ort, Laughter, and Liberty, but the plurals, Quips, Cranks,
Wiles, Nods, Becks, Smiles, we do not manage quite so easily, especially
in view of the couplet 29-30.

28. Smiles may be said to be wreathed because they inwreathe the face.
See Par. Lost III 361.

33. trip it, as you go. So in Shakespeare, "I'll queen it no inch
further; Rather than fool it so; I'll go brave it at the court, lording
it in London streets."

41. With this line begins a series of illustrations of the _unreproved
pleasures_ which L'Allegro is going to enjoy during a day of leisure. At
first the specified pleasures or occupations are introduced by
infinitives, _to hear, to come_; but the construction soon changes, as we
shall see. The first pleasure is To hear the lark, etc. 41-44. L'Allegro
begins his day with early morning. Here we must imagine him as having
risen and gone forth where he can see the sky and can look about him to
see what is going on in the farm-yard.

45-46. Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow.

It must be L'Allegro himself who comes to the window, and as he is
outside, he comes to look in through the shrubbery and bid good morning
to the cottage inmates, who are now up and about their work. The
pertinency of the phrase, _in spite of sorrow_, is not intelligible.

53. Oft listening how the hounds and horn. This "pleasure" and the
next--_sometime walking_--are introduced with present participles. There
is no interruption of grammatical consistency.

57. Sometime walking, not unseen. See the counterpart of this line,
Penseroso 65. Todd quotes the note of Bishop Hurd,--"Happy men love
witnesses of their joy: the splenetic love solitude."

59. against, _i.e._ toward.

62. The clouds in thousand liveries dight. _Dight_ is the participle of
the verb _to dight_, meaning to adorn. It is still used as an archaism.

67. And every shepherd tells his tale. This undoubtedly means _counts the
number_ of his flock. In Shakespeare we find, to _tell_ money, years,
steps, a hundred. So _tale_ often means an enumeration, a number.
L'Allegro finds the shepherds in the morning counting their sheep, not
telling stories.

68. With this line ends the long, loose sentence that began with line 37.
We now come to a full stop, and with line 69 begin a new sentence.

70. the landskip. A word of late origin in English, of unsettled spelling
in Milton's day.

71. Russet lawns. In Milton, _lawn_ mean