was seene, nor never
shall bee."

_Purest ray serene_. As Hales remarks, this is a favourite
arrangement of epithets with Milton. Cf. _Hymn on Nativity_:
"flower-inwoven tresses torn;" _Comus_: "beckoning shadows dire;"
"every alley green," etc.; _L'Allegro_: "native wood-notes wild;"
_Lycidas_: "sad occasion dear;" "blest kingdoms meek," etc.

55. _Full many a flower_, etc. Cf. Pope, _Rape of the Lock_, iv. 158:

"Like roses that in deserts bloom and die."

Mitford cites Chamberlayne, _Pharonida_, ii. 4:

"Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent
Of odours in unhaunted deserts;"

and Young, _Univ. Pass._ sat. v.:

"In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen,
She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green;
Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace,
And waste their music on the savage race;"

and Philip, _Thule_:

"Like woodland flowers, which paint the desert glades,
And waste their sweets in unfrequented shades."

Hales quotes Waller's

"Go, lovely rose,
Tell her that's young
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide
Thou must have uncommended died."

On _desert air_, cf. _Macbeth_, iv. 3: "That would be howl'd out in
the desert air."

57. It was in 1636 that John Hampden, of Buckinghamshire (a cousin of
Oliver Cromwell), refused to pay the ship-money tax which Charles I.
was levying without the authority of Parliament.

58. _Little tyrant_. Cf. Thomson, _Winter_:

"With open freedom little tyrants raged."

The artists who have illustrated this passage (see, for instance,
_Favourite English Poems_, p. 305, and _Harper's Monthly_, vol. vii.
p. 3) appear to understand "little" as equivalent to _juvenile_. If
that had been the meaning, the poet would have used some other phrase
than "of his fields," or "his lands," as he first wrote it.

59. _Some mute inglorious Milton_. Cf. Phillips, preface to _Theatrum
Poetarum_: "Even the very names of some who having perhaps been
comparable to Homer for heroic poesy, or to Euripides for tragedy,
yet nevertheless sleep inglorious in the crowd of the forgotten
vulgar."

60. _Some Cromwell_, etc. Hales remarks: "The prejudice against
Cromwell was extremely strong throughout the 18th century, even
amongst the more liberal-minded. That cloud of 'detractions rude,' of
which Milton speaks in his noble sonnet to our 'chief of men' as in
his