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Of some clay habitation, visit us

With thy long levell'd rule of streaming light, And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,

Or Tyrian Cynosure.

2. BROTHER.

Or if our eyes

Be barr'd that happiness, might we but hear The folded flocks penn'd in their wattled cotes, Or sound of past'ral reed with oaten stops,

340. With thy long levell'd rule.] It was at first in the Manuscript, With a long levell'd rule

340. λαμπρα μεν ακτές, ήλιου xaaraons. Euripides, Suppl. Mul. 650, or 660. Milton's longlevelled rule of streaming light, is a fine and almost literal translation of λov xava cans of his favourite Greek poet. Hurd.

The sun is said to "level his evening rays," P. L. iv. 543. T. Warlon.

341. —our star of Arcady, Or Tyrian Cynosure.] Our greater or lesser bear-star. Calisto the daughter of Lycaon king of Arcadia was changed into the greater bear called also Helice, and her son Arcas into the lesser, called also Cynosura, by observing of which the Tyrians and Sidonians steered their course, as the Grecian mariners did by the other. So Ovid. Fast. iii. 107.

Esse duas Arctos; quarum Cynosura petatur

Sidoniis, Helicen Graia carina notet. Valerius Flaccus, i. 17.

-neque enim in Tyrias Cynosura

carinas

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Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock
Count the night watches to his feathery dames,
'Twould be some solace yet, some litle cheering
In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.
But O that hapless virgin, our lost Sister,
Where may she wander now, whither betake her
From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles?
Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now,
Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm
Leans her unpillow'd head fraught with sad fears. 335
What if in wild amazement, and affright,

Or, while we speak, within the direful
Of savage hunger, or of savage heat?

grasp.

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When the big wallowing flakes of pitchy clouds

And darkness wound her in.

1 Bro. Peace, Brother, peace. I do not think my sister &c. These lines were altered, and the others added afterwards on a separate scrap of paper.

358. Of savage hunger, or of savage heat?] The hunger of savage beasts, or the lust of men as savage as they. This appears evidently from the context to be the sense of the passage; and I should not have mentioned it, if two very ingenious persons had not mistaken it. The alliteration might help perhaps to determine Milton to the choice have been too strong an expresof this word; and lust would sion for the younger brother, who rather insinuates than openly declares his fears.

ELDER BROTHER.

Peace, Brother, be not over-exquisite
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;

For grant they be so, while they rest unknown,
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid?
Or if they be but false alarms of fear,

How bitter is such self-delusion?

I do not think my Sister so to seek,
Or so unprincipled in virtue's book,

And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever,
As that the single want of light and noise

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(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not)

Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts, And put them into misbecoming plight.

Virtue could see to do what virtue would

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,

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presses. For every paren"thesis should contain matter of weight; and, if it throws in "some passion or feeling into "the discourse, it is so much the better, because it furnishes the speaker with a proper occa"sion to vary the tone of his "voice, which ought always to "be done in speaking a paren"thesis, but is never more pro

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perly done than when some passion is to be expressed. "And we may observe here, "that there ought to be two "variations of the voice in speak"ing this parenthesis. The first "is that tone which we use, "when we mean to qualify or "restrict any thing that we have "said before. With this tone "should be pronounced, not "being in danger; and the se"cond member, as I trust she is "not, should be pronounced with "that pathetic tone in which we "earnestly hope or pray for any "thing." Origin and Progr. of Language, b. iv. p. ii. vol. iii. p. 76. Edinb. 1776. This is very specious and ingenious reasoning. But some perhaps may think this beauty quite accidental and undesigned. A parenthesis is often thrown in, for the sake of explanation, after a passage is writ

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375

371. Could stir the constant mood] The Manuscript had stable, but Milton corrected it to constant mood; for stable gives the idea of rest, when the poet was to give the idea of action or motion, which constant does give. Warburton.

So "my constant thoughts," P. L. v. 552. T. Warton.

373. Virtue could see to do what virtue would

By her own radiant light, &c.] This noble sentiment was inspired from Spenser, Faery Qu. b. i. cant. 1. st. 12.

Virtue gives herself light through darkness for to wade.

375. —And Wisdom's self &c.] Mr. Pope has imitated this thought ;

Bear me some God! oh quickly bear me hence

To wholesome Solitude, the nurse of

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Where with her best nurse Contemplation
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort

Were all to ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.

Examynacyon of A. Askew, p. 24. "Hath not he moche nede of helpe who seketh to soche a 66 surgeon?" So also in Isaiah, ii. 10. "To it shall the Gentiles

"seek." T. Warton.

377. She plumes her feathers,] I believe the true reading to be prunes, which Lawes ignorantly altered to plumes, afterwards imperceptibly continued in the poet's own edition. To prune wings, is to smooth, or set them in order, when ruffled. For this is the leading idea. Spenser, F. Q. ii. iii. 36.

She gins her feathers foule disfigured
Proudly to prune.

And in the M. M. of Thestylis,

-At their brightest beams Him pround in lovley wise. That is, he "pruned his wetted "and disordered wings." Waterfowl, at this day, are said to preene, when they sleek or replace their wet feathers in the sun. See commentators on Shakespeare, P. I. Henry IV. act i.

s. 1.

Which makes him prune himself, &c. Where Dr. Warburton and Hanmer substituted plume. Upton derives the word from the French brunir, to polish. Noles on Spenser, p. 446. col. 2. Prune her tender wing is in Pope. Prune, amputo, is sometimes written proine, as in Drayton, Polyolb. vol. ii. s. iii. p. 714. [But see fol. edit. 1613.] "Here proine, and

330

"there plant." And in other places. Pope says,

Contemplation prunes her ruffled wings.

See On the Marks of Poetical Imi-
tation, 12mo. 1757. p. 43. I find,
however, in Hughes's Thought
in a Garden, written 1704, Poems,
edit. 1735. vol. i. 12mo. p. 171.

Here Contemplation prunes her wings.
T. Warton.

380. Were all to ruffled,] So read as in editions 1637, 1645, and 1673. Not too, nimis. Allto, or al-to, is, intirely. See Tyrwhitt's Gl. Chaucer, v. Too. Various instances occur in Chaucer and Spenser, and in later writers. "O how the coate of "Christ that was without seam "is all to rent and torn." Homilies, b. i. i. See Hearne's Gl. Langtoft, p. 665. Observat. on Spenser's F. Q. ii. 225. and Upton's Spenser, Notes, p. 391. 594. 625. And the fifteenth general rule for understanding G. Douglass's Virgil, prefixed to Ruddiman's Glossary in the capital edition of that translation. And Upton's Gloss. v. All. The corruption, supposed to be an emendation, "all too ruffled," began with Tickell, who had no knowledge of our old language, and has been continued by Fenton, and Dr. Newton. Tonson has the true reading, in 1695, and 1705. T. Warton.

I have restored the old reading. E.

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