fore to some extent tautological.

197. ~dark lantern~. The stars by a far-fetched metaphor are said to be
concealed, though not extinguished, just as the light of a dark lantern
is shut off by a slide. Comp. More; "Vice is like a _dark lanthorn_,
which turns its bright side only to him that bears it."

198. ~everlasting oil~. Comp. _F. Q._ i. 1. 57:

"By this the eternal lamps, wherewith high Jove
Doth light the lower world, were half yspent:"

also _Macbeth_, ii. 1. 5, "There's husbandry in heaven; Their candles
are all out." There is here an irregularity of syntax. "That Nature hung
in heaven" is a relative clause co-ordinate _in sense_ with the next
clause; but by a change of thought the phrase "and filled their lamps"
is treated as a principal clause, and a new object is introduced: comp.
l. 6.

203. ~rife~, prevalent. ~perfect~, distinct; see note, l. 73.

204. ~single darkness~, darkness only. _Single_ is from the same base as
_simple_; comp. l. 369.

205. ~What might this be?~ This is a direct question about a past event,
and has the same meaning as "what should it be?" in line 482: see note
there. ~A thousand fantasies~, etc. On this, passage Lowell says: "That
wonderful passage in _Comus_ of the airy tongues, perhaps the most
imaginative in suggestion he ever wrote, was conjured out of a dry
sentence in Purchas's abstract of Marco Polo. Such examples help us to
understand the poet." Reference may also be made to the _Anat. of Mel._:
"Fear makes our imagination conceive what it list, ... and tyrannizeth
over our fantasy more than all other affections, especially in the
dark"; also to the song prefixed to the same work, "My phantasie
presents a thousand ugly shapes," etc. On the power of imagination or
phantasy, Shakespeare says:

"As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to _shapes_, and gives to _airy nothing_
A local habitation and a name."--

_M. N. D._ v. 1. 14.

Compare also Ben Jonson's _Vision of Delight_:

"Break, Phant'sie, from thy cave of cloud,
And spread thy purple wings;
Now all thy figures are allow'd,
And various shapes of things:
Create of _airy forms_ a stream ...
And though it be a waking dream," etc.

207. ~Of calling shapes~, etc. In Heywood's _Hierarchy of Angels_ there is
a reference to travellers seeing strange shapes beckoning to them. Such
words as 'shapes,'