1011.

Heaven, 14, "And, after all, Death doeth his flag advance," Grosart, p. 97. Cotgrave gives "to raise, advance, lift up" s. v. monter. Youth and Joy. Referring to the passage from the Apology for Smectymnus quoted in the note on line 780 we see that later in life Milton made Virtue and Knowledge the offspring of pure Love. Perhaps time had brought to him "the philosophic mind" which Wordsworth celebrates. He was 25 years old when he wrote Comus; 33 when he wrote the Apology.

1012-17. The beginning of Lawes' epilogue, and a series of reminiscences of Shakespeare: e.g. Midsummer N. D. IV. 1. 102, 103, where Oberon says:

"We the globe can compass soon,

Swifter than the wandering moon:"

the same play, 11. 1. 175, Puck's words,

"I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes,"

i.e. make the circuit of the universe: and Macbeth 111. 5. 25, 26:
"Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound."

There, as here (1017), corner='horn' (cornu); cf. the compounds bicorn, unicorn.

1015. Bowed, because in any landscape the horizon appears to rest upon the earth. The clown in Twelfth Night, III. 2. 65, preferred welkin ("out of my welkin") to element because the latter was "overworn." For etymology, cf. German Wolke, a cloud.

1019. Ben Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (the Masque in which Comus appears) ends with a song in praise of Virtue. The last

stanzas run:

"She, she it is in darkness shines,

"Tis she that still herself refines,

By her own light to every eye;

More seen, more known, when Vice stands by;
And though a stranger here on earth,

In heaven she hath her right of birth.

There, there is Virtue's seat:
Strive to keep her your own:

'Tis only she can make you great,
Though place here make you known."

The first lines of this extract may be compared with Comus 373-75; the last stanza would seem to have been in Milton's memory when he finished his Masque.

2. 99,

1021. Sphery. 'Celestial;' cf. Midsummer N. D. II. "Hermia's sphery eyne,” where ‘starlike' (as in Tennyson's “starlike sorrows of immortal eyes") is the sense. Sphery is one of the many epithets ending in y that Keats uses-—

1023.

"Hold sphery session for a season due."

Endymion 111.

There seems to be an echo of this verse in Pope's Ode on

St Cecilia's Day, VII.

1023, 24. Masson writes: "Respecting these closing lines of Comus, in which the moral of the poem is summed up, there is an interesting anecdote:-Returning to England in 1639, after his year and more of continental travel and residence in Italy, Milton passed through Geneva. There was then residing there, as teacher of Italian, or the like, a certain Camillo Cerdogni or Cardouin, of Neapolitan birth, and probably of Protestant opinions; and this Cardouin, or his family, kept an Album, in which it was their habit to secure the autographs of distinguished persons passing through the town. The volume itself, rich with signatures and inscriptions and scraps of verse in all languages, is still extant...Among the autographs in it are those of not a few eminent Englishmen of Milton's time, including Thomas Wentworth, afterwards the famous Earl of Strafford; but the most valued autograph is Milton's. It is as follows (all in Milton's hand except the date):

if Vertue feeble were

Heaven it selfe would stoope to her.

Caelum non animum muto qui trans mare curro.

Joannes Miltonius,

Junii 10. 1639."

Anglus.

I. INDEX OF WORDS.