50. Cf. Browne, _Religio Medici_: "Rich with the spoils of nature." 51. "_Rage_ is often used in the post-Elizabethan writers of the 17th century, and in the 18th century writers, for inspiration, enthusiasm" (Hales). Cf. Cowley: "Who brought green poesy to her perfect age, And made that art which was a rage?" and Tickell, _Prol._: "How hard the task! How rare the godlike rage!" Cf. also the use of the Latin _rabies_ for the "divine afflatus," as in _Æneid_, vi. 49. 53. _Full many a gem_, etc. Cf. Bishop Hall, _Contemplations_: "There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowells of the earth, many a fair pearle in the bosome of the sea, that never 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."