99. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ v. 428:
27 lines✦
though from off the boughs each mornWe brush mellifluous dews;" and _Arcades_, 50: "And from the boughs brush off the evil dew." Wakefield quotes Thomson, _Spring_, 103: "Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling dropsFrom the bent brush, as through the verdant mazeOf sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk." 100. _Upland lawn_. Cf. Milton, _Lycidas_, 25: "Ere the high lawns appear'dUnder the opening eyelids of the morn." In _L'Allegro_, 92, we have "upland hamlets," where Hales thinks"upland=country, as opposed to town." He adds, "Gray in his _Elegy_seems to use the word loosely for 'on the higher ground;' perhaps hetook it from Milton, without quite understanding in what sense Miltonuses it." We doubt whether Hales understands Milton here. It is truethat _upland_ used to mean country, as _uplanders_ meant countrymen,and _uplandish_ countrified (see Nares and Wb.), but the othermeaning is older than Milton (see Halliwell's _Dict. of ArchaicWords_), and Johnson, Keightley, and others are probably right inconsidering "upland hamlets" an instance of it. Masson, in his recentedition of Milton (1875), explains the "upland hamlets" as "littlevillages among the slopes, away from the river-meadows and thehay-making." 101. As Mitford remarks, _beech_ and _stretch_ form an imperfectrhyme.
✦