23. the no good. Cp. the use of où in Gr.; as, † Tŵv yepupŵv oỷ diáλvσις, Thucydides, i. 137; ἡ οὐ περιτείχισις, Ib. iii. 95; ἡ οὐκ ἐξουσία, Ib. v. 50% &с. So тò μǹ кaλóν, Sophocles, Antigone, 370, &c.

26. It was the complaint, &c. Mr. Osborn notes that when the Bill for abolishing Bishops, Deans, and Chapters was before the House of Commons, Dr. Hackett was heard in their defence (1641), and urged "that their endowments were encouragements to Industry and Virtue, and were serviceable for the advancement of Learning." These were the arguments usually adopted in their favour.'

28. pluralities. Plurality was a crying offence in Milton's eyes; see Apology for Smectymnuus: The Prelate himself, being a pluralist, may under one surplice, which is also linnen, hide four benefices, besides the metropolitan toe,' &c. On the New Forcers of Conscience, 1-6:

'Because you have thrown off your prelate-lord,

And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy,
To seize the widowed whore Plurality

From them whose sin ye envied, not abhrored,
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword

To force our consciences that Christ set free?"

See also The Second Defence, &c.

29. dasht. Comus, 451-2:

'noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe.'

Psalm vi. 21:

6

Mine enemies shall all be blank and dashed
With much confusion.'

It had been

. . . If you

30. I never found cause, &c. See Remonstrant's Defence: happy for this land, if your priests had been but only wooden mean by wooden, illiterate or contemptible, there was no want of that sort among you; and their number increasing daily, as their laziness, their tavernhunting, their neglect of all sound literature, and their liking of doltish and monastical schoolmen daily increased.' Also The likeliest Means to Remove &c.: . . . as if with divines learning stood and fell, wherein for the most part their pittance is so small.'

P. 30. 3. discontent. Suckling's Sessions of the Poets:

Those that were there thought it not fit

To discontent so ancient a wit.'

17. over it is, &c. The full phrase would be over what it is,' &c.; but 'what' having occurred just before in what advantage, Milton does not care to repeat it.

18. scapt. So scape-goat. Cp. crawfish with écrevisse, craze with écraser, &c. Escape is ultimately cognate with skip.

19. ferular the rod, the cane, the 'tawse' (see Jamieson). Mr. Skeat sends me a sketch of the thing from an old seal in his possession. It expanded at the end-the end designed for the victim—into a flat round; that

is, it was in shape like a battledore with the handle lengthened and the bat diminished, and so well adapted for effect on the palm of the hand, which was the part of application. See Defence of the People of England: 'If I had leisure, or that if it were worth my while, I could reckon up so many barbarisms of yours in this one book as, if you were to be chastiz'd for them as you deserve, all the school-boys' ferulas in Christendome would be broken upon you.' See other instances-from Bishop Hall's Censure of Travel and Feltham's Resolves-apud Richardson. The stem is the Lat. ferula, which is of the same root as ferire, to strike; see Horace, Satires, i. 3. 120; Juvenal, i. 15, where see Mayor's note. See Martial, Epigrams, xiv. 80, Ferulae' : 'Invisae nimium pueris grataeque magistris

Clara Prometheo munere ligna sumus.'

The form ferularis is not found in Classical Latin; the Classical adjs. are ferulaceus and feruleus. Ferularis would seem an analogue of regularis.

fescu= the wand or pointer; another form is festu. Lat. festuca, a stalk, stem, small stick. See Remonstrant's Defence: A minister that cannot be trusted to pray in his own words without being chewed to, and fescued to a formal injunction of his rote lesson, should as little be trusted to preach, &c.' See Sir T. More's Workes, p. 1102: 'But I shall afterward anon lay it afore him agayne and sette him to it with a festue that he shall not say but he saw it.' See Way's Promptorium Parvulorum, s. v. festu, note: 'In Piers Ploughman's Vision, line 6183 [Mr. Skeat's B-Text, x. 278, festu], where allusion is made to Matth. vii. 3, the mote in the eye, festuca, is termed fescu. [So in the Wycliffite version.] The Medulla likewise renders "festuca, a festu or lytul mote." The name was applied to the straw, or stick, used for pointing in the early instruction of children: thus Palsgrave gives "festue, to spell with, festev." Occasionally the word is written with c or k, instead of t; but it is apparently a corruption [probably due to writing, as there is often confusion in MSS. between c and t]. "Festu, a feskue, a straw, rush, little stalk or stick, used for a fescue. Touche a fescue; also a pen or a pin for a pair of writing tables." CorG.' In the Puritan, one of the plays falsely ascribed to Shakspere, fescue = dial-hand; see iv. 2, Sir Godfrey Plus loq.: Nay, put by your chats nowe; fall to your business roundly; the fescue of the dial is upon the christ-cross of noon.' The form feasetrau, given by Halliwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, is clearly due to some crude popular etymology. In Somersetshire occurs the form vester; see Jennings' Glossary of West Country Words.

21. the theam. This was the old grammar-school word for an essay; cp. Fr. thème. See Locke, On Education, § 171: 'As to themes they have I confess the pretence of something useful, which is to teach people to speak handsomely and well on any subject.'

a Grammar lad=a grammar-school lad. The phrase is still so used provincially, as in Durham.

22. utter'd. To utter to outer, send out, issue. We still speak of ' uttering coin.'

is, it was in shape like a battledore with the handle lengthened and the bat diminished, and so well adapted for effect on the palm of the hand, which was the part of application. See Defence of the People of England: 'If I had leisure, or that if it were worth my while, I could reckon up so many barbarisms of yours in this one book as, if you were to be chastiz'd for them as you deserve, all the school-boys' ferulas in Christendome would be broken upon you.' See other instances-from Bishop Hall's Censure of Travel and Feltham's Resolves—apud Richardson. The stem is the Lat. ferula, which is of the same root as ferire, to strike; see Horace, Satires, i. 3. 120; Juvenal, i. 15, where see Mayor's note. See Martial, Epigrams, xiv. 80, Ferulae': Invisae nimium pueris grataeque magistris

=

6

Clara Prometheo munere ligna sumus.'

The form ferularis is not found in Classical Latin; the Classical adjs. are ferulaceus and feruleus. Ferularis would seem an analogue of regularis. fescu the wand or pointer; another form is festu. Lat. festuca, a stalk, stem, small stick. See Remonstrant's Defence: A minister that cannot be trusted to pray in his own words without being chewed to, and fescued to a formal injunction of his rote lesson, should as little be trusted to preach, &c.' See Sir T. More's Workes, p. 1102: 'But I shall afterward anon lay it afore him agayne and sette him to it with a festue that he shall not say but he saw it.' See Way's Promptorium Parvulorum, s. v. festu, note: In Piers Ploughman's Vision, line 6183 [Mr. Skeat's B-Text, x. 278, festu], where allusion is made to Matth. vii. 3, the mote in the eye, festuca, is termed fescu. [So in the Wycliffite version.] The Medulla likewise renders festuca, a festu or lytul mote." The name was applied to the straw, or stick, used for pointing in the early instruction of children: thus Palsgrave gives "festue, to spell with, festev." Occasionally the word is written with c or k, instead of t; but it is apparently a corruption [probably due to writing, as there is often confusion in MSS. between c and t]. "Festu, a feskue, a straw, rush, little stalk or stick, used for a fescue. Touche a fescue; also a pen or a pin for a pair of writing tables." CorG.' In the Puritan, one of the plays falsely ascribed to Shakspere, fescue = dial-hand; see iv. 2, Sir Godfrey Plus loq.: Nay, put by your chats nowe; fall to your business roundly; the fescue of the dial is pon the christ-cross of noon.' The form feasetrau, given by Halliwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, is clearly due to some crude >opular etymology. In Somersetshire occurs the form vester; see Jennings' Glossary of West Country Words.

6

21. the theam. This was the old grammar-school word for an essay; cp. r. thème. See Locke, On Education, § 171: As to themes they have I confess e pretence of something useful, which is to teach people to speak hand›mely and well on any subject.'

a Grammar lad=a grammar-school lad. The phrase is still so used ovincially, as in Durham.

22. utter'd.

ttering coin,'

To utter to outer, send out, issue. We still speak of

I 2

22. without the cursory eyes, &c. = without his eyes running over or survey ing it. Henry V, v. 2. 77-8:

6

I have but with a cursorary eye
O'er-glanced the articles.'

a temporizing and extemporizing licencer: a licencer who considers only the expediencies of the moment, and arranges offhand the means to satisfy them.

25. standing to, &c. = standing close to, in near connection with, &c. So‘Sir John stands to his word,' 1 Henry IV, i. 2. 130, &c.; and so our present usage.

P. 31. 4. considerat. On the active sense of passive participles in Elizabethan English see Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, § 294 and 374. Considerate has retained its active sense.

5. watchings. Watch, wake, wait are but various forms from A.S. wacian. 6. expence of Palladian oyl. Operam et oleum perdere' was a common Latin phrase. See Cicero, Ad Familiares, vii. 1. 3 (perhaps in the Latin phrase there is allusion to athletes' oil; see l. c.); Ad Atticum, ii. 17; see also xiii. 38: ante lucem quum scriberem contra Epicurios, de eodem oleo et opera exaravi nescio quid ad te et ante lucem dedi.' Lucubration means originally a working by lamplight.

Palladian oyl- learned oil. The olive-tree was sacred to Pallas Athena; of which dedication Milton perhaps here suggests a meaning. The old mythology was never a dry and forceless thing to him. He, like Bacon, discerns in it the wisdom of the ancients.' The oil-light, by which men of learning studied, was a gift of the goddess of learning. In the Latin poets Pallas sometimes oil, as Ovid, Tristia, iv. 5. 3.

unleasur'd=aoxoλos.

See

10. punie. Puny = puiné = puis-né, i.e. post-natus or after-born. Bishop Hall's Resolutions for Religion, apud Richardson: 'Or [if any shall usurp] a motherhood to the rest . and make them but daughters and

punies to her,' &c. Of the Evil Angels: If still this priviledge were ordinary left in the church, it were not a work for puisness and novices, but for the greatest master and most learned and eminently holy doctors which the times can possibly yield.'

12. bayl is ultimately from Latin bajulus, a bearer, porter.

idiot. See Trench's Select Glossary.

17. under the Presse. We say 'in.' 'Sub prelo' is the common sixteenth century Latin phrase.

19. diligentest. See above, note to p. 15, l. 15.

20. dares. Commonly, when we use dare with another verb, we do not inflect the 3rd person; we treat it like the auxiliary verbs; but when it 'governs an accusative,' then we inflect it. We say 'he dare not go,' but 'he dares him to go.' See Morris' English Accidence, p. 184. The fact is that the words are different. The auxiliary dare is really an old preterite, like wot, wont, olda, &c. See Grein's Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie, Glossar., s. v. durran; also Skeat's Moeso-Gothic Dict. p. 304.