treet.

_The Emathian Conqueror_: When Thebes was destroyed (B.C. 335) and the
citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar
to be spared.

7 -- l. 2, _the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet_: Plutarch has a
tale that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B.C. took Athens, a
proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect produced on
the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from the _Electra_ of
Euripides sung at a feast. There is however no apparent congruity
between the lines quoted (167, 168 Ed. Dindorf) and the result
ascribed to them.

-- 95 A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry;--that written by
thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Jeremy Taylor,
Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, have left similar
specimens.

78 98 These beautiful verses should be compared with Wordsworth's
great Ode on _Immortality_: and a copy of Vaughan's very rare little
volume appears in the list of Wordsworth's library.--In imaginative
intensity, Vaughan stands beside his contemporary Marvell.

79 99 _Favonius_: the spring wind.

80 100 _Themis_: the goddess of justice. Skinner was grandson by his
mother to Sir E. Coke:--hence, as pointed out by Mr. Keightley,
Milton's allusion to the _bench_. L. 8: Sweden was then at war with
Poland, and France with the Spanish Netherlands.

82 103 l. 28 _Sidneian showers_: either in allusion to the
conversations in the 'Arcadia,' or to Sidney himself as a model of
'gentleness' in spirit and demeanour.

85 105 Delicate humour, delightfully united to thought, at once simple
and subtle. It is full of conceit and paradox, but these are
imaginative, not as with most of our Seventeenth Century poets,
intellectual only.

88 110 _Elizabeth of Bohemia_: Daughter to James I, and ancestor of
Sophia of Hanover. These lines are a fine specimen of gallant and
courtly compliment.

89 111 Lady M. Ley was daughter to Sir J. Ley, afterwards Earl of
Marlborough, who died March, 1629, coincidently with the dissolution
of the third Parliament of Charles' reign. Hence Milton poetically
compares his death to that of the Orator Isocrates of Athens, after
Philip's victory in 328 B.C.

93 118 A masterpiece of humour, grace, and gentle feeling, all, with
Herrick's unfailing art, kept precisely within the peculiar key which
he chose,--or Nature for him,--in his Pastorals. L. 2 _the god
unshorn_: Imberbis Apollo. St. 2 _beads_: prayers.

96 123 With bett