94. rebecks sound. What was a rebeck ?

104. friar's lantern. Meaning?

120. weeds of peace. In what modern expression is this old meaning of 'weeds' retained? high triumphs. The student may be interested to read Bacon's essay, Of Masks and Triumphs.

126. The English poets from Ben Jonson down have mistaken the Greek word σaóþpwv (chaste, modest) for saffron. The latter is a word unknown to the Greek or Latin language. It comes through the French safran from the Arabic zaphran. The saophron was a girdle worn by girls, indicative of chastity, and not yellow or saffron at all.

132. Jonson's learned sock. Ben Jonson's plays are composed according to classical standards, and show his wide learning. The 'sock' was a low shoe worn by the Greek comic actors.

133-134. This represents the prevalent conception of Shakespeare during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

136. Lydian airs.

Lydian music was soft and voluptuous. See

Spenser, Faerie Queene, III, 1, 40.

138. pierce. This word in Milton's day was pronounced so as to rhyme with verse.

144. Compare Merchant of Venice, V, i, 61.

145. Who was Orpheus ?

In writing line 125 may Milton have been thinking of the last scene of As You Like It? What other line in the poem suggests the same play?

6

Point out the suggestiveness of such phrases as wreathèd smiles, 'wrinkled care.'

How does line 89 prove that Milton was not confining. himself to an account of the pleasures of one particular day?

To what country pleasures does Milton allude in lines 91-116? Compare the pleasures of the cheerful man with those suggested in Paradise Lost, IX, 445-453.

Il Penseroso.. 3. bested, help.

6. fond. In what modern phrase is this meaning of 'fond' retained? 10. Morpheus. Who was he? Cf. morphine. Read Spenser, Faerie Queene, I, 1, 39–40.

15. weaker, here a comparative.

18. Who was Prince Memnon? He is not known to have had a sister.

19. Who was Cassiopea?

23-24. What sources of joy are symbolized by Vesta and Saturn? This ancestry is Milton's own invention.

29. Ida, a mountain in Crete, one of Saturn's favorite haunts.

33. grain, purple. 35. sable stole, black tunic. Cypress lawn is crêpe. 36. decent. Meaning? 55. hist, a verb, to bring silently.

56. Who was Philomel?

57. plight, mood. 59. Cynthia. Milton has given to Cynthia, the moon, the dragons anciently assigned to Demeter.

64. woo, bend.

74. curfew.

Find the derivation of the word.

83. the bellman's, etc. The night watchman, who went about ringing a bell and calling out the hours, ended each announcement with the singing of a verse.

87. outwatch the Bear, sit up all the night. This constellation does

not set.

88. Hermes, Hermes Trismegistus. Who was he? 98. sceptred pall, royal robe.

104-105. Who was Museus?

102. buskined stage. Meaning?

109. Chaucer, whose Squiere's Tale was left unfinished. completed by Spenser, Faerie Queene, IV, II and III.

It was

116. Milton refers to Spenser and to the Italian poets, Ariosto and Tasso.

124. Attic boy, Cephalus.

134. Sylvan. Who was Sylvanus ?

147-150. What is the meaning of these lines?

134. brown, dark.

156. studious cloister's pale. Does Milton mean a university or a monastery?

The student may be interested to determine what suggestions Milton may have derived from the song in Fletcher's The Nice Valour. This song is reprinted in the notes to Il Penseroso in Hale's Longer English

Poems.

Why are vain, deluding joys spoken of as having no father? May it be because they are thought of as undisciplined?

Spenser (Faerie Queene, I, x, 46) portrays Contemplation as an old man; Milton as a cherub. Which is better?

Into what three groups may the night's reading be divided?

What word near the close of the poem suggests Milton's persistent purpose to do what he afterward attempted in Paradise Lost — 'justify the ways of God to men'?

What is the significance of Milton's choosing for these poems Italian titles ?

Compare the introductions of the two poems.

Which seems the

more conventional? Is there any trace of Puritanism in either? What is the prevailing meter in both, and what variations do you observe?

What difference is there in the music preferred by the cheerful and the contemplative man respectively?

Note the difference in the evening pleasures chosen by each.

In which poem does the first personal pronoun often occur? What conclusion would you draw from this difference?

What other indications are there that Milton liked contemplation better than mirth?

Of what significance are line 57 in L'Allegro and line 65 in Il Penseroso in deciding which poem was written first?

How is nature treated in the two poems- as reflecting a mood, or is it described for its own sake?

Illustrate the manner in which Milton tinges his descriptive passages with human emotion and interest.

Lycidas was inserted in the second of two small volumes of poems in Greek, Latin, and English, contributed by the Cambridge friends and college fellows to the memory of Edward King. The poem is a pastoral elegy. Theocritus, Bion, and Vergil are among the masters whom Milton followed.

Iff. Milton's modesty is, no doubt, partly conventional and assumed. 5-7. Compare the thought suggested by Milton's sonnet On his being arrived at the Age of Twenty-three.

7. compels. Why in the singular rather than in the plural?

8. dead, dead. Note the repetition.

repetition and describe their effect.

Find other cases of the use of

13. This alliteration in w was a favorite one with Milton.

15. Who were the nine Muses; and what was the Pierian spring? 25. lawns. Cf. L'Allegro, l. 71.

26. See Job iii. 9.

28. gray-fly, trumpet fly.

29. battening. Meaning?

30. In the first draft Milton wrote, 'Oft till the even-star bright. had sloped his burnisht wheel.' Which reading do you prefer, and why?

34. Distinguish between satyrs and fauns.

36. Attempts have been made to identify Damotas with one of Milton's instructors at Cambridge. The name is used by Theocritus and by Vergil.

38. What is the force of must'?

40. gadding. Exact meaning?

54. Mona, Anglesey. The shaggy top is the high interior of Anglesey, the island fastness of the Druids, once thick with woods.' -Masson.

55. Deva. The river Dee forms the old boundary between England and Wales. It was once believed that by some changes in its bed or current the river gave the inhabitants of the region through which it flowed intimations of coming good or ill.

58. Calliope. See Paradise Lost, VII, 32–38.

59. her enchanting son. Why is this adjective employed?

65. What is meant by 'shepherd's trade'?

70. spirit, to be scanned as one syllable.

72. Milton seems to mean that the really great man has only one human weakness the ambition to be famous.

75. Atropos was really a Fate, not a Fury. In what other instances has Milton taken liberties with classical mythology?

77. Why should Phœbus reply?

79. foil. Meaning?

85-86. These rivers are associated with pastoral poetry. Mincius is a river near Vergil's birthplace; Arethuse, a spring near Syracuse in Sicily, where Theocritus lived.

89. herald of the sea, Triton.

96. Hippotades, Eolus, son of Hippotes.

99. Panope, one of the fifty sea nymphs, daughters of Nereus. Read Spenser, Faerie Queen, IV, XI, 49.

103. Camus, a personification of Cambridge University situated on the river Cam.

106. Who was Hyacinth?

108-131. Upon the whole passage read Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, paragraphs 20-25.

142. rathe. Meaning? Cf. rather.

143. crow-toe, the hyacinth.

149. amaranthus. The plant was the ancient emblem of immortality.

151. laureate. Meaning? Cf. poet laureate. hearse. For derivation see Murray's New English Dictionary.

160. fable of Bellerus old, place fabled to have been the haunt of Bellerus, a personage invented by Milton. The name was suggested by the Roman name of Land's End - Bellerium.

162. The coast of Spain is referred to.

176. nuptial song. See Rev. xiv. 3 and xxi. 9.

192. twitched, caught up as if in haste, having tarried too long.

How does Lycidas, as compared with L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, show in Milton an increasing seriousness?

Is the elegy an expression of personal grief or a tribute of respect? Would the poem have gained or lost, if the grief expressed had been more personal?

Discuss Dr. Johnson's charge that the poem is both artificial and insincere.

Indicate the changes of mood of the poet throughout the course of the elegy.

Show that some passages in the poem exhibit an increasing fervor of emotion.

What is the meter of Lycidas?

Read Longfellow's sonnet Milton, and illustrate its truth from this poem — particularly the lines

So in majestic cadence rise and fall

The mighty undulations of thy song.

Point out ten lines of blank verse, and describe the effect upon the poem of the occasional lack of rhyme.

What rhyme predominates through the first fourteen lines, and what is the effect of the repetition?

What is the metrical structure of ottava rima as illustrated by the last eight lines of the poem?

Note the instances where Milton has placed the adjective after the noun, or has used the order of adjective, noun, adjective. What has he gained by such an arrangement?

What do you understand by the pastoral manner as illustrated by this poem? Why is the pastoral a more artificial manner for English than for Greek poetry?

What justification is there for Milton's mingling of pagan mythology with Christian belief?