looking, though so good to those who treat him well.

115. Thus done the tales. An absolute construction, imitating the Latin
ablative absolute.

117. The country folk having gone early to bed, tired with their day's
labor, L'Allegro hastes to the city, where the pleasures of life are
prolonged further into the night.

120. In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold. This must mean such things as
masques and revelries among the upper classes.

122. Rain influence. See note on Hymn on the Nativity 71.

124. What is the antecedent of whom?

125. What ceremony is here introduced?

128. Do not misunderstand the word mask. Its meaning becomes plain from
the context.

131. To what pleasure does L'Allegro now betake himself?

132. Among the dramatists of the Jacobean time Ben Jonson had especially
the repute of scholarship. The sock symbolizes comedy, as the buskin does
tragedy. Compare Il Penseroso 102.

133-134. Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

The couplet seems intended to convey the idea of a counterpart or
contrast to the _learned sock_ of Jonson. So considered, it is by no
means an unhappy characterization.

135. The last of the "unreproved pleasures" that L'Allegro wishes he may
enjoy, seems not so much planned to follow the rest in sequence of time
as to accompany them and be diffused through them all. Observe the ever
in this line. The eating cares are a reminiscence of Horace's _curas
edaces_, Ode II 11 18.

136. Lap me in soft Lydian airs. The three chief modes, or moods, of
Greek music were the _Lydian_, which was soft and pathetic; the _Dorian_,
especially adapted to war (see Par. Lost 550); and the _Phrygian_, which
was bold and vehement.

138. the meeting soul. The soul, in its eagerness, goes forth to meet and
welcome the music.

139. The word bout seems to point at a piece of music somewhat in the
nature of a round, or catch.

145. That Orpheus' self may heave his head. Even Orpheus, who in his life
"drew trees, stones, and floods" by the power of his music, and who now
reposes in Elysium, would lift his head to listen to the strains that
L'Allegro would fain hear.

149. Orpheus, with _his_ music, had succeeded in obtaining from Pluto
only a conditional release of his wife Eurydice. He was not to look back
upon her till he was quite clear of Pluto's domains. He failed to make
good the condition, and so again lost his Eurydice.