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Come, Lady, while Heav'n lends us grace, Let us fly this cursed place,

When the spawn on stones do lie,

To wash their hemp, and spoil the fry. Mr. Seward farther remarks, that the construction of the two last of Milton's lines is a little difficult. To crown her head with towers is true imagery; but to crown her head upon her banks, will scarcely be allowed to be so. He would therefore put a colon instead of a comma at the last line but two, and then read

And here and there thy banks upon Be groves of myrrh, and cinnamon. And after these verses is added in the Manuscript, Song ends.

936. Mr. Calton says the phrase is Greek, "may thy banks be crowned upon, &c." But if there is any difficulty in these lines, it would be removed by placing a comma after there, and another after upon. In prose upon thy banks would have followed the last line. E.

This votive address to Sabrina was suggested to our author by that of Amoret. But the form and subject, rather than the imagery, is copied. Milton is more sublime and learned, Fletcher more natural and easy.

I know not which poet wrote first: but in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, certainly written not after 1613, and printed in 1616,

find a similar vow, b. i. s. i. p. 28. Milton has some circumstances which are in Browne and not in Fletcher.

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May never evet, nor the toade,
Within thy bankes make their abode:
Taking thy journey to the sea,
Maist thou ne'er happen in thy way
On nitre or on brimstone myne,
To spoyle thy taste. This spring of
thyne

Be ever fresh! Let no man dare
To spoyle thy fish, make lock or ware;
But on thy margent still let dwell
Those flowers which have the sweet-

est smell;

And let the dust upon thy strand
Become like Tagus' golden sand.

From a close parallelism of thought and incident, it is clear that either Browne's pastoral imitates Fletcher's play, or the play the pastoral. Most of B. and Fletcher's plays appeared after 1616. But there is unluckily no date to the first edition of the Faithful Shepherdess. It is, however, mentioned in Davies's Scourge of Folly, 1611.

As Milton is supposed to have taken some hints in Comus from Peel's Old Wives Tale, I may perhaps lengthen this note, by producing a passage from that writer's play, entitled The Love of King David and faire Bethsabe, &c. edit. 1599. 4to.

May that sweet plaine that beares her pleasant weight

Be still enamel'd with discouloured flowers;

The precious fount beare sand of purest gold,

And for the peble, let the silver streames

That pierce earth's bowels to maintaine her force,

Play upon rubies, saphires, chrysolites:

The brims let be embrac'd with golden curles

Of mosse.

Let all the grasse that beautifies her bower

Lest the sorcerer us entice

With some other new device.

Not a waste, or needless sound,
Till we come to holier ground;

I shall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide,
And not many furlongs thence
Is your Father's residence,
Where this night are met in state
Many a friend to gratulate
His wish'd presence, and beside
All the swains that near abide,
With jigs, and rural dance resort;
We shall catch them at their sport,
And our sudden coming there

Will double all their mirth and cheer;
Come let us haste, the stars grow high,

But night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.

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The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow town and the President's castle; then come in country dancers, after them the attendant Spirit, with the two Brothers and the Lady.

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SONG.

SPIRIT.

Back, Shepherds, back, enough your play,

Till next sun-shine holiday;

Here be without duck or nod

960

Other trippings to be trod

Of lighter toes, and such court guise
As Mercury did first devise

960. Here be without duck or nod] "Here are." By duck or nod, we are to understand the affectations of obeisance. So in K. Richard III. a. i. s. 3.

courtesy.

"ledge in dancing." And Drayton, Polyolb. s. vi.

Those delicater dames so trippingly to tread.

In the Midsummer Night's

Duck with French nods and apish Dream, Oberon orders his fairies to dance after his ditty trippingly, a. ii. s. 5. But to trip seems to have been the proper pace of a fairy. As above, v. 118.

Again, in Lear, a. ii. s. 2.
Than twenty silly ducking observants,
That stretch their duties nicely.
Compare Mids. N. Dr. a. iii. s. 1.
Nod to him, elves, and do him
courtesies.

And Timon of Athens, "The
"learned pate ducks to the golden
"fool." a. iv. s. 3. It is the
same word in Othello, a. ii. s. 1.

And let the labouring bark climb
hills of seas
Olympus high, and duck again as low
As hell's from heaven.

T. Warton.

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With the mincing Dryades

On the lawns, and on the leas.

965

This second Song presents them to their Father and Mother.

Noble Lord, and Lady bright,
I have brought ye new delight,
Here behold so goodly grown
Three fair branches of your own;
Heav'n hath timely tried their youth,

Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise,

964. With the mincing Dryades]

So Drayton, of the Lancashire

970

Shepherds they weren of the best,
And lived in lowly leas.

lasses, Polyolb. s. xxvii. vol. iii. Shakespeare, Tempest, act iv.

p. 1183.

-Ye so mincingly that tread.

Again, ibid. p. 1185, and 1187.
And in his Eclogues, vol. vii.

s. 3.

Ceres, most bounteous Lady, thy rich leas

Of wheat, rye, barley, fetches, oats,

and pease.

p. 1417. where the word may Henry V. act v. s. S. hence be understood.

Now Shepherds lay their winter weeds away,

And in neat jackets minsen on the plain.

Jonson and Shakespeare use the word in the same sense. T. War

ton.

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-her fallow leas

The darnel, hemlock, and rank fu-
mitory
Doth root upon.

971. Their faith, their patience,] The title to this song in the Manuscript is only 2 Song: and here he had written at first patience, and then temperance, and then patience again; and this latter is the better, because of intemperance following.

973. With a crown of deathless praise,] At first he had written,

To a crown of deathless bays.
And in the Manuscript the
stage-direction following is, The
Damon sings or says.

To triumph in victorious dance
O'er sensual folly, and intemperance.

The dances ended, the Spirit epiloguises.
SPIRIT.

To the ocean now I fly,

And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,

Up in the broad fields of the sky:
There I suck the liquid air

All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three.
That sing about the golden tree:

976. To the ocean now I fly, &c.] This speech is evidently a paraphrase on Ariel's song in the Tempest, act v. s. 3.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,

&c.

Warburton.

976. Pindar in his second Olympic, and Homer in his fourth Odyssey, describe a happy island at the extremity of the ocean, or rather earth, where the sun has his abode, the sky is perpetually serene and bright, the west wind always blows, and the flowers are of gold. This luxuriant imagery Milton has dressed anew, from the classical gardens of antiquity, from Spenser's gardens of Adonis "fraught with pleasures mani"fold," from the same gardens in Marino's L'Adone, Ariosto's garden of Paradise, Tasso's garden' of Armida, and Spenser's Bowre of Blisse. The garden of Eden is absolutely Milton's own creation. T. Warton.

979. Up in the broad fields of

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the sky :] And so in Virgil, Æn. vi. 888.

Aëris in campis latis.

At first he had written plain fields.

980. There I suck the liquid air.] Thus Ubaldo in Fairfax's Tasso, a good wizard, who dwells in the centre of the earth, but sometimes emerges, to breathe the purer air of mount Carmel. c. xiv. 43.

And there in liquid ayre myself disport.

T. Warton. 982. Of Hesperus, and his daughters three] He had written at first,

Of Atlas and his nieces three.

Hesperus and Atlas were brothers.

982. The daughters of Hesperus had gardens or orchards which produced apples of gold. Spenser makes them the daughters of Atlas, F. Q. ii. vii. 54, See Ovid, Metam. iv. 636. And Apollodor. Bibl. 1. ii. s. 11. But

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