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Of human mould with gross unpurged ear;

And yet

such music worthiest were to blaze
The peerless height of her immortal praise,
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,
If my inferior hand or voice could hit
Inimitable sounds, yet as we go,

Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show,
I will assay, her worth to celebrate,

And so attend ye toward her glittering state:
Where ye may all that are of noble stem
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem.

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That thou will like an airy spirit go.
And see Comus, v. 997.
List mortals, if your ears be true.
T. Warton.

77. -Hand or voice could hit, &c.] Parad. Reg. iv. 254. "Tones "and numbers hit by voice or “hand." And, i, 171.The hand sung with the voice." T. Warton.

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81. And so attend ye toward her glittering state:] Jonson, Hymenæi, vol. v. 272.

And see where Juno

Displays her glittering state and chair, A state is a canopy. See the notes P. L. vii. 440. and x. 445. T. Warton.

83. Approach, and kiss her sa

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cred vesture's hem.] Fairfax, in the metrical dedication of his Tasso to Queen Elizabeth, bids his Muse not approach too boldly,

nor soil

her vesture's hem.

I must not quit Milton's Genius without observing, that a Genius is more than once introduced in See the poems on Lord Bacon's Jonson's Underwoods and Masques. birth-day, written 1620, vol. vi. 425. and in " Part of the King's "Entertainment passing to his "Coronation," the Genius of London appears. Ed. fol. 1616. p. 849. And in the Entertainment at Theobald's, 1607, the dialogue is chiefly supported by a Genius, p. 887. And the Fates things to the Genius of this piece, are represented teaching future who is the Genius of the palace of Theobald's, p. 888. T. Warton.

84. enamell'd green.] Ena

Follow me as I sing,

And touch the warbled string,

Under the shady roof

Of branching elm star-proof.

Follow me,

I will bring you where she sits,

Clad in splendor as befits
Her deity.

Such a rural Queen

All Arcadia hath not seen.

SONG III.

NYMPHS and Shepherds dance no more By sandy Ladon's lilied banks,

melled, with this application, occurs repeatedly in Sylvester's Du Bartas. And in Drayton, Sydney, and Peele. T. Warton. 87.-warbled string.] That is, the lute accompanied with the voice. T. Warton.

89.-branching elm star-proof.] That is, which will resist the evil influence of the planets. It is a vulgar superstition that one species of elm has this virtue. Warburton.

But I believe he means no more than, proof against the rays of the sun; impenetrable to star or sun-light, as he says P. L. ix. 1086. where see the note. Hurd. One of Peacham's Emblems is the picture of a large and lofty grove, which defies the influence of the moon and stars appearing over it. This grove, in the verses affixed, is said to be,

Not pierceable to power of any starre.
VOL. III.

90

95

See Peacham's Minerva Britanna, p. 182. edit. 1612. 4to. But literally the same line is applied to a grove in the Faerie Queene, i. i. 7. Where Spenser seems to have imitated Statius, Theb. 1. x.

85.

-Nulli penetrabilis astro
Lucus iners.

Compare our author, P. L. b. ix. 1088.

Where highest woods impenetrable To star, or sun-light, spread their umbrage broad.

Sylvester has "Sun-proof ar"bours," Du Bartas, p. 171. edit. 1621. Works. But starproof is astrological, as in Martin's Dumbe Knight, 1608. Reed's Old. Pl. iv. 479.

Or else star-cross'd with some hagg's
hellishness.
T. Warton.

97. By sandy Ladon's lilied banks, &c.] This was the most G g

On old Lycæus or Cyllene hoar

Trip no more in twilight ranks,

Though Erymanth your loss deplore,

A better soil shall give ye thanks.

From the stony Mænalus

Bring your flocks, and live with us,
Here ye shall have greater grace,

To serve the Lady of this place.

Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were,
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.

Such a rural Queen

All Arcadia hath not seen.

beautiful river of Arcadia, and the others are famous mountains of that country: and the poet calls it sandy Ladon after Ovid, Met. i. 702.

Donec arenosi placitum Ladonis ad

amnem

Venerit.

and it might properly be said to have lilied banks, since Dionysius, as I find him quoted by Farnaby, has called it Ευκαλαμον ποταμον και εὕστεφανον Λαδωνα.

97. I know not that Dionysius mentions the river Ladon any where, but in the following verse of the Periegesis, v. 417.

Ηχι δε ωγυγιος μηκύνεται ὕδασι Λάδων. Ovid mentions Ladon more than once, but without its lilies. Compare Statius, Theb. ix. 573. And Callimachus, Hymn. Jov. v. 18.

Festus Avienus, I believe, is the only ancient Latin poet, if he deserves the name, who speaks of the fertility of the fields washed by Ladon. Descript. Orb. v. 574.

*

100

105

Hic distentus aqua sata lambit pinguia
Ladon.

But by lilied banks we are perhaps only to understand waterlilies. Lilied seems to have been no uncommon epithet for the banks of a river. So in Sylvester, cited in England's Parnassus, 1600. p. 479. [Works, ut supr. p. 1201.]

By some cleare river's lillie-paved side.
T. Warton.

Derby, was the lady before whom * Alice, Countess Dowager of this Mask was presented at Hare

field. She married Ferdinando Lord Strange; who on the death of his father Henry, in 1594, became Earl of Derby, but died the next year. She was the sixth daughter of Sir John Spenser of Althorpe in Northamptonshire. She was afterwards married to Lord Chancellor Egerton, who died in 1617. See Prelim. N. on Comus. And Dugd. Baron. iii. 414, 251. She died Jan. 26, 1635-6, and was buried at Hare

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All eares, eyes, tongues, heard, saw, and told, her honour, &c. A Dedication to this Lady Dowager Derby, full of the most exalted panegyric, is prefixed to Thomas Gainsford's Historie of Trebizonde, a set of tales. Lond. 1616. 4to.

But Milton is not the only Great English poet who has celebrated this Countess Dowager of Derby. She was the sixth daughter, as we have seen, of Sir John Spenser, with whose family Spenser the poet claimed an alliance. In his Colin Clouts come home again, written about 1595, he mentions her under the appellation of Amarillis, with her sisters Phillis, or Elizabeth, and

Charillis, or Anne; these three of Sir John Spenser's daughters being best known at court. See v. 536.

Ne lesse praise-worthy are the Sisters three, &c.

After a panegyric on the two first, he next comes to Amarillis, or Alice, our lady, the Dowager of the above-mentioned Ferdinando Lord Derby, lately dead.

But Amarillis, whether fortunate,
Or else unfortunate, as I aread,
That freed is from Cupid's yoke by
fate,

Since which, she doth new bands
adventure dread:

Shepheard, whatever thou hast heard
to be

In this or that praysd diversly apart,
In her thou maist them all assembled

see

And seald up in the treasure of her heart.

And in the same poem, he thus apostrophises to her late husband Earl Ferdinand, under the name Amyntas*. See v. 432.

Amyntas quite is gone, and lies full

lowe,

Having his Amarillis left to mone! Help, O ye Shepheards, help ye all

in this,

Her losse is yours, your loss Amyntas

is;

Amyntas, flowre of Shepheards pride forlorne: &c.

And to the same lady Alice, when Lady Strange, before her husband Ferdinand's advancement to the Earldom, Spenser addresses his Teares of the Muses,

But if this poem, according to its dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh, was printed in 1591, then Amyntas would be Henry Lord Compton, who died 1589, and Amarillis, Anne his widow. Consequently, Alice is not Amarillis, but another of the three sisters here celebrated. But I date the poem, for unanswerable reasons, in 1595-6. See Life of Spenser, prefixed to Mr. Ralph Church's edition of the Faerie Queene, Lond. 8vo. 1758. vol. i. pp. xviii. xxx. And compare Upton's edition, vol. i. Pref. p. xi. And his note, iii. vi. 45. Where Amintas may mean some other person. See Dugd. Baron. ii. 400. col. ii. 403. col. i. But this doubt does not affect the main purport of my argument.

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