In sage and solemn tunes have sung,

Of turneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and inchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Thus night oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited morn appear,

Not trick'd and frounc'd as she was wont

With the Attic boy to hunt,

But kerchef'd in a comely cloud,

While rocking winds are piping loud,

125

Or usher'd with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves.

123. Not trick'd and frounc'd
as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,]
Shakespeare calls dress tricking.
Mrs. Page, in the Merry Wives
of Windsor, "Go get us proper-
"ties and tricking for our fairies."
Frounc'd is another word to the
same purpose, signifying much
the same
as frizzled, crisped,
curled. The Attic boy is Ce-
phalus, with whom Aurora fell
in love as he was hunting. See
Peck, and Ovid. Met. vii. 701.

125. But kerchef'd in a comely cloud,] Kerchef is a head dress from the French couvre chef; a word used by Chaucer and Shakespeare. Julius Cæsar, act

ii. sc. 3.

130

"gloomy with rain and wind, he "walks into the dark trackless "woods, falls asleep by some "murmuring water, and with "melancholy enthusiasm, ex"pects some dream of prognosti"cation, or some music played "by aerial performers." Never were fine imagery and fine imagination so marred, mutilated, and impoverished, by a cold, unfeeling, and imperfect representation! To say nothing, that he confounds two descriptions. T. Warton.

130. With minute drops.] A natural little circumstance calculated to impress a pleasing melancholy; and which reminds one of a similar image in a poet that abounds in natural little circumstances. Speaking of a << "Tis gentle Spring-Shower, "scarce to patter heard," says Therefore the winds piping to us in Thomson, Seas. Spring, ver. 176. Dr. J. Warton.

126. While rocking winds are piping loud,] So Shakespeare, Mids. N. Dr. a. i. s. 1.

vain.

The still, that is, gentle shower, in the next line is opposed to the "winds piping loud." See note on The Passion, 28. T. Warton.

127. Doctor Johnson, from this to the hundred and fifty-fourth verse inclusively, thus abridges our author's ideas. "When the "morning comes, a morning

He means, by minute drops from off the eaves, not small drops, but minute drops, such as drop at intervals, by minutes, for the shower was now over: as we say, minute-guns, and minutebells. In L'Allegro, the lark bade good-morrow at the poet's window, through sweet-briars, honeysuckles, and vines, spread

And when the sun begins to fling

His flaring beams, me Goddess bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown that Sylvan loves
Of pine, or monumental oak,

Where the rude axe with heaved stroke
Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee with honied thigh,

ing, as we have seen, over
the walls of the house. Now,
their leaves are dropping wet
with a morning-shower. T. War-

ton.

131. And when the sun begins
to fling
His flaring beams,]

185

140

In Comus, in the manuscript, v. 181.

In the blind alleys of this arched wood.
See P. R. ii. 293. and P. L. i. 304.
Ibid. b. ix. 1107.

-A pillar'd shade,
High overarch'd.

Here, by the way, is accidentally

So Drayton, Nymphid. vol. i. p. Bishop Warburton's ingenious 1449.

When Phoebus with a face of mirth Had flong abroad his beames. Our author, in his book Of Reformation, of gospel truth. "In "a flaring tire bespeckled her." Pr. W. vol. i. 9. T. Warton. 133. To arched walks of twilight groves,

And shadows brown that Sylvan loves.] Thus in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, now in high reputation, b. ii. s. iv. p. 104.

Now wanders Pan the arched groves and hills,

Where fayeries often danc'd.

Again, ibid. s. ii. p. 44.

Downe through the arched wood the shepherds wend.

but false idea of the Saracen architecture. Compare also b. iv. 705. T. Warton.

134. shadows brown] See the notes, P. L. iv. 246. and P. R. ii. 292. E.

141.-day's'garish eye,] Garish, splendid, gaudy. A word in Shakespeare, Richard III. act iv.

Sc. 4.

-a garish flag. Romeo and Juliet, act iii. sc. 4.

-all the world shall be in love with night,

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

141. The eye of day for the sun, was a common image in Spenser, Sylvester, Drayton, Ph. Fletcher, Shakespeare, &c. T. Warton.

142. While the bee with honied

That at her flow'ry work doth sing,

And the waters murmuring

With such consort as they keep,

145

Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep;

And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream
Of lively portraiture display'd,
Softly on my eye-lids laid.

thigh, &c.] Compare P. R. iv.
247. where see the note. Com-
pare also Drayton's Owle, vol. iv.
p. 1492.

See the small brookes as through the

groves they travel, With the smooth cadence of their murmuring; Each bee with honie on her laden thye. T. Warton.

148. Wave at his wings] Wave is used here as a verb neuter.

148. I do not exactly understand the whole of the context. Is the Dream to wave at Sleep's wings? Doctor Newton will have wave to be a verb neuter: and very justly, as the passage now stands. But let us strike out at, and make wave active.

-Let some strange mysterious dream Wave his wings, in airy stream, &c. "Let some fantastic Dream put "the wings of Sleep in motion, "which shall be displayed, or "expanded, in an airy or soft "stream of visionary imagery, gently falling or settling on "my eye-lids." Or, his may refer to Dream, and not to Sleep, with much the same sense. the mean time, supposing lively adverbial, as was now common, displayed will connect with pourtraiture, that is, "pourtraiture

In

150

lively displayed," with this sense, "Wave his wings, in an airy stream of rich pictures so "strongly displayed in vision as "to resemble real life." Or, if lively remain as an adjective, much in the same sense, displayed will signify displaying itself. On the whole, we must not here seek for precise meanings of parts, but acquiesce in a general idea resulting from the whole, which I think is suffiT. Warton. ciently seen.

150. Softly on my eye-lids laid.] In the same strain, Fletcher in the Faithful Shepherdess, act ii. s. 1. vol. iii. p. 126.

-Sweetest slumbers

And soft silence, fall in numbers
On your eye-lids.

And in the Tragedy of Valenti-
nian, in an address to Sleep, act
v. s. 2. vol. iv. p. 353.

On this afflicted prince fall like a cloud

In gentle showers.

Nor must I forget an exquisite
passage in Par. L. b. iv. 614.

The timely dew of sleep
Now falling with soft slumbrous
weight inclines
Our eye-lids.

But for wildness, and perhaps
force, of imagery, in expressing

And as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,

151. -sweet music breathe &c.] This thought is taken from Shakespeare's Tempest. Jortin. 151. And as I wake, sweet music

cr

breathe

Above, about, and underneath.] Probably suggested to Milton's imagination by some of the machineries of the Masks under the contrivance of Inigo Jones. Hollinshead, describing a very curious device or spectacle presented before Queen Elizabeth, insists particularly on the secret or mysterious music of some fictitious nymphs, "which," he adds, "surely had been a noble hearing, and the more melo"dious for the varietie [novelty] thereof, because it should come "secretlie and strangelie out of "the earth." Hist. iii. f. 1297. Jonson, in a Masque called a Particular Entertaynment of the Queene and Prince at Altrope, 1603, has this stage-direction. "To the sound of excellent soft musique, that was there con"cealed in the thicket, there came tripping up the lawne a beauy of faeries," &c. p. 871. edit. 1616. And Shakespeare drew from the same source, although the general idea is from Plutarch, Anton. Cleopatr. act iv.

66

s. 3. The soldiers are watching before the palace. "Musick of "hautboys under the stage.-2 "Sold. Peace, what noise? "1 Sold. List, list! Musick i'th' "uir. 3 Sold. Under the earth, "&c." Sandys, in the Notes to his English Ovid, says, that “In "the garden of the Tuilleries at "Paris, by an artificial device "underground invented for mu"sicke, I have known an echo

By

repeat a verse." Edit. Oxon. 1632. p. 103. Psyche in Apuleius, sleeping on a green and flowery bank near a romantic grove, is awakened by invisible singers and unseen harps. Aur. Asin. l. V. p. 87. b. edit. Beroald. tion in Apuleius, where Pysche the way, the whole of this ficwafted by the zephyrs into a delicious valley, sees a forest of huge trees, containing a superb palace richly constructed of ivory, gold, and precious stones, in which a sumptuous banquet accompanied with music is most luxuriously displayed, no person in the mean time appearing, has been adopted by the Gothic romance writers. Tasso's Inchanted Forest, hears Rinaldo, in unseen harps and singers, c. xvi. 67. T. Warton.

152. Above, about, or underneath.] This romantic passage has been imitated by an author of a strong imagination, an admirer and follower of our poet, Thomson, in Summer, first edit. p. 39. The context is altered rather for the worse in the later editions.