[101]. Built in the eclipse: eclipses were believed to shed malign influences (see 'P. L.,' i. 594-599); one of the ingredients of the witches' hell-broth, in 'Macbeth,' is 'slips of yew, slivered in the moon's eclipse'; rigged with curses dark: 'with,' of course, though this has been questioned, expresses accompaniment; to understand it as instrumental, makes a crazy hyperbole of the phrase.
[102]. sacred head: King was dedicated to the holy office of the ministry. He is made to represent, in the poem, a pure priesthood.
[103-107]. Next Camus: Dr. Masson's note, and the included quoted one, are the most acceptable of the numerous notes on this passage: 'Camus, the tutelary genius of the Cam, and of Cambridge University, appeared as one of the mourning figures; for had not King been one of the young hopes of the University? The garb given to Camus must doubtless be characteristic, and is perhaps most succinctly explained by a Latin note which appeared in a Greek translation of "Lycidas" by Mr. John Plumptre in 1797. "The mantle," said Mr. Plumptre in this note, "is as if made of the plant 'river-sponge,' which floats copiously in the Cam; the bonnet of the river-sedge, distinguished by vague marks traced somehow over the middle of the leaves, and serrated at the edge of the leaves after the fashion of the ἀὶ, ἀὶ of the hyacinth." It is said that the flags of the Cam still exhibit, when dried, these dusky streaks in the middle, and apparent scrawlings on the edge; and Milton (in whose Ms. "scrawled o'er" was first written for "inwrought") is supposed to have carried away from the "arundifer Camus" ('Eleg.,' i. 11) this exact recollection. He identifies the edge-markings with the ἀὶ, ἀὶ (Alas! Alas!) which the Greeks fancied they saw on the leaves of the hyacinth, commemorating the sad fate of the Spartan youth from whose blood that flower had sprung.'
[107]. pledge: child; Lat. pignus amoris.
[109]. The Pilot: St. Peter, whom, it must be understood, Milton presents as 'the type and head of true episcopal power,' to which he was in no wise opposed. He wished the bishop to be a truly spiritual overseer, as the word signifies.
[114]. Enow: an archaic plural form of 'enough'; 'hellish foes enow.'—P. L., ii. 504; 'evils enow to darken all his goodness.'—Antony and Cleopatra, I. iv. 11.
[117]. to scramble at the shearer's feast: to scramble for and gobble up fat benefices.
[118]. the worthy bidden guest: one who has been truly called to serve the Church.
[119]. Blind mouths: 'mouths' is used, by synecdoche, for gluttons, as the five preceding verses show. Ruskin's explanation of the phrase, in his 'Sesame and Lilies,' is very ingenious, but it is not likely that Milton meant it to have such significance. 'Those two monosyllables,' he says, 'express the precisely accurate contraries of right character in the two great offices of the Church,—those of Bishop and Pastor. A Bishop means
a person who sees. A Pastor means one who feeds. The most unbishoply character a man can have is, therefore, to be Blind. The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be fed,—to be a Mouth. Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind mouths."'