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Cf. Matthew Arnold's

"The slumb'rous cedarn shade,"

The New Sirens.

991. Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Here, and in P. L. v. 292, 93, Milton is obviously adapting to his own purposes the language of Psalm xlv. 8: "all thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia." It seems misleading to print Cassia as though the word were a proper name; cassia being merely a species of scented laurel. Cf. Cotgrave, "Casse, The drug, or spice tearmed cassia... Casse aromatique, the aromaticall wood, barke, or bastard Cinnamon." Under Nard he writes "Spike, or spikenard; (an herb).”

992. Bow, i.e. the rainbow.

993. Blow. Transitive; usually said of the flowers themselves, as in Midsummer N. D. 11. 1. 249, "where the wild thyme blows," 'blooms.'

=

995. Purfled. 'With embroidered edge;' cf. the Faerie Queene, 1. "Purfled with gold and pearle of rich assay;"

2. 13: and II. 3.

26:

"Purfled upon with many a folded plight." From F. pourfilé: i.e. fil, ‘a thread,' and pour (Lat. pro) confused, as often, with par (L. per), ‘throughout.' Cf. Cotgrave: “Pourfiler d'or, To purfle, tinsell, or overcast with gold thread;" and "Pourfileure, Purfling; a purfling lace or worke, baudkin-work, tinselling.” Purfle (the noun) survives in the contract form purl, a term used in lacemaking. Between 995 and 996 the Cambridge MS. inserts a line, giving the colours of the flowers-"yellow, watchet, green and blue." Watchet meant 'pale blue;' cf. Cotgrave, "Pers, watchet, blunket, skie-coloured." Shew. For the rhyme cf. 1. 512.

997. Cf. Arcades 72, 73.

998-1002. By using "Assyrian queen" in line 1002 Milton reminds us that the Adonis legend came from the East.

definite is the reference in P. L. I. 446:

"Thammuz came next behind,

Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate

In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded."

Still more

Commenting on this passage Masson remarks: "The legend was that he (i.e. Thammuz=the Adonis of Greek mythology) was killed by a wild boar in Lebanon; and the phenomenon of the reddening at a particular season every year of the waters of the Adonis, a stream which flows from Lebanon to the sea near Byblos, was mythologically accounted for by supposing that the blood of Thammuz was then flowing afresh. There were annual festivals at Byblos in Phoenicia in honour of Thammuz, held every year at the season referred to. Women were the chief performers at these festivals-the first part of which consisted in lamentations for the death of Thammuz, and the rest in rejoicings over his revival"--Masson, III. p. 124. This Eastern cultus (cf. Ezekiel viii. 14, "and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz ") spread to Greece, taking the form of the familiar Adonis myth: that he was killed by the wild boar, was mourned for by Aphrodite, and at last, in consideration of her sorrow, suffered by the gods of the lower world to spend six months in every year upon earth with her. His yearly return to earth was celebrated by religious rites (at Athens, Alexandria and elsewhere) such as Theocritus describes in the xvth Idyl. The story must have been a comparatively late importation into Greece, as no traces of it occur in Homer. Usually it is explained as being a symbolisation of the annual return of spring: "in the Asiatic religions Aphrodite was the fructifying principle of nature, and Adonis appears to have reference to the death of nature in winter and its revival in spring-hence he spends six months in the lower and six in the upper world"-Smith's Classical Dictionary.

998, 999. Referring to the so-called "Gardens of Adonis,"

"That one day bloom'd, and fruitful were the next,"
1 Henry VI. 1. 6. 7;

where the very roses (on which Adonis lay) were thornless, as we may gather from Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels v. 3: "I pray thee, light honey-bee, remember thou art not now in Adonis' garden, but in Cynthia's presence where thorns lie in garrison about the roses."

Milton, we may be sure, recollected the long account in the Faerie Queene (111. 6. 29—42) of this paradise where Adonis was supposed to live in company with Aphrodite; cf. too, Spenser's Hymne in Honour of Love, 22-28. Keats imitates Spenser in Endymion 11.; and Spenser probably owed his ideas on the subject of these mythical gardens to Pliny, Natural History XIX. An alternative region

4.

symbolising the ideal region of bliss was the Garden of Alcinous, and in P. L. IX. 439-441 Milton gives us the twofold allusion:

1000.

"Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned

Or of revived Adonis, or renowned
Alcinous."

I.e.

"the wide wound that the boar had trench'd

In his soft flank"- Venus and Adonis 1052, 53.

1002. Assyrian queen, i.e. Aphrodite; "her worship was of Eastern origin, and probably introduced by the Phoenicians to the islands of Cyprus, Cythera and others, from whence it spread all over Greece. She appears to have been originally identical with Astarte, called by the Hebrews Ashtoreth, and her connection with Adonis clearly points to Syria"-Classical Dictionary. Assyrian queen may have been suggested by the title Zupin Oeós, a synonym for the Syrian Astarte. Cf. the Nativity Ode 200-204, with the double reference to "moonèd Ashtaroth" and "wounded Thammuz."

66

1003-1011. The myth of Psyche is an allegory of the human soul (yuxń) which, after undergoing trials and tortures, is purified by pain and eventually reaches happiness and rest. Probably Milton introduced the story here because he wished to emphasize the sanctity of love, by showing that there is a place for it among the gods. "Comus," says Masson, "had mis-apprehended Love, knew nothing of it except its vile counterfeit...had been outwitted and defeated. But there is true Love, and it is to be found in Heaven." The idea is well illustrated by P. L. VIII. 612-629, where Adam questions the angel Raphael— "Love not the Heavenly Spirits ?"—and receives the reply-"Without Love no happiness."

1004. Advanced.

Almost a metaphor, since advance was specially used of raising a standard or banner; cf. P. L. 1. 535-537:

"Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled
The imperial ensign; which, full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind."

Frequent in Shakespeare; for a beautiful instance cf. Romeo and Juliet v. 3. 94-96, where Romeo is pointing to the body of Juliet:

"Beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,

And death's pale flag is not advanced there."

This last line was borrowed by Giles Fletcher in Christ's Victorie in

Heaven, 14, "And, after all, Death doeth his flag advance," Grosart, p. 97. Cotgrave gives "to raise, advance, lift up" s. v. monter.

ΙΟΙΙ.

Youth and Joy. Referring to the passage from the Apology for Smectymnus quoted in the note on line 780 we see that later in life Milton made Virtue and Knowledge the offspring of pure Love. Perhaps time had brought to him "the philosophic mind" which Wordsworth celebrates. He was 25 years old when he wrote Comus; 33 when he wrote the Apology.

1012-17. The beginning of Lawes' epilogue, and a series of reminiscences of Shakespeare: e.g. Midsummer N. D. IV. 1. 102, 103, where Oberon says:

"We the globe can compass soon,

Swifter than the wandering moon:

the same play, II. 1. 175, Puck's words,

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"I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes,"

i.e. make the circuit of the universe: and Macbeth 111. 5. 25, 26:

"Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound."

There, as here (1017), corner='horn' (cornu); cf. the compounds bicorn, unicorn.

1015. Bowed, because in any landscape the horizon appears to rest upon the earth. The clown in Twelfth Night, III. 2. 65, preferred welkin ("out of my welkin") to element because the latter was "overworn." For etymology, cf. German Wolke, a cloud.

1019. Ben Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (the Masque in which Comus appears) ends with a song in praise of Virtue. The last

stanzas run:

"She, she it is in darkness shines,

'Tis she that still herself refines,

By her own light to every eye;

More seen, more known, when Vice stands by;
And though a stranger here on earth,

In heaven she hath her right of birth.

There, there is Virtue's seat:

Strive to keep her your own:

'Tis only she can make you great, Though place here make you known."

The first lines of this extract may be compared with Comus 373-75; the last stanza would seem to have been in Milton's memory when he finished his Masque.

1021. Sphery. 'Celestial;' cf. Midsummer N. D. II. 2. 99, "Hermia's sphery eyne," where 'starlike' (as in Tennyson's "starlike sorrows of immortal eyes") is the sense. Sphery is one of the many epithets ending in y that Keats uses

"Hold sphery session for a season due."

Endymion III.

1023. There seems to be an echo of this verse in Pope's Ode on St Cecilia's Day, VII.

1023, 24. Masson writes: "Respecting these closing lines of Comus, in which the moral of the poem is summed up, there is an interesting anecdote:-Returning to England in 1639, after his year and more of continental travel and residence in Italy, Milton passed through Geneva. There was then residing there, as teacher of Italian, or the like, a certain Camillo Cerdogni or Cardouin, of Neapolitan birth, and probably of Protestant opinions; and this Cardouin, or his family, kept an Album, in which it was their habit to secure the autographs of distinguished persons passing through the town. The volume itself, rich with signatures and inscriptions and scraps of verse in all languages, is still extant... Among the autographs in it are those of not a few eminent Englishmen of Milton's time, including Thomas Wentworth, afterwards the famous Earl of Strafford; but the most valued autograph is Milton's. It is as follows (all in Milton's hand except the date):

-if Vertue feeble were

Heaven it selfe would stoope to her.

Calum non animum muto qui trans mare curro.

Joannes Miltonius,

Junii 10. 1639."

Anglus.

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