[76] He was sent by James I. to assist an embassy to the Elector Palatine, who had married his daughter Elizabeth.

[77] He had lately lost his wife, for whom he had a rare love.

[78] “If they know us not by intuition, but by judging from circumstances and signs.”

[79] “With most willingness.”

[80] “Art proud.”

[81] A strange use of the word; but it evidently means recovered, and has some analogy with the French repasser.

[82] To understood:  to sweeten.

[83] He plays upon the astrological terms, houses and schemes.  The astrologers divided the heavens into twelve houses; and the diagrams by which they represented the relative positions of the heavenly bodies, they called schemes.

[84] The tree of knowledge.

[85] Dyce, following Seward, substitutes curse.

[86] A glimmer of that Platonism of which, happily, we have so much more in the seventeenth century.

[87] Should this be “in fees;” that is, in acknowledgment of his feudal sovereignty?

[88] Warm is here elongated, almost treated as a dissyllable.

[89] “He ought not to be forsaken:  whoever weighs the matter rightly, will come to this conclusion.”

[90] The Eridan is the Po.—­As regards classical allusions in connexion with sacred things, I would remind my reader of the great reverence our ancestors had for the classics, from the influence they had had in reviving the literature of the country.—­I need hardly remind him of the commonly-received fancy that the swan does sing once—­just as his death draws nigh.  Does this come from the legend of Cycnus changed into a swan while lamenting the death of his friend Phaeton? or was that legend founded on the yet older fancy?  The glorious bird looks as if he ought to sing.

[91] The poet refers to the singing of the hymn before our Lord went to the garden by the brook Cedron.

[92] The construction is obscure just from the insertion of the to before breathe, where it ought not to be after the verb hear.  The poet does not mean that he delights to hear that voice more than to breathe gentle airs, but more than to hear gentle airs (to) breathe. To hear, understood, governs all the infinitives that follow; among the rest, the winds (to) chide.

[93] Rut is used for the sound of the tide in Cheshire. (See Halliwell’s Dictionary.) Does rutty mean roaring? or does it describe the deep, rugged shores of the Jordan?

[94] A monosyllable, contracted afterwards into bloom.

[95] Willows.

[96] Groom originally means just a man.  It was a word much used when pastoral poetry was the fashion.  Spenser has herd-grooms in his Shepherd’s Calendar.  This last is what it means here:  shepherds.