[767.] dictate. The accent in Milton’s time was on the first syllable, both in noun and verb. spare Temperance. For Milton’s praises of Temperance comp. Il Pens. 46, “Spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet”; also the 6th Elegy, 56-66; Son. xx., etc. “There is much in the Lady which resembles the youthful Milton himself—he, the Lady of his college—and we may well believe that the great debate concerning temperance was not altogether dramatic (where, indeed, is Milton truly dramatic?), but was in part a record of passages in the poet’s own spiritual history.” Dowden’s Transcripts and Studies.
[768.] If Nature’s blessings were equally distributed instead of being heaped upon a luxurious few, then (as Shakespeare says, King Lear, iv. 1. 73) “distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough.”
[769.] beseeming, suitable. The original sense of seem is ‘to be fitting,’ as in the words beseem and seemly.
[770.] lewdly-pampered; one of Milton’s most expressive compounds = wickedly gluttonous. Lewd has passed through several changes of meaning: (1) the lay-people as distinct from the clergy; (2) ignorant or unlearned; and finally (2) base or licentious.
[774.] she no whit encumbered, i.e. Nature would not be in the least surcharged (as Comus represented in l. [728]). No whit, used adverbially = not in the least, lit. ‘not a particle.’ Etymologically aught = a whit, naught = no whit.
[776.] His praise due paid, i.e. would be duly paid. On due, see [note], l. 12. gluttony: abstract for concrete.
[779.] Crams, i.e. crams himself. There are many verbs in English that may be thus used reflexively without having the pronoun expressed, e.g. feed, prepare, change, pour, press, etc.
[780.] enow. ‘Enow’ conveys the notion of a number, as in early English: it is also spelt anow, and in Chaucer ynowe, and is the plural of enough. It still occurs as a provincialism in England. On lines [780-799] Masson says: “A recurrence, by the sister, with much more mystic fervour, to that Platonic and Miltonic doctrine which had already been propounded by the Elder Brother (see lines [420-475]).”
[782.] sun-clad power of chastity. With ‘sun-clad’ compare ‘the sacred rays of chastity,’ l. [425]. Similarly in the Faerie Queene, iii. 6, Spenser says of Belphoebe, who represents Chastity, “And Phoebus with fair beams did her adorn.”
[783.] yet to what end? A rhetorical question, = it would be to no purpose.