Where with her best nurse Contemplation
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort

Were all to ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.

Examynacyon of A. Askew, p. 24. "Hath not he moche nede of "helpe who seketh to soche a surgeon?" So also in Isaiah, ii. 10. "To it shall the Gentiles "seek." T. Warton.

"

377. She plumes her feathers,
I believe the true reading to be
prunes, which Lawes ignorantly
altered to plumes, afterwards
imperceptibly continued in the
poet's own edition. To prune
wings, is to smooth, or set them
in order, when ruffled. For this
is the leading idea. Spenser,
F. Q. ii. iii. 36.

She gins her feathers foule disfigured
Proudly to prune.

And in the M. M. of Thestylis,
-At their brightest beams
Him proynd in lovley wise.

That is, he "pruned his wetted
" and disordered wings." Water-
fowl, at this day, are said to
preene, when they sleek or re-
place their wet feathers in the
sun. See commentators on Shake-
speare, P. I. Henry IV. act i.

380

"there plant." And in other places. Pope says,

Contemplation prunes her ruffled wings.

See On the Marks of Poetical Imitation, 12mo. 1757. p. 43. I find, however, in Hughes's Thought

in a Garden, written 1704, Poems,

edit. 1735. vol. i. 12mo. p. 171.

Here Contemplation prunes her wings.
T. Warton.

380. Were all to ruffled,] So read as in editions 1637, 1645, and 1673. Not too, nimis. Allto, or al-to, is, intirely. See Tyrwhitt's Gl. Chaucer, v. Too. Various instances occur in Chaucer and Spenser, and in later writers. "O how the coate of "Christ that was without seam " is all to rent and torn." Homi

lies, b. i. i. See Hearne's Gl. Langtoft, p. 665. Observat. on Spenser's F. Q. ii. 225. and Upton's Spenser, Notes, p. 391. 594. 625. And the fifteenth general rule for understanding G. Douglass's Virgil, prefixed to Ruddiman's Glossary in the capital edition of that translation. And Upton's Gloss. v. All. The corruption, supposed to be an emendation, "all too ruffled," began with Tickell, who had no knowledge of our old language, and has been continued by Fenton, and Dr. Newton. Tonson has the true reading, in 1695, and 1705. T. Warton.

I have restored the old reading. E.

He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' th' centre, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.

2. BROTHER.

That musing meditation most affects

The pensive secrecy of desert cell,

Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds,

And sits as safe as in a senate-house;

For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,
His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,
Or do his gray hairs any violence?
But beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree

レ

Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
Of dragon-watch with uninchanted eye,
To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit
From the rash hand of bold incontinence.
You may as well spread out the unsunn'd heaps
Of miser's treasure by an out-law's den,
And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope
Danger will wink on opportunity,
And let a single helpless maiden pass
Uninjur'd in this wild surrounding waste.
Of night, or loneliness it recks me not;
I fear the dread events that dog them both,

395

400

405

Compare also Shakespeare, As you like it, act i. s. 3. And see below, the note v. 982. Т. Warton.

395. Of dragon-watch with uninchanted eye,] That is, which cannot be inchanted. Here is more flattery; but certainly such as no poet in similar circum

Uninjur'd in this wide surrounding waste:

and I know not whether wide is not better than wild, which seems to be sufficiently implied in

waste.

404.-it recks] I care not for, &c. So "what recks it them?" Lycid. v. 122. and Par. L. ix. 173. "Let it, I reck not." And ii. 50. " Of god, or hell, or worse, "he recked not." See Note on v. 836. infr. From reck comes retchlessness, or recklessness, in the

stances could resist the oppor- Thirty-nine Articles, where the tunity of paying. T. Warton.

400. -as bid me hope] The first reading was,

common reading is, " into wretch"lessness of most unclean living." Artic. xvii. As if, yet with a manifest perversion of terms, a wretched profligacy was intended. The precise meaning is, a carelessness, a confident negligence, consisting "of the most aban"doned course of life." Reck, with its derivatives, is the lan

and at present it stands in the guage of Chaucer and Spenser. Manuscript,

T. Warton.

L

Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person
Of our unowned Sister.

ELDER BROTHER.

I do not, Brother,

Infer, as if I thought my Sister's state
Secure without all doubt, or controversy:
Yet where an equal poise of hope and fear

Does arbitrate th' event, my nature is
That I incline to hope, rather than fear,
And gladly banish squint suspicion.

My Sister is not so defenceless left
As you imagine; she' has a hidden strength

Which you remember not.

1

2. BROTHER.

What hidden strength,

Unless the strength of heav'n, if you mean that?
ELDER BROTHER.

I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength,
Which if heav'n gave it, may be term'd her own :

410

415

first passado, and for hope and fear, hopes and fears.

413. -squint suspicion.] Alluding probably in this epithet to Spenser's description of Suspicion in his Mask of Cupid, Faery Queen, b. iii. cant. 12. st.

15.

For he was foul, ill-favoured, and grim,

Under his eye-brows looking still ascaunce &c.

Thyer.

415. As you imagine; &c.] This verse is redundant in the Manuscript,

As you imagine, Brother; she has a hidden strength.

'Tis chastity, my Brother, chastity:
She that has that, is clad in complete steel,
And like a quiver'd nymph with arrows keen

420. 'Tis chastity, my Brother,
chastity;

She that has that, is clad in cómplete steel,

And like a quiver'd nymph with arrows keen, &c.] Perhaps Milton remembered a stanza in Fletcher's Purple Island, published but the preceding year, b. x. st. 27. It is

in a personification of Virgin

chastitie.

With her, her sister went, a warlike
maid,
Parthenia, all in steele and gilded

arms,

In needle's stead, a mighty spear she sway'd, &c.

See El. iv. 109. T. Warton.

421. She that has that, is clad in complete steel, &c.] He has finely improved here upon Horace, Od. i. xxii. 1.

Integer vitæ, scelerisque purus &c. and the phrase of complete steel is borrowed from Shakespeare. Hamlet speaking to the Ghost, act i. sc. 7.

-What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel

Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the

moon?

420

Where through the sacred awe of chastity,

No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer

Shall dare to soil her virgin purity.

421. The phrase "complete " steel" was, I rather think, a common expression for "armed " from head to foot." It occurs

in Dekker's Untrussing of the

Humorous Poet, which was acted

by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, and the choir-boys of St. Paul's, in 1602. Hamlet appeared at least before 1598. Again, in The weakest goeth to the wall, of which the first edition was in 1600. Hence an expression in our author's Apology, which also confirms what is here said, s. 1. "Zeal, whose sub"stance is ethereal, arming in "complete diamond, ascends his " fiery chariot, &c." Pr. W. i. 114. T. Warton.

422. And like a quiver'd nymph with arrows keen] I make no doubt but Milton in this passage had his eye upon Spenser's Belphœbe, whose character, arms, and manner of life perfectly correspond with this description. What makes it the more certain is, that Spenser intended under that personage to represent the virtue of chastity. Thus in the introduction to the third book of his Faery Queen, complimenting his virgin sovereign Queen Elizabeth, he says,

But either Gloriana let her choose,
Or in Belphœbe fashioned to be:
In th' one her rule, in th' other her
rare chastity.

F

Thyer.