[We are much indebted to our valued correspondent for the offer he has
so kindly made us of the MS. Notes in question, which we shall gladly
receive; and also for his extremely useful suggestion of the advantage
of such notifications to intending editors, as he describes.]
_Milton's L'Allegro._--Your correspondent (No. 18. p. 286.) has been
anticipated by Headley, who suggested, long ago, that the word _tale_
here implied the _numbering_ sheep. When Handel composed his beautiful
air, "Let me wander not unseen," he plainly regarded this word in the
more poetical sense. The song breathes the shepherd's tale of _love_
(perhaps addressed to "the milkmaid singing blithe") far more than it
conveys a dull computation of the _number_ of "his fleecy care." Despite
of that excellent commentator, Tom Warton, who adopted Headley's
suggestion, it is to be hoped that readers will continue, though it may
be in error, to understand the line as your correspondent _used_ to do:
an amatory _tête-à-tête_ is surely better suited to "the hawthorn in the
dale," than either mental arithmetic, or the study of Cocker.