y nursing his melancholy, Il Penseroso deems the wood that
hides him a sacred place, and resents intrusion as a profanation.

141. Hide me from day's garish eye. See Richard III. IV 4 89, Romeo and
Juliet III 2 25.

142. While the bee with honeyed thigh. Is this good apiology?

146. Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. Note that sleep is represented as
having feathers. These feathers, in their soft, gentle movement and in
their refreshing effect are likened to dew. The figure is a common one
with the poets. In Par. Lost IX 1044, Milton has,--"till dewy sleep
oppressed them." Cowper, Iliad II, 41, has,--"Awaking from thy dewy
slumbers."

148. his refers to the _dewy-feathered sleep_. Il Penseroso asks that a
strange, mysterious dream, hovering close by the wings of sleep, and
lightly pictured in a succession of vivid forms, may be laid on his
eye-lids.

155-166. The word studious in line 156 determines that the passage refers
to college life and not to church attendance. The old English colleges
have their cloisters, and these have much the same architectural features
as do churches.

157. embowed means vaulted, or bent like a _bow_.

158. massy-proof: massive and proof against all failure to support their
load.

159. And storied windows richly dight. Compare L'Allegro, 62.

170. The best possible comment on this use of the verb spell is Milton's
own language, Par. Regained IV 382, where Satan, addressing the Son of
God, thus speaks:--

Now, contrary, if I read aught in Heaven,
Or Heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters
In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
Sorrows and labors, opposition, hate,
Attends thee; scorns, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and, lastly, cruel death.

Il Penseroso's aspiration is that as an astrologer he may learn the
influence of every star and that he may come to know the virtue of every
herb.

ARCADES.

The noble persons of the family of the Countess Dowager of Derby were
fortunate enough to obtain the services of the poet John Milton to aid in
the composition of a mask, which they presented to her ladyship at her
residence in the country. Arcades--the Arcadians--is Milton's
contribution to this performance. In date the poem precedes Comus, which
is known to have been composed in 1634.

On the meaning of the term _mask_, as appli