Note 553 — INDEX TO THE NOTES.

drowsy frighted, i.e. drowsy and frighted. The noise of Comus’s rout is here supposed to have kept the horses of night awake and in a state of drowsy agitation until the sudden calm put an end to their uneasiness. In Milton’s corrected MS. we read ‘drowsy flighted,’ where the two words are not co-ordinate epithets but must be regarded as expressing one idea = flying drowsily; to express this some insert a hyphen. Comp. ‘dewy-feathered,’ Il Pens. 146, and others of Milton’s remarkable compound adjectives. The reading in the text is that of the printed editions of 1637, ’45, and ’73.