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 i…