Between 1638 and 1645 he may have recollected Chaucer's line in Troilus and Cresseyde, the sonne gan westrin fast,' &c. A correspondent in Notes and Queries (Feb. 1873) quotes from Whittier, the glow of autumn's westering day.' Wested' occurs in Spenser's Introduction to the Faery Queene, 1. 8, 'westing' in Cook's Voyages. Cf. Dryden, Virg. G. iv. 577, 'the southing sun. The northern English form westling' is used by Allan Ramsay, Gentle Shepherd, ii. 4, and often by Burns.

32] Imitated by R. West, Death of Q. Caroline

'Meantime thy rural ditty was not mute,

Sweet bard of Merlin's cave.'

'Ditty' (dictum, Fr. dicté) means properly the words of a song as distinguished from the tune. Cf. Shaksp.As You Like It, v. 3, 'Though there was no great matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable.' Hence it was applied to a short pithy poem, generally on love and its sorrows. Milton has 'amorous ditties,' P. L. i. 449; xi. 584. Cf. Comus, 86.

33 tempered]='attuned,' P. L. vii. 598. Warton compares Fletcher, Purple Island, ix. 20, 'tempering their sweetest notes unto thy lay,' and Spenser, Ecl. vi. 7. Gray, Progress of Poesy, has

Thee the voice, the dance obey, . Tempered to thy warbled lay."

Cf. Petrarch, Sonnet xxxviii. 2, Temprar potess' io in si soavi note I miei sospiri.' The Latin temperare is similarly used, Hor. Od. IV. iii. 18. Milton employs the word 'temper' in several senses, e.g. of sword metal, P. L. ii. 813; vi.

322; of mental constitution, P. R. iii. 27; of climate, P. L. xii. 636 (cf. Chaucer, Assembly of Fowles, stanza 30, the aire

so at

tempre was'); of mixing in proportion (cf. Ezek. xlvi. 14; Exod. xxix. 2). All these come from the general notion of dividing (réμ-V-W, tem-p-us, &c.), the prevailing idea being that of regular distribution and order.

oaten flute] Cf. 1. 88; Comus, 345; Spenser, Ecl. i. 72 ; x. 8, &c., &c.; Collins, Ode to Evening, l. 1. 'Pipes of corn' are mentioned in Shaksp. M. N. Dr. ii. 2; Spenser, Ecl. ii. 40. Although the oaten pipe has been chosen by English poets as the representative of pastoral music, the classical authority for such usage is more than doubtful. Theocritus speaks only of reeds (κάλαμος, αὐλός, δῶναξ), or of the Pan's pipe (ovply). Lucretius in the celebrated passage, v. 1382 foll., adds the hemlock pipe (cicuta) to the calamus and tibia. Perhaps the earliest instance of avena in this sense is in Virg. Ecl. i. 2 (cf. Ov. Met. viii. 191; Tibull. III. iv. 71); but it is a question whether the word may not there mean any reed or hollow stalk; Pliny, N. H. xix. 1, uses it of the flax-plant, 'tam gracili avena.' No argument can of course be drawn from the stipula of Virg. Ecl. iii. 27, where the designation is purposely disparaging. So in an Elegy to Dr. Donne by R. B.

'all indeed Compared to him, piped on an oaten reed ;'

and in Tickell's mock-heroic poem, Kensington Gardens, the shrill corn-pipes' are a substitute for martial trumpets in a battle of fairies.

Dream, ii. 2, where the scene is laid in a forest.

Gadding] here simply describes the straggling nature of the vine (Cic. de Senect., 'multiplici lapsu et erratico'), without any allusion to her desertion of the marital elm, as Warburton suggests (Hor. Od. IV. v. 30; Epod. ii. 10; Catullus, lxii. 49). Gad, from the past tense of go or ga (yede and yode in Spenser), was formerly a common word. Warton quotes from a Norfolk Register of 1534 'the Gadynge with S. Marye Songe,' i.e. the going about with a carol to the Virgin. Gadlyng 'vagrant' in Chaucer, Wyatt, &c. Cf. P. Fletcher, Pisc. Ecl. i. 21, 'the gadding winde ;' Bacon, Essays, 'Envy is a gadding poison.' The word is however specially used of wives roving from home, as in Ecclus. xxv. 25; xxvi. 8, &c. A poet of the sixteenth century (probably John Heywood) speaks thus in praise of his lady'At Bacchus' feast none her shall meet,

=

Ne at no wanton play;
Nor gazing in the open street,
Nor gadding as astray.'

41] Cf. Moschus, Epit. Bion. 30, ̓Αχὼ δ ̓ ἐν πέτρησιν ὀδύρεται ὅττι σwn, Shelley, Adonais, st. xv.—

Lost Echo sits among the voiceless mountains,

And feeds her grief with thy remembered lay.'

45

fan,' as in P. L. iv. 156, 'gentle gales, fanning their odoriferous wings. Spenser, F. Q. I. i. 17, has threatening her angry sting,' i.e. moving in a threatening manner.

45 canker] a crab-like tumour ('cancra') in the rose, caused by a caterpillar feeding on the blossom. Here it is used for the insect itself. Cf. Joel, i. 4, ii. 25; 2 Tim. ii. 17; James v. 3. Warton gives several references from Shakspere-e.g. Two Gent. of Verona, i. 1, 'In the sweetest bud the eating canker dwells;' K. John, iii. 4; M. N. Dr. ii. 3, &c. &c. The term is also applied to the blossom of the dog-rose, Much Ado, i. 3, 'I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace.'

46] Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, says: 'There is found in the summer a spider called taint, of a red colour.... This by country people is accounted a deadly poison unto cows and horses.' Milton may have employed the designation worm' by poetic license in a wide sense (see on 7. 28), or he may have meant any worm that causes a 'taint' or disease in sheep.

weanling] a diminutive of weanel, from wean. In Spenser, Ecl. ix., ‘a weanell waste' = a weaned lamb; Beattie translates depulsos a lacte (Virg. Ecl. vii. 15) 'my weanling lambs.' This must not be confounded witheanling' (Merch. of Ven. i. 3), which means 'just dropt,' from ean or yean (O. E. eacnian, 'to conceive in the womb'). "Wean'

Or frost to flowers that their

gay

wardrobe wear

For

47] Scott thinks 'simplicity is violated by making flowers wear their wardrobe.' It is difficult to see the point of this criticism. the original reading 'buttons,' cf. Shaksp. Hamlet, i. 3; Browne, Brit. Past. ii. 3, Flora's choice buttons of a russet dye.' Hence the name of the flower called 'bachelor's buttons.'

50-55] This form of appeal to the Nymphs, complaining of their absence from the scene of their votary's distress, has been a favourite one with poets ever since Virgil (Ecl. x. 9) copied it from Theocritus (i. 66). Milton has here borrowed something from both; from the latter in making the locality of the Nymphs suit that of the catastrophe (whereas Virgil speaks of their usual haunts, Parnassus, Pindus, and Aganippe), and from the latter in identifying the Nymphs with the Muses, whose favourites both Gallus and Lycidas are imagined to be. Keightley refers to Aristoph. Nub. 269 foll., as the original source of the idea, but the resemblance is hardly close enough to warrant the supposition that Theocritus was thinking of that passage, the circumstances and leading sentiment being quite different. The form of address (ELTE—ELTE, &c.) might better be compared with that in 7. 156 foll. of the present poem. The lines which Warton

59

quotes from Spenser's Astrophel, 127 foll., are not much more than an echo of the Greek and Latin originals, since the remonstrance is there addressed, not to the Nymphs, but to shepherds and shepherdesses, who were the actual companions of Astrophel; the office of stanching the wound being in fact performed by some strange shepherds, but too late to save his life. Lord Lyttelton on the Death of his Wife imitates more closely :

'Where were ye, Muses, when relentless Fate

From these fond arms your fair disciple tore?

Nor then did Pindus and Castalia's stream,

Or Aganippe's fount your steps detain,

Nor where Clitumnus rolls his gentle stream.'

Cf. Shelley, Adonais,

'where was lorn Urania, When Adonais died?'

Ossian, Dar-thula, 'Where have ye been, ye southern winds, when the sons of my love were deceived?'

55

seems to favour the former supposition.

54 shaggy top] Cf. P. L. vi. 645; Comus, 429. Drayton, Polyolbion, 12th Song, speaks of 'shaggy heaths.' This description of Anglesey was true only of the olden time; it was then called 'the Dark,' as Drayton tells us in the 9th Song of his Polyolbion, where Mona is made to say-'my brooks

Of their huge oaks bereft to heaven so open lie, That now there's not a root discerned by any eye.' We do not know whether Milton had any personal acquaintance with these parts; Masson thinks he may possibly have visited his friend Diodati's residence on the Dee (Eleg. i. 3).

55] Cf. Vac. Ex. 98; Spenser, F. Q. IV. xi. 30; and the Аkidos ἱερὸν ὕδωρ of Theocr. i. 69. Drayton calls the Dee the ominous' and the hallowed' flood in Polyolb. 10th Song; this superstition was based on the fact of its being the boundary between England and Wales, whence

'the changing of his fords The future ill or good of either country told.'

In the 11th Song the epithet 'wisard' is applied to the Weever, of which it is said that

oft twixt him and Dee Much strife arose in their prophetick skill.'

Hence probably arose the notion, mentioned by Camden, that the word meant 'God's water,' and the Roman name Deva may have been

partly owing to a similar association of ideas. Col. Robertson, Topography of Scotland, p. 141, derives it from the Gaelic da-abh (dāv) = 'double water' or confluence, and this is further confirmed by its Welsh name Dyfr-dwy, signifying the same thing.

56 Ay me!] = 'Ah me,' as in 1. 154; P. L. iv. 86, &c. It is probably the Spanish Ay de mi, and is to be distinguished from the affirmative Ay (G. ja). A correspondent of Notes and Queries observes that 'oh ja' is used in Southern Germany as an expression of woe-rather a curious coincidence. The Italians also say Ahimé.

57] These words will hardly bear Newton's proposed construction— 'I dream of your having been there.' Warton would supply the ellipse after 'there' but why should I suppose it, for what, &c.;' a construction resembling the Greek ảλλà yàp (àλλ' où yàp oîda, &c.), but hardly admissible in English. simpler way would be to refer the 'for,' &c., to the words 'I fondly dream,' i.e. I fondly dream when I say Had ye been there, &c.;' the question in l. 50 being of course equivalent to a wish that the Muses had been present.

A