Setting. Declining.

130. 136. The mortal right-lined circle. 0, the character of death.

147. Gruter. Jan Gruter (1560-1627),

a continental scholar; author of Inscriptiones Antiquæ (1603).

157. Cardan. Italian philosopher of the sixteenth century.

160. Hippocrates. Greek physician (460377 B. C.).

164. Entelechia. A word coined by Aristotle to denote the actual being of a thing in distinction to its capacity for being.

167. Canaanitish woman. See Genesis, xlvi: 10.

178. Adrian. Hadrian, Emperor of Rome. 182. Thersites. A foul-mouthed coward in the Iliad, where Agamemnon is leader of the Greek host.

130. 205. Lucina. Goddess of childbirth; here equivalent to midwife.

[ocr errors]

211. Our light in ashes. According to the custom of the Jews, who place a lighted wax-candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse." (Browne's note.)

212. Brother of death. Sleep.

224. To weep into stones. A reference to the fable of Niobe.

131. 257. Mummy is become merchandise. A medicinal preparation made, or supposed to be made, from mummies, was highly regarded in the old medicine. 258. Mizraim. The Biblical name for Egypt; Browne seems to use it as symbolic of Egypt's great men.

268. Nimrod. The Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Orion.

269. The dog-star. Sirius.

274. Perspectives. Telescopes.
298. Scape. Oversight.
309. Sardanapalus. Last king of As-
syria, who, when his besieged city of
Nineveh was about to be captured, gath-
ered together his household and treasure
and burned all, with himself, in his palace.
316. Gordianus. An emperor of Rome in
the third century. Man of God. Moses,
buried by the hand of God; cf. Deu-
teronomy, xxxiv: 6.

321. Enoch. "And Enoch was not, for
God took him." Genesis, v: 24. Elias.
Elijah was taken up to heaven in a chariot
of fire; 2 Kings, ii: 1-12.

327. Decretory. Established by decree. 346. Alaricus. King of the Visigoths, who captured and sacked Rome in 410; he was buried, with vast treasure, in the bed of a river.

348. Sylla. Roman general and dictator (138-78 B. C.)

132. 357. That poetical taunt of Isaiah. See Isaiah, xiv: 16-17.

367. St. Innocent's churchyard. In Paris. 371. Moles of Adrianus. Hadrian's Mole, or tomb, now known as the Castle of St. Angelo.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

THE LIFE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH

32. Compurgator. A person who swore to his belief in the innocence of one on trial. 69. A fit of the mother. A pun on the old meaning of mother-hysteria.

135. 121. Ascham. See note on The Good Schoolmaster, above.

138. Et si ... pudor. And if that womanly bashfulness of mine.

136. 188. Latter Lammas. This rendering of Græcas Calendas is explained by the fact that neither a Greek calends nor a later Lammas (a church festival on August first) exists; the latter term was used ironically for "never."

211. Semper eadem. Always the same. 231. This anagrammatist. Edmund Campion, an English Jesuit, executed for treason in 1581.

271. Cordial. Invigorating.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

145. 2. Cerberus. A three-headed dog, guardian of the gateway of Hades.

10. Cimmerian. Cimmeria was a land in which, according to Homer, the sun never shone.

12. Euphrosyne. Mirth.

29. Hebe. The goddess of youth.

most

146. 45. Then to come in spite of sorrow. The passage has been much disputed about. The interpretation which seems satisfactory is that L'Allegro finds pleasure in hearing the song of the lark in the early morning, and then in coming to the window to look out through sweet briar and eglantine, to bid good morrow to the new day.

67. Tells his tale. Counts his sheep.
83. Corydon, Thyrsis, etc. Conventional
names in pastoral verse.
103. She
telling the stories.

[ocr errors]

he. Persons who are

125. Hymen. The god of marriage.
132. Jonson's learned sock. Actors in
classical comedy wore a low-heeled
soccus, or slipper. Jonson's plays were
famous for the scholarly learning they
embodied.

147. 145. Orpheus. According to the Greek myths, Orpheus was the most wonderful of all human musicians. Pluto consented to let Eurydice return with her husband to the earth, but Orpheus, by looking back to be sure she was following, broke the terms of his agreement with Pluto, and Eurydice remained in Hades. Hence the phrase," half-regained."

IL PENSEROSO

10. Morpheus. The god of sleep. 18. Prince Memnon's sister. Memnon was a handsome king of the Ethiopians, according to Homer. Milton here assumes

« PreviousContinue »