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Milton's Comus

Note 3 — INDEX TO THE NOTES.

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insphered. ‘Sphere,’ with its derivatives ‘sphery,’ ‘insphere,’ and ‘unsphere’ (Il Pens. 88), is used by Milton with a literal reference to the cosmical framework as a whole (see Hymn Nat. 48) or to some portion of it. In Shakespeare ‘sphere’ occurs in the wider sense of ‘the path in which anything moves,’ and it is to this metaphorical use of the word that we owe such phrases as ‘a person’s sphere of life,’ ‘sphere of action,’ etc. See also Comus, 112-4, 241-3, 1021; Arc. 62-7; Par. Lost, v. 618; where there are references to the music of the spheres.

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