[373.] Virtue could see, etc. The best commentary on this line is in lines [381-5]: comp. Spenser: “Virtue gives herself light through darkness for to wade,” F. Q. i. 1. 12.
[375.] flat sea: comp. Lyc. 98, “level brine”: Lat. aequor, a flat surface, used of the sea.
[376.] seeks to, applies herself to. This use of seek is common in the English Bible: see Deut. xii. 5, “unto his habitation shall ye seek”; Isaiah, viii. 19, xi. 10, xix. 3; i. Kings, x. 24.
[377.] her best nurse, Contemplation. The wise man loves contemplation and solitude: comp. Il Penseroso, 51, where “the Cherub Contemplation” is the “first and chiefest” of Melancholy’s companions. In Sidney’s Arcadia, “Solitariness” is “the nurse of these contemplations.”
[378.] plumes. Some would read prunes, both words being used of a bird’s smoothing or trimming its feathers—or (more strictly) picking out damaged feathers. See Skeat’s Dictionary, and compare Pope’s line, “Where Contemplation prunes her ruffled wings.”
[379.] various, varied: comp. l. [22]. The ‘bustle of resort’ is in L’Allegro the ‘busy hum of men.’
[380.] all to-ruffled. Milton wrote “all to ruffled,” which may be interpreted in various ways: (1) all to-ruffled, (2) all too ruffled, (3) all-to ruffled. The first of these is given in the text as it is etymologically correct: to is an intensive prefix as in ‘to-break’ = to break in pieces; ‘to-tear’ = to tear asunder, etc.; while all (= quite) is simply an adverb modifying to-ruffled. But about 1500 A.D. this idiom was misunderstood, and the prefix to was detached from the verb and either read along with all (thus all-to = altogether), or confused with too (thus all-to = too too, decidedly too). It is doubtful in which sense Milton used the phrase; like Shakespeare, he may have disregarded its origin. See Morris, § 324; Abbott, §§ 28, 436.
[381.] He that has light, etc. Comp. Par. Lost, i. 254: ‘The mind is its own place,’ etc.
[382.] centre, i.e. centre of the earth: comp. Par. Lost i. 686, “Men also ... Ransacked the centre”; and Hymn Nat. 162, “The aged Earth ... Shall from the surface to the centre shake.” Sometimes the word ‘centre’ was used of the Earth itself, the fixed centre of the whole universe according to the Ptolemaic system. The idea here conveyed, however, is not that of immovability (as in Par. Reg. iv. 534, “as a centre firm”) but of utter darkness.
[385.] his own dungeon: comp. Sams. Agon. 156, “Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) The dungeon of thyself.”