—Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act v, sc. 1.
"If Nature thunder'd in his opening ears,
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heaven had left him still
The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!"
—Pope, Essay on Man, I.
"Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud, it deafens mortals' ears,
As wise philosophers have thought,
And that's the cause we hear it not."
—Butler's Hudibras, II, i, 617.
See, also, Montaigne, Essays, I, xxii; Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, II, 9; Plato's Republic, VI; Dryden's "Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew," etc.
[35.] consort. Accompaniment. This word, so written until Milton's time, has now given place to concert, whenever used as here.
[36.] age of Gold. The fabled primeval age of universal happiness.
"A blisful lyfe, a peseable, and so swete,
Ledde the peplis in the former age."—Chaucer.
[37.] mould. Matter, substance. The word is used in the old Romances to denote the earth itself. Milton elsewhere says: