[695]. oughly: the spelling in Milton's editions; 'as Milton has the common spelling, ugly, in all other cases where he has used the word, he must have intended a different form here, perhaps to indicate a more guttural pronunciation.'—Masson.
[698]. visored: masked; he appears as 'some harmless villager,' v. 166.
[707]. budge: austere, morose; fur: used metaphorically for order, sect, profession. Landor remarks that 'it is the first time Cynic or Stoic ever put on fur.' 'Budge' also means a kind of fur, but it certainly cannot have that meaning here; the context requires the other meaning.
[708]. from the Cynic tub: i.e. from the tub whence Diogenes, the Cynic, delivered them.
[714]. curious: careful, nice, delicate, fastidious.
[719]. hutched: hoarded, laid up, as in a hutch or chest.
[724]. yet: in addition; or, it may have the force of 'even.'
[744]. it: i.e. beauty.
[750]. grain: 'a term derived from the Latin granum, a seed or kernel, or grain in the sense of "grain of corn,"—which word granum had come, in later Latin times, to be applied specifically to the coccum, a peculiar dye-stuff consisting of the dried, granular, or seed-like bodies of insects of the genus Coccus, collected in large quantities from trees in Spain and other Mediterranean countries. But that dye was distinctly red. Another name for it, and for the insect producing it, was kermes . . . whence our "carmine" and "crimson." "Grain," therefore, meant a dye of such red as might be produced by the use of kermes or coccum.'—From Masson's note on 'Sky-tinctured grain,' 'P. L.,' v. 285, based on George P. Marsh's dissertation on the etymology of the word, in his 'Lectures on the English Language' (1st S., 4th Am. ed., 1861, pp. 65-75). Masson's note on 'cheeks of sorry grain' is 'i.e. of poor colour,' as if 'grain' were used in the general sense of colour merely. It is better, I think, to understand 'grain' here in its special sense of red, but used by Comus ironically, as indicated by 'sorry.' Beautiful cheeks are presumed to have a delicate reddish hue; but where the features are homely and the complexion coarse, the cheeks may be said, ironically, to be of a sorry grain, i.e. not red at all.
[759]. pranked: set off, adorned, decked.