Note 810 — COMUS.
Reading edition
809. ’tis but the lees, etc. Lees and settlings are synonymous = dregs. The allusion is to the old physiological system of the four primary humours of the body, viz. blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy (see Burton’s Anat. of Mel. i. 1, § ii. 2): “Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen”; μελαγχολία, black bile. See Sams. Agon. 600, “humours black That mingle with thy fancy”; and Nash’s Terrors of the Night (1594): “(Melancholy) sinketh down to the bottom like the lees of the wine, corrupteth the blood, and is the cause of lunacy.”