" So on the words _forestalling night_, "i. e.
anticipating. Forestall is literally to anticipate the market by
purchasing goods before they are brought to the stall." In the verse
"Thou hast immanacled while Heaven sees good,"
he explains that "_while_ here has the sense of _so long as_." But Mr.
Masson's notes on the language are his weakest. He is careful to tell us,
for example, "that there are instances of the use of _shine_ as a
substantive in Spenser, Ben Jonson, and other poets." It is but another
way of spelling _sheen_, and if Mr. Masson never heard a shoeblack in the
street say, "Shall I give you a shine, sir?" his experience has been
singular.[373] His notes in general are very good (though too long).
Those on the astronomy of Milton are particularly valuable. I think he is
sometimes a little too scornful of parallel passages,[374] for if there
is one thing more striking than another in this poet, it is that his
great and original imagination was almost wholly nourished by books,
perhaps I should rather say set in motion by them. It is wonderful how,
from the most withered and juiceless hint gathered in his reading, his
grand images rise like an exhalation; how from the most battered old lamp
caught in that huge drag-net with which he swept the waters of learning,
he could conjure a tall genius to build his palaces.
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