Married to immortal verfe, Such as the meeting foul may pierce, The melting voice through mazes running, The hidden foul of harmony; Which is an iambic verse, changing to trochaic in the next line, 140 To the full-voic'd quire below. Dr. J. WARTON. 137. Married to immortal verse.] So in Browne's BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS, of a shepherd, B. i. S. v. p. 93. MARRYING his fweet noates with their filuer found. And in our author's Poem AT A SOLEMN MUSICK, V. 1. Sphere-born harmonious fisters, Voice and Verfe, Philips, Milton's nephew, fays in the Preface to his THEATRUM The Unity and MARRIED calm of states. And he has MARRIED Lineaments, for harmony of features, in Rom. and JULIET. 142. The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that ty The bidden foul of harmony.] Mr. Malone thinks, that Milton has here copied Marfton's comedy, WHAT YOU WILL, 1607. SUPPL. Shakefp. vol. i. 588. Cannot your trembling wires throw a chain Of powerful rapture bout our mazed sense? But the poet is not displaying the effect of mufic on the fenfes, but of a skilful That Orpheus felf may leave his head 145 From golden flumber on a bed Of heap'd Elyfian flowers, and hear Such ftrains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half regain'd Eurydice. These delights if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee I mean to live *. 150 a skillful musician on mufic. Milton's meaning, is not, that the fenfes are inchained or amazed by mufic, but that, as the voice of the finger runs through the manifold mazes or intricacies of found, all the chain's are untwifled which imprison and entangle the bidden foul, the effence or perfection, of HARMONY. In common sense, let mufic be made to fhew all, even her most HIDDEN, powers. 146. From golden flumber on a bed Of heap'd Elyfian flowers.-] So in PARAD. L. B. iii. 358. Rowles o'er ELYSIAN FLOWERS her amber ftream. Milton's florid ftyle has this distinction from that of most other poets; that it is marked with a degree of dignity. * Doctor Johnson has remarked, that in L'ALLEGRO no part" of "the gaiety is made to arife from the pleasures of the bottle." The truth is, that Milton means to describe the chearfulness of the philofopher or the ftudent, the amusements of a contemplative mind. IL PENSEROSO. ENCE vain deluding joys, HE The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys? Dwell in fome idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes poffefs, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the fun-beams, V. 1. Hence vain deluding joys, &c.] Mr. Bowle obferves, that the opening of this poem is formed from a diftich in Sylvefter, the tranflator of Du Bartas, WORKES, edit. fol. 1625. p. 1084. Hence, hence, falfe pleasures, momentary joyes, 8. As the gay mates that people the fun-beams.] I have formerly obferved, that this line is from Chaucer, WIFE OF B. T. v. 868. As thick as motes in the funne-beam. As probably from Drayton, Mus. ELYS. NYMPH. vi. vol. iv. p.1494. edit. ut fupr. As thick as ye difcerne the atoms in the beams. But it was now a common illuftration. Randolph's POEMS, edit. 1649. P. 97. To numbers that the ftars outrun, And all the atoms in the fun. Mr. Or likeft hovering dreams The fickle penfioners of Morpheus train. IO But hail thou Goddefs, fage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Mr. Bowle adds the following parallel, from Caxton's Golden LEGEND, in the LYF of S. MYCHEL, edit. 1483. fol. 306. b. This ayer also is full of devils and of wycked spyrytes, as the sONNEBEMES ben FULL of fmale MOTES." To which he subjoins a pasfage from Pulci's MORG. C. xxv. ft. 137. Sappi che tutto quefto aere e denfo Compare Note on v. 93. infr. The fickle penfioners of Morpheus train.] FICKLE is tranfitory, perpetually fifting, &c. As it is ufed in Shakespeare, SONN. CXXVI. O thou, my lovely Boy, who in thy power Time's glafs is FICKLE, because its contents are always stealing away. PENSIONERS became a common appellation in our poetry, for train, attendants, retinue, &c. As in the MIDS. N. DR. A. ii. S. i. Of the faery queen. The cowflips tall her PENSIONERS be. This was in confequence of queen Elizabeth's fashionable establishment of a band of military courtiers by that name. They were some of the handsomeft and tallest young men, of the best families and fortune, that could be found. Hence, says Quickly, in the MERRY WIVES, A. ii. S. ii. "And yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, PENSIONERS." They gave the mode in drefs and diverfions. They accompanied the Queen in her progrefs to Cambridge, where they held torches at a play on a Sunday in King's college Chapel. 66 12. Hail divineft Melancholy, &c.] Milton, fays Mr. Bowle, has here fome traces of Albert Durer's MELANCOLIA. Particularly in the BLACK VISAGE, the LOOKS COMMERCING WITH THE SKIES, and the STOLE DRAWN over her DECENT SHOULDERS. The painter, he adds, gave her wings, whith the poet has transferred to CONTEMPLATION, V.52. I think it is highly probable, that Milton had this perfonification in his eye and by making two figures out of one, and by giving Melancholy a kindred companion, to whom wings may be properly attributed, and who is diftantly implied in Durer's idea, he has removed the violence, and cleared the obfcurity, of the allegory, preferving at the fame time the whole of the original conception. Whofe Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove To fet her beauty's praise above The Sea-Nymphs, and their pow'rs offended: 20 16. O'erlaid with black, flaid wisdom's bue.] Her countenance ap- The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud But this imagery is there extended and enriched with new fublimity: 19. Or that starr'd Ethiop queen, &c.] Caffiope, as we learn from Apollodorus, was the wife of Cepheus king of Ethiopia. She boated herself to be more beautiful than the Nereids, and challenged them to a tryal; who in revenge perfuaded Neptune to fend a prodigious whale into Ethiopia. To appease them, fhe was directed to expofe her daughter Andromeda to the monster: but Perfeus delivered Andromeda of whom he was enamoured, and tranfported Caffiope into heaven, where she became a conftellation. BIBL. ii. C. iv. §.3. Hence fhe is called that ftarred Ethiop queen. See Aratus, PHAENOM. V.189. feq. But Milton feems to have been struck with an old Gothic print of the conftellations, which I have seen in early editions of the Aftronomers, where this queen is reprefented with a black body marked with white ftars. |