758. ~as mine eyes~: as he has already charmed mine eyes; see note, l. 170.
759. ~rules pranked in reason's garb~, _i.e._ specious arguments. _Pranked_ = decked in a showy manner: Milton (Prose works, i. 147, ed. 1698) speaks of the Episcopal church service _pranking_ herself in the weeds of the Popish mass. Comp. _Wint. Tale_, iv. 4. 10, "Most goddess-like _prank'd_ up"; _Par. Lost_, ii. 226, "Belial, with words clothed in _reason's garb_."
760-1. I hate when Vice brings forward refined arguments, and Virtue allows them to pass unchallenged. ~bolt~ = to sift or separate, as the _boulting-mill_ separates the meal from the bran; in this sense the word (also spelt _boult_) is used by Chaucer, Spenser (_F. Q._ ii. 4. 24), Shakespeare (_Cor._ iii. 1. 322, _Wint. Tale_, iv. 4. 375, "the fanned snow that's _bolted_ By the northern blasts twice o'er," etc.). The spelling _bolt_ has confused the word with 'bolt,' to shoot or start out. See Index to Globe _Shakespeare_.
763. ~she would her children~, etc., _i.e._ she wished (that) her children should be wantonly luxurious: comp. l. 172; _Par. Lost_, i. 497-503.
764. ~cateress~, stewardess, provider: lit. 'a buyer.' _Cateress_ is feminine: the masculine is _caterer_, where the final _-er_ of the agent is unnecessarily repeated.
765. ~Means ... to the good~: intends ... for the good.
767. ~dictate~. The accent in Milton's time was on the first syllable, both in noun and verb. ~spare Temperance~. For Milton's praises of Temperance comp. _Il Pens._ 46, "Spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet"; also the 6th Elegy, 56-66; _Son._ xx., etc. "There is much in the Lady which resembles the youthful Milton himself--he, the Lady of his college--and we may well believe that the great debate concerning temperance was not altogether dramatic (where, indeed, is Milton truly dramatic?), but was in part a record of passages in the poet's own spiritual history." Dowden's _Transcripts and Studies_.
768. If Nature's blessings were equally distributed instead of being heaped upon a luxurious few, then (as Shakespeare says, _King Lear_, iv. 1. 73) "distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough."
769. ~beseeming~, suitable. The original sense of _seem_ is 'to be fitting,' as in the words _beseem_ and _seemly_.