Note 844 — SCENE II.

Reverend and honourable Matrimony, &c.] In a note on the Aldine edition of Milton, I have pointed out the resemblance between the present passage and that in Par. Lost, b. iv. 750;

“Hail, wedded love, mysterious law,” &c.:

and I take this opportunity of observing, that some lines in a play by a dramatist contemporary with Middleton seem to have been in Milton’s memory when he described the fall of Vulcan;

“How high I tumbled, who can gesse aright,

Falling a summers day from morne to night.”

Heywood’s Brazen Age, 1613, sig. I.

“from morn

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,

A summer’s day; and with the setting sun,” &c.

Par. Lost, b. i. 742.

Homer has merely;

πᾶν δ’ ἦμαρ φερόμην, ἅμα δ’ ἠελίῳ καταδύντι, κ. τ. λ.

Il. I. 592.