hus raps you?" Do not confound this word with _rap_, meaning to
strike.

42. Forget thyself to marble. With this compare On Shakespeare 14.

43. With a sad leaden downward cast. So in Love's Labor's Lost IV 3 321,
"In leaden contemplation;" Othello III 4 177, "I have this while with
leaden thoughts been pressed." So also Gray in the Hymn to Adversity,
"With leaden eye that loves the ground."

45-55. Compare the company which Il Penseroso entreats Melancholy to
bring along with her with that which L'Allegro wishes to see attending
Mirth.

46. Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet. Only the rigid ascetic has
a spiritual ear so finely trained that he hears the celestial music.

48. Aye, as their rhymes show, is always pronounced by the poets with the
vowel sound in _day_.

53. the fiery-wheeled throne. See Daniel VII 9.

54. The Cherub Contemplation. Pronounce _contemplation_ with five
syllables. It is difficult to form a distinct conception of the nature
and office of the _cherub_ of the Scriptures. Milton in many passages of
Par. Lost follows, with regard to the heavenly beings, the account given
by Dionysius the Areopagite in his Celestial Hierarchy. According to
Dionysius there were nine orders or ranks of beings in heaven,
namely,--seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers,
principalities, archangels, angels. The cherubim have the special
attribute of knowledge and contemplation of divine things.

55. hist, primarily an interjection commanding silence, becomes here a
verb.

56. With the introduction of the nightingale comes the first intimation
of the time of day at which Il Penseroso conceives the course of his
satisfactions to begin.

57. Everywhere else in Milton plight is used with its modern
connotations.

59. The moon stops to hear the nightingale's song.

65. Remember L'Allegro's _not unseen_.

77. Up to this point Il Penseroso has been walking in the open air.

78. removed,--remote, retired.

87. As the Bear never sets, to outwatch him must mean to sit up all
night.

88. With thrice great Hermes. "Hermes Trismegistos--Hermes
thrice-greatest--is the name given by the Neo-Platonists and the devotees
of mysticism and alchemy to the Egyptian god Thoth, regarded as more or
less identified with the Grecian Hermes, and as the author of all
mysterious doctrines, and especially of the secrets of alchemy." (The
_New Eng. Dicty._) To such studies the serious mediaeval scholars devote