When it did it implied the meeting face to face of the
principals. On the verses
"And some flowers and some bays
For thy hearse to strew the ways,"
he has a note to tell us that _hearse_ is not to be taken "in our
sense of a carriage for the dead, but in the older sense of a tomb or
framework over a tomb," though the obvious meaning is "to strew the
ways for thy hearse." How could one do that for a tomb or the
framework over it?
[374] A passage from Dante (Inferno, XI. 96-105), with its reference
to Aristotle, would have given him the meaning of "Nature taught
art," which seems to puzzle him. A study of Dante and of his earlier
commentators would also have been of great service in the
astronomical notes.
[375] Almost every combination of two vowels might in those days be a
diphthong or not, at will. Milton's practice of elision was confirmed
and sometimes (perhaps) modified by his study of the Italians, with
whose usage in this respect he closely conforms.
[376] Letter to Rev. W. Bagot, 4th January, 1791.
[377] So Dante:--
"Ma sapienza e amore e virtute."
So Donne:--
"Simony and sodomy in churchmen's lives."
[378] Mr. Masson is evidently not very familiar at first hand with
the versification to which Milton's youthful ear had been trained,
but seems to have learned something from Abbott's "Shakespearian
Grammar" in the interval between writing his notes and his
Introduction.
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