legro_ and _Il Penseroso_. It is a striking proof of Milton's
astonishing power, that these, the earliest great Lyrics of the
Landscape in our language, should still remain supreme in their style
for range, variety, and melodious beauty. The Bright and the
Thoughtful aspects of Nature and of Life are their subjects: but each
is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and
Italian manner.--With that of _L'Allegro_ may be compared a similar
mythe in the first Section of the first Book of S. Marmion's graceful
_Cupid and Psyche_, 1637.

116 144 _The mountain-nymph_; compare Wordsworth's Sonnet, No. 254. L.
38 is in _apposition_ to the preceding, by a syntactical license not
uncommon with Milton.

118 -- l. 14 _Cynosure_; the Pole Star. _Corydon_, _Thyrsis_, &c.:
Shepherd names from the old Idylls. _Rebeck_ (l. 28) an elementary
form of violin.

119 -- l. 24 _Jonson's learned sock_: His comedies are deeply coloured
by classical study. L. 28 _Lydian airs_: used here to express a light
and festive style of ancient music. The 'Lydian Mode,' one of the
seven original Greek Scales, is nearly identical with our 'Major.'

120 145 l. 3 _bestead_: avail. L. 10 _starr'd Ethiop queen_:
Cassiopeia, the legendary Queen of Ethiopia, and thence translated
amongst the constellations.

121 -- _Cynthia_: the Moon: Milton seems here to have transferred to
her chariot the dragons anciently assigned to Demeter and to Medea.

122 -- _Hermes_, called Trismegistus, a mystical writer of the
Neo-Platonist school. L. 27 _Thebes_, &c.: subjects of Athenian
Tragedy. _Buskin'd_ (l. 30) tragic, in opposition to sock above. L. 32
_Musaeus_: a poet in Mythology. L. 37 _him that left half-told_:
Chaucer in his incomplete 'Squire's Tale.'

123 -- _great bards_: Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, are here presumably
intended. L. 9 _frounced_: curled. _The Attic Boy_ (l. 10) Cephalus.

124 146 Emigrants supposed to be driven towards America by the
government of Charles I.

125 -- l. 9, 10. _But apples_, &c. A fine example of Marvell's
imaginative hyperbole.

-- 147 l. 6 _concent_: harmony.

128 149 A lyric of a strange, fanciful, yet solemn beauty:--Cowley's
style intensified by the mysticism of Henry More.--St. 2 _monument_:
the World.

129 151 Entitled 'A Song in Honour of St. Cecilia's Day: 1697.'

_Summary of Book Third_

It is more difficult to characterize the English Poetry of the
Eighteenth century than that of any ot