No More Learning

_crystal_: fairness.


Poem 53.

This "Spousal Verse" was written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and
Katherine Somerset. Although beautiful, it is inferior to the
"Epithalamion" on Spenser's own marriage,--omitted with great reluctance
as not in harmony with modern manners.

_feateously_: elegantly.

_shend_: put out.

_a noble peer_: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the height
of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion following to
the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.

_Eliza_: Elizabeth; _twins of Jove_: the stars Castor and Pollux;
_baldric_: belt, the zodiac.


Poem 57.

A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry;--that written by
thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Wotton's, 72, is
another. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay,
have left similar specimens.


Poem 62.

_whist_: hushed; _Pan_: used here for the Lord of all; _Lars and
Lemures_: household Gods and spirits of relations dead; _Flamens_: Roman
priests; _That twice-batter'd god_: Dagon.
_Osiris_, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion
with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed
after death in a sacred chest. This myth, reproduced in Syria and Greece
in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, represents the
annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter
darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn
overcomes Typho. --It suited the genius of Milton's time to regard this
primaeval poetry and philosophy of the seasons, which has a further
reference to the contest of Good and Evil in Creation, as a malignant
idolatry. Shelley's Chorus in _Hellas_, "Worlds on worlds," treats the
subject in a larger and sweeter spirit.

_unshower'd grass_: as watered by the Nile only.


Poem 64.

_The Late Massacre_: the Vaudois persecution, carried on in 1655 by the
Duke of Savoy. This "collect in verse," as it has been justly named, is
the most mighty Sonnet in any language known to the Editor. Readers
should observe that, unlike our sonnets of the sixteenth century, it is
constructed , on the original Italian or Provencal model,--unquestionably
far superior to the imperfect form employed by Shakespeare and Drummond.


Poem 65.

Cromwell returned from Ireland in 1650. Hence the prophecies, not
strictly fulfilled, of his deference to the Parliament, in stanzas
21-24.

This Ode, beyond doubt one of the finest in our language, and more in
Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet, is occasionally
obscure from imitation of the condensed Latin syntax. The meaning of st.
5 is "rivalry or hostility are the same to a lofty spirit, and
limitation more hateful than opposition.