83. _The painful family of death_. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_, ii. 118:
"Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;" and Dryden, _State of
Innocence_, v. 1: "With all the numerous family of Death." On the
whole passage cf. Milton, _P. L._ xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, _Æn._
vi. 275.
86. _That every labouring sinew strains_. An example of the
"correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (_Essay on
Criticism_, 371),
"The line too labours, and the words move slow."
90. _Slow-consuming Age_. Cf. Shenstone, _Love and Honour_: "His
slow-consuming fires."
95. As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in _Comus_,
359:
"Peace, brother, be not over-exquisite
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;
For grant they be so, while they rest unknown
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid?"
97. _Happiness too swiftly flies_. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil,
_Geo._ iii. 66:
"Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit."
98. _Thought would destroy their paradise_. Wakefield quotes
Sophocles, _Ajax_, 554: [Greek: En tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistos
bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").