[170.] The best possible comment on this use of the verb spell is Milton’s own language, Par. Regained IV 382, where Satan, addressing the Son of God, thus speaks:—
Now, contrary, if I read aught in Heaven,
Or Heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters
In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
Sorrows and labors, opposition, hate,
Attends thee; scorns, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and, lastly, cruel death.
Il Penseroso’s aspiration is that as an astrologer he may learn the influence of every star and that he may come to know the virtue of every herb.