er midnight orgies were veiled in darkness. She was a Thracian
divinity, and her worshippers were called Baptae ('sprinkled'), because
the ceremony of initiation involved the sprinkling of warm water.

131. ~called~, invoked. ~dragon-womb Of Stygian darkness~. The Styx (= 'the
abhorred') was the chief river in the lower world. Milton here speaks of
darkness as something positive, ejected from the womb of Night, Night
being represented as a monster of the lower regions: comp. _Par. Lost_,
i. 63. The pronoun 'her' shows that 'womb' is here used in its strict
sense, but in _Par. Lost_, i. 673, "in his _womb_ was hid metallic ore,"
it has the more general sense of "interior": comp. the use of Lat.
_uterus_, _Aen._ ii. 258, vii. 499. ~dragon~: Shakespeare refers to the
dragons or 'dragon car' of night, _Cym._ ii. 2. 48, "Swift, swift, you
_dragons_ of the night"; _Tro. and Cress._ v. 8. 17, "The _dragon_ wing
of night o'erspreads the earth"; see also _Il Pens._ 59, "Cynthia checks
her dragon yoke."

132. ~spets~, a form of _spits_ (as _spettle_ for _spittle_).

133. ~one blot~, _i.e._ a universal blot: comp. _Macbeth_, ii. 2. 63.
Milton first wrote, "And makes a blot of nature."

134. ~Stay~, here used causally = check. The radical sense of the word is
'to support,' as in the substantive _stay_ and its plural _stays_. ~ebon~,
black as ebony. Ebony is so called because it is hard as a stone (Heb.
_eben_, a stone); and the wood being of a dark colour, the name has
become a synonym both for hardness and for blackness.

135. ~Hecat'~, _i.e._ Hecate (as in line 535): a mysterious Thracian
divinity, afterwards regarded as the goddess of witchcraft: for these
reasons a fit companion for Cotytto and a fit patroness of Comus. Jonson
calls her "the mistress of witches." She was supposed to send forth at
night all kinds of demons and phantoms, and to wander about with the
souls of the dead and amidst the howling of dogs.

136. ~utmost end~, full completion. Compare _L'Alleg._ 109, "the corn
That ten day-labourers could not _end_," where 'end' = 'complete.'

137. ~dues~: see note, l. 12.

138. ~blabbing eastern scout~, _i.e._ the tale-telling spy that comes from
the East, viz. Morning.

139. ~nice~; hard to please, fastidious: "a finely chosen epithet,
expressing at once _curious_ and _squeamish_" (Hurd). It is used by
Comus in contempt: comp. ii. _Henry IV._ iv. 1, "Hence, therefore, thou
_nice_ crutch"; and see the index to t