Note Tells — MILTON’S MINOR POEMS.

105. A connective is lacking to make the syntax sound: the subject of tells must be he. the drudging goblin. This is Robin Goodfellow, known to readers of fairy tales. Ben Jonson makes him a character in his Court Masque, Love Restored, where he is made to [89] recount many of his pranks, and says, among other things, “I am the honest plain country spirit, and harmless, Robin Goodfellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country maids, and does all their other drudgery.”