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LYCIDAS 



AND 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS 



LONDON : FRINTED BY 

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 

AND PARLIAMENT STREET 



THE 



LYCIDAS AND EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS 

OF 

MILTON 



EDITED, WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION 

(INCLUDING A REPRINT OF THE RARE LATIN VERSION OF 

THE LYCIDAS BY WILLIAM HOGG, 1694), BY 

C. S. JERRAM, M.A. 

TSIN. COLL. OXON. 



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SECOND EDITION, REVISED 






LONDON ^%); c\f>> 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

1881 



A/t rights reserved 



PREFACE 



TO 

THE SECOND EDITION. 



The Notes to this edition have been carefully revised, 
and several inaccuracies corrected. In making these 
improvements I have had the advantage of consulting 
Prof. Masson's three-volume edition of Milton's Poetical 
Works (1874) and Prof Hales* Longer English Poems, 
which latter work, though published while my first 
edition was in progress, I had not then seen. One note 
(on Lycidas 163) has been entirely recast, a mature recon- 
sideration of the passage having convinced me that the 
view I had previously taken is untenable. I have only 
to add, that the favourable opinions I have received, 
both publicly and privately, from many eminent English 
authorities induce me to hope that my book, in its 
emended form, may be welcomed by all students of 
Milton as a real contribution to this department of our 
literature. 

C. S. J. 

WiNDLESHAM : June 1881. 



PREFACE 



TO 



THE FIRST EDITION. 



-•O*- 



The two following poems have been selected as the only 
specimens of Pastoral "Elegy that Milton has given* to 
the world. Besides the Arcades and the Comus — which 
are dramatic ^ pastorals — they are his sole contribution 
to a class of poetry which was in his age most fashion- 
able, and whose influence is apparent in most of his 
poems, especially those of earlier date. The origin and 
history of the Pastoral, and its place in European litera- 
ture, will form the subject of the first part of the follow- 
ing Introduction, in which I have endeavoured to give 
such pr^luninary information as may enable the reader 



' An attempt was made to dra- 
matise the Lycidas in a piece en- 
titled LycidaSy A Musical Enter- 
tainment^ which appears to have 
been performed at the Theatre 
Royal, Covent Garden, in 1767. 
It consists of Recitatives and Airs, 
with a couple of Choruses. For 
the Airs the words of the original 
are recast in short lines in a lyrical 
form ; the following is a specimen, 
corresponding to //• 113 foil, of 



the Lycidas I 

How well could I have spared for thee 
The Swains, who lean and flashy Songs 
Grate on their Pipes of wretched Straw I 

The sheep look up and are not fed, 
But swoln with the rank Mist they draw. 

Rot and the foul contagion spread — 
Not so thy Flocks, O Shepherd dear ; 
Not so thy Songs, O Muse most rare ! 

For the credit of the play-going 
public of the last century it is to be 
hoped that this piece 'met with all 
the success it deserved* 



viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

to get some idea of the purpose and character of the 
Lycidas and the Epitaphium Danuniis before entering 
upon a critical examination of them. With the former 
of these all Englishmen, who have even a moderate 
knowledge of the poetry of their own country, are 
probably more or less familiar; the latter is perhaps 
known only by name to many a student of Milton, 
whose acquaintance with him is confined to the English 
poems. All such will unite with me in grateful acknow- 
ledgments to Professor Masson for having rescued this 
touching el^y from its partial obscurity, by his notice 
of it as illustrating one of the most affecting passages in 
the early life of our great poet, and by his admirable 
translation into English hexameters, which by his kind 
permission I have been enabled to insert in this volume. 
And here, while I most gladly admit my many obliga- 
tions to that eminent biographer of Milton, perhaps it is 
only fair to myself to say that the idea of including the 
Epitaphium was conceived by me long before the publi- 
cation of his second volume. It was added not only 
because of the similarity of its subject and occasion to 
those of the Lycidas^ but also from a belief that the 
study of Milton's Latin poetry, considered as a more or 
less successful imitation of ancient models, would prove 
eminently useful to those who are far enough advanced 
in scholarship to be able to translate the classical authors 
themselves with some degree of ease and fluency. Such 
a study, by way of occasional exercise, would be no bad 
training for young scholars in our public schools and 
elsewhere, if they came to the task furnished with some 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. ix 

previous knowledge of the matter of the poems, such as 
the present edition supplies in the case of the Epitaphium 
Damanis. Here therefore the notes have been made as 
concise as possible ; since I thought it unnecessary to 
dwell upon ordinary points of grammar, except where 
some unusual or doubtful construction might call for 
remark, and since I had explained many of the allusions 
in my previous commentary upon the Lycidas, As the 
greater number of the references are to Viigil and 
Theocritus, whose works every scholar is supposed to 
possess, I have not generally cited the passages in 
extenso ; but in annotating the Lycidas some discretion 
has been exercised in this matter. Quotations from 
Latin, Greek, and sometimes from Italian authors, are 
mostly given in the original. In a few cases I have 
attempted a translation, where the point of the reference 
lay in the matter of the extract, and hot in the gram- 
matical form of expression. 

In commenting upon both poems, I have tried to 
state clearly and without reserve the conflicting opinions 
of former editors upon disputed passages, fairly balancing 
the evidence and giving what I considered adequate 
reasons for choosing or rejecting any particular inter- 
pretation. In one or two instances I have been un- 
willingly compelled to leave the question doubtful, and 
in one at least (see note on Lycidas, 163) it^was felt 
necessary to return to an older explanation, in spite of 
the fact that all recent editors have adopted the new 
one.^ In every case I have aimed at so much conciseness 
as was compatible with a thorough examination of each 

* See, however, Pre&ce to the Second Edition. 



X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

point under discussion ; for although I quite agree with 
Mr. Keightley* that brevity in a note is a thing most 
desirable, I know that it is highly unsatisfactory to the 
reader to find a difficulty unexamined or passed over, 
and to be put off with the ipse dixit of a commentator, 
when he expects, if not a solution of the matter in 
dispute, at least an impartial statement of diverse views. 
Besides supplying what is barely necessary for under- 
standing the author's meaning, I have sought to give 
collateral information on points of English grammar and 
etymology, illustrated by references and quotations, and 
also to exhibit from certain lines in the Lycidas (espe- 
cially //. 113 foil.) Milton's relation to the history and 
religious opinions of his time. To avoid needlessly 
encumbering the notes, the bulk of such information 
has been placed in two Appendices at the end of the 
poem* 

Among the various books consulted, I may mention 
the following : — 

1. The editions of Milton's poems by Newton, War- 
ton, and Todd, chiefly useful for references ; also, 
Keightle/s edition of 1859, and that by Mr. Browne, 
published in the Clarendon Series, 1870. The respective 
merits of all these are noticed in the Introduction (pp. 

38-9). 

2. Dictionaries of all kinds, English and foreign (in- 
cluding the latest edition of Johnson by Latham, and 
Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology ^ 1872), 

> Preface to his Edition of Milton's Poems, 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xi 

with other works, such as Earle's Philology of the Eng- 
lish Tongue, Morris's Outlines of English Accidence, 
Marsh's Lectures on the English Language, &c. &c. 

3. Masson's Life of Milton (to which I have already- 
referred), Hallam's History of Literature, Warton's His^ 
tory of English Poetry, Scott's Critical Essays (1785), 
and several minor works bearing on the subjects under 
review. 

As regards the text and various readings, I am 
greatly indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Aldis Wright, 
of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has been good 
enough to collate for me the MS. of Lycidas with Todd's 
list of readings and with the first printed editions, veri- 
fying all, and amending a few which that editor had 
incorrectly or insufficiently given. 

I have also much pleasure in acknowledging my 
obligations to my friend, the Rev. James Moore, M.A., 
late Vicar of All Saints, Liverpool, for his careful re- 
vision of the MS. while it was in progress, for his help 
in arranging the materials of my Introduction, and for 
many valuable suggestions throughout the work. 

Once or twice reference has been made to a certain 
Epitaph, which (as many readers may remember) was 
found by Professor Morley written in MS. at the end of 
a copy of the 1645 edition of Milton's poems, preserved 
in the King's Library of the British Museum. Not 
wishing to commit myself to an opinion either way upon 
the authorship of this poem, I have designated it simply 
as the Miltonic Epitaph. The whole story of its recovery 
and the arguments on Professor Morley's side of the con- 



xii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

troversy are given in his Introduction to The King and 
the Commons y published in 1869. At present the question 
is generally supposed to be settled against the Miltonic 
authorship, by the decision of those experts who assert 
that the handwriting is not Milton's, nor the signature 
J. M. There is at all events no dispute as to the date, 
which is 1647, ^nd I have merely cited the poem as the 
work of a contemporary writer, and as undoubtedly 
' Miltonic' in style and expression. 

The Latin paraphrase of the Lycidas^ by W. Hogg, 
is inserted at the suggestion of Mr. F. A. Paley of Cam- 
bridge, who has recently published a translation of the 
same poem. In his preface he alludes to Hogg's version 
of 1694, but regrets that he was unable to meet with a 
copy of it There is a copy, possibly unique, of this para- 
phrase in the Library of the British Museum, preserved in 
a miscellaneous collection of pieces, chiefly of the i8th 
century. Most of the poems are in English, but one 
of them is a Latin version of the First Book of the 
Paradise Losty by an unknown author, dated 1685. 
Hogg's translation is preceded by some Latin Elegiacs, 
In Laudem Academics CantabrigiensiSy not worth preserv- 
ing, with a dedication to the Earl of Mulgrave. There 
is also an English address 'to the Reader,' explaining 
the circumstances of King's death, and of the production 
of the commemoratory verses (see Introduction^ p. 2). 
Part of this address is worth quoting on account of 
its quaintness. * Now he [Edward King] was a Person 
generally beloved in his Life, which made him so much 
lamented at his Death; which occasioned several Students 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xiii 

to pen lamentations on his Death,* among whom was this 
Milton and Clieveland. I was desired by others to make 
these two Translations, which was the occasion that I 
penned them. I was advised to put them in the Press, 
and that which encouraged me to adventure to do it was 
hopes that ingenious Gentlemen will communicate tokens 
of their kindness to me, for at this time my necessity is 
very great. These Poems will afford a high and innocent 
Recreation.* A version of Clieveland's elegy is, as the 
Latin title indicates, included in the volume ; but I have 
not thought it worth while to feprint this in addition. 

The English translation of the Epitaphium Damonis^ 
by Dr. Symmons, is to be found in the Life of Milton 
appended to his edition of the Prose Works (1806). It 
is a fair specimen of the artificial literary style which 
prevailed during the i8th centurj^ ; and it may be inter- 
esting to some readers to compare it with the version by 
Professor Masson, for the sake of contrast and variety. 

' The italics are mine. 



WooDCOTE House, Windlesham : 
May 1874. 



CONTENTS. 

PA6S 

Preface ••••••••«•.¥ 

Introduction i 

Lycidas • . • • 47 

Idem Latine redoitum a Gulielmo HoCiEO • • . loi 

Epitaphium Damonis 109 

Translated by Dr. STMUfONs 126 

The Same by Professor Masson • 13^ 



INTRODUCTION. 



-•©•- 



The occasion which led to the production of the Lyddas is 
stated in the following heading prefixed to the poem by Milton 
himself I ' In this monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, 
unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish 
seas, 1637, and by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted 
Clergy, then in their height* 

This friend was Edward King, son of Sir John King, who was 
Secretary for Ireland under Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. 
He was bom at Boyle, Co. Roscommon ; admitted as a lesser 
pensioner of Chrisfs College, Cambridge, at the age of four- 
teen, with his brother Roger aged sixteen, in 1626, Milton's 
third year, imder the same tutor Chappell {Lye, 36) ; and made 
Fellow by a royal mandate, dated June 10, 1630 — an honour 
which Milton himself might well have expected. During his 
residence at Cambridge he wrote several copies of Greek and 
Latin verses {Lye, 10) on special occasions, which are of no 
great merit, and was destined for holy orders {Lye, 113 folL). 
It would appear that by his moral worth and gentle bearing he 
had won the esteem of all his associates, though nothing is 
known of Milton's relations with him during their academic 
career, beyond what we gather from the poem before us. On 
August 10, 1637, as King was crossing from Chestfer to Dublin 
to visit his friends in Ireland (among whom was Chappell, now 
Dean of Cashel and Provost of Trinity College), the ship 
struck on a rock ofif the Welsh coast, and all on board are said 
to have perished {Lye, 100). Accounts however vary about 
this, for Todd quotes from a preface by W. Hogg (1694), 

B 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

>(whose Latin version of the Lycidas is included in this volume) 
a statement tiiat ' some escaped in the boat/ and that they 
vainly tried to get King into it, so that he and the rest were 
drowned, * except those only who escaped in the boat* We 
do not know whence Hogg got this story : the. authorised 
preface to the Cambridge verses of 1638 says, * Dum alii vec- 
tores vitae mortalis frustra satagerent,' which seems to imply 
that they all perished, though * alii ' (not being celeri) does not 
necessarily mean this. The inscription goes on to say that 
King was in the act of prayer when the ship went down — a fact 
which could not have been known unless some one had sur- 
vived to tell the tale. He was then aged twenty-five. : Milton 
does not mention King's death in either of his .letters to 
Diodati (Sept 2 and 23, 1637) ; but later in Michaelmas Term 
he joined with other friends of the deceased in writing a series 
of memorial verses. He was then at Horton, where he also 
wrote the Sonnet to a Nightingale (1633), L Allegro and II Pen- 
serosOf Arcades and Cotnus (1634). The Lycidas is signed 
J. M., Nov. 1637 (but the Cambridge verses appeared early in 
the next year), and was republished with his fuU name and the 
titie * Poems on Several Occasions' in 1645, when the heading 

* In this monody, &c* was for the first time added. The whole 
collection had twenty-three Latin and Greek pieces and thir- 
teen English, of which Lycidas came last : the first are entitled 
^Edvardo King naufrago ab amicis moerentibus, amoris et 
fjLViias xapiv^^ with the motto Sirecte calctdum ponas^ ubique nau- 
frapum est. Among other names are Henry King, brother 
of Edward, and Beaumonj of Peterhouse, afterwards better 
known. The verses are not worth preserving — a * poetic 
canaille^* as Professor Masson calls them. 

The name * Lycidas ' was a common one with the ancient 
bucolic poets, but perhaps the Seventh Idyll of Theocritus 
was especially in Milton's mind when he adopted it The mon- 
ody is cast in a form commonly known and designated as the 

* pastoral ; ' it is not, however, strictly speaking, a pastoral, but 
a poem descriptive of college life under an allegory drawn from 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

that of shepherds. It is well to make this distinction at the: 
outset, in order to have some grounds for defending Milton 
against the charge of confusion and incongruity which certain 
critics (and notably Dr. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets) have 
laid against him. The exact value of such criticism^ as applied 
to the Lycidasy will be discussed in its proper place ; here it is 
enough to say that whatever may be the faults of the poem on 
this score (including the crowning one of all — the introduction 
of the Christian pastor side by side with the ideal shepherd), 
confusion of this kind did not begin with Milton, but had been 
the common practice of his predecessors in a style of composi- 
tion which had long been degenerating from its primitive state 
of simplicity, and had now become an allowed medium for 
expressing opinions upon any sort of subject that might be 
present in the poet's mind. A brief review of pastoral poetry 
in its various stages from the time of Theocritus will best show 
how this change was brought about. 

• There is no reason for refusing the claims of the S3rracusan 
bard to the honour of having originated this kind of poetry, if 
only we are careful to distinguish the pastoral of real life, such 
as the shepherds loved to practise in early times, from the artifi- 
cial drafts of professed poets who made rural themes a vehicle 
for their imagination. Among these last we do not know for 
certain that Theocritus had any predecessors whose names can 
worthily be coupled with his own. Naeke (Opuscula Philo- 
iogicaj vol. i. p. 162) draws a good distinction between the old 
pastoral life and manners, which existed in the first ages of the 
world, and the artificial description of them which we call 
'pastoral poetry.' He maintains that speculations, such as 
those prefixed to -the Idylls on the origin of the pastoral,* really 

* The Scholia on Theocritus (ed. their own fashion ; hence bucolic 

Ziegler, 1867) say that, after some poetry had its beginning. Also that 

civil discord at Syracuse, the citizens they afterwards continued the custom 

held a festival to Artemis for having and sang for prizes of loaves and 

brought about a reconciliation, and wallets full of seeds and skins of 

that the rustics presented offerings wine, with crowns on their heads, 

and sang praises to the goddess in and horns on their foreheads, and 

B 2 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

concern the olden times ; but that the pastoral itself had no 
proper existence before Theocritus. He takes no notice of any 
difference between Theocritus and his successors in their method 
of treatment ; and his remarks seem to imply that the Idylls of 
Theocritus were no more a picture of facts than Virgil's Ec- 
logues or the Italian pastorals. It is indeed very hard to 
say how much in Theocritus is literal fact ; but there is the 
plainest evidence that his scenes have been drawn from nature 
and from the shepherd-life of Sicily, and that they are the 
direct and first-hand presentation of actual shepherds singing 
of their flocks and of their loves, poetically but not allegori- 
cally. At the same time, his Idylls bear the trace of Alexan- 
drian refinement, and of having been written, as Naeke says, 
* non ad priscorum hominum ingenium sensumque,' &c, but 
for those * qui tssdio capti aliunde imaginem simplicitatis re- 
vocare student.' It was only natural that in those early times, 
when the conditions of human life were simple and uniform, 
and the shepherd's calling was followed by nearly all classes, 
the long hours of leisure should have been beguiled by song j 
and, as Lucretius * supposes, the whistling of the wind through 
the reeds might have suggested the first rude shepherd's pipe. 
Various degrees of skill would engender competition, and for 
this the rural festivities of Pan or Ceres would aflford grand 
^opportunities of display, which is probably the reason why the 
oldest theories on the subject ascribe the origin of pastoral 
poetry to such occasions. In course of time the best specimens 
would become known beyond the original rustic circle, and so 
professional poets began to adopt a similar mode of expression; 



crooks in their hands. The above 
is stated as *the true account' ; 
some, however, maintain that pas- 
toral poetry arose at Sparta during 
the Persian war, at a similar festival 
of Artemis and in a similar way ; 
while others place its origin as far 
back as the time of Orestes, when 
he returned from Tauri with the 
image of Artemis and crossed from 



Rhegium to Tyndaris in Sicily, 
whereat the inhabitants sang praises 
to Artemis in their own rustic style, 
and thus gave rise to a regular 
custom. 

* * Et zephyri cava per calamorum 
sibila primum 
Agrestes docuere cavas inflare 
cicutas.* — LucR. 5, 1382 foil. 



INTRODUCTION. 



hence soon arose a distinct school of poetry, in which the poet 
and his friends are introduced in the dramatic form of shepherds, 
telling of their flocks and herds, their rustic amours, and the 
joys of a country life.* 

But pastoral poetry was not destined to remain long in 
this state of uniform simplicity. The real and the dramatic 
characters soon became blended into one, and the shepherd 
was identified with the poet. Even in Theocritus we see the 
beginnings of this very natural confiision, for in the seventh 
Idyll the swain Simichidas professes his inferiority to Philetas 
and Asclepiades, actual poets of the day and the instructors of 
Theocritus, who, in fact, introduces himself under the name of 
Simichidas ; but this Idyll is the only one which contains per- 
sonal allusions to the poet, and in which real and imaginary 
names are intermingled. Passing on to the 'Enra^ioc B/wvoc 
of Moschus, we find the same phenomenon more apparent ; for 
there not only is the deceased bard lamented by name in the 
midst of a highly allegorical passage, and the real cause of his 
death by poison nakedly stated, but so transparent is the veil of 
pastoral allegory which disguises the personality of the poet, 
that Bion is represented as piping to his flocks and milking his 
goats at the same time that he is compared with Homer, Hesiodj 
and Pindar, with his own master Theocritus, and even with 
Moschus himself, in language which expressly intimates that 
something like a school of bucolic poetry was even thus early 
establishing itself in Sicily. Whether such an idea ever had 
any recognised existence, or had reached any degree of ma- 
turity during the period of 200 years that intervened between 
Theocritus and Virgil, is a question we have no means of de- 
ciding ; suflice it to say that in the time of the latter poet the 
terms ^ Sicilian ' and ' Syracusan ' had come to be used as dis- 
tinctive literary epithets of pastoral song (Virgil, Ed, iv. i ; 



' At secura quies et nescia fallere 
vita. 
Dives opum variarum, at latis 
otia mndis .... 



Mugitusque bourn mollesque 

sub arbore somni 
Non absunt.' — Virg. (r. iL 

467. 



6 INTRODUCTION'. 

vi. i). ThiiS fact of itself shows how conventional the method of 
treating the subject had now become, and also prepares us for 
what we actually find when we examine the Eclogius of Virgil* 
The pastoral, which was at first a true and simple inspiration of 
nature, was already passing into an artificial stage in which it 
became the mouth-piece of general poetic utterance, and not 
seldom a mere toy for tiros in verse, * as young birdes, that be 
newly crept out of the nest, by little first prove theyr tender 
wyngs, before they make a greater flyght' * Such a fate indeed 
it was only too certain to incur when once it had taken its 
regular place in literature and lost its original simplicity. The 
poets who adopted the new fashion, though they assumed the 
character of shepherds, yet failed to attain the true pastoral re- 
sult, since neither their own inclination nor surrounding influ- 
ences favoured a consistent treatment. But in Virgil first of 
all the unreality and confusion of subject-matter and the 
general departure from primitive simplicity begin to be most 
conspicuous. His Eclogues are close imitations, often literal 
translations, of Theocritus ; and in them we find the Greek 
pastoral applied to Roman life, and the scenery of Sicily trans- 
ferred to the Mantuan district. Also the persistency with 
which shepherds bearing Greek names talk of Rome and the 
things of Rome, and adapt not only the pastoral imagery but 
even the very circumstances of the Idylls of Theocritus to the 
every-day occupations of Roman life, seems to prove that 
Virgil not merely recognised the Greek pastoral as the source 
of his inspiration, but sought to invest Theocritus himself with 
a Latin dress. And in numerous passages we cannot help see- 
ing that he has allowed his excessive fondness of imitation to 
cramp his native originality, and to close his eyes to the open 
face of nature. At Rome Greek literature was a beau idkal of 
excellence, and Greek models were accepted as supreme ; so 
that an aptness for appl3dng the matter no less than the metre 



' Spenser, Epistle to GoMeil in his Introduction to Viigil*s Bu' 
Harvey (quoted also by Conington colics). 



INTRODUCTION. f 

of Greek poetry to Roman uses did not in those days appear 
to derogate in the least from the character of originality. 
Nevertheless Virgil, though he lived and breathed so fully in the 
atmosphere of Greece, and reproduced with such exactness the 
tastes and impressions he had there imbibed, copied as one 
who brought with him native insight and vision, and had the 
power of impressing his own stamp upon much that he had 
gathered from others. The confusion of the pastoral may be 
considered as fully developed in the Eclogues, though often- 
times so perfect is the poet's art, and so exquisite his grace, 
that we may be led to forget or even to reconcile ourselves to 
what he has done in this direction. Henceforth pastoral poetry 
is no more than a particular mode of poetical expression, and 
has nothing in common with Theocritus beyond its outside 
form.^ It seems strange indeed that a people like the Romans, 
claiming descent from a pastoral ancestry and nursed by a 
regular recurrence of festivals in pastoral recollections, should 
afterwards have been almost wholly indifferent to the cultivation 
of this class of poetry ; yet the later Roman bucolic poets, 
such as Calpumius and Nemesianus, occupy but a low place 
among the post- Augustan authors, and need only be mentioned 
as specimens to show how little regard was paid to the Pastoral 
for some time after the days of Virgil. Their poetry, which 
invests political subjects with a pastoral dress, is miserably un- 
real, and, though obviously Viigilian in its style and aim, is 
wholly destitute of the master's power and elegance. It may 
be interesting to notice here in passing an eclogue (Omflidus 
Verts et HiemiSy sive Cuculus) by the Venerable Bede, which 
was one of the few and scattered pastoral remmiscences during 
the long and dreary period which intervened between the old 
and the new epochs of literature. 

From what has been said it appears that there may be two 
kinds of pastoral — one real and the other allegorical : the first 

* For a fuller and nearly exhaust- critus, see Conington's Introduction 
ive criticism of Virgil's Ech^ues, in to the Bucolics^ in yoL i. of his 
their relation to the JdyUs of Theo- edition of Virgil, 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

gives an actual representation of rural life in any country what- 
ever, such as we partially find in the Idylls of Theocritus, 
while among our own poets perhaps Ben Jonson, in his Sad 
Sheph^d, has approached most nearly to this primitive type. 
The second class is represented by Spenser and his con- 
temporaries, its object being to disentangle the poet fh)m all 
local and surrounding associations, and to place him in such a' 
state of ideal freedom as shall afford full scope for his imagina- 
tion. For this the fiction of some Arcadia, a kind of visionary 
land, was most suitable, where the poet, in shepherd guise, 
could adapt to his purpose as much of pastoral life as he saw 
fit. And although Spenser, in the opening lines of the Faery 
Queen^ gives notice of changing his ' oaten reeds for trumpets 
stem,' and for ' knights and ladies gende deeds,' much of the 
pastoral nevertheless shows itself even here. Whatever the theme 
might be, it was thrown by the poetical fashion of the time 
into an imaginary world, and an ideal scene was fitted to it 

The earliest modem pastorals are Portuguese,^ in or even 
before the fourteenth century. They mainly deal with the 
passion of love in its relation to the ideal felicity of shepherd 
life. Spain followed in the same course; but the adoption of 
the fashion by the Italians, whose language was more widely 
known, started an epoch of great popularity for this kind of 
composition in Europe. Sannazaro wrote his Arcadia in 1502, 
and the Piscatory Eclogues^ which are in Latin and very 
Virgilian, appeared about 1520. Soon afterwards began the 
regular pastoral drama, of which // Sagrifizio of Beccari, in 
i554> ^''^s the first specimen. This, as Hallam thinks, may 
have been suggested by the * Sicilian Gossips ' {Adoniazusa) of 
Theocritus, where there is the germ of a dramatic action in the 
dialogue. George de Montemayor, who, by his Diatuiy made 

' Except the French /Ar/ifwr(p//e'j, toral is narrow, Sannazaro tried to 

which were love dialogues in aher> vary his imagery by depicting the sea 

nate stanzas and in pastoral cha- and fishermen ; but the sea having 

racter. less variety than the land, and being 

2 Dr. Johnson {Rambler^ '750) less known to the generality of men, 

observes that, as the range of pas- is therefore less fit for pastoral. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

tljLis kiild of poetry fashionable in Spain, followed Sannazaro, 
but improved upon him by giving more variety, more passion, 
more reasoning, and a more connected story. Then followed 
Lope de Vega with his Arcadia^ about the end of the sixteenth 
century. Towards 1580 came Tasso's Aminta, and in 1585 
Guarini's Pastor FidOy containing musical choruses, * the pro- 
totypes of the Italian Opera which added recitatives to the 
choruses.' 

In 1690 the Society of Arcadians was founded at Florence 
by CrescentinL They assumed all the accessories of Greek 
pastoral, and took as their device the pipe of seven reeds 
bound with laurel \ and theirpresident was designated 'custode 
generale.' * Their influence was great in purifying the national 
taste ; and though the poetry rather lacked power of feeling, its 
natural imagery and pastoral character have invested it with a 
charm and beauty which to the imaginative reader is quite 
irresistible. From Italy the fashion passed to England about 
the sixteenth century, when travel led the way to knowledge, 
and translations began to be made. Though the influence of 
Italian poetry upon English literature goes back at least to 
Chaucer, who translated many lines from the Italian, and pro- 
bably borrowed his Falamon and Arcite and his Troilus from 
the Theseida and Filostrato of Boccaccio respectively, yet it was 
not till much later that Italian poets and romances were popu- 
larly known in avowed translations. Ascham, in his Scholemaster 
(1589), complains of them as * carrying the will to vanitie and 
marring good manners.' Boccace's uQvels were translated by 
W. Paynter in 1566, and Burton, in his Afiatomy of Melancholy ^ 
mentions the reading aloud of them as a winter evening's 
diversion. A translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso by 
Harvington appeared in 1590, and one of Tasso's GerusaUmme 
Liberata^ probably by Carew, in 1593. 

The first English pastorals were Barkley's Eclogues (15 14), 
chiefly moral and satirical, with little rural scenery. They were 

' From Hallam's History of European Literature^ vol. ii. 



lO 



INTRODUCTION. 



modelled on Petrarch's XII. Eclogues (1350), which were the 
first modem Latin bucolics, and on Mantuan (1402). And 
these modem Latin pastorals became so much admired that a 
collection of thirty-eight of them was printed at Basel in 1546. 
Mantuan was read and taught as a classic : see Shaksp., Lovis 
Labour Losty iv. 2, where Holofemes quotes a line of his and 
says, *• Old Mantuan 1 old Mantuan ! who understandeth thee 
not loves thee not' In 1563 came Googe's Eglogs} Epitaphs^ 
and Sonnets y and this abundance of pastorals is probably trace- 
able to the fascination of the Italian poets. Spenser's Eclogue 
December is a literal rendering from the French of Clement 
Marot (Warton's Hist of English Poetry ^ and Critique on the 
Faery Queen.) 

In the Elizabethan age pastoral poetry was a popular 
delight. Bishop Hall, Prologue to Satires^ 1597, exclaims — 

Would ye but breathe within a wax-bound quiU, 
Pan's sevenfold pipe, some plaintive pastoral ; 

and in his first satire he complains that he cannot 

Under everie bank and everie tree 
Speak rimes unto mine oaten minstrelsie. 

In his History of English Poetry Warton remarks : * This fami-^ 
liarity with the pagan story was owing to the numerous English 
versions of them. Translations occupied every pen, and 
acquired a general notoriety. Learned allusions were no 
longer obscure ' to common readers ; but their extravagances 



' Petrarch introduced the form 
j^^gue for EcloguCy imagining the 
word to be derived from 3^ {aiy6s\ 
* a goat,' and to mean * die con- 
versation of goatherds.' But, as 
Dr. Johnson observes in his Lijfe of 
A. Philips^ it could only mean ' the 
talk of goats. ^ Such a compound, 
however, could not even exist, as it 
would be al7o-Xo7fa, if anything. 
Ecloga {iK-Kaiyai) of course mean 
simply Selected Pieces, a name 



afterwards given to the poems which 
Virgil himself called by the de- 
scriptive name Bucolica, 

* The chief translations of the 
classics after 1550 are Virgil's 
^mid, by Phaier (1558) ; byStani- 
hurst (1583) ; the Culex^ by Spenser 
(1 591); Ovid's Metamorpkosesy by 
Golding (1565) ; Epistles, by Tur- 
berville (1567); Tristia, by Church- 
yard (1580); Horace's .£^/i^ and 
Satires, by Drant (1567) ; Homer, 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

x^ert imitated, and not their natural beauties.' Again : * When 
the queen paraded through a country town, almost every 
pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house 
of any of her nobility, on entering the hall she was saluted by 
the Penates, and conducted to her privy chamber by Mercury. 
* . . At dinner select transformations of Ovid's Ms/a- 
morphoses were exhibited in confectionery. . . . When 
she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered 
with Tritons and Nereids ; the pages of the family were con- 
verted into wood nymphs, who peeped from every bower, and 
the footmen gambolled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs.^ 
. . . When her majesty hunted in the park, she was 
met by Diana, who, pronouncing our royal prude to be the 
brightest paragon of imspotted chastity, invited her to groves 
free from the intrusions of Actseon. ... In one of the 
fulsome interludes at court, the singing boys of her chapel pre- 
sented the story of the three rival goddesses on Mount Ida, to 
which her majesty was ingeniously added as a fourth ; and 
Paris was arraigned in form for adjudging the golden apple to 
Venus, which was due to the queen alone.' (Warton's Hist, of 
Eng, Poetry^ ed. 1824, voL iv* p. 323.) 

Besides the classics and the Italian tales, Gothic romance 
still held its ground. ' Giants, dragons, and enchanted castles, 
borrowed from the magic storehouse of Boiardo, Ariosto, and 
Tasso, began to be employed by the epic muse. The Gothic 
and pagan fictions were blended and incorporated' {ib.) \ and 
we find in Sidney's Arcadia an application of the Italian pas- 
toral to feudal manners, and so fashionable did pastoral 
writings soon become that the language of courtiers wiUi all its 
false and tawdry finery was put into the mouths of simple 
shepherds. Spenser, whose Shtphearcts Calendar (1579) is the 
masterpiece of all pastorals in that age, brought his treatment 
nearer to the truth of nature ; yet the Doric rusticity of the dia- 

by Chapman (1604^14). Queen > See account of the pageant at 

Elizabeth herself translated Seneca's Kenilworth in Scotf s novel of that 
Hercules (Etaus, name. 



I a INTRODUCTION. 

logue is somewhat repulsive to modem ears ; and this, which 
was native to Theocritus, is boirowed, not always ' correctly, by 
his English imitator. 

In 1590 appeared Sidney's Arcadia^ one of the most beau- 
tiful efforts of English fancy in that age — not exactly a pastoral, 
since it has far less to do with shepheids than with courtiers 
and knights, though the idea might have been suggested by the 
popularity of the Diana of Montemayor, to which allusion has 
been already made. In the preface of his edition of the Ar- 
cadia (1867) Mr. Friswell says : * The scene is laid in a fabulous 
and semi-pagan Greece, where young people wander in woods, 
kill lions and bears, fall in love, believe in Christianity and 
heathen gods, wear armour like the Tudor knights, and fight 
with Helots and Lacedaemonians, in a most confusing way.' 
It would now, perhaps, be thought very tedious, but it is less 
pedantic than most books of that time, and its popularity was 
great in the days of Shakspere and for years afterwards 
(Hallam, vol. ii. p. 216). Early in the seventeenth century 
appeared the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher (the forerunner 
of Comus\ Browne's Britannic^ s Pastorals (16 13), also well 
known to Milton, and the Sad Shepherd of Jonson. 

Touching the influence of Spenser on succeeding poetry. 
Professor Masson (vol. i. p. 410 foil.) remarks that about 1630 
there was ' a distinct Spenserian School,' partly of professed and 
partly of unconscious disciples. As the poetry of Spenser is 
* as nearly poetry in its essence as any that ever was,' a resem- 
blance to him was thought a warrant of poetic quality. This 
is seen in Chapman, Jonson, Dra3rton, and others, Shakspere 
being an exception, sui generis^ and of no school But there 
were also those who purposely studied Spenser, made him their 
avowed model, and cultivated his forms of poetry — ^the pastoral 
and tlie descriptive allegory; and among these W. Browne 
and Giles and Phineas Fletcher stand most prominent 

* For the mistakes which Spenser by Skeat on the two concluding 
has made as to the meaning of some eclognesof the .S'A^i^n/'j Calendar, 
of the old words he uses, see notes 



INTRODUCTION. 



13 



Browne's Brit Pastorals (1613-1616) are cast very closely 
in pastoral form, and are a story of shepherds amid scenes of 
English country life, full of luxuriant natural descriptions, with 
only an occasional flight to higher subjects. Spenser is acknow- 
ledged several times by name, but traces of other poets 
(especially of Du Bartas *) may be discerned. The Shep- 
herds Pipe^ of seven eclogues (1614), is a simpler poem, and 
one of equal skill. Of Giles Fletcher there only remains 
Christ s Victory over Death (1610), which is very Spenserian. 
Phineas Fletcher's two great poems are the Piscatory Eclogues^ 
where fishermen take the place of shepherds, and the Purple 
Island^ a poem describing the anatomy of the human body 
under an image indicated by that name. Both were published 
at Cambridge soon after 1632. 

The old criticisms on what the pastoral ought to be may be 
divided into two classes, each of which failed, though in a dif- 
ferent way, of hitting the mark. Those who insisted upon a 
* golden age,' simple manners, mean sentiments, and the like, 
confused the pastoral of real life, which had long ceased to 
exist (if it ever did exist after Theocritus), with the changed 
artificial growth which had sprung out of it. Those on the 
other hand who avoided this particular mistake, but forbade 
all allusions to politics or religion as foreign to the nature of the 
pastoral, forgot that all pastoral poets after Virgil's time had 
admitted such allusions, and by so doing had, as it were, legal- 
ised them ; and these same critics fell into the totally distinct 
error of allowing too wide a definition of this sort of poetry, as 
if any rural poem whatever were ipso facto a pastoral. Having 
briefly drawn this distinction, let us now examine by way of 



> Sylvester translated the Divine 
Weeks and Works of Du Bartas in 
1605, which was very popular till 
1650, but aflerwards ceased to be 
read. When Milton was a boy, 
everybody was reading it. The first 
part of the poem is called *The 
First Week,' or * Birth of the 
World,' and it is divided into seven 



days or cantos. The Second Week 
contains the Bible history as far as 
the Kings and Chronicles, also 
divided into days, each correspond- 
ing to an epoch and headed with a 
name (Adam, Noah, &c.). Four 
days are complete ; the rest are un- 
finished. 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

illustration a few of the opinions of successive critics, remarking 
upon them as we proceed. 

In the Preface to John Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess we 
read : * A pastoral is a representative of shepherds and shep- 
herdesses with their actions and passions, which must be such 
as may agree with their natures \ at least, not exceeding former 
pictures and vulgar traditions. They are not to be adorned with 
any art but such as nature is said to bestow, such as singing and 
poetry, or such as experience may teach them, as the virtues of 
herbs, &c' Again, Drayton, in his Preface to the Pastorals^ 
observes : ' The subject of pastoral, as the language of it, ought 
to be poor, silly, and of the coarsest woof in appearance, yet the 
highest and noblest matters of the world may be shadowed forth 
in them. The chief law of pastoral is decorum^ and that not to 
be exceeded without leave, or, at least, fair warning.' Pope, 
in the Introduction to his Pastorals (1704), gives a rksume of 
the opinions of preceding critics, the chief of which are that 
' Pastoral is an image of the golden age,' so that ideal and not 
actual shepherds have to be described. The principal points 
to be observed are ' simplicity, brevity, and delicacy.' * The 
fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic, the 
thoughts plain — ^the expression humble, yet as pure as the 
language will afford, neat but not florid, easy yet lively.' The 
joyous side of shepherd life and not the miseries should be 
shown.. The Eclogues should be various, each having its own 
particular beauties. In the Guardian (17 13) pastoral poetry 
is spoken of as describing a state of early innocence and joy, 

* where plenty begot pleasure, and pleasure begot singing, and 
singing begot poetry, and poetry begot pleasure again.' Sim- 
plicity must be pourtrayed, but troubles should be concealed, 
except such small annoyances as merely set off the general 
happiness of the 'state. The shepherds need not, however, be 

* dull and stupid ;' they may have *good sense and even wit, 
provided it be not too gallant and refined ;' but they must not 
*make deep reflections,' which are to be left to the reader. 
The reasons why we are pleased with pastoral are threefold— 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

^ love of ease,' * approbation of innocence and simplicity/ and 
* love of the country ; ' and all these are natural to man. Theo- 
critus is the great master of pastoral ; Virgil sacrifices simplicity 
to nobleness and sublimity, and some of his Eclogues are not 
properly pastorals at all. The Italians are ^ fond of surprising 
conceits and far-fetched imaginations,* as is shown in Tasso's 
Aminia and Guarini's Pastor Fido, * The French are so far from 
thinking abstrusely that they often seem not to think at all ;' * they 
fall into the manner of their country, which is gallantry,' and the 
dresses and manners of their shepherds are like those of a court 
and ball-room. The English have too servilely copied the Greek 
and Roman pastorals ; Spenser and A. Philips have succeeded 
best, since they have *not only copied but improved the 
beauties of the ancients.' The manner of the ancients should 
be followed, but deviations as to climate, customs, and the soil 
and its products, are to be recommended. The theology of 
the Pagan pastoral may be retained, where * universally known; 
and all else should be made up of our own rustical superstition 
of fairies, goblins, &c. — since no man can be delighted with the 
imitation of what he is ignorant of.' On April 27, 1713 
(Guardian, No. 40), appeared a mock comparison of Philips's 
with Pope's Pastorals, really written by Pope himself, in which 
he gave the palm of superiority to his own poems under pre- 
tence of preferring those of his rival. The whole production is 
ironical, and it ends by asserting of Pope's Pastorals that ' they 
are by no means pastorals, but something better.! Here we 
must not omit to notice Gay's burlesque pastorals, entitled the 
Shepherds Week, both because many of his remarks, though 
ironically uttered, really bear on the matter before us, and 
because there has been from time to time so much ludicrous 
misconception as to their object and character. We make the 
following extracts from the Proeme to the Shepherd's Week, 
which appeared in 17 14: 'Great marvel hath it been that in 
this our island of Britain no poet hath hit on the right simple 
eclogue after the true ancient guise of Theocritus before this 
mine attempt • . • My love to my country much pricketh me 



i6 



INTRODUCTION. 



forward to describe aright the manners of our own honest 
ploughmen ; albeit not ignorant am I what a rout and rabble- 
ment of critical gallimawiry hath been made by certain young 
men concerning I wist not what Golden Age and other out- 
rageous conceits to which they wQuld confine pastoral. This 
idle, trumpeiy unto that ancient Doric shepherd Theocritus 
was never known. It is therefore my purpose to set forth 
before thee a picture of thy own coimtry. . . . Thou wilt not 
find mv shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking 
the kine, tying up the sheaves. Sec Spenser I must acknow- 
ledge a bard of sweetest memorial; yet hath his shepherd's 
boy at times raised his rustic reed to rh3nnes more rumbling 
than rural. Diverse grave points hath he also handled of 
churchly matter, to great clerks only appertaining. His names 
[are] indeed right simple and meet for the country (Lobbin, 
Cuddy, &c.), some of which I have made bold to borrow. . . . 
The language of my shepherds is such as is neither spoken by 
the country maiden nor the courtly dame, having too much of 
the country to be fit for the court, too much of the court to be 
fit for the country. . . . But here again much comfort ariseth 
in me from the hopes that some lover of simplicity shall arise 
who shall render these mine eclogues into such more modem 
dialect as shall be then understood.' ^ 

In the pieces which follow, Ga)r's object was to ridicule pas- 
toral itself by presenting a homely and often coarse picture of 
rustic life as a set-off against the * golden age ' view we have 
mentioned ; and in doing so he claims simply to be going back 
to Theocritus, the fountain-head of all bucolic poetry, who 
was himself faithful to nature. Nor can it be denied that Gay 



* Dr. Johnson {Ltff of Gay) says 
that Pope *is supposed to have 
incited Gay to write the Shepherd? s 
Week^ to show that, if it be neces- 
sary to copy nature with minute- 
ness, rural life must be exhibited 
such as grossness and ignorance have 
made it. The Pastorals are intro- 
duced by a Proeme, written in imi- 



tation of obsolete language. But 
the effect of reality and truth be- 
came conspicuous, even when the 
intention was to show them grovel- 
ling and degraded. These Pastorals 
became popular, and were read with 
delight by those who had no interest 
in the rivalry of the poets, nor 
knowledge of the critical dispute.' 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

does in this respect present us niath a superficial copy of his 
alleged model in almost everything but the ridiculous names 
(Blowselinda, Bowsybseus, &c.) he gives to some of his charac- 
ters, which are not at all after the style of those adopted by 
Theocritus. How then is it that Gay's pastorals are on the 
whole an evident burlesque, while those of Theocritus are as 
evidently real ? It cannot be merely a question of coarseness 
as contrasted with refinement, for there are indecencies in some 
of the Idylls to which no parallel can be found in the Shep- 
herd*s Week, As a poet of course Theocritus has the ad- 
vantage ; but this does not make all the difference between 
them. The solution seems to be in some way as fol- 
lows. Both poets described actual facts of nu-al life and in 
homely language ; but the kind of rural life Theocritus had to 
describe was very different from that which came under the 
notice of Gay, * Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly 
piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine. tying sheaves,' &c. 
Just so ; but the shepherds of Theocritus did pipe as well as 
milk and bind sheaves ; and if they had not piped, or if no 
shepherds had ever done so, the production which we call 
Pastoral Poetry would never have existed. This does not con- 
sist merely in a description of rustic manners.' To ns it is 
purelyartificial, and has been so in all countries ever since Virgil's 
time ; but to Theocritus and his contemporaries it was a reality 
— a substantially correct reproduction of the doings, feelings, 
occupations, and utterances of the Sicilian shepherds — and 
afterwards but too often an ungainly mimicry of what once had 

' From not observing this fact, From Truth and Nature shall we 
Crabbe made the genuine mistake widely stray 

embodied in the following lines from Where Virgil, not where Fancy, 
his poem The Village (i 783) : — leads the way ? 

• On Mincio's banks in Caesar's Ye^, thus the Muses sing of happy 

bounteous reign, swains. 

If Tityrus found the golden age because the Muses never knew their 

again, pa«» 

Must sleepy baids the fUttering By such examples taught I paint 

dreams prolong, "** ^^ 

Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan As Truth will paint it, and as hwrds 



song? 



will not.' 



i8 



INTRODUCTION. 



life and reality. The shepherd's pipe, which was at first real, 
became afterwards a sham ; and the poetiy met with much the 
same fate. Owing to the nature of its climate and its manners, 
England is not a country in which shepherds could practise 
piping and singing like the Dorian swains ; and perhaps neither 
the genius nor the language of the English race would ever have 
fostered anything like the true ancient pastoral amongst us.^ 

Of those critics, who fell into the error of identifying the 
pastoral with rural poetry in general, Dr. Johnson may be 
fairly taken as the representative. In the Rambler he remarks, 
' The true definition of a pastoral is a poem in which any action 
or passion is represented by its effects upon a country life, and 
has nothing peculiar but its confinement to rural imagery, with- 
out which it ceases to be pastoral.' Hence he thinks those 
writers are wrong who insist upon a golden age, meanness of 
sentiment and language, and confinement to persons of low 
rank.* Still the interest should be centred in rural life, and 
therefore should not contain allusions to the Church or State, 
or * lamentations on the death of some illustrious person, whom 
when once the poet has called a shepherd he has no longer 
any labour upop his hands, but can make the lilies wither and 
the sheep hang their heads, without any art or learning, genius 
or study.' On the misconception involved in refusing to admit 
political allusions into the pastoral we have already remarked 
(p. 13) ; that there is the essence of truth in the last quoted 
sentence (piinus the sarcasm) every reader will allow. We will 
close this part of our subject by citing a still more sarcastic 



* * In England every poet who 
has tried to play on the Doric pipe 
has sounded a false note. There is 
nothing in our damp island atmo- 
sphere, or in our own character, to 
favour that easy, contented, grass- 
hopper life which still marks the 
peoples of the South.* — Quarterly 
Review^ July 1S73. 

-He instances *the Dorick' of 
Spenser's ShepheartPs Calendar^ * a 



mangled dialect which no human 
being could ever have spoken," and 
quotes the opening of the 9th. 
Eclogue, — 

* Diggon Davie ! I bidde her god 

daye; 
Or Diggon her is, or I missaye,* &c. 

— which Pope affected to admire in 
his ironical essay in the Guardian^ 
No. 40. 



INTRODUCTION, ?9 

utterance of the same critic, in his life of A. Philips (1781), 
which nevertheless gives us a perfectly true account of the 
reasons why the writing of pastorals became so fashionable. 
'At the revival of learning in Italy, it was soon discovered 
that a dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with 
little difficulty; because the conversation of shepherds excludes 
profound or refined sentiment, and for images and descriptions 
satyrs, fauns, &c., were always within call ; and woods, rivers, 
&c., supplied variety of matt^, which having a natural power to 
soothe the mind did not quickly cloy it* Add to this the well- 
known charms of the country and its associations, and the 
relief which these afford from the turmoils of life, to the 
imagination at least, if not always in reality, and we shall cease 
to wonder at the vitality of a species of composition which 
held its ground for so many centuries, though it has now, 
perhaps for ever, passed away. 

Hence it will appear that even if Lyddas were a formally 
cast Pastoral, ample license by precedents would be allowed 
for the method in which Milton has treated his subject We 
are now in a position to consider a few of the criticisms which 
have been passed upon the poem itself. . That of Dr. Johnson 
in his Lives of the Poets is the best known and the most 
unfavourable of all. In his Life of Milton he writes : — * The 
diction is harsh, the rh)nnes uncertain, and the numbers un- 
pleasing . • . . ^ not the effusion of real passion, 
which runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions* 

, Where there is leisure for fiction there is little 

grief. No nature, for there is no truth; no 

art, for there is nothing new. Its form is pastoral, easy, vulgar, 

and therefore disgusting When Cowley tells 

Hervey that they studied together, it is easy to suppose how 
much he must miss the companion of his labours; but what 
image of tenderness can be excited by these Hnes : " We drove 

afield, &c."? Though the representation 

may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and 
remote that it is never sought, because it cannot be knowa 

c 2 



30 INTRODUCTION. 

when it is found. Among the flocks, &a, appear the heathen 
deities, Jove, &c. He who thus grieves will excite no sym- 
pathy ; he who thus praises will confer no honour.' Again — 
*With these trifling Actions are mingled the most awful and 

sacred truths The shepherd is now a feeder of 

sheep, and afterwards a superintendent of a Christian flock — 
an approach to impiety of which, however, I believe the writer 

not to have been conscious No man could 

have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure had he not 
known the author.' It should in the flrst place be imderstood 
that in Milton's day English poetry had not been brought 
under the kind of criticism to which it has since been sub- 
jected, and that therefore we must view the Lycidas in relation 
to its age. But whatever incongruities a harsh and prosaic 
test may elicit, other critics even of Dr. Johnson's own time 
have held very different opinions respecting the melody, ten- 
derness, and grandeur of this charming poem.* Thyer (1785) 
observes that * what gives the greatest grace to the whole poem 
is the natural and agreeable wildness and irregularity which 
runs through it, than which nothing could be better suited to 
express the affection which Milton had for his friend. Grief 
is eloquent, but not formal.' Hurd, though he sees * no extra- 
ordinary wildness and irregularity in the conduct of this little 
poem,' remarks, * There is a very original air in it, owing not 
to disorder in the plan, but to the variety of the metre. Milton's 
ear was a good second to his imagination.' On Johnson's com* 
parison of Lycidas with Cowley's El^^ Scott {Critical Essays^ 
1785) says, 'Cowley speaks of Hervey in propria persona ^ 
Milton is pro tern, a, rustic poet' Hence the images of the one 
are drawn from the study, those of the other from the field. 
* Whatever pathos there is in either results from the recollection 
of fiiendship terminated by death.' The comparison of Milton 
with Cowley is about as unfortunate as any that could have 

> See collection of criticisms in tondiing th^ alleged insincerity of 
the editions of Warton and Todd. Milton's sorrow is given iVurther oa 
The answer of Professor Masson (p. 30), 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

been made, either as regards true feeling or true poetry. The 
reader may judge for himself by contrasting the following 
extract from the elegy on the Death of Hervey with any corre- 
sponding passage in Lycidas he may choose to select : — 

Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, 
Have ye not seen us walking every day f 
Was there a tree abouty which did not know 

The love betwixt us two ? 
Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade. 

Or your sad branches thicker join. 

And into darksome shades combine. 
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid 

Or again — 

Wondrous young man^ why wert thou made so good 
To be snatched hence, ere better understood f &c. &c. 

But enough of this. We know that Dr. Johnson had no 
genuine appreciation of poetry ; yet his shrewd intelligence 
and the soundness of his judgment on most literary points 
might have enabled him to write a fairer critique of Milton's 
early poems, had not the marked opposition of his religious and 
political principles to those of our author prejudiced his mind 
against the many and thus prevented his forming an impartial 
estimate of the/t7«^, even where the conflict of their respective 
opinions was not concerned. Hallam notes it as remarkable 
that Johnson had before * selected Virgil's loth Eclogue for 
peculiar praise, which belongs to the same class of allegory and 
requires the same sacrifice of reasoning.' As to the second 
objection, it may be urged that though Milton has brought 
together in the same poem heathen and Christian images, he 
has not grouped them confusedly together, nor united them in 
action, but dealt with them in proper succession. The passage 
which treats of the corruption of the clergy in Lycidas is as 
completely isolated as that about the Syrian shepherdess in the 
Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, So in the Nativity 
Hymn the epithet ' Great Pan ' is applied to the new-bom child. 



22 INTRODUCTION, 

just as our Lord is spoken of as * Pan,' in Spenser's 5th and 
7 th eclogues — the sense in which the early Church loved to 
express such words as those of St John x. xi, when on the 
walls of the catacombs the first Christians pictured the Good 
Shepherd. The mingling of sacred and pro&ne allusions 
appears in a more glaring form in such passages as Spenser, 
F, Q. I. X. 53, where Mount Sinai and the Mount of Olives 
are placed with Mount Parnassus ; or in Surre/s Translation 
of ^neid IV., where we have * holy water stocks * in Dido's 
temple, and * nun ' commonly used of a pagan priestess (cf. 
Drayton, Eel. 5, * Diana's nuns ') ; and Shakspere's Midsummer 
Nighfs Dream, i. i, where * nun ' and ' cloister' are mentioned 
along with Diana, Venus, &c * Church ' is used of heathen 
temples (cf. Acts xix. 37), e.g. * Church of Jove' in Marlowe's 
LucaUy and 'Church of Pallas' in Chaucer, who also calls 
Amphiaraus, priest of Apollo, a *• bishop.' It is therefore unfair 
to say that Milton is alone and conspicuous in these irregulari- 
ties. The early Italian poetry also affords frequent instances 
of the intrusion of strictures on the dergy ; the introduction 
of St. Peter in company with Triton and Neptune reminds us 
of Dante's making Cato Uticensis porter of Purgatory, and the 
excuse which has been offered for the one poet may fairly 
enough be urged for the other — ' Per veritk fe im gran capriccio, 
ma in cib segue suo stile.' ^ 

The Lycidas may therefore be described as an allegoric 
pastoral representing College life and friendship, and is cast 
mainly in the form of Greek and Latin pastorals, though the 
scenery is transferred to the British isles. Nowhere is the 
student brought in as such ; nor is the pastoral disguise ever 
dropped, except in the digression upon Fame and in the isolated 
passage about the clergy where another kind of shepherd ap- 
pears upon the scene. Virgil's loth Eclogue is in most points 
similar, even including those few lines (44-49) ^^ which he 
describes Gallus as an actual soldier of the camp in Italy. 

' See Neve's Cursory Remarks on some English Poeis (1789). 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

There is really the same confusion in Lycidas, though its cir- 
cumstances are not quite so incongruous. Lycidas, as a shep- 
herd, had no more to do with a shipwreck than Callus, as a 
shepherd, with the army; but in the former instance the 
pastoral fiction passes more easily into the actual circumstances 
of King's death than in the case of Gallus. The allegory 
proper extends only to King's life and to Milton's connection 
with him, while the catastrophe is given as it actually occurred. 
So in Virgil Lycoris is not represented as an actual shepherdess, 
but is supposed to have literally gone away to the Alps with a 
rival What gives Milton more license in his treatment is the 
fact that Lycidas is not an avowed pastoral, forming one of a 
series of the same kind ; whereas Virgil's loth Eclogue does 
occur in such a connexion and cannot well be separated from 
the rest. Virgil was ostensibly engaged in pastoral compositions 
and introduced the story of Gallus among them j Milton how- 
ever not being previously thus occupied, but starting with a 
desire to celebrate his lost friend's memory, availed himself of a 
form of poetry which was at the time most in vogue. The 
opening lines * show that Milton had not meant to write verse 
again imtil he had attained the full maturity of that poetic power 
which he had long felt within him ; yet the tribute due to his 
deceased friend overcame this resolution, and thus the expres- 
sion of his grief is the pervading thought of the whole. It may 
even be that the fact of King's having been intended for holy 
orders was the starting point whence sprang those well-known 
lines on the English clergy which eventually became the most 
significant part of the poem, and the heading added in 1645 
is an express intimation that Milton intended to give special 
prominence to lines which were originally suggested by his im- 
mediate subject, and in fact only came in by way of digression. 
There are two such digressions in Lycidas (see notes on //. 
85 and 132) — one on Fame, the other on the corruptions of 
the clergy. Touching the first, the consideration of a life 

^ See note on * Once more,' /. i. 



«4 



INTRODUCTION. 



of youthful promise, so suddenly cut short, leads to the reflec- 
tion that after all there may be no use in hum^m labour and 
striving after fame ; but he turns from all this to the lofty truth, 
that the power of faultless discernment and the final meed 
of fame are in the hands of an all-wise and supreme Judge. 
Here Milton has lighted upon a grand fact of humanity which 
cannot be better expressed than in the words of a recent 
writer in the Contemporary Review (April 1872): — 'The 
desire for fame is the craving to be judged fairly ... an 
universal instinct of mankind. Man has a right to a just 
judgment, which is to be welcomed as a privilege. • • • 
Real reputation is the reflection of the glory of God upon, 
the lives of men ; but when men feel they are not appreciated, 
they make their appeal to another life, and daim to stand 
before the eternal judgment-seat' 

The second digression is probably his first definite expression 
of feeling on Church matters, not as yet decidedly anti-episco- 
palian. He simply laments the state of things existing ; but it 
was not till 1641 that he directly ascribed it to the influence of 
prelacy {Reason of Church GovemmefU), The papists ceased 
to be troublesome after the death of Mary of Scotland (1587)^ 
and the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588); but now the 
ultra-Protestant party ' began to desire an advanced reformation, 

having already (1563) attacked the vestments and ceremonies 
of the Reformed Church. Episcopacy was denounced on the 
ground of not being expressly ordered in Scripture, while 
government by elders was held to be divinely appointed.' In 
1593 an Act was passed against Romanists and Puritans equally, 
for non-acceptance of the Lituigy was made equivalent to 



' Walton {Idfi of Hooker) notices 
three parties then in England : *the 
active Romanists, the restless Non- 
conformists, and the passive, peace- 
able Protestants.' The first lost 
power after the death of Mary ; and 
the second he charges with ' an innate 
restless pride and malice^opposition 



to the government and especially to 
the bishops.' 

* On this point see remarks of 
Mr. M. Arnold, in the Comhiii 
Magazine for Feb. 1870, on the 
difference between the Puritan theory 
and that of the Established Qmrchet 
upon Church Government 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

disloyalty. This identification by statute soon led to some 
disaffection, though in Elizabeth's reign the political side of 
Puritanism did not strongly appear, as all parties felt that- their 
strength was bound up with the safety of her person and her 
throne.^ But the character of James I. secured no such 
esteem; and the Puritans began to assume a more decided 
antagonism, both political and religious. The Hampton Court 
Conference (1604) was on the whole unfavourable to their 
party ; the doctrine of the di^dne right of kings was gratifying 
to James, and the two maxims — Le roy s^avisera^ and No bishops 
no king-^^i^rX together. The Millenary Petition was rejected, 
and the 141 Canons ' enforced conformity with great rigour. 
The 'King's Letters' of 1623, for restraining extravagant 
preaching on both sides, fell perhaps more heavily on the Puri- 
tans, with whom a lengthy exposition of doctrine was a sine 
qua non, than on the Prelatists who made this a matter of less 
vital importance, and who were, moreover, content that cate- 
chising on the Sunday afternoons should take the place of 
sermons (see note on /. 125). Charles I. (1625) united the 
pretensions of absolute monarchy with those of a powerful 
hierarchy, and thus Crown and Church were opposed to 
People and Puritans. Church and State questions were more 
closely related than ever ; and the influence, iirst of Bucking- 
ham, and then of Strafford and Laud, tended to the same 
result. The Star Chamber and High Commission Courts went 
hand in hand ; and the resistance of Hampden to an unjust 
impost was almost coincident with the outcry against the new 
lituigy in Scotland. On March 10, 1629, Charles dissolved the 
parliament, and seemed intent on ruling without one. Now 
the struggle began in earnest. For some time there had been 
* an anti-Calvinistic spirit in the English Church, which was 
now spreading among the younger clergy ' (see Masson's Life of 

> See Macaulay, Hist ofEngiandf • nods, Episcopacy, Established Order 

▼oL 1. ch. i. of Services, and condemn all im- 

' The Canons assert Royal Su- pngners of Church order and disci- 

premacy, Authority of Church Sy- pUoe as hereby established. 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

Milton,, i. p. 309, and also the account of the consecration of 
St. Katharine Cree Church in Fuller). Laud was Bishop of 
London, and virtually Primate ; the death of Buckingham had 
given him paramount influence with the king, and the patron- 
age of Church benefices was largely in his hands. He was a 
man of small intellect, but of great tenacity of purpose ; and 
'his nature if not great was very tight' (Masson, i. p« 361). 
All his views centred in divine right of bishops and uniformity 
in the Church \ and he was of opinion that ' unity cannot 
long continue in the Church when uniformity is shut out at 
the church-door ' (Laud's Diary). In 1633 the period of 
* Thorough ' began ; Wentworth ruled despotically in Ireland, 
Laud was made Primate, great strictness of Church discipline 
was enforced, and Prynne was imprisoned for his Histriomas^ 
fix. In 1637 Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick were pilloried, 
the question of ship-money was decided against Hampden 
(June 12), a placard designating Laud ' the arch- wolf of Can- 
terbury ' was posted at Cheapside,* and Williams, Bishop of 
Lincoln, a friend of the Puritans, was imprisoned (July 11) for 
alleged libel On July 23 a tumult arose in Edinburgh about 
the New Lituigy, which lasted for many weeks, and issued 
finally in the signing of the New Covenant (Feb. 28 or March i, 
1638). Then the Scotch bishops were deposed, and the 
Covenanters prepared for war. 

As to Milton's own religious sentiments, we know that from 
his father he inherited strict Puritan principles, yet accompanied 
with refined aesthetic tastes. His early surroundings were 
Puritan, and Richard Stock, * a zealous Puritan,' was pastor of 
the parish in which he lived. The time of his birth (1608) was 
that in which the Puritan party was gaining strength, though 
still in the minority. His early training was under his father 
(cf. Epist ad Fatrem)^ who doubtless exercised much influence 
upon his opinions. Next he was under the care of Young, a 
Puritan minister {Ep. Fam, i. El. 4), and afterwards at St 

1 See beginning of Appendix II. 



INTRODUCTION. 



27 



Paul's School, under the two Gills {Ep, Fam, 2, 3, 5). His 
reading was very wide, including, besides the classics, French, 
Italian, Hebrew, and the mass of English literature then exist- 
ing.* His early versions of Psalms cxiv. and cxxxvi. show 
extensive reading. In February 1625 he entered Cambridge, 
where there was a strong Puritan element, Dr. Preston of 
Emanuel being the leader. Christ's College was less impreg- 
nated with these principles, and Chappell himself was in Laud's 
interest, who afterwards made him Bishop of Cork. The Latin 
elegies on Bishops Andrewes and Felton (1626) show that 
Milton was not then an anti-Prelatist, and the Ode in Otdntum 
Navembris of the same year is laudatory of the ' pious James. 
In 1627 his Elegy to Young, who had fled to Hambuig probably 
because of his non-conformity, expresses ajflfection tor him and 
sympathy with his doctrines. In July 1628 he writes to 
A. Gill, deploring the ignorance of the clergy ; and in the same 
year he wrote the Academic Prolusion on * the compatibility of 
sportive exercise with the study of philosophy* (Masson, i. p. 250 
foil.), which contains specimens of outrageous license and 
even of coarse obscenity, for which, however, he apologises on 
the ground of long-standing custom. He there designates the 
students generally as * calf-heads,' *rams,' ' Irish birds,' &c &c, 
and by other titles quite unmentionable ; all which shows that 
he could at times throw off his habitual seriousness. The 
general idea we gather of Milton's University life is that he 
was serious and earnest, reading with unusual vigour, but, being 
thrown among companions for the most part uncongenial, he 
had little affection for the place.* In the ApoL Smect, (1642) 



1 The chief authors Milton pro- 
bably read are — Chaucer (ending 
1400), Lydgate, Ascham, Skelton, 
Surrey, Wyatt, &c. (1400-1580) ; 
and the Elizabethans (1580-1625) 
Sidney, Hooker, Raleigh, Bacon, 
Spenser, SackviUe, Daniel, Dray- 
ton, Chapman, Sylvester's Du 
Bartas^ Donne, Davies, the two 
Fletchers, Wither, Carew, Brawny 



Greene, Marlowe, Shakspere, Hey- 
wood, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, Massinger and Ford. 

* See 1st Elegy (to Diodati) : 
'Quam male Phcebicolis convenit 
ille locus ;' also in his letter to Gill 
(1624) he writes: 'Atque ego pro- 
fecto cum nullosfere siudiorum con- 
sortes hie reperianiy Londinum recta 
respicerem, nisi per justitium hoc 



28 INTRODUCTION. 

he says of the University — * In the time of her better hecdfh 
and mine own younger judgment I never greatly admired (her), 
so now much less.' 

In 1629 he took his B.A., and subscribed the Articles (a 
ceremony which he repeated in 1632 on taking his M.A.) ; and 
in the same year he wrote his 6th Elegy to Diodati, in praise of 
wine and mirth, though he says that the higher poesy demands 
pure life and spare living. The Nativity Ode contains a 
decided opinion in favour of Church music, and this is ex- 
pressed again in the ode At a Solemn Musick and towards the 
end of the Penseroso \ but in the later treatise on Christian 
Doctrine^ bk. ii. c. 4, he inveighs against all external worship^ 
quoting Amos vi. 5, ' Woe to them... that chaunt to the sound 
of the viol,' &C. 

In a letter to a friend, December 163 1, inclosing the 7 th 
sonnet, he declares his unwillingness to take holy orders, chiefly 
on the ground of unfitness ; but in the Reason of Church 
Government (i 641) he stated his objections more clearly thus — 
^ I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the 
sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and 
forswearing.' L Allegro and // Penseroso^ written in or near 
1632, are both far from Puritanical — ^the one being a joyous 
outburst of mirth and fancy, free from the least sensuous taint, 
and the other expressing the melancholy of a studious mood 
without sourness or austerity. The Masques of Arcades and 
Comus (1634) represent a kind of amusement which he after- 
wards, in his Free CommonwecUthy disapproved because of its 
licentiousness. But Comus is itself a protest against this very 
thing, and thereby, instead of inveighing at the immorality of 
the stage after the usual Puritanical manner, he showed practi- 
cally how to turn such things to good account 

By birth and education tlien Milton was in every respect a 
Puritan, notwithstanding his classical learning and his genuine 

sestivum [the Long VcuoHon) in tarem, et quasi claustris musanun 
otium alte literarium recedere cogi- delitescere.' (See note on /. 34.) 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

love for the beautiful He was a man of few convictions, but 
these were strong and lasting, the uppermost feeling of his 
mind being that a ceaseless and determined struggle must be 
maintained against the evil that is in the world. In both his 
prose and his poetry liberty stands forth as the ideal ; and this 
yearning after freedom fostered in him a resolute dislike of that 
religious and civil formality, which had displaced the healthy 
and genial life of the preceding Elizabethan times. Moreover 
the impulse of an indwelling poetic life, and an exalted idea of 
human duties and responsibilities, 'as ever underneath the great 
Taskmaster's eye,' would often bear him beyond the narrow range 
of party conflict His mission was to be a poet first, and a 
statesman or theologian afterwards. He had also a power of 
foresight and of self-discipline, which imparted a kind of set 
purpose to all his works, and caused an absence of those 
< strains of unpremeditated art,' which he was himself foremost 
to appreciate in Shakspere.^ All along he seems to have con- 
sciously nursed his inborn powers, unwilling before the full 
growth of his genius to begin the lofty poetic task of which he 
felt himself capable, ^ though of highest hope and hardest 
attempting.' 

It may be that the self-consciousness of the student ever 
accompanying the poet in Milton has produced an artificial 
semblance in some of his poetry which may reasonably lead to 
the question — * How far is Lycidas an expression of genuine 
sorrow?' 

In reply to Dr. Johnson's coarse criticism, that it is * not the 
effusion of real passion, which runs not after remote allusions 
and obscure opinions,' that ' where there is leisure for fiction 
there is little grief,' that ' there is no nature, for there is no 
truth,' and that ' no image of tenderness can be excited by the 
lines "we drove afield,"' &c. — the opinions of some other 
critics have already beea quoted,* to which may be added 

• LAUegro^ 133 — Warble his native wood-notes 

*And sweetest Shakspere, Fancy's wild.' 

child, • See p. 20. 



30 INTRODUCTION. 

Hallam's remark {Hist of Eng. Lit. vol. iii. p. 46), that * it has 
been said fairly that Lycidas is a good test of real feeling in 
poetry.' But no better or more comprehensive answer could 
be given than the following, which we take the liberty of 
quoting from Masson's Life of Milton^ vol ii. p. 84 : It is * a 
finer monument to the memory of King — to let the fact of his 
death originate a whole mood of the poef s mind — than if he 
had merely registered the feet in a lyric of direct regret. So 
poets honour the dead : they let his image intertwine itself with 
all else that arises in their minds ; and out of the best choosing 
still the best, they lay that on the tomb, saying, " This belongs 
to you,^^^ * Yet Dr. Johnson, notwithstanding his prejudice, 
forgot certain facts which he might with a little ingenuity have 
pressed into his service. First, we know nothing whatever of 
Milton's relations with Edward King, except what we gather 
from this poem. There is no mention of any kind of associa- 
tion between them during their college career. Secondly, we 
do know that King gained the fellowship over Milton's head ; 
and thirdly, Milton does not notice King's death to Diodati, 
though writing only a month afterwards. As to the disappoint- 
ment about the fellowship, we have no right to suppose that it 
led to any coldness between the two friends, and it would not 
have been like Milton to allow this. The first and third points 
are purely negative, so that after all we must look to the 
Lycidas to speak for itself. The mere form of the poem can 
prove nothing against the genuineness of Milton's regret, for 
grief, like all deep feeling, will reflect the tendency or mental 
habit of the patient. Thus Cicero philosophised grief when 
his daughter died; and Marmontel, the dramatist, wrote the 
play of Penelope on the death of his child ; to which we may 
add the example of our own poet laureate in his exquisite In 

* Of the Lycidas it may be truly are shed with artistic precision and 

said (to use the language of one of griefs meted out in strict accordance 

our public journals), that it is not to with the canons of the schools.' — 

be classed among * the coldly- correct Daily Telegraphy on death of Charlei 

Jeremiads, in which at the grave of Dickens, June 20, 1870. 
academical renown rhetorical tears 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

Memoriam, It was, therefore, only natural that Milton should 
give vent to his grief in verse, and in that kind of verse which 
was then most usual on such occasions. But we must be care- 
ful lest the pathos and intrinsic beauty of much of the poem 
should lead us into an exaggerated idea of the extent of his 
sorrow. We may safely conclude with Professor Masson that 
King was really a friend, but not the friend of his youth. For 
both the evidence of Milton's correspondence with Diodati, 
and the intense and passionate grief of some portions of the 
Epitaphium Damonis, prove that he and not King was deepest 
in his affections. Yet the elegy in which he laments the loss 
of Diodati is a pastoral, cast in a form more artificial than even 
the LyddaSy and written not in English but in I^tin. We will 
now proceed to give some account of this other poem. 

The subject of it, Charles Diodati (see the Argument), was 
bom in 1608, and was therefore ^bout the same age as Milton. 
His father, Theodore Diodati, was an Italian by descent, but 
married an English lady of good fortune, and was appointed 
physician to Prince Henry and the Princess Elizabeth^ afterwards 
Queen of Bohemia : his uncle, Giovanni Diodati, was the author 
of the Italian translation of the Bible, known by his name. He 
formed a close intimacy with Milton at St Paul's School, which 
he left in 1621 for Trinity College, Oxford, where Alexander 
Gill, son of the head-master of St Paul's, had also been 
educated. The friendship between the two young men con- 
tinued throughout their university career, though they could 
only meet in London during the vacations, and correspond by 
letters at other times. Two of Diodati's episdes are extant^ 
written in Greek, probably in 1625 and 1626, and bearing the 
headings Qthahoro^ MiXrcMi^i iv<l>palyeffdai and xaiptiv respect- 
ively. The first name is, of course, a literal rendering of the 
Italian Dio-ddti^ 'God-given' (see note on Epit, Dam. 210). 
To this letter Milton appears to have replied in the elegiac 
poem which stands first in the collection qntided Elegiarum 
Liber ^ the third line of which shows that his friend was then 
residing in Cheshire, somewhere on the banks of the Dee. 



32 INTRODUCTION. 

From the heading prefixed to the 6th elegy of the same series 
we learn that Diodati had on Dec 15, 1629, sent Milton a 
copy of verses, describing the Christmas festivities he was then 
enjoying, and pleading these by way of excuse if his poetry 
were found to be ^ less good than usual ' (^ sua carmina excusari 
postulasset, si solito minus essent bona '). Milton's answer is 
that conviviality and poetry, * Bacchus and the Muse,' are not 
hostile to one another, but go well in company ; only that he 
who would sing of high and holy themes, ' of heaven and pious 
heroes and leaders half divine' — he must live soberly and 
severely, with chaste morals and stainless hands. The elegy 
concludes with a mention of the Hymn on Christ's Nativity, 
upon which the poet was at that time engaged, and which he 
promises to submit to his friend for criticism (see on Epit. 
Dam, 180). 

After this we have no more direct information about Diodati 
until Sept 2, 1637, when Milton addressed to him a Latin 
epistle, complaining of his long silence, and expressing a hope 
that they might shortly meet in London. From this and the 
following letter (dated Sept 23 of the same year) we gather 
that Diodati was now in full medical practice, probably in 
Cheshire, — * among the Hyperboreans,' as Milton jocosely 
terms the natives of those parts, — ^that he made occasional 
joiuneys for visiting and recreation, and that he had a regular 
lodging in town, where Milton once expected to find him, but 
was disappointed. Part of the second letter will presently be 
quoted (in translation) in the note on /. 150 of the Epitaphium ; 
and towards the end of it Milton intimates his intention of 
taking chambers in one of the Inns of Court for the purpose of 
study j but this plan appears to have been abandoned in favour 
of the continental tour which took place early in the following 
year (Masson, vol. i. p. 601). It was during this journey (in 
the sununer or autumn of 1638) that Diodati died suddenly. 
The place and circumstances of his death are alike uncertain ; 
but we know that the sad news did not readi MUton till some 
time afterwards, as the third Italian sonnet (beginning Diodati^ 



INTRODUCTION. 33 

e ie V dirb con maraviglia) must have been addressed to his 
friend from Italy about, or more probably after, the actual time 
of his decease (ib. p. 775). Prof. Masson argues very 
plausibly that Milton heard the tidings first from John Diodati, 
Theological Professor at Geneva, with whom he was staying in 
June 1639, ^^ ^is way back to England. But however this 
may have been, we are sure that grief for the loss of so dear a 
friend possessed the poet's mind to the temporary exclusion 
even of those political anxieties which had been the cause of 
his sudden return. Of this we have evidence not only in the 
Epitaphium Damonis itself, which, notwithstanding its artificial 
form and its pastoral conceits, is as true an outburst of the 
bitterest sorrow as anything of the kind we know, but also in 
Milton's own words forming part of a letter in 1647 to Carlo 
Dati, one of his former friends at Florence iJEpit, Dam, 137). 
After recalling the recollection of their former intimacy, and 
assuring Dati of his continued affection, he suddenly refers to 
the memoiy of the deceased Diodati, and to the grief he had 
felt at his death, which only the thought of the unmixed joy he 
had tasted in the society of his Florentine companions could in 
any way alleviate. We give the extract : — * Testor ilium mihi 
semper sacrum et solenne fiiturum Damonis tumulum, in cujus 
funere ornando cum luctu et moerore oppressus, ad ea quae 
potui solatia confugere cupiebam, non aliud mihi quicquam 
jucundius occurrit quam vestrum omnium gratissimam mihi 
memoriam revocasse. Id quod ipse jamdiu legisse debes, 
siquidem ad vos 411ud carmen pervenit, quod ex te nunc primum 
audio.' The * carmen ' referred to is in fact the Epitaphium 
Damonis^ sl copy of which Milton had sent to Dati as a token 
of his regard, on account of his name being mentioned therein 
(137 L c.). 

Of the poem itself we have already spoken incidentally in 
our observations on the Zycidas, and much of what has been 
said of the one applies with equal force to the other. It is, 
however, more of a direct and avowed pastoral, and was evi- 
dently suggested by the 'En-tra^coc Bcoivoc of Moschus, whence its 

D 



34 INTRODUCTION. 

title is taken. We have had occasion to mention and partly to 
examine that poem as a specimen of Greek pastoral (see p. 5), 
and we then noticed how the real circumstances of the life and 
death of Bion appear from time to time through the veil of 
allegory under which the poet has chosen to disguise his per- 
sonality. The same fact is observable in several passages of 
Milton's Epttaphium^ in which the poet's actual self is blended 
with the character of the ideal Th}a:sis, and the person of the 
real Diodati with that of the shepherd Damon. Nor is this 
surprising ; the image of his lost friend was too vividly im- 
pressed upon Milton's soul, and his grief (like that of Moschus 
for Bion) too sincere to allow him to sustain with absolute con- 
tinuity his assumed disguise, which, be it remembered, he had 
adopted merely in deference to the then prevailing fashion, and 
would not, even on purely critical grounds, have felt himself 
bound to keep with undeviating precision. Yet he never allows 
this liberty to degenerate into a license : the strain of the poem 
is pastoral throughout — ^far more so than in the case of the 
Lycidas, whose variations and digressions have already been 
discussed in detail. It is this very freedom of treatment which 
gives the Epitafhium Damonis its real value and interest, claim- 
ing for it recognition as a record of one period in the life of a 
great and distinguished man, about which we should otherwise 
have had but scanty information. The following remarks by 
Warton, in answer to some rather disparaging criticism of Dr. 
Johnson on this poem, are very much to the point : * The pas- 
coral form is a fault of the poet's times.' The poem ' contains 
some passages which wander far beyond the bounds of buco- 
lick song, and are in his own original style of the more sublime 
poetry. Milton cannot be a shepherd long. His native powers 
often break forth, and cannot bear the assumed disguise.' We 
subjom a list of those passages, in which the pastoral allegory 
is for the moment abandoned. 

In /. 13, Thyrsis is described as sojourning Tusca in urbe^ 
Le. at Florence, where Milton was actually staying at the time 
for literary purposes — ^ animi causa ' as the Argument expresses 



INTRODUCTION. 35 

it As a shepherd he would have no business there, so far 
away from home and for such an object 

Z/. 46-49 may be applied either way, but seem to convey 
the idea of a student's rather than of a shepherd's fireside. 

The ' Attic salt ' of /. 56 admits of only one application. 

Z/. 1 13 folL describe Milton's actual journey to Italy, which 
has nothing to do with his assumed pastoral character. (Com- 
pare the parallel instance of Callus, in VirgiFs loth Eclogue, 
see p. 23 of this Introduction.) 

In U, 126-138 the accidental circumstance of Diodati's 
Tuscan origin is mentioned in the middle of an imaginary 
description of Tuscan swains, among whom the actual names 
of Dati and Francini occur, not under a classical designation 
(like Lyddas and Menalcas, /. 132), but just slightly Latin- 
ised. 

Id, 162-178. Here the poet is confused with the shepherd 
— ^the intention of the real Milton to write a real British epic 
being stated partly in plain language, partly under a pastoral 
figure (168-171). 

Z. 181. The name of Manso, Milton's Neapolitan host, is 
introduced with scarcely any disguise, and the description of 
the chased goblets which follows, though probably real (see 
note ad ioc,)y is at any rate not drawn from the circumstances of 
bucolic life. 

Z/. 209-219. The pastoral imagery now entirely disap- 
pears ; the name Diodatus is substituted for that of Damon, 
and his present state of bliss among the saints in heaven is 
described in Scriptural language, which is in the last line 
curiously varied by a Pagan but not distinctively pastoral 
metaphor — * bacchantur ' — * orgia ' — * thyrso.' 

The scene is laid in England, as appears from the mention 
of the Chelmer (/. 90 note) and of the Colne (/. 149), but the 
associations are necessarily classical, owing to the form in which 
the poem is cast Those who adopt what we have endeavoured 
to represent as the right view of the requirements of a modern 
pastoral will not blame Milton for this, but will transfer their 

D 2 



36 INTRODUCTION. 

censure to the Roman poet, who by blending Sicilian with 
Italian scenery originated the confusion. Still the introduction 
of lions and wolves in //. 41, 42 would better have been 
avoided, though a similar mistake is made by Virgil in his 5th 
Eclogue (/. 26) without equal excuse for it 

The Epitaphium Damonis has been rendered into English 
by Symmons (about 1804) in the Life of Milton appended to 
his edition of the Prose Works ; also by Langhome (1760), as 
far as /. 138 ; and again byCowper. A new translation into 
English hexameters is given by Professor Masson, in the second 
volume of his Life of Milton^ which, by the courtesy of the 
author, I am enabled to reprint entire. 

Of detached pieces of criticism on the Lycidas the follow- 
ing are given by Todd in his edition of Milton's poetical 
works : — 

1. Peck's Explanatory and Critical Notes ^ 6-^., printed with 
his New Memoirs of Milton (1740). 

2. Remarks in Dr. Johnson^ Lives of tJie Poets (Life of 
Milton) (1781). 

3. Critical Essay on Lycidas by John Scott (1785). 

4. Cursory Remarks on some ancient English Poets ^particularly 
Milton, by P. Neve (1789). To these we need only add the 
complete account and examination of this poem and the 
Epitaphium Damonis in vols. L and iL of Professor Masson's 
Life of Milton (1859 and 187 1). 

The Lycidcu was translated into I^tin by William Hogg 
(Hogseus) in 1694, and into Greek by Plumptre, Canon of 
Worcester, in 1797. Both these translations have been made 
use of in the notes to this edition ; the former is reprinted 
at the end of the volume. 

As might be expected, the poem has found many imitators. 
The first ' imitations, or rather open plagiarisms from Milton ' 
(as Warton says), were made in 1647 by Robert Baron in a 
poetical romance, entitled the Cyprian Academy (see Todd, 
Appendix to voL vi.). Into this he transferred whole lines 
and phrases from nearly all Milton's early poems, then lately 



INTRODUCTION. 37 

published ; and from Lycidas was borrowed the greater part of 
the floral description in //. 1 35-1 51. Samuel Boyse, in his 
Vision of Patience (1741), laments the death of a Mr. Gumming, 
lost at sea, under the name * Lycidas,' but does not otherwise 
imitate Milton's monody. In 1760 Robert Lloyd published 
the Ttars and Triumph of Parnassus^ containing an ode on the 
death of the king (George IL), in which occur the lines we have 
quoted on /. 75, beginning, * Where were the Muses,' &c In 
the same note reference is made to a similar passage from Lord 
L)rtdeton's monody on the death of his wife. Michael Bruce, 
in Daphnis (a monody on Mr. Amot), has these lines : — 

So may I snatch his lays, who to the lyre 
Wailed his lost Lycidas by wood and rill, &c ; 

and further on — 

Where were the Muses, when the leaden hand 
Of death remorseless closed your Daphnis' eyes ? 

Fair was thy thread of life. 
But quickly by the envious sisters shorn j 
So Daphnis died, long ere his prime he feU, 
Nor left he on these plains a peer behind. 

The metre is arranged in long and short lines at irregular 
intervals, like those in the Lycidas, We may also notice a 
monody on the death of Queen Adelaide by Julian Fane, 
among the Cambridge Prize Poems for 1850, which is closely 
modelled (as the heading intimates) upon that of Milton. A 
few extracts are subjoined as examples of the imitation : — 

For she no more upon the dawning day 

Listening their joyous lay. 
Shall bend her wistful eyes for ever closed .... 
Where were ye nymphs upon that fatal mom ? , • • . 
AlcLSy what boots it to enquire your place ? 
For what could ye have done f . , , , 
Last reverend Camus^ as he footed slow, &c. 

Besides these and more of the same kind, we have detached 



3? ^ INTRODUCTION. 

expressions undique decerpta, such as * melt with ruth,' ' but not 
the wise/ &c. (speaking of Care tormenting the great and 
proud), * hence with the blazing clarion of renown' (cf. Lye, i8, 
and for the sentiment 76 foil.), &c The monody ends with 
an apotheosis of the queen which nearly resembles that of 
Lyddas — ^ Cease, Albion, cease to weep,' ' She shall arise,' &c., 
* Now Albion weeps no more,' &c The latest reminiscence 
appears in the London Lyrics by Mr. Locker (1872): — 

And still the woodland rings^ and still 
The old Damoetas listens — 

speaking of the youthful glow of life as compared to a laughing 
leaping rilL 

Among the various editions of Milton's poems, which in- 
clude the Lyddas^ we select the following : 

1. The Cambridge Verses of 1638, already referred to 
(p. 2). The English poems succeed the Latin, and are sepa- 
rately entided Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr, Edward King, 
Anno Domini 1638.' The Lyddas is dated J. M., November 
1637, in the MS. preserved in the library of Trinity College, 
Cambridge. It has no title in this first edition. 

2. Poems of Mr, yohn Milton^ both English and Latin^ 
composed at several times, collected and republished in 1645. 
Here the heading, * In this Monody,* &c, is for the first time 
prefixed. 

3. Poems, &*€,, upon several Occasions (1673, the year before 
Milton died). This is a reprint of the former, with some addi- 
tions, and containing the Hartlib Tractate on Education. 

4. Successive editions for Tonson (i 695-1 747). 

5. BaskerviUe's Poetical Works of Milton (i 758-1 760). 

6. Newton's editions (175 2-1 790). Of these Keightley 
observes in his own preface that they are * the first EngHsh 
instance of a Variorum edition, fi-om MS. notes by Jortin, 
Warburton, Thyer, Peck, Sympson, &c. Very respectable for 
those times, when criticism was imperfect, and knowledge of 
earlier English Hterature and language slender.' 



INTRODUCTION. 39 

7. Warton's editions of the smaller poems, except the 
Paradise Regained^ with notes (1785 and 1791). 

8. Hayley's Poetical Works of Milton (1794-1797). 

9. Todd's Poetical Works, <5^•^., with the Principal Notes of 
varums Commentators (t8oi, 1809, i826). Here the sub- 
stance of Warton's notes is reproduced, with many additions by 
the editor; they consist of a mass of materials, for the most 
part undigested and ill-arranged, and are chiefly useful for their 
collection of parallel passages, though these (as Masson truly 
remarks, vol. i. p. 534) * are pushed to the verge of the ridicu- 
lous — interesting only as illustrations of similarity of thought 
and expression among poets of a particular age/ 

10. Keightle/s Poetical Works, &c. (1859). The poems 
are arranged chronologically, the spelling is modernised, except 
in the case of a few words, such as * sovran,' * highth,' &c., and 
the punctuation carefully amended. There are no introduc- 
tions to the separate pieces, the references in the notes are 
given with the initials of those editors who first observed them, 
though many of these, as Keightley tells us in his preface, were 
noticed by himself independently. For the notes he claims 
the especial merit of terseness and compression, and con- 
sequently fails to give us the arguments on both sides in many 
disputed passages, presenting merely his own conclusions or 
those of others, without examination in detail, and often with- 
out any reasons whatever. 

11. English Poems by John Milton, edited by R. C. 
Browne, King's College, London (1870). This edition comprises 
much useful information within a small space, but does not 
profess to enter upon a detailed investigation of mooted points. 
The introduction has a great deal of original matter, well con- 
sidered and clearly expressed. The editor frequently adopts 
the conclusions of Mr. Keightley, to whom he specially acknow- 
ledges his obligation in a short preface prefixed to the notes. 

A new and complete edition of Milton is promised by Pro- 
fessor Masson, and is expected shortly to appear.^ 

' See Pre&ce to Second Edition. 



40 INTRODUCTION. 

The original MS. of Lycidas (together with those of the 
Arcades^ Comus, and some of the minor poems) is preserved in 
the library of Trin. ColL, Cambridge. These were collected 
by Charles Mason and Thomas Clark, Fellows of Trinity, in 
1736, having been found among MSS. formerly given to the 
College by Sir H. Newton Puckering, who was educated there, 
and who died in 1700 (Masson, vol. ii. p. 104). From them 
Todd in 1801 collected his various readings in the three poems 
above mentioned ; but as his copy of them is not quite 
accurate, we append the following corrected list : — 

/. 10. * Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he well knew.' 

22. * To bid faire peace/ &c. {To erased and And substituted.) 

26. Glimmering corrected to opening, 

30. *Oft till the ev'n starre bright,' (altered to that rose in 

E7/ning bright,) 

31. 'his bumisht weele,' (altered to westring weele,) 

47. 'Their gay buttons weare.' {beare is then written and 
erased, and wardrope weare substituted.) 

51. 'yor (^^?«r erased) lov'd Lycidas.' 

58. ' What could the golden-hayrd Calliope 
For her inchaunting son, 
When shee beheld {the godsfarre sighted bee) 
His goarie scaipe rowle dawne the Thracian lee' 

After /. 59 is written in the margin — 

' Whome universal nature might lament, 
And heaven and he I deplore, 
When his divine head downe the streame was sent' 
{Head is first altered to visage, and then divine to 
goarie^ 

69. ' Hid in the tangles,' (changed to Or with, &c.) 
85. ^ . . . . thou smooth flood,' (altered to fam^d, and then 
to honoured,) ' 5'^-sliding Mincius,' (altered to smooth-^ 
sliding,) 
105. ^ ScrauVd ore with figures dim,' (changed to Inwrought^ 
iia ' Tow massy keys,' &c. (also ' //7ze/-handed ' in /. 130.) 
114.' Anough of such,' &c. 

129. '. . . . little sed.' {nothing is first written, but erased.) 
138. *. . . . stintly (?) looks.' (First sparely, which is erased 
and then replaced.) 



INTRODUCTION. 41 

The first correction is obscured by the tail of the / in the 
superscribed sparely coming down in fh)nt of the first letter 
(which may be either /or/). Mr. Aldis Wright, to whose 
courtesy I am indebted for these amended readings, believes 
the word to be faintly and not stintly. 

I, 139. *^f7«^ hither/ &c., (corrected to Throw hither^ &c.) 
142 foil, originally stood thus : — 

' Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies, 
Colouring the fale cheeke ofuninjoyd love. 
And that sadfloure that strove 
To write his own woes on the vermeil graine ; 
Next adde Narcissus yt still weeps in vaine^ 
The woodbine and ye pancie fireakt w'J» jet, 
The glowing violet' 

Afterwards Milton inserted the garish columbine, but altered 
it to the well attir'd woodbine. 

' The cowslip wan that hangs his pensive head. 
And every bud that sorrows liverie weares.' 

(First changed to sad escutcheon bearesy then to im^ 
broidriCy and beares to weares,) 
* Let Daffadillies fille thire cups with teares, 
Bid Amaranthus all his beautie shed.' 

(These two lines were transposed, and the let was altered to 
and^ The whole of the above passage is struck through with 
the pen, and the substituted lines are written below. 

/. 153. 'Let our jfl^ thoughts,* &c., (changed io fraile.) 
154. *. . . . Yt floods,' &c., (changed to shoars.) 
160. '. . . . Corineus oldi.^ (^^//frwj substituted.) 
176. *Zw/^««J5^ the unexpressive nuptial song,' (altered to and 
heares, &c.) 

The unsettled state of orthography * in Milton's time makes 

^ In an article on English ortho- that it was settled hy those who 

graphy in the Philological Museum^ were more or less ignorant of the 

the -writer remarks that the uniform antecedents of our language, and 

system now in vogue came in about maintained by compositors, by whose 

the middle of the 1 7th century ; influence certain modes of spelling 



4* 



INTRODUCTION. 



it unnecessary to notice in detail the varieties of spelling 
which occur in various editions of this poem. We shall presently 
(on /. 129) remark upon sed and blew (/. 192) as illustrating 
the habit of writing to suit the eye as well as the ear ; in /. 130 
doore is changed to dore in the MS. to coincide with moreva the 
next line. For those who are curious in such matters we ap- 
pend a few selected words from the four editions of 1638, 1645, 
1673, and 169s (Tonson's), from which it will be seen that 
in many instances the earlier ones had the modem ortho^ 
graphy, which afterwards got altered 5 but this is purely acci- 
dental 





1638 


1645 


1673 


1695 


/. 37 


gone 


gon 


gon 


gon 


47 


wardrobe 


wardrop 


wardrop 


wardrobe 


S3 


lie 


ly 


ly 


ly 


57 


been 


bin 


bin 


bin 


82 


perfect witnesse 


perfet witnes 


perfet witnes 


perfect witness 


112 


mitred 


miter*d 


miter'd 


miter'd 


114 


enough 


anow 


anow 


anow 


128 


wolf 


woolf 


woolf 


woolf 


129 


said 


sed 


sed 


sed 


140 


turf 


terf 


terf 


terf 


175 


oazie locks 


oozy Lock's 


oozy Lock's 


oozy Locks 


185 


perillous 


perilous 


perilous 


perillous 


186 


oaks 


Okes 


Okes 


Okes 


192 


blew 


blew 


blew 


blew 



In Milton's MS. the preterites and past participles in -ed 
are almost uniformly spelt with the apostrophe, as destitidy 
honour^ dy &c ; even mitrid is thus given, where no vowel 
is omitted. Honied seems to be the only instance in Lycidas 
to the ccmtrary. The forms in -/ are sometimes with and 
sometimes without the apostrophe, as nur^ty dandty &c., by the 



became established as the general 
usage. He further observes that no 
usage can make a blunder right, and 
that the right spelling is that which 



agrees best with pronunciation, ety- 
mology, and the analogy of a word 
to others of the same dass to which 
it belongs. 



INTRODUCTION. 43 

side of askty freakt, &c. It should be noted that the use of 
the apostrophe began nearly about Milton's time, and continued 
to be usual till quite lately. Spenser very seldom employs it ; 
he generally omits the e altogether, as joyd, cloyd^ &c., some- 
times placing it at the end, as spide^ obeyde, &c. After ky n^ /, 
Sy &c, the letter / is used, as pliukt, learnt^ topty tosiy pusht^ 
some of which forms are sdll to be met with. Originally, as 
in Chaucer, whenever -ed was written, it was meant to be 
sounded ; hence arose these various contrivances to show when 
it was mute. 

Lycidas is the last poem, excepting .the SonnetSy which 
Milton wrote in rime. In the preface, added in 1668 to 
Paradise Lost^ he speaks of ' rime ' as being nothing but ' the 
invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and 
lame metre,' and congratulates himself upon having in that 
poem set the first example in English ' of ancient liberty re- 
covered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modem 
bondage of riming.' Yet the skilful arrangement of rimes in 
Lycidasy and the exquisite cadences which his fine musical ear 
enabled him to produce, without rule and apparently without 
effort, are an evidence of how much may be done by means of 
an expedient which he afterwards so unsparingly denounced ; 
and there is perhaps no poem which exhibits these qualities in 
equal profusion. The idea of the system, in which the rimes 
occur sometimes alternately, but more often at longer and 
irregular intervals, the ten-syllabled lines being now and then 
varied by shorter ones of six syllables, is derived from the 
Italians. The following extracts from choruses in Tasso's 
Aminta and Guarini's Pastor Fido will show what the originals 
were like, but it will be seen that Milton has made considerable 
variations upon his models. 

I. From Aminia^ Act iv. Scene 2 : — 

Ci6 che morte rallenta, Amor, restringi, 
Amico tu di pace, ella di guerra ; 



44 INTRODUCTION. 

£ del suo trionfar trionfi e regni, 
£ mentre due bell' alme annodi e cingi, 
Cosl rendi sembiante al ciel la terra, 
Che d' abitarla tu non fuggi o sdegni. 
Non son vie Ik su ; gli umani ingegni 
Tu placidi ne rendi, e V odio intemo 
Sgombri, signor, da' mansueti cori, 
Sgombri mille furori, 
£ quasi fai col tuo valor superno 
Delle cose mortali un giro etemo. 

2. From Pastor FtdOy Act iv. Scene 9 : — 

O bella eta dell' oro, 

Quand' era cibo il latte 

Del pargoletto mondo^ e culla il bosco 

E i cari parti loro 

Godean le gregge intatte, 

N^ temea 1 mondo ancor ferro nh tosco. 

Pensier torbido e fosco 

Allor non facea velo 

Al sol di luce etema 

Or la ragion, che vema 

Tra le nubi del senso, ha chiuso il cielo. 

Ond' h che 1 peregrino 

Va 1' altrui terra, e 1 mar turbando il pino. 

Peck, in his New Memoirs of Milton (1740), fancifully com- 
pares the Lycidas to a piece of music, consisting of so many 
bars, which are represented by the paragraphs ; each rime 
being a chord , and the lines without any answering rime being 
discords. He cites the Pindaric odes of Cowley as examples 
of similar irregularity in riming, only that in these there are no 
discords or lines without rimes. The distinction between 

* chords ' and * discords * (as if they were two different things 
in music) is of course erroneous ; but, substituting phrases for 

* bars ' and concords for * chords ' in the above comparison, we 
may allow that the effect upon the ear of an occasional unrimed 



IxNTRODUCTION. 45 

line bears some analogy to that produced by an unresolved 
discord in harmony. Nevertheless so artistic is the whole 
metrical arrangement of this charming monody that the sensa- 
tions experienced by the most fastidious reader can never be 
otherwise than agreeable, and to the judgment of such we con- 
fidently leave the decision of the question, whether (as Dr. 
Johnson will have it) * the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncer- 
tain, and the numbers unpleasing.' 



LYCIDAS. 



Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more 
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 



I] * Onoe more, amid my various 
occupatioDS, do I return to poetry, 
that I may offer a tribute to the 
memory of my deceased friend.' It 
seems better to understand the allu- 
sion thus than to restrict it (as Peck 
and Newton have done) to ' poems 
on like occasions' with that of the 
LycidaSy such as the Ode on the 
Death of a Fair Infant^ the Epi' 
taph on the Marchioness of Win" 
Chester^ and the four I^in Elegies 
of 1626. Since the production of 
Comus in 1634, the poet's pen had 
been unemployed, and we know 
from his letter to Diodati of Sept. 
23, 1637, that he was now study- 
ing ancient and mediaeval history, 
in preparation for his Italian tour, 
which took place in the following 
spring. Warton properly observes 
that the plants specified in this and 
the next line are not peculiar to 
elegy, but * symbolical of general 
poetry.' As evergreens they are 
also emblems of immortality, which 
is perhaps the leading idea intended 
to be conveyed. Cf. Drayton, 6th 
Pastoral Eclogue : — 

'Nor mournful cypress nor sad 

widowing yew 
About thy tomb to prosper shall 
be seen j 



But bay and myrtle^ which if ever 

new, 
In spight of winter flourishing 

and green.' 

There seems to be no sufEdent 
ground for the distinction which 
Newton draws between the laurel, 
myrtle, and ivy, as representing the 
poetic talent of the deceased, his 
ripeness for love, and his learning 
(Hor. Od, I. i 29) respectively. 
Drayton, however, in his 3rd Ec- 
logue, speaks of 'bays that poets 
do adorn, And myrtle of chaste 
lovers worn.' 

2 brown] dark and sombre (It. 
bruno) ; the puUa myrtus of Hor. 
Od, I. XXV. iS. 

ivy never lere] Cf. Sylves- 
ter, Du Bartasy 70, * immortal bays 
never unleaved.' Sere (O. E. jwfr, 
verb skdrian) occurs only twice 
elsewhere in Milton, P. L. x. 107 1 
and Psalm ii. 27. Cf. Macbeth, 
V. 3, 'the sear the yellow leaf;' 
Spenser, Eel, L 37, 'My luslfiill 
leaf is dry and sere,' where it is 
explained in the Glossary as an 
antiquated word, like guerdon, for- 
lorn, and others, which have now 
returned into use. Newton's state- 
ment that ' there are more obsolete 
words in this than in any other of 



48 



LYCIDAS. 



I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 
And with forced fingers rude 
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, 



Milton's poems ' may well be dis- 
puted. (See note on /. 189.) 

3-8] Those who imagine an allu- 
sion to the untimely death of Mr. 
King in the premature gathering of 
the laurels, &c., seem to overlook 
the fact that these plants represent, 
not the lost friend, but the verses 
offered to his memory. The meta- 
phor by which an early death is 
compared to the plucking of unripe 
fruit (as in Cic. De Senectute^ * Quasi 
poma ex arboribus/ &c., quoted by 
Dunster) has therefore no applica- 
tion here, the reference being ob- 
viously to the poet's efforts in verse, 
which were, in his own opinion, yet 

* harsh and crude,* but whose time 
of maturity a pious duty compelled 
him to forestall. Six years pre- 
viously, in the Sonnet written at 
the age of twenty-three, he had 
expressed his resolution not to hasten 
the time of his * inward ripeness;* 
and in the accompanying letter he 
says, 'I take no thought of being late, 
so it give advantage to be more fit.' 

4 forced] i.e. unwilling, as ex> 
plained in //. 6, 7. 

5] Cf. P. L. X. 1066. Shatter is 
a modem softening of scatter, like 
shave and scab, sharp and scatp, &c. 

mellowing] {mollis) would strictly 
apply to fruit, not to leaves or 
flowers. But the sense probably is, 

* before the advancing year, which 
ripens the fruit, causes your leaves 
to fall.* Keightiey remarks that 

* these plants all shed their leaves 
during the year, but gradually.* Cf. 
Marlowe, TanUmrlaine, ii. I, *And 
fall like mellowed fruit with shakes 
of death.* 

6 J Plumptre*s translation (1797), 
iriKpii iurayKcUa, \v7rphf XP^H-* ^^^^ 



iro9€ip6y, probably gives the right 
sense of this line, i.e. an occasion 
sad in itself, but concerned about a 
dear object (Spens. F. Q. I. i. 53). 
But dear may mean * iinportant,* 
from its primary sense of * costly * 
(O. E. dedre, G. theuer), an inter- 
pretation which is slightly favoured 
by the occurrence of the word with 
the same meaning and connexion 
in Sidney's Arcadia, where Time is 
addressed as * the father of occasion 
deare.* Hence arose the peculiar 
use of 'dear' in a sense apparently 
contradictory to its usual one, as in 
Shakspere's 'dearest foe,* *dear 
peril,* &c., which is to be explained, 
not (as Home Tooke supposes) from 
derian, * to hurt,* but by a natural 
transition from the original notion 
of importance into that of strong 
interest or emotion, whether of love 
or hatred. (See Dyce's Glossary to 
Shakspere, pp. 119, 120.) 

The position of the noun between 
the two epithets is very common in 
Milton. Out of numberless in- 
stances which occur. Peck quotes 
P. L. V. 3, ' temperate vapours 
bland;* ix. 1003, 'mortal sin ori- 
ginal.* Cf. also/. ^ supra. Arcades, 
49) 51, to which may be added 'the 
two-topt mount divine * of the 
supposed Miltonic Epitaph — an ex- 
pression which Dean Stanley in his 
letter to Prof. Morley (Introd. to 
King and Commons, p. xxxii.) pro- 
nounced to be 'Milton all over.* 
This order of words is imitated from 
the Greek (cf Hes. Theog. 811, 
X^^Ktos ollbhs iurrtfufyfis ; Eur. Phcen. 
234, ri^jSoXoy 2>pos lp6v). In Latin 
the adjectives are usually placed to- 
gether, either with a conjunction, as 
' Fatalis incestus^«^ judex,* Hor. Od, 



LYCIDAS. 



49 



Compels me to disturb your season due ; 
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 
Who would not sing for Lycidas ! he knew 



lO 



III. iii. 19, or without one, as ' do- 
mas exilis Plutonia,' Hor. Od, I. iv. 
17; 'suavis daedala tellus,' Lucr. 

i. 7. 

7 eompela] instead of compel^ 

the ' bitter constraint' and * sad occa- 
sion' being so nearly identical as to 
form one idea. Cf. Hor. Od, i. 
xviL 12, 'dis pietas mea £t musa 
cordi eft,^ But, even without any 
such connexion of meaning, the 
Elizabethan writers and their imme- 
diate successors commonly made 
the verb agree in number with the 
nearest pr^^eding noun. Many in- 
stances occur in the Bible, e.g. Prov. 
i. 27 (where Luther's version also 
has 'Angst und Noth kommt^), ib. 
ii. 6 ; Luke v. 10. Paul Bayne, in 
one of his Letters (circ. 1600), says, 
'You will be desirous of knowing 
how my wife and her place agreeth ;' 
Bacon, Essay on Mttsques^ observes 
that ' double masques . . . addetk 
state and variety,' where no singular 
noun precedes the verb. Even Mr. 
Tennyson, in a recent volume of 
Poems, has the construction, *I 
should know what God and man tr.' 
But many verbs apparently singular 
are really examples of the Northern 
plural in -f, — e.g. Shakspere, Corio' 
lantts, iy. i, 'fortune's blows . . . 
craves a noble cunning,' &c. &c. 
James I. constantly uses this form 
in his letters to Queen Elizabeth, as 
* my articles desynx, ' ' your subjectis 
prefers, ' &c. 

8 ere Ml prime] Being only 
twenty-five years old. 

9] Milton probably had in his 
mind Spenser's Astrophel, 7, 8. 
There is a similar repetition of the 
name, with marked effect, in the 
ode on Death of a Fair In/ant^ 



26. The present line is imitated by 
Samuel Boyse (1 741) in his ViHen 
of Patience, * Young Lycidas the 
learned and the good.' 

peer] i. e. * equal,' from par. 
Milton has used the word only 
twice elsewhere in this original 
sense, in P. L. i. 39, v. 812, though 
he often applies it to the rebel 
angels as a title of nobility — e.g. 
'the grand infernal peers,* &c. — 
which is also its usual meaning in 
Shakspere. With the present pas- 
sage cf. p. Fletcher, Asc, Eel. vi. 
I, 'A fisher boy that never knew 
his/«r;' Cowley, Death of Hervey, 
'My sweet companion and my gentle 
peer.* This is another of the words 
(see note on sere, I. 2) explained as 
obsolete in the Glossary to the 
Shepheard^s Kalendar ; it must have 
been familiar in the 14th century, 
as Wicklif, in his translation of Matt. 
xi. 16, has ' children that crien unto 
her peeris,* i.e. 'fellows.* For the 
history of the word see Du Cange, 
Glossarium, s. v. Parei. 

10] Peck compares Virg. E. x. 3, 
' neget quis carmina Gallo ? ' 

he knew to ting] Cf. Comus, 
87. These and similar expressions 
are evidently intended as imitations 
of the Latin and Greek verb-noun 
infinitive — e.g. canere callthotf (Scty 
VftfToTo, &C. In Spenser's Ruines 
of Time occurs the well-known 
passage — 

' Not to have been dipped in Lethe's 

lake 
Could save the son of Thetis ^9*^^ 
to die: 

(Cf. Eur. Alcestis, il, %v 9ovCw i^V' 
(rdfitiv.) But this construction is 
unnecessary and eveu inaccurate in 



50 



LYCIDAS. 



Himself to sing, and build the lofty rime. 
He must not float upon his watery bier 
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, 



English : first, because the infin. in 
'ing (O. £. -an) is the real equiva- 
lent of the classical phrase ; and 
secondly, because the sign * to ' was 
properly used with the gerund in 
'Onne or -eune to denote a pur- 
pose. Probably our English poets, 
not knowing that the form in -ing 
was really an infinitive, and con- 
founding it with the present par- 
ticiple, which it accidentally re- 
sembles, thought that the only way 
of reproducing the Latin and Greek 
construction was by the use of the 
sign * to ' with the verb. 

How far this estimate of King's 
poetry is supported by facts we have 
no adequate means of ascertaining, 
since only a few copies of his Latin 
verses are extant (see Masson's 
Lifig of Milton^, vol. i. pp. 603, 604), 
which show a fair amount of scho- 
larship, but are of no great poetical 
merit Milton may here be using 
the language of exaggeration, or he 
may have had other and more suf- 
ficient grounds for his opinion than 
such compositions as these would 
afford. 

IniUd the loftj rime] Todd 
compares Spenser, Ruitus of Rome^ 
stanza xxiv. — 

< To build with levell of my loftie 
style 

That which no handes can ever- 
more compyle ;' 

also Eur. Supp. 998, &018&S Mf>- 
yoM'c, to which we may add Aristoph. 
Rana, 1004, wvpy^cas ^fuira trtfivd. 
The Latin * condere carmen ' (Lucr. 
V. 2 ; Hor. A. P. 436, Epist. I. iii. 
24) is probably here imitated ; but 
the original expression does not ne- 
cessarily contain any metaphor from 
building, since condere simply means 



*to put together,* and is therefore 
applied to any sort of operation 
which might come under that general 
notion, such as building, composing, 
laying in the tomb, &c. ; it is more- 
over used of prose writing as well as 
of poetry. Gray, Death of Hoel^ fol- 
lowing Milton, has < build the lofty 
verse, and Merrick (circ. 1700), in 
his Odeto Fancy^ * build the rhyme.' 
Rime=B * verse,' as in P. L, i. 16. 
Elsewhere in Milton the word occurs 
only in the Prefiu:e to Paradise Zos/, 
where *rime' is distinguished from 
blank verse. Since it is there written 
riffle, but rhyme in P, L. i. 16, Bp. 
Pearson suggested that Milton pur- 
posely varied the spelling to signify 
the difference of meaning. .This idea 
is at any rate not supported by the 
present passage, since our poet ori- 
ginally wrote rtme in his MS., 
though the printed editions of 1638 
and 1645 1^^ l^Avc rhyme. Hence 
I have adopted in the text what is 
now known to be the proper ortho- 
graphy. (See Appoidbc I.) 

12 Mer] (O. E. A«r, L. fer^ 
etrum), because the waves bear the 
body on their surface. Cf. Fletcher, 
Ihirple Island^ i. 210, * The dying 
swan . . . tides on her watrie hearse.' 

13 welter] properly * to roll ' 
(ze^a/-low,G.wa/-tzen, L. voI-yo^ Gr. 
c2X-«). It was formerly used in a 
wider sense than at present. Cf. 
Od. Nat, 124; P. Z. i. 78 ; Spens. 
Eel. vii. 197, * These wisards wel- 
ter in wealth's caves.' Keble, 
Christian Year (4th S. after Tri- 
nity), speaks of * the deep weltering 
flood.' For a very early use of the 
word see the JCing^s Quhair, by 
James I. of Scotland, 1423, where 
the turning of Fortune's wheel is 
called ' the sudayn weltering of that 



LYCIDAS. 



51 



Without the meed of some melodious tear. 

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well, 
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring ; 
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. 
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse — 
So may some gentle Muse 



IS 



ilk qiihele.' Cf. Pope, Odyssey^ 
xiv. 155, * he welters on the wave.' 

Parehing] describes generally the 
effect of exposure to the weather, 
and is used of cold as well as of beat, 
P. L. ii. 594, where Newton comp. 
Ecclus, xlui. 21, ' The cold north 
wind . . . bumeth the wilderness. ' 
Cf. Virg. G, i. 93, *Borese pene- 
trabile frigus adurat ; ' Xen. Anab. 
IV. V. 3, where the wintry wind is 
said diroKai^iv Trdvra, 

meed] (O.E. mid, G. mUthe, akin 
to iiiffd6$), Cf. /. 84, the only other 
instance of the word in Milton. 
Shakspere uses it frequently. Cf. 
Spens. F, Q, ii. iii. 10, * honour 
virtue's meed ; ' Browne, Brit. Past. , 
* baye the learned shepherd's meede.' 

melodioui tear] s < mournful 
strain ; ' imitated by Mason in his 
Monody on Popey * the loan of some 
poetick woe.* Cooper, Tomb of 
Shakspere, 'the gurgling notes of 
her melodious woe ;' Shelley, Ado- 
nais, 'the lorn nightingale Mourns 
not her mate with such melodious 
pain.' Hurd comp. Eur. Suppl. 
454, SdKfwi 8* iTOifii(ovffi ( B ' a 
dirge*). Cf. Virg. ASn. ii. 145, 'his 
lacrimis vitam damns,' Le. 'to this 
sorrowful appeaL' In the Epitaph 
on the Marchioness of Winchester 
Milton speaks of his verses as ' tears 
of perfect moan,' and Spenser en- 
titles his elegy on Sir P. Sidney 
Tears of the Muses. 

15] The customary invocation of 
the Muses is studied from the open- 
ing lines of Hesiod's Theogony, 
The ' sacre4 well ' is Aganippe on 



Mount Helicon {o^i fitya rt (ddfoy 
Tc), and not, as Keightley supposes, 
' a fount of the poet's own creation,' 
and the ' seat of Jove ' is the altar 
upon the same hill (fivfjUnf ipurBwios 
Kpoviuifos). Cf. // PenserosOf 47, 
48 ; Spenser, £cl. iv. 41, where the 
name of the mountain is transferred 
to the spring. * Well ' in the sense 
of a natural fount occurs only here 
and in P. L. xi. 416 (from Psalm 
XXX vi. 9). 

17 somewhat loudly] i.e. make 
no uncertain answer to my appeal 
(see next line). Todd quotes from 
Drummond's Eie^y on Gustaims 
Adolphus — 

' Speak it again, and louder louder 

yet; 
Else while we hear the sound we 

shall forget 
What it delivers.' 

18 coy] (Fr. coi, Lat. quietus), 
formerly said of things as well as of 
persons {P. L. iv. 310). Warton 
instances from the Apology for Smec- 
tymnuus 'a coy fiurting style,' i;e. 
one which deals in quibbling and 
subterfuge, and thus eludes the 
grasp of the understanding; also 
Drayton, Past. Eel. vii., 'these 
things are all too coy (i.e. difiUcult) 
for me.* Chaucer, Romaunt of the 
Rose, has the verb acoie, * to caress.' 
Cf. Turberville (of Jupiter and 
Danae), ' when he coyde the closed 
nunne in a towre.' 

19 to may, Ac] probably sug- 
gested by the * sic tibi,' &c. of Virg. 
Eel. X. 4. Cf. Eel. ix. 40 ; Hor. 



B 2 



5« 



LYCIDAS. 



With lucky Words favour my destined urn, 
And as he passes turn, 
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud — 
For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, 



20 



Od. I. iii. I. The sense is, ^ As 
the Muses enable me to lament my 
lost friend, so may some kindly 
poet honour my memory when I 
am dead.' For Muse in the sense 
of *poet,* cf. Spenser, Prothala- 
mion^ 159, ' Some brave Muse may 
sing \* Diyden, Abs, and Achit, I. 
' Adriel .... himself a Muse ;' 
Chapman, Horn, (7^. yiii. 499, 'This 
sung the sacred Muse.* Newton's 
reference to Sams. Ag. 973 is not 
quite apposite, as Fame is there in- 
troduced in her proper character as 
a divinity, though her gender is 
changed on the poet's own responsi- 
bility. There is some awkwardness 
here in the use of * muse ' for the in- 
spired poet immediately after the in- 
vocation of the Muses as the inspirers 
of the song, but the sense is clear. 
In an Itsilian translation by T. 
Mathias (1812) *Muse' is properly 
rendered 'cantor.' 

20 fayour] homfavere{tl^ftiiiuii») 
in its technical sensed Hor. Od, 
III. i. 2. 

mj destined nm] Le. the ton^ 
destined for me. For * urn ' in this 
sense cf. Shaksp.«Ci^. v. 5 — 

*The most noble corse that ever 

herald 
Did follow to his nm.' 

Dyce, Glossary^ p. 477, quotes from 
Fortiguerra's Ricciardetto, * aprir la 
porta dell' uma ' ( » tomha), 

22] Thereseems to be no necessity 
for rejecting the usual interpretation 
of ' shroud ' in the sense of grave- 
clothes. Dunster indeed observes 
that it is * the Miltonic word for 
harbour, recess, hiding-place,' and 
takes it here to mean * tomb ; * but 
as Milton's use of the word (as a 



noun) is confined to this and three 
other passages {Comus^ 147 ; Od, 
Nat. 218 ; P, L, x. 1068), in all of 
which the context shows that it is 
employed metaphorically, these re- 
ferences prove nothing as to its 
meaning here. It may, however, 
mean the biack pall that covers the 
coffin. Mallet, in his iVilliam and 
Margaret^ has the lines — 

' And clay-cold was her lily hand 
That held her sable shroud,' 

but the phrase is probably copied 
from Milton. Todd's citations from 
Sylvester are still less to the point, 
since two of them do not contain 
the word at all, and in the third it 
unquestionably means ' dress of 
mourning,' in its primary accepta- 
tion (O. £. scrud) of clothes or 
covering. Cf. Shaksp. L, Lab, 
Lost J V. 2, * A smock shall be your 
shroud, ' and (for the secondary 
sense) Ezek. xxxi. 3, * a cedar with 
a shadowing shroud.' Pennant, in 
his London, mentions *a 'place 
called the shrowds^ a covered space 
on the side of [Paul's] church.' 

23] The poem now passes into 
the pastoral form ; the new para- 
graph should begin at /. 25, the 
present line being connected with 
/. 18, * I would fain sing for Ly- 
cidas, for he was my companion, 
&c.' Masson, Life of Milton, p. 611, 
says, 'The hill is Cambridge, the 
joint feeding of the flocks is com- 
panionship in study, the rural ditties 
are academic iambics and elegiacs, 
and old Damoetas is either Mr. 
Chappell or some more kindly fel> 
low of Christ's' (see on /. 36). 
Among these coU^e poems were 
ih^ Elegiacs to T. Young, 1626; the 



LYCIDAS. 



5S 



Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. 
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 
Under the opening eyelids of the Mom, 
We drove a-field, and both together heard 



25 



Vacatiifn Exercise^ 162S ; and the 
NcUivUy Ode, 1629. King's Latin 
verses have been already noticed 
(/. 10). P. Fletcher, in his 1st 
Piscatory Eclogue, describes his fa- 
ther's euly life under a similar alle- 
gory drawn from the fisherman's 
trade : — 

*Whcn the raw blossom of my 
youth was yet 

In my first childhood's green en- 
closure bound. 

Of Aquadune I learnt to fold my 
net . . . 

And guide my boat where Thames 
and Isis heire, 

By lowly Eton slides and Windsor 
proudly faire. 

But when my tender youth gan 

fairly blow, 
I changed large Thames for Ca- 
mus' narrower seas ; 
There as my years, so skill with 

years did grow. 
And now my pipe the better sort 

did please ; 
So that with Limnus and with 

Belgio 
I durst to challenge all my fisher 

peeres, 
That by leam'd Camus' banks did 

spend their youthful! yeares.' 

25 l»WBi] P, Z. iv. 252 ; VAl' 
iigro, 71 ; Od, Nat, 85. «A lawn 
is a plaine among trees ' (Camden). 
Cf. L. saltus. The restriction of 
meaning to grass kept smooth in a 
garden is comparatively modem 
(Wordsworth, White Doe of Ryl- 
stone, canto iv. 45 ; Tennyson, In 
Metn. 94, &c). The word is va- 
riously written lavmd, laund, lande 
in Piers Plowman, Chaucer, Surrey, 



Shakspere, &c. ; it is the Old Fr. 
lande, Sp. landa, Welsh llan^ which 
comes from the older Celtic Ian, ' a 
place,' and originally meant an 
area or open space, hence a church- 
3rard and a church, as in Uan^ 
dudno, &c. 

26] Milton's habit of early rising 
is illustrated in the Apology for 
Smectymnuus (quoted by Warton), 
where he describes himself as ' up- 
stirring in winter often before the 
sound of any bell awakens men to 
labour or devotion ; in summer as 
oft as the bird that first rouses, or 
not much tardier.' Cf. V Allegro, 
41 foil.; P. L. V. 1-25; ix. 192- 
200. 

opening] altered from ' glimmer- 
ing ' in ed. 1638, from the MS. first 
draft ; the improvement is obvious. 
The phrase is partly imitated by M. 
Bruce in his Daphnis, when he 
speaks of ' the closing lids of light.' 
Cf. Crashaw, Musics Duel, *the 
eyelids of the blushing day.' War- 
ton cites Job iii. 9 (margin) ; xli. 
18 ; Soph. Antig, 103, afi4pas jSA.^- 
^apoy ; Middleton, Game of Chesse 
(1625), *the opening eyelids of the 
mom.' 

27 drove] probably means * drove 
our flocks, '^ like * drive the team 
afield' in Gray's Elegy \ but the 
*word is often used intransitively 
(like irf^iv, agere), as in Gay's 3rd 
Pastoral {Sh^hetd's Week), * Now 
the sun drove adown the western 
road.' The a in * afield' is a dia- 
lectic form an of the preposition 
on ( Wyatt, Abused Lover, ' now off, 
now an '), of which the n was natn* 
rally dropped before a consonant; 
before h it was sometimes omitted 
('ahead,' &c.), sometimes retained 



54 



LYCIDAS. 



What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, 
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel 



30 



( * an hunting, * &c. ) . * Fell on sleep * 
occurs in Acts xiii. 36 ; in Cran- 
mer's Bible the reading was *a 
building' in John ii. 20, but it is 
now ' in building.' 

heard what time, Ac.] a con- 
densed expression for 'heard the 
horn of the gray-fly at the time 
when she sounds it.' Comp. djco^> 
9iv 8rc, audire quum, 

28] * The gray-fly or trumpet-fly ' 
(Warton). This cannot be the cock- 
chaffer, as some assert, since that 
insect flies only in the evening. 
Scott, Critical Essays, observes that 
the three parts of the day, morning, 
noon, and evening, are clearly in- 
tended. A writer in the Edinburgh 
Reu'uw (July 1868) suggests tbsit 
the * gray-fly ' may be the grig or 
cricket, O. E. grcsg-hama, i. e. 

* gray-coat,* from its colour. For 

* horn ' cf. Collins, Ode to Evening, 
' where the beetle winds his small 
but sullen horn* 

lultry horn] according to the 
classical usage by which an epithet 
is employed for an adverbial phrase 
denoting time. Farrar, Greek Syn" 
tax, p. 81, instances ffKordios ^jKOtp, 

* i^neas se matutinus agebat/ com- 
paring them with Dryden's * gentler 
they laid them down as evening 
sheep,'' 

29 battening] usually intransi- 
tive, *■ to grow fat,' as in Shaksp. 
Hamlet, iii. 4, 'batten on this 
moor.' It is used transitively in 
J. Philips* Cider, bk. i., *the mea- 
dows here with battening ooze en- 
riched,* and in Brown's Brit, Pas- 
torals, bk. ii. 1st song, 'thebatning 
earth.* The original root is bat-, 
whence also bet-tet and O. £. bit-tin 
(see on /. 64). There was an older 



foi-m, battel (cf. Holland's Plu- 
tarch, 'battell soil'), whence the 
college term 'battels.' Batful- 
' rich * occurs often in the Poly- 
dbion. 

fresh dewi, Ac.] Cf. Virg. G. 
iii. 324-326; Eel. viii. 15. 

30] See Various Readings. Keight- 
ley remarks that the evening star 
^appears, not rises, and it is never any- 
where but on "heaven's descent," * 
and he endeavours to save Milton 
from the charge of astronomical in- 
accuracy by interpreting the allusion 
of any star that rose about sunset. 
But the passage from the Faery 
Queene, ill. iv. 51 ('the golden 
Hesperus was mounted high in top 
of heaven sheen '), which Keightley 
himself quotes in his note on Comus, 
I. 93, shows that another poet was 
in fact guilty of the same error. 
Probably both remembered the ah- 
Xihs iurffip of Apollonius [Argonau- 
tica, iv. 1630), which is the same as 
Hesperus; and it is no necessary 
imputation of ignorance against Mil- 
ton to suppose that he meant this 
star both here and in the ComAs, 
since he was far more likely to have 
erred in company with the ancients 
than to have corrected their mis- 
takes by the light of modem dis- 
covery (see on /. 168). The 
amended line, inferior perhaps to 
the original on account of its diffuse- 
ness, is just such an expansion as a 
poet might easily produce, if he 
wished to lengthen the verse with- 
out recasting the whole passage. 

31 westering] originally 'bur- 
nisht,' which, as Todd observes, is 
a conmion epithet of the sun in 
older poetry. Miltoi^ however, 
has not so applied it elsewhere. 



LYCIDAS. 



55 



Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, 
Tempered to the oaten flute ; 



Between 1638 and 1645 1^^ "'^Y 
have recollected Chaucer's line in 
Troihis and Cressgyde^ *the sonne 
gan westrin fast/ &c. A corre- 
spondent in JVbUs and Queries (Feb. 
1873) quotes from Whittier, * the 
glow of autumn's westering- day.' 
*Wested* occurs in Spenser's In- 
troduction to the Faefy Queene, 
L 8, 'westing' in Cook's Voyages, 
Cf. Dryden, Virg. G. iv. 577, *th« 
southing sun.' The northern Eng- 
lish form ' westling ' is used by 
Allan Ramsay, Gentle Shepherd^ ii. 
4, and often by Bums. 

32] Imitated by R. West, Death 
ofQ. Caroline — 

' Meantime thy rural ditty was not 

mute, 
Sweet bard of Merlin's cave.' 

* Ditty' {dictum, Fr. dict^) means 
properly the words of a song as dis* 
tinguished from the tune. Cf. 
Shaksp.^j YouLikelt.y. 3, *Though 
there was no great matter in the ditty ^ 
yet the note was very untuneable.' 
Hence it was applied to a short 
pithy poem, generally on love and 
its sorrows. Milton has ' amorous 
ditties,' F. Z. i. 449 ; xi. 584. 
Cf. Comus, 86. 

33 tempered] = * attuned,' P. L, 
vii. 598. Warton compares Fletch- 
er, Purple Island, ix. 20, * temper- 
ing their sweetest notes unto thy 
lay,' and Spenser, Eel, vi. 7. Gray, 
Progress of Poesy, has — 

' Thee the voice, the dance obey. 
Tempered to thy warbled lay.' 

Cf. Petrarch, Sonnet xxxviii. 2, 
' Temprar potess' io in si soavi note 
I miei sospiri.' The Latin tempe^ 
rare is simdarly used, Hor. Od, iv. 
iii. 18. Milton employs the word 
'tenrper' in several senses, e.g. of 
sword metal, P, L, ii 813; vi. 



322; of mental constitution, P. R, 
iii. 27 ; of climate, P, L, xii. 636 
(cf. Chaucer, Assembly of Fowles^ 
stanza 30, ' the aire ... so at- 
tempre was ') ; of mixing in propor- 
tion (cf. Ezek. xlvi. 14; Exod. 
xxix. 2). All these come from the 
general notion of dividing (perhaps 
in r4fi'P-w, /^m-p-us, &c.), the pre- 
vailing idea being that of regular 
distribution and order. 

oaten flute] Cf. /. 88 ; Comus, 
345 ; Spenser, £cl. i. 72 ; x. 8 &c., 
&C.; Collins, Ode to Evening, /. i. 
'Pipes of com' are mentioned in 
ShaJcsp. M. N. Dr, ii. 2 ; Spenser, 
Eel. ii. 40. Although the oaten 
pipe has been chosen by English 
poets as the representative of pas- 
toral music, the classical authority 
for such usage is more than doubt- 
ful. Theocritus speaks only of 
reeds (leciXa^os, oMn, 8(»i^a{), or of 
the Pan's pipe (<rwp^7l). Lucretius 
in the celebrated passage, v. 1382 
foU., adds the hemlock pipe {cicuteC\ 
to the calamus and tUna. Perhaps 
the earliest instance of avena in this 
sense is in Virg. Eel. i. 2 (cf. Ov. 
Met. viii. 191 ; TibuU. iii. iv. 71) ; 
but it is a question whether the word 
may not there mean any reed or 
hollow stalk ; Pliny, N. H. xix. i, 
uses it of the flax -plant, ' tam gra- 
cili avena.* No argument can of 
course be drawn from the sHpula 
of Virg. Eel. iii. 27, where the de- 
signation is purposely disparaging. 
So in an Elegy to Dr. Donne by 
R. B.— 

' all indeed 
Compared to him, piped on an oaten 
reed ;* 

and in Tickell's mock-heroic poem, 
Kensington Gardens, * the shrill 
corn-pipes ' are a substitute for mar- 
tial trumpets in a battle of Iktries. 



56 



LYCIDAS. 



Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel 
From the glad sound would not be absent long, 
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song. 

But oh ! the heavy change, now thou art gone, 
Now thou art gone, and never must return I 
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves. 
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown. 



35 



40 



In this countiy the oaten pipe seems 
to have been common among rus- 
tics, and may still be met with. 
Burns, in a letter to Mr. Thompson 
(No. Ixiv.), speaks of *an oaten 
reed cut and notched like thai you 
fee every shepherd boy have^ but the 
sound is described as ' abominable.' 
Probably, therefore, our older poets 
took the expression from an over- 
literal rendering of catena in passages 
where it ought to have been under- 
stood in a wider sense. 

34] Cf. Virg. EcL vi. 27, *Tum 
vero in numerum Faunosque feras- 
que videres Ludere ; ' Pope, PasUh 
ralst ii. 50. Newton comp. also 
Spenser, Past, ^gi, 1x6— 

'Ye Sylvans, Fawns, and Satyrs 

that emong 
These thickets oft have daunced 
after his pipe.* * 

If Damoetas is Mr. Chappell, the 
Satyrs and Fauns may represent the 
wilder and less studious under- 
graduates of Christ's. We know 
from a letter to GiU, 1628, that 
Milton had to complain of uncon- 
genial companions at Cambridge 
('cum nullos fere studiorum con- 
sortes hie reperiam, &c.'), and be 
may have intended to pay them a 
passing compliment. 

36 Old DamoBtas] i<; a character 
in Sidney's Arcadia, the master of 
the young shepherd Dorus, and 
described as a * su^ipicicuis uncouth. 



arrant, doltish clown.' If Milton 
had this Damoetas in mind, the 
allusion to Chappell under that name 
may possibly show that he had not 
quite forgotten the old disagreement 
with his tutor which led to his tem- 
porary 'rustication' in 1626 (see 
Eleg. i. 11-20, Masson'sZ^, vol. i. 
p. 14X). 

37-49] Scott in his Critical Es- 
says remarks that there is ' a peculiar 
languid melody in these lines,' and 
that Milton has here used 'the 
poetical licence by which sense is 
attributed to inanimate existence to 
great advantage.' Ct Virg. Eel, 
X. 13, V. 62, for the symjMithy of 
natural objects with human sorrow 
and joy. 

38 never mnit] » art destmed 
never to return. Cf. Od, Nat, 151, 
' This must not yet be so. ' 

39] Dunster cites Ovid, Met, xi. 
43, where the beasts, woods, and 
rocks are said to mourn for Orpheus. 
For the structure of the line cf. 
Virg. G, iv. 465, ' 7>, dulcis con- 
junx, te solo in litoresecum, &c.;' 
Spenser, F, Q, IV. x. 44, < Thee^ 
goddesse, thee the winds, the clouds 
doe feare.' 

40 wild thyme] not mentioned 
elsewhere by Milton. Prof. Morley 
quotes this line in defence of the ex- 
pression ' thymy wood ' in the Epi- 
taphy against the objection raised that 
thyme does not grow in a wood. 
He adds a reference to Hor. Od, i. 
xvii. 5. and to Shaksp. M. N, 



\ Faunus was represented with goat's feer, •semicaper,'Ovid, Fast.y. loi. 



LYCIDAS. 



S7 



And all their echoes mourn. 

The willows, and the hazel-copses green, 

Shall now no more be seen 

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 

As killing as the canker to the rose, 

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, 



45 



Dream^ ii. 2, where the scene is 
laid in a forest. 

Gadding] here simply describes 
the straggling nature of the vine 
(Cic. de SemcLf *multiplici lapsu 
et erratico*), without any allusion 
to her desertion of the marital elm, 
as Warburton suggests (Hor. Od, 
IV. V. 30; JEpad. ii. 10; Catullus, 
Ixii. 49). Gadf from sb. gad, *a 
goad' (cf. *gad'fiy% Icel. gaddr^ 
meant 'to drive about,' and was 
once common. Warton quotes from 
a Norfolk Register of 1534 *the 
Gadynge with S. Marye Songe,* i.e. 
the going about with a carol to the 
Virgin. Gadlyng = * vagrant * in 
Chaucer, Wyatt, &c. Cf. P. Fletcher, 
Pise» Eel, i. 21, * the gadding winde ;' 
Bacon, Essays^ ' Envy is a gadding 
poison.' The word is however 
specially used of wives roving from 
home, as in Ecclus. xxv. 25 ; xxvi. 
8, &c. A poet of the sixteenth 
century (probably John Heywood) 
speaks thus in praise of his lady — 

*At Bacchus' ftast none her shall 
meet, 
Ne at no wanton play ; 
Nor gazing in the open street, 
Not gadding as astray.' 

41] C£ Moschus, Ept't. Bion, 
30, 'Ax(^ 8* iy irirff^ffty 58^pcrat Ihri 
ffunrfi, Shelley, AdimaiSf st. zv. — 

' Lost Echo sits among the voiceless 

mountains. 
And feeds her grief with thy re- 
membered lay.' 

44' fanning] Le. * moving like a 



£ui,' as in P, L. iv. 156, 'gentle 
gales, fanning their odoriferous 
wings.* Spenser, F, Q, I. i. 17, 
has, * threatening her angry sting,' 
Le. moving in a threatening manner. 

45 oanker] a crab-like tumour 
(< cancra') in the rose, caused by a 
caterpillar feeding on the blossom. 
Here it is used for the insect itself. 
Cf. Joel, i. 4, ii. 25 ; .2 Tim. ii. 17 ; 
James v. 3. Warton gives several 
references from Shakspere — e.g. 
Two Gent, of Verona^ i. i, * In the 
sweetest bud the eating canker 
dwells ;' JC, John, iii. 4 ; il/. AT. Dr. 
ii. 3, &c. &c. It is the same word 
as eancer, 

46] Sir T.Browne, Vulgar Errors, 
says : ' There is found in the summer a 
spider called /aiW, ofa red colour. . . . 
This is accounted a deadly poison 
unto cows and horses. It is most 
unlikely that Milton should have 
called this insect a *worm.' He 
probably refeis either to the maggots 
or * flukes ' which infest the livers of 
sheep, or to the parasitic worm 
{Strongylus mierurus) which, finding 
its way into the bronchial tubes of 
young lambs, is a frequent source of 
disease. 

weanling] a diminutive oiweanel, 
from wean. In Spenser, EcL ix., * a 
weancll waste * = a weaned lamb ; 
Beattie translates depulsos a lacte 
(Virg. Ed, vii. 15) *my weanling 
lambs.' This must not be con- 
founded with * eanling ' {Merck, of 
Ven, i. 3), which means * just dropt,* 
from ean or yean (O. E. edcnian^ 
* to conceive in the womb ') . * Wean • 



58 



LYCIDAS. 



Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear 
When first the white-thorn blows ; 
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. 

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
For neither were ye playing on the steep, 
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, 



SO 



is O. E. weniafty G. ge-wohmn, 
to accttstom to do without the 
breast. 

47] Soott thinks 'simplicity is 
violated by making flowers wear 
their wardrobe.' It is difficult to 
see the point of this criticism. For 
the original reading 'buttons,' cf. 
Shaksp. Hamlet, i. 3 ; Browne, 
Brit. Past ii. 3, * Flora's choice 
buttons of a russet dye. ' Hence the 
name of the flower called ' bachelor's 
buttons.' 

50-55] This form of appeal to 
the Nymphs, complaining of their 
absence from the scene of their vo- 
tary's distress, has been a favourite 
one with poets ever since Vii^l 
(Eel. X. 9) copied it from Theocritus 
(i. 66). Milton has here borrowed 
something from both^ from the latter 
in making the locality of the Nymphs 
suit that of the catastrophe (whereas 
Virgil speaks of their usual haunts, 
Parnassus, Pindus, and Aganippe), 
and from the former in ioentifylng 
the Kymphs wiih the Muses, whose 
tavourites both Gallus and Lycidas 
arc imagined to be. Keightley 
refers to Aristoph. Nub. 269 foil., 
as the original source of the idea, 
but the resemblance is hardly close 
enough to warrant the supposition 
that Theocritus was thinking of that 
passage, the circumstances and lead- 
ing sentiment being quite different 
The form of address (rfre — efr«, 
&c) might better be compared with 
that in. U. 156 foil, of the present 
poem. The lines which Warton 



quotes from Spenser's Astrophd^ 
127 foil., are not much more than an 
echo of the Greek and Latin ori- 
ginals, since the remonstrance is 
there addressed, not to the Nymphs, 
but to shepherds and shepherdesses, 
who were the actual companions of 
Astrophel; the office of stanching 
the wound being in fact performed 
by some strange shepherds, but too 
late to save his life. Lord Lyttelton 
on the DecUh of his Wife imitates 
more closely : — 

'Where were ye. Muses, when re- 
lentless Fate 

From these fond arms your £adr 
disciple tore ? 

Nor then did Pindus and Castalia's 
stream. 

Or Aganippe's foimt your steps 
detain, . . . 

Nor where Clitumnus rolls his 
gentle stream.' 

Cf. Shelley, Adonais, — 

* where was lorn Urania, 
When Adonais died ?* 

Ossian, Dar-thtUaj * Where have ye 
been, ye southern winds, when the 
sons of my love were deceived?' 

52] *The steep,' according to 
Richardson, is the hill Ceryg y 
Druidion in Denbighshire, the re- 
puted sepulchre of the Druids.. 
Keightley suggests the Penmaen- 
mawr (between Conway and Ban- 
gor), but the mention of the Druids, 
in the absence of any special legend 
connecting them wiUi that locsdity. 



LYCIDAS. 

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, 

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. 

Ay me, I fondly dream ! 

Had ye been there — for what could that have done ? 



59 



55 



seems to favour the former supposi- 
tion. 

54 tihtkggy top] Cf. /». Z. vi. 
645 ; Comus, 429. Dra3rton, Pa- 
fyoiitoftf 12th. Song, speaks of 
' sha£^ heaths.' This description 
of Anglesey was true only of the 
olden time ; it was then called * the 
Dark/ as Drayton tells us in the 
9th Song of his Pofyo/dion, where 
Mona is made to say — ' my brooks 
... Of their huge oaks bereft 
to heaven so open lie, That now 
there's not a root discerned by any 
eye.* We do not know whether Mil- 
ton had any personal acquaintance 
with these parts ; Masson thinks he 
may possibly have visited his friend 
Diodati's residence on the Dee 
(£/eg. i. 3). 

55] Cf. yac, Ex. 98; Spenser, 
F, Q. IV. xi. 30; and the "AimSos 
Uf^v 08«p of Theocr. i. 69. Dray- 
ton calls the Dee the ' ominous ' and 
the 'hallowed* flood in Polyolb. 
loth Song; this superstition was 
based on the fact of its being the 
boundary between England and 
Wales, whence — 

' the changing of his fords 
The future ill or good of either 
country told.* 

In the nth Song the epithet *wi- 
sard * is applied to the Weever, of 
which it is said that — 

' oft twixt him and Dee 
Much strife arose in their prophetick 
skill.* 

Hence probably arose the notion, 
mentioned by Camden, that the 
word meant * God s water,* and the 
Roman name Deua may have been 



partly owing to a similar assodatioii 
of ideas. Col. Robertson, TofO' 
graphy of Scotland, p. 141, derives it 
from tibe Gaelic da-abh (dav)^ 
'double water' or confluence, and 
this is further confirmed by its 
Welsh name Dyfr-divy^ signifying 
the same thing. 

56 Ay me!] ^'Ah me,' as in 
/. 154; P, Z. iv. 86, &c. It is 
probably the Spanish Ay de mi, and 
is to be distinguished from the 
affirmative Ay (G. ja). A cor- 
respondent of Notes and Queries 
observes that 'oh ja* is used in 
Southern Germany as an expression 
of woe — rather a curious coinci- 
dence. The Italians also say 
AhimS. 

fondly] s. foolishly, from the p . p. 
of the old verb fonne, *to make 
foolish.* The modem sense of ' in- 
dulgent* obviously arose from the 
idea of excessive love blinding the 
eyes of reason. For the primary 
use cf. P. L. iii. 470; xL 59; 
Shaksp. Coriolanus, iv. I, *'Tis 
fond to wail;* Spenser, F, Q. ill. 
viii. 25, * rudenes fond.* 

57] These words will hardly hear 
Newton*s proposed construction — 
* I dream of your having been 
there.* Warton would supply the 
ellipse after * there* — *but why 
should I suppose it, for what, &c. ; * 
a construction resembling the Greek 
&XA& 7c^ [iLX\*ohyhp o78a, &c.}, but 
hardly admissible in English. A 
simpler way would be to refer the 
*for,* &c, to the words *I fondly 
dream,* i.e. 'I fondly dream when 
I say Had ye been there, &c.;* the 
question in /. 50 being of course 
equivalent to a wish that the Muses 
had been present 



6o 



LYCIDA& 



What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, 
The Muse herself for her enchanting son, 
Whom universal Nature did lament, 
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar. 
His gory visage down the stream was sent, 
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ! 



60 



5S-63] A comparison with the 
various readings of the original 
MS. Mrill show that this passage is 
the result of most careful revision. 
Having first substituted the more 
poeticd description of Calliope as 
* the Muse that Orpheus bore ' for 
the direct designation of her by 
name, and having got rid of the 
somewhat prosaic parenthesis, ' the 
gods farsighted bee/ Milton first 
introduced in the margin the words 
' and heaven and hel deplore ; ' but 
afterwards erased them. * Divine 
head* (of the margin) was then 
changed to * goary visage/ suggested 
by the 'goarie scalp* of the first 
draft, and a final line was added to 
close the paragraph and to complete 
the rime. For the sentiment 
compare an epitaph by Antipater 
Sidonius, translated by Major Mac- 
gregor from the Greek Anthology — 

*No longer, Orpheus, shalt thou 
charmed oaks lead ; 

For thou irt dead ! and much the 
Muses grieved ; 

Calliope, thy mother, most be- 
reaved. 

Why mourn we our dead sons, 
since e^en their own 

To save fix>m death no power to 
gods is known?* 

59 enohantixig son] Cf. P, Z. 
X. 353, 'his fair enchanting daugh- 
ter.* For the story see Ov. Met, 
xi. i-SS, 61. This passage is partly 
repeated in P, L. vii. 34 foil Pout 
rr- * company * is a fiivourite word 
with MUton [Comus, 542 ; S, A. 



443 ; P. L, i. 747, &c.). Shak- 
spere has 'rout of rebels,' 'merry 
root,* and similar expressions. Cf. 
Spenser, F, Q. VI. ix. 8, 'the 
shepheard swaynes sat in a rout* 
This word has the same derivation as 
rout= • defeat,' and route- * path,' 
all of which come in different ways 
from the Latin rupta. The simi- 
larity in sense his suggested an 
imaginary connexion with the Welsh 
rh(md, which has both mean- 
ings. [H. Wedgwood, according 
to his favourite theory of deriva- 
tion from the sound of words 
(see Introduction to his Dictionary 
of Etymology)^ refers it to the 
Swedish rjotct, *to bellow,' com- 
paring the O. £. hrutan, 'to 
snore ;' a suggestion which the cri- 
tical reader may examine for him- 
self] 

63] Milton has been blamed for 
following the reading 'volucrem 
Hebrunr in Virg. ^n, i. 317, 
which was altered to 'Eurum' on 
the strength of Servius* remark, 
*nam quietissimus est (Hebrus).' 
But Wagner and Forbiger defend 
the MS. reading, and compare Sil. 
Ital. ii. 73, 'cursuque fatigant 
Hebrum.' Conington observes that 
the same unnecessary alteration of 
' Hebro * into ' Euro ' was attempted 
in Hor. Odi i. xxv. 20. The ra- 
pidity of this particular river has 
little to do with the matter ; swift- 
ness was a general attribute of 
rivers, and therefore became a com- 
monplace poetical epithet of thex^. 
Thus in Viig. ^n» iii. 76 Mycouus 



LYCIDAS. 



6% 



Alas ! what boots it with incessant care 
To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade, 
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 
Were it not better done, as others use, 



«s 



is called 'cdsa/ but 'humilis' in 
Ov. Met. .vii. 463, and the low- 
lying Prodiyta is designated *alta/ 
SSn. ix. 715, because this was a 
general epithet of islands. Todd 
comp. Davison, Poeticcd Rapsodit^ 

* Swift-flowing Hebrus staid all his 
streames in a wonder;' and Mr. 
Darby, in a letter to Warton (1785), 
quotes a statement of the Jesuit 
Catrou that the Hebrus is *un 
fleuve d'une grande rapidity ' in 
direct contradiction to the assertion 
of Servius. 

the Lesbian shore] Ov. Met, xi. 
55, /.r., * Methymnsei potiuntur litore 
Lesbi.' According to common tra- 
dition the head of Orpheus was 
carried by the waves to Lesbos, and 
there buried, for which pious office 
the Lesbians were rewarded with 
the gift of preeminence in song. 

64^-84] The pastoral landscape 
now disappears, and the shepherd 
merges into the poet (see IfUro- 
durtion), * What use is there in 
all this laborious pursuit of learn- 
ing, when life is so uncertain?' 
Phcebus interposes with ' a strain of 
higher mood,' reminding the ques- 
tioner that fame, which is the re- 
ward of noble deeds, lives on after 
death in heaven. The rural muse, 
though momentarily recalled at /. 
8;, does not permanently reappear 
till /. 132. 

what boots it] Cf. Richard II, 
i. 3 ; Winter's Tale^ iii. 2, &c. 

* Boot ' is O. £. b6t^ whence bitan^ 
' to improve,* from same root as 
batten (/. 29). 

incessant] in ed. 1638 'inces- 
sant ' The two forms seem to have 
been used indiscriminately aboat 
this period ; we find ' unexpiessive/ 



/. 176, Od. Nai, 116; Ungrateful,' 
P, Z. V. 407 ; * increate,' ib,- iii. 6. 
Shakspere has ' unpossible,' *un- 
effectual,' 'unperfect' (see Bible 
version of Ps. cxxxix. 16) aloi^ 
with *ingrate(ul,' * infortunate,' &c. 

65] Cf Spenser, Eel, vi. 67, 
'homely shepherd's quill.' 

66 meditate the Xnse] a literal 
translation of Virgil, Eel, i. 2, 
*' Musam meditaris ' (/ucXcrai'). This 
is one instance among mp^v of 
Milton's habit of verbally adopt- 
ing classical phrases (cf. ii, 20 
supra). Perhaps the most remark- 
able cases are the 'thick drop se- 
rene' {P, L, iii. 25), from gutta 
serenay and the 'happy-making 
sight' {Ode on Ttme^ 18), from 
Visio BaUifica, Viigil meant sim- 
ply 'compose a song,* a meaning 
which 'Muse' will not bear in 
English, although it cannot go with 
* meditate ' in any other sense. It 
is therefore doubtftil whether Milton 
intended 'thankless' to be intransi- 
tive, i.e. 'the poetry which gets 
no thanks,' or transitive^ i.e. 'the 
Muse who though courted with 
pains yet proves ungrateful.' For 
the former sense cf. Surrey, TVansl, 
of Virg, jSn, ii. 1x3, 'these thank- 
less tales,' and the two meanings of 
ingratiis^ 'ungrateful' and 'unre- 
quited.' 

67] The reading of 1638, 'do ' for 
' use,' is an error of the press, caused 
by the word ' done,' preceding. 

as others nse] aUudiug to the 
fashionable erotic poetry of the day 
(as represented by Herrick, Wither, 
Lovelace, &c. , /. 69 note), with which 
Milton's severer taste did not accord. 
From his 7th Elegy, however, we 
learn that he had once yielded to a 



6tf 



LYCIDAS. 



To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair ! 
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise- 
That last infirmity of noble mind — 



70 



softer passion, which the more seri- 
ous pursuits of college life soon dis- 
pelled — 

'Donee Socraticos umbrosa Aca- 
demia rivos 
Prsebuit, admissum dedocuitque 
jugum.' 

It has been plausibly argued that 
there is in the next two lines a spe- 
cial reference to two Latin poems 
by G. Buchanan (who was one of 
Milton's j^vourite authors), address- 
ed to Amaryllis and Nesera respec- 
tively. As regards the latter, the 
allusion seems highly probable ; 
since the poet distinctly describes 
himself as a prisoner bound by 
Cupid with a lock of Neaera's hair — 

* Deinde unum evellens ex aurico- 

mante capillum 
Vertice captivis vinda dedit ma- 
nibus.' 

It is true that the Amaryllis of Bu- 
chanan represents the city of Paris,* 
and not an actual lady ; but Milton 
may easily have overlooked or ig- 
nored this fact. The probability of 
the reference is strengthened by the 
first MS. reading, * Hid in the tan- 
gles, &c;' since our poet would 
hardly have conmiitted the absurdity 
of representing a lover sporting with 
one mistress, and at the same time 
being entangled in the hair of 
another, unless some such literary 
association had confused the two 
names in his mind. The present 
passage is imitated by Soame Jenyns 
in his Immortality oft?ie Soul — 

* Were it not wiser far, supinely laid, 
To sport with Phyllis in the noon- 
tide shade ? ' 

68] Amaryllis and Nesera are two 



of the common representative names 
in ancient pastoral song. Cf. Virg. 
Eel. i. 31 ; ii. 14 ; iii. 3, 81 ; ix. 
22. *A/iuipvAXtf (iftop^o'trw), the 
'sparkling beauty,' is the subject of 
Theocritus* 3rd Idyll. Both names 
occur together in Ariosto, Orl. Fur, 
xi. 12. 

69] Cf. Lovelace, To AUhia^ 

* When I lie tangled in her hair.' 

70] This sentiment is common in 
the classics. Newton instances Cic. 
ProArchia^ c. 10, ' trahimur omnes 
laudis studio, et optimus quisque 
maxime gloria ducitur.* Cf. Spen- 
ser, Tears of the MuseSy 454, * due 
praise that is the spur of doing well.' 
It is vividly illustrated in the Faery 
Queene^ ii. vii. 46 foil., where Philo- 
tim^ is described as holding a golden 
chain reaching to heaven, * every 
linck whereof was a step of dignity,' 
and by which the crowd were striv- 
ing *to climb aloft.' It reappears 
in the Paradise Regained, iii. 24 foil. , 
in an enlarged form from the mouUi 
of Satan tempting our Lord to am- 
bition, where the phrase * erected 
spirits ' (/. 27) may perhaps explain 
the * clear spirit' of this passage, 
i.e. purified by elevation into a 
clearer atmosphere. Keightley takes 
it to mean * illustrious,' It ckiaro. 
The identical expression 'clear 
spirit ' is cited by Todd from Mil- 
ton's Prose IVorkSt vol i. p. 1 61, 

Scott (Critical Essays) doubts the 
correctness of representing Fame 

* both as a motive and as a reward.' 
But surely the desire of Fame acts 
as a motive during the toil of action, 
and when realised in attainment be* 
comes its final reward. 

71] Athenseus in his Deipnoso* 
p^ista (xi. 15, § 1 16) represents Plat^ 



LYCIDAS. 



63 



To scorn delights, and live laborious days ; 
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, 
And slits the thin-spun life. * But not the praise,' 
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears, 
' Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. 



75 



as saying iaxo-rw rhv rris 8({{f|5 

/Actfo. Cf. Tacitus, Hist. iv. 6, 
'etiam sapientibus cupido glorise 
novissima exuitur,' of which the line 
quoted by Warton from Massinger's 
Very fVoman, * though the desire of 
fame be the last weakness wise men 
put off,' is nearly a literal transla- 
tion. Of pride Bp. Hall says, 
* Pride is the inmost coat, which we 
put on first and put off last.' 

73 guerdon] This word is not 
elsewhere found in Milton's poems, 
but is common in Spenser {F. Q. i, 
vii. 15 ; II. vL 28, &c.). Though 
it occurs at least as early as Chaucer, 
it seems to have become obsolete in 
the sixteenth century, being ex- 
plained in the Glossary to the Shtp- 
hearifs Kalendar (see on /. 2) ; and 
even as late as 1730 it was Uiought 
to require a note in a poem by West 
on EducatUm, Most readers will re- 
member the scene in Levis Labout^s 
Lost, iii. I, where Costard the clown 
exclaims, ' O sweet guerdon, better 
than remuneration,* taking each 
word to mean a sum of money. 
(For the derivation see Appendix 

I.). 

74] Cf. P. R. iii. 47, /. e, ; Chap- 
man's Homer's II. xvii. 177, *thiat 
frail blaze of excellence that neigh- 
bours death.' Pindar {Nem. x. 4) 
uses 4>Ac7C(r0ai in the same sense. 

75 blind Fury] Cf. Spenser, 
Raines of Rome, St. 24. Milton 
here purposely in indignation calls 
Atropos a Fury, and not without 



classical authority ; for in an Orphic 
Hymn (quoted by Sympson) the 
deal /uoijCMU are styled o^<oirX(i«rafu»(, 
which is a proper epithet of the 
Furies. Langhome in his El^ on 
the Death of Handel speaiks of ' the 
grim fury's breast.' Cf. Lloyd, 
Tears and Triumph of Parnassus — 

* Where were ye Muses (/. 50 supra) 

when the fatal shears 
The Fury raised to close his reve- 
rend years ? ' 

For the * shears of destiny' see 
Shaksp. IC. John, v. 2. 
76] According to the old verse — 

' Clotho colum retinet, Lachesis net, 
et Atropos occat,* 

For * slit ' in the sense of cutting 
across, mstead of lengthwise, Keight- 
ley cites Golding's Ovid, Met, xii. 
248— 

' Like one that with an ax doth slit 
An ox's neck in' sacrifice.' 

But not the praise] i.e. *the 
praise is not intercepted ' (Warton). 
This is a kind of zeugma, the verb 
'slits' being strictly applicable to 
the thread alone, but su^esting 
another verb of similar meaning to 
govern Upraise.' 

77] From Virg. EcL vi. 3, where 
Conington remarks that touching 
the ear was a symbolical act, the 
ear being the seat of memory. 

78] Cf. Pindar, Nem. vii. 45, 
Ti/ua tk yiy¥vrai, &c., i.e. * true 
honour is theirs whose glorious fame 



64 



LYCIDAS. 



Nor in the glistering foil 

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, 

Biit lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 



So 



the god exalteth, an aid to their 
memory after death' (rcOraic^wy 
fioa06oy), 

79, 80] Thus translated by Plump- 

tre (1797)— 

KCiTCU 

hrnya r&y iroAXfir Odfifiti jcal iyd- 

And by Mathias (see note on /. 

19)- 

' Non mai d' orpel fallace 
Con mentito splendor sfavilla al 

mondo, 
Dello spanto romor nemica, Fama.' 

Milton's words admit of a twofold 
construction. The first is — *Nor 
is it (Fame) set off to the world in 
(i.e. fy) the glistering foil, nor does 
it lie (consist) in a wide reputation.' 
In this case ' foil ' must be under- 
stood in a sense which it often bears 
elsewhere, of a dark substance 
(originally a thin Im/ of metal), in 
which jewels were placed to ' set off' 
their lustre. Cf. Shaksp. Ifuk, 
//. i. 3— 

* z/oil wherein thou art to set 
The precious jewel of thy home re- 
turn;' 

I Hen, IV, i. 2 (quoted by Warton), 
' And like bright metal on a sullen 
ground, &c.' In Rich, III, v. 3 
the stone of Scone set in the oak 
chair of Edward I. is called 

' a base foul stone. 
Made precious by the foU of Eng- 
land's chair.' 

Chr. Brook in an Epithalammm 
(speaking of a newly wedded bride) 
says — 

<Then let the dark foyU of the ge- 
niallbed 



Extend her brightness to his in- 
ward sight.' 

But this mode of taking the words 
£uls to give a suitable meaning to 
the passage. It is not Fame itself 
which is * set off to the world,' but 
the life and actions of the man, the 
display of which before the eyes of 
the public constitutes fame — at least 
according to the vulgar notion which 
Milton is here combating. The 
true sense seems to be this : * Nor 
does it (true Fame) consist in the 
specious appearance which is dis- 
played to tfie world, nor in a wide- 
spread renown.' FamcyrUX then be 
the subject of the verb lies^ and set 
off a participle agreeing with fail ; 
the preposition in before ' glistering 
foil ' will have the same construc- 
tion and sense as the in before 
* broad rumour,' both phrases being* 
constructed after lies. And the 
meaning of 'foil' will be, not ex- 
actly * leaf-gold,' as Newton takes 
it (comparing the ' golden foile ' of 
Spenser, F. Q, i. iv. 4), but tinsel, 
i.e. some baser metal which glitters 
like gold, and makes a £Eur show to 
the eye. Scott doubts 'whether 
the metaphor of "plant" is con- 
tinued to this line or not,' and 
imagines * a plant with leaves artifi- 
cially gilded.' Perhaps the idea of 
'foil' [folium) was suggested by 
the word * plant,' but the metaphor 
itself is not resumed till /. 81 in the 
words 'lives and spreads,' which 
describe the growth of a tree. 

81 by] probably =s 'near,* i.e. 
'in presence of.' Shaksp. Twelfth 
Night, ilL I, ' Thou mayest say the 
king lives fy a beggar, if a b^gar 
dwell near him.' So we still say 
'hard^.' This seems better than 



LYCIDAS. 



6S 



And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 

As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 

Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.' 

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, 
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, 
That strain I heard was of a higher mood. 
But now my oat proceeds, 
And listens to the herald of the sea, 



85 



Keightley's explanation, ' by means 
of.' 

83 lastly] in the somewhat un- 
usual sense of ' finally ' or * decisive- 
ly ;' a literal rendering of uUi' 
mum. Cf. Hor. Od. I. xvi. 19, 
* allis urbibus ultima Stetere causae, 
&c,' i.e. the final (ultimate) cause 
of their ruin. 

84 meed] See on /. 14, and cf. 
Spenser, F. Q. iii. z. 31, *Fame is 
my meed and glory, virtue's pay.' 

85-102] The return after the di- 
gression is marked by an invocation 
of the pastoral fountain Arethusa, 
and of Virgil's native river, the 
Mincius — a practical recognition of 
the Sicilian and Roman pastorals 
as Milton's own originals (see In- 
troduction). For the story of Are- 
thusa see Ovid, Afrt. v. 579 foil. 
In Moschus, E/diaphium Bionis^ 83, 
Bion is said to have * drunk of 
Arethusa's fount,' and in Theocr. Id, 
i. ti7 the dying Daphnis exclaims, 
XoTp* 'fi^^waa, Virgil [Ed, x. l) 
invokes her as a Muse inspiring 
his song. 

honoured flood] imitated by West 
in his Monody on Q. Caro/ine, * O 
honoured flood with reeds Pierian 
crowned, Isis ! ' Here the epithet 
is given to the river because of its 
association with VirgiL 

86] Cf. Sylvester, Du Bartas^ 
171, *the crystal of smooth-sliding 
floods.' This and the * vocal reeds ' 
are from Virgil, G«>rg, iii 14, * tardis 



ubi flexibus errat Mincius, et tenera 
praetexit arundine ripas.' The epi- 
thet 'vocal' is best illustrated by 
the passage in Lucretius, v. 1383 
folL, alluded to on /. 33. 

87] An apology to the rural mose 
for departing from the pastoral 
strain, under the irresistible influ- 
ence of Phoebus. A similar device 
is adopted after the next digression 

(/. 132). 

mood] {P, L, i. 550 j S, A, 661) 
s * character,' from modus ^ signify- 
ing a particular arrangement of in- 
tervals in the musi(^ scale, the 
study of which formed so important 
an element in the Greek system of 
education (Plato, Republic^ B. iii.; 
Aristotle, Politics^ B. viii.). The 
word has nothing to do with a 
' mood ' or state of mind^ which is 
O. £. mSd^ G. muth^ 'impulae,' 
though the similarity of meaning 
might easily cause confusion. 

b8] See on/. 33. Here the in- 
strument, of course, stands for the 
poem. A still bolder expression 
occurs in the 6th El^y, /. 89, ^bere 
patriis meditata cicutis means ' com- 
posed in my native tongue.' In 
Landor's Imaginary ConvenaHons 
(Southey and Landor) this line is 
curiously misquoted, 'now my oar 
proceeds ; ' upon which Southey is 
supposed to remark, ' Does tine oar 
listen ? ' 

89 listens] Le. like a piipil 
(dicpcMiT^s), to learn what he istoeaj 



66 



LYCIDAS. 



That came in Neptune's plea. 

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, 

What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain ? 

And questioned every gust of rugged wings 

That blows from oif each beaked promontory. 

They knew not of his story ; 

And sage Hippotades their answer brings, 



90 



95 



upon the subject. The ^ herald ' is 
Triton, the son of Neptune ; his . 
instrument was the concha or spiral 
shell (Virg. yEn. vi. 171 j x. 209), 
and his office of herald is illustrated 
in Ovid, Ma. i. 333 foil., where he 
is ordered to sound a retreat for the 
waters of the deluge (* cecinit jussos 
receptus'). 

90] Keightley understands * Nep- 
tune's plea' to mean the judicial 
enquiry which Neptune deputed 
Triton to hold ; and he instances 
the * Court of ComnuMi Pleas,^ &c., 
as examples of the word in this sig- 
nification. But it seems better to 
take it in its usual sense of a state- 
ment made by the defendant to sa- 
tisfy {placere) the court ; here the 
excuse offered by Neptune and con- 
veyed by Triton. Milton probably 
intended to represent Neptune him- 
self as involved in the blame, and 
desirous to clear himself by a strict 
enquiry applied to his subordinates. 
Plumptre adopts this view when he 
translates TlwrtiHiMvos dfiuvrfip. 

91 felon] (MS. ' fellon *) ^ 
* cruel,* if it comes from /eil, with 
the additional sense of 'criminal/ 
the winds being introduced as cuU 
prits about to be tried. For the 
etymology see Appendix I. 

93 wbigs] misprinted 'winds' 
in Tondon's edition of 1705, and in 
Newton's of 1785, probably on ac- 
count of 'winds' in /. 91. 'Gust 
of wings' is the gen. of quality »■ 
f winged gusts,' and ' rugged ' = 
^n^ed,' ie. broken by intervening 



/obstacles. Rugged and ragged seem 
to have been used indiscriminately 
about this period {VAlUgro^ 9; 
Isaiah ii. 21), but they are dis- 
tinct words, the former being allied 
to the O. £. nih, ' rough,' the latter 
to Swed. re^^ ' shaggy hair.' 

94] Warton compares P. Z. xi. 
746 ; Drayton, Polyolbion^ ist Song, 
' the utmost end of Comwal's fur- 
rowing heak.'' Pliny, NcU. Hist. x. 
49, uses ' rostrum ' for the promon- 
tory of an island in the Nile. 

95 his story] i.e. how to give 
any accoimt of him. 

96] Warton observes that Hip- 
potades is not a common name of 
iEolus, and doe<; not occur in Virgil. 
He quotes Homer, Od. x. 2 ; Ovid, 
Met. iv. 661 ; xiv. 86, &c., and 
passages from the ArgonatUica of 
Apoll. Rhodius and VaL Flaccus. 
The epithet ' sage ' implies authority 
and responsibility. Dunster thinks 
there is a special allusion to ' sciret ' 
in Virg. ^n. i. 63, which is how- 
ever there qualified by the addition 
of 'jussus' and of 'foedere certo.* 
Homer, Od. x. 21, represents 
iEolus as acting by his own discre- 
tion (iravcficrou f|8* 6py6fi€v Bv k* ^Oc- 
\riffi). Richardson understands 
' sage ' of his foreknowledge of the 
weather; but this is a later and 
rationalised form of the story, and 
one which Milton as a poet is not 
likely to have chosen, since even 
when writing history he professes 
himself unwilling to give up the 
myths entirely, rejecting only those 



LYCIDAS. 



67 



That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed; 

The air was calm, and on the level brine 

Sleek Panop^ with all her sisters played. 

It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, 

That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, 
His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge. 



IGO 



which are ' impossible and absurd ' 
{Hist, of Britain, c. i, and see 
Grote, Hist, of Greece, vol. i. c. 17). 

98 level brine] imitated by J. 
Warton in his Enthusiast (]740)« 
* the dolphin dancing o'er the level 
brine.* 

99 Fanope] one of the fifty 
daughters of Nereus and Doris 
(Hesiod, Theog. 250 foil.). The 
name Ha»&rti, denoting a wide view 
over a calm expanse of water, is 
significant here, as also in Virg. 
Georg. i. 437, yEn. v. 240, 823. 
Spenser (apparently on his own au- 
thority) introduces her as an *old 
nymph ' who kept the house of Pro- 
teus {F. Q. III. viiL 37). 

100] See the inscription prefixed 
to the Cambridge Verses of 1638, 
'navi in scopulum allisa, et rimis 
et ictu fatiscente. ' 

loi] Warton comp. Shaksp. 
Macbeth, iv. I — 

• slips of yew, 
Slivered (cut) in the moon's ecUpse,' 

used by the witches for their incan- 
tations. The superstition about 
eclipses as portents of impending 
calamity is an old one (Virg. Georg, 
i. 465 foil., and cf. P. L. i. 597 
foil.); hence might naturally arise 
the belief that work done during an 
eclipse was likely to £ul of success ; 
but there seems to be no evidence 
to show that the ancients actually so 
r^;arded it. 



102 sacred] consecrated by friend- 
ship, and therefore inviolable. Cf. 
Tennyson, In Memoriam, xiv. 10, 
*the man I held as half divine.' 

103 Camus] So in Spenser's 
PastoraU yEglogue the Thames, 
Humber, Severn, and other rivers 
mourn for their &vourite bard Phil- 
lisides. Cowley, Complaint, I. 6, 
speaks of * reverend Cam.' * Sire ' 
is the usual mythological designa- 
tion of a river, as a presiding and 
protecting power. Cf. Livy, ii. 10, 
*Tiberine pater;' Virg. ^n. viii. 
31. What follows is an adaptation 
of the natural features of the locality 
to the circumstances of mourning, 
but without the unpleasant associa- 
tions which appear in the *nuda 
arva' and 'juncosas Cami paludes' 
of the 1st Elegy, //. 13, 89. That 
Milton had no great affection for 
Cambridge is clear (see on //. 34, 36), 
but this was not a fit occasion for 
expressing any such feeling. With 
* footing slow ' Keightley compares 
F. Q. I. iii. 10, ' A damsel spied 
slow footing her before.* Cf. Dun- 
combe, Ode to C P. — 

* where sedgy Cam 
Bathes with slow pace his acade- 
mic grove.' 

Those who are acquainted with the 
locality will recognise the appro- 
priateness of these descriptions; it 
may not be out of place to mention 
the fact, that in a report addressed 



F 2 



68 



LYCIDAS. 



Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. 
* Ah ! who hath reft/ quoth he, * my dearest pledge ? ' 
Last came, and last did go, 



^05 



to the Cambridge Improvement 
Commissioners (Oct. 1871) by Mr. 
J. B. Denton, *the sluggish nature 
of the river* is expressly noted as 
one of the main difficulties in the 
way of the proposed operations. 

105J In the 'figures dim* War- 
burton sees a reference to the * fabu- 
lous traditions of the high antiquity 
of Cambridge.* Perhaps we need 
hardly look for any such precise ap- 
plication of the expression, which 
may very well be a part of the 
general picture of desolation. Dun- 
ster*s remark that * on sedge-leaves, 
when dried, there are certain dim, 
indistinct, and dusky streaks on the 
edge,* is worth noticing, and the ori- 
ginal reading * scrauled ore * seems 
to favour the probability of such an 
allusion. 

106] For the legend of Hyacin- 
thus (to which Milton also alludes 
in the Ode on the Death of a Fair 
Infant^ 25 foil.) see Ovid, Met. 
X. 210 foil. ' Ipse suos gemitus 
foliis inscribit et Ai Ai Flos habet 
inscriptum' (fi^. 215). Hence Theo- 
critus, X. 28, calls the fiower a 
TpaiTT^ &dKUf0QSj and Moschus, £pit. 
Bion, I. 6, exclaims vvv 6(£fcty0c 
A<£\ct T& ith, ypdfjLfutra. Cf. Drum- 
mond, JE^. oft Prince Henry — 

* that sweet flower that bears 
In sanguine spots the tenour of our 
woe.* 

107 reft] (O. E. refian^ to rob) 
now commonly appears in its com- 
pound he-reave. The simple verb 
occurs nowhere else in Milton, but 
is frequently used by the Elizabe- 
than poets, e.g. Shakspere, Much 
Ado.'w, X, AlVs Well, v. 3, &c.; 
Surrey, passim ; Spenser, F. Q. 
L iii. 36, 41, &c. Sir W. Ra- 



leigh, Cynthia^ says of the mooti, 
*• she that from the sun r(00z/«r power 
and might.* 

pledge] "> offspring, considered 
as a security of conjugal fidelity. 
Pignus in this sense is very com- 
mon, cf. Propert. iv. xi. 73, *com- 
munia pignora natos.* Milton has 
*pignoracara,' Eleg. iv. 42. War- 
ton quotes from the Fime Spirituali 
of Angelo Grillo *mio caro pegno.^ 
Cf. P. L. ii. 818 ; Ode At a Solemn 
Musickt I. I; Spenser, F. Q. I. x.4 ; 
Bacon, Essay on Marriage^ 'their 
dearest pledges ; * Lord Ljrttelton, 
on the death of Lady L. — 

* Nor did she crown our mutual 

flame 
With pledges dear, and with a 
father*s tender name.* 

108] Neve in his Cursory Re- 
marks on some English Poets (1789) 
observes that * as Dante has made 
Cato of Utica keeper of the gates 
of Purgatorio, Milton has here in 
return placed St. Peter in company 
with Apollo, Triton, &c.,* and that 
*for the intrusion respecting the 
clergy of his time tiie earliest 
Italians have set plentifiil example.* 
See for instance St. Peter's animad- 
versions upon the d^eneracy of his 
successors in Paradiso, Canto 27, 
which closely resembles the present 
passage. Dante does not however 
make Cato the * keeper of the gates * 
(that office being given to an angel, 
Purgat. ix. 78, 105), but the guar- 
dian of certain wandering spirits 
outside the place itself. For the 
charge of irreverence urged against 
Milton for his alleged confiision of 
things sacred and profime see Intro- 
duction, p. 22. 



LYCIDAS. 



69 



The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain — 

The golden opes, the iron shuts amain. 

He shook his mitred locks, and stem bespake : 



no 



109 Pilot] is an addition to the 
gospel narrative (Luke v. 3), where 
there is no intimation that Peter 
acted in that capacity towards the 
others. He was doubtless the 
steersman of his own ship, a sense 
in which * pilot ' is often used {P. L. 
i. 204 ; S, A, 198). In /. 1044 of 
the latter poem the ' pilot ' and 
' steersmate ' are distinguished. 

no] Originally from Matt. xvi. 
19, where the number of keys is 
not mentioned. From the earliest 
times St. Peter was represented 
with two keys ; hence P. PUetcher 
in his Locusts (quoted by Todd) sa)rs 
of the Pope — 

' In his hand two golden keys he 

beares, 
To open heaven and hell and shut 



agame 



.» 



and in the Purple Island, viL 421, 
Dichostasis (Schism) is invested with 
the same authority. Dante (Inferno, 
xxvii) makes Pope Boniface say — 

' Lo ciel poss* io serrare e disser- 

rare, 
Come tu sai ; per6 son due le 
chiavt' 

In the ode In Quintum Novembris 
Milton speaks merely of *Apo- 
stolicae custodia clavis.' The dis- 
tinction between the two metals — 
one denoting the value of the bene- 
fits secured by admission, the other 
stem severity in exclusion — is our 
poet's own ; in the parallel passage 
of Dante, Purg. ix. 120 foil., lx)th 
a golden and a silver key are used 
by the angel to open the gate. The 
Italian proverb quoted by Mr. 
Bowles, * Con le chiavi d' oro s' apre 



ogna porta,* alludes to the influ- 
ence of money, and has therefore 
nothing to do with the * power of 
the keys.* 

in amain] a 'firmly/ lit. ' with 
might,* from O. £. magen, a de* 
rivative of magan, *to be strong.' 
For the prefix a see on /. 27. 

112] It would be unfair to con- 
strue this admission of the mitre 
into a precise statement of Milton's 
religious views at this period, or to 
suppose with Warburton that * it 
sharpened his satire to have the 
prelacy condemned by one of their 
own order.* As St. Peter here 
speaks with episcopal authority, he 
is made to wear the distinctive dress 
of his order. So in the 3rd Elegy 
(1626) on the Bishop of Winchester, 
the glorified prelate is represented 
with the * infula * or mitre upon his 
head (/. 56). In the Reason of 
Church Government, c. vi. (1641) 
Milton indeed uses very different 
language, when he speaks of 'the 
haughty prelates with their forked 
mitres, the badge of schism ; ' • but 
the events of the three intervening 
years had produqed a considerable 
change in his attitude towards the 
clergy, or at least had emboldened 
him in the expression of opinions, 
which had been long lurking in his 
mind, and of which the present in- 
vective is perhaps the earliest inti- 
mation. 

bespake] here used absolutely, as 
in P, R, i. 43 ; Ode Nat, 76. Cf. 
Spens. F, Q. I. ii. 32, *he thus 
bespake.* The prefix ie- is the 
same as-fy ( «» * near * or * to *), with 
the addition of the person ad- 
dressed. P. Z. iv. 1005, ' Gabriel 



70 



LYCIDAS. 



* How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
Ejiow of such as, for their bellies' sake, 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
Of other care they little reckoning make, 



"5 



. . . thus bespake the fiend.' At the 
present day it usually ^ 'speak 
for,^ i.e. 'secure beforehand,* and 
Sometimes 'declare' or 'show,' as 
in Cowper's 72w>6, ii. 702, * His head 
. . . bespoke him;' Poems by Jane 
Taylor, 'the cheerful chimes be- 
speak the hour of prayer.' 

113-X31] Three grounds of com- 
plaint are here alleged — (i) the 
covetousness and moral corruption 
of the clergy, (2) their &lse or im- 
perfect doctrine, (3) another evil, 
distinct from the former, but not 
expressly defined, which is most 
probably to be understood of the 
increasing perversions to Romanism 
so frequent at this period. (See Ap- 
pendix II.). 

114 enow] printed 'anow' in 
ed. 1645 (in the MS. 'anough'). It 
is spelt both vrays in the Areopagi- 
tica (1644). So 'emong' and 
' among,' &c. In Shaksp. Merck, 
of Venice^ ii. 2, we find * aleven' for 
* eleven * (see Dyce cul loc, ). 

for their bellies' sake] Cf. Ezek. 
xxxiv. 2,3. On what follows War- 
ton remarks that Milton has copied 
from Spenser's 5th Eclogue the 
sentiments of Piers the Protestant 
shepherd, which are quoted at full 
length in the Animadversions on the 
'Remonstrants Defence ( 1 641 ). Our 
author's prose works abound with 
specimens of similar language ; e.g. 
in the Apology for Smectymnuus he 
speaks of 'the prelate, who being a 
pluralist may under one surplice 
hide four benefices ; ' and many 
.similar passages might be quoted. 
Compare also the following lines, 
addressed to the clergy in the 
tragedy of Baptistes^ translated from 
the Latin of G. Buchanan in 1637, 



and sometimes, but without sufficient 
reason, attributed to Milton — 

' Then like dumb dogs that bark not 

here, you firet 
And fume about your sheepcotes ; 

but the wolves 
Which of you drive away ? The 

wolves, said I ? 
You are the wolves yourselves, 

that flay your flocke, 
Clothed with their wool ; their 

milk don't slack your thirst, 
Their flesh your hunger. Thus 

yourselves you feed. 
But not your flock.' 

1x5] Cf. P. L. iv. 193. T. 
Becon, chaplain to Cranmer (about 
1540), says in his Policy of War — 
* They come into their benefices non 
per ostium sed cUiunde^ for the desire 
of filthy lucre' (St. John x. i). By 
intrusion into the fold Milton does 
not imply absence or invalidity of 
orders ; his matured views concern- 
ing a minister's credentials were 
afterwards clearly set forth in the 
treatise on Christian Doctrine^ 
c 29, 31. These are 'spiritual 
knowledge and sanctity of Ufe,' to 
be tested by previous trial, and the 
choice is to belong to the people 
collectively ; a mode of proceeding 
which Hooker {Eccl. PoL vii. 14) 
argues to be a mere pretence, since 
the elders 'allow not their own 
previous choice to be set aside by 
their [the people's] disapprobation ;' 
and he ludicrously compares it to 
the way of 'nurses with infants, 
whose mouths they besmear with 
the backside of the spoon, as 
though they had fed them, when 
they themselves devour the ifood.* 

116, 117] Cf. Becon, Jewel of 



LYCIDAS. 

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 

And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 

Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 

A sheep-hook, or }iave learned aught else the least 



r« 



1 20 



J<^ — *Our spiritual men are led 
with no care of feeding Christ*s 
flock. . . Christ's threefold Pasce is 
turned into the Jews* double TolU, 
They feed nothing except them- 
selves, they toll and catch what- 
soever they may.' 

118 the worthy bidden gueit] 
Matt xxii. 8. Milton here allows 
the principle of emolument for 
ministerial services, since ' the 
shearers' feast' is the due reward 
of honest shepherds ; latterly his 
opinions on this subject were some- 
what modified. In the Treatise en- 
titled The Likeliest Means to remove 
Hirelings and in the Christian Doe- 
trine^ while barely admitting that 
' the labourer is worthy of his hire,' 
he restricts it to voluntary contribu- 
tions, adding that ' it is more de- 
sirable to serve gratuitously,' and to 
support themselves (if need be) * by 
the exercise of some trade or call- 
ing' (C. D, c. 31). 

119] The phrase ' blind mouths ' 
may be illustrated from the classical 
usage of transferring to one bodily 
sense the functions of another ; e.g. 
Soph. (Ed, T. 371, ru^A^s ra Aro, 
Val. Flacc. ii. 461, 'csecus clamor,' 
Plin. N, H, xxxvii. 18, *surdus 
color,' &c. The shepherds are 
emphatically termed 'mouths,' first 
for their gluttony, secondly in refer- 
ence to their preaching. As regards 
the former cf. Hesiod, TTieog. 26, 
where the Heliconian swains are 
said to be yatrripfs otov^ * nothing 
but bellies.' Cf. yatrr4p9s hpySt 
(*lazy gluttons'), St. Paul to 
Titus, i. 12 ; Pliny, AT, H. ix. 17, 
30, *proceres gulae' (* noble glut- 
tons '). Hogg (1694) translates the 



present passage * O caci ventres^ qui 
vix comprendere dextra Pastorale 
pedum, aut aliquid didicere, &c.' 
Next by a bold ngure of speech the 
' mouths ' are said < to hold a sheep - 
hook,' with which Newton aptly 
compares Hor. Sat. 11. il 39 — 

' Porrectum magno magnum spectare 

catino 
Vellem ait Harp3riis gula digna 
rapadbus ;' 

also P. L. V. 711, * the eternal eye 
...saw... and smiling said^ As to 
the relative importance of preach- 
ings Milton places it foremost 
among ministerial duties, even 
above the administration of sacra- 
ments (C. P, c. 29). To a Puritan 
'a non-preaching ministry' was a 
crying eyil, and even James I. at 
the Ha/npton Court Conference of 
1604 gives his opinion that * a 
preaching ministry is best,' though 
he orders * that praying be attended 
to as well.' At the same Conference 
the daily use of the Book of Homi- 
lies, originally set forth in 1562 to 
remedy the defects of the clexgy on 
this haul (see Preface to Homilies)^ 
was strictly enjoined; and some 
twenty years later the Kin^s 
Letters were issued for the express 
purpose of restraining extravagances 
in the pulpit (Fuller, Church Hist. 
X. vii. 4). 

120 fheep-hook] jcopJrn, Theocr. 
Id,y\\, 43; 'pedum,' Virg. Eel. v. 
88. Cf. Treatise on Rejformation 
in England^ B. ii., ' the pastorly 
rod and sheep-hook of Christ' 
(Psalm xxiii. 4). Of unlearned 
ministers Becon remarks in his Pre- 
£Eice, 'They leap into the pulpits 



72 



LYCIDAS. 



That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! 

AVhat recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 

And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 



without shame, when they under- 
stand not what pulpit matters mean. 
They teach before they learn.' Mil- 
ton's earlier opinions were in favour 
of a learned dexgy, as might have 
been expected from the circum- 
stances of his education. In a letter 
to the elder Gill from Cambridge, 
1628. he deplores the ignorance of 
those * who without any acquaint- 
ance with criticism or philosophy 
engage in the study of theology* 
{Epist. Fam. 3). But in the Like- 
liest Way <Sr»r. (1651) he contemp- 
tuously designates all such learning 
as *■ scholastical trash/ adding that 
every requisite * may be easily at- 
tained, and by the meanest capaci- 
ties, if they seek the guidance of 
the Holy Spirit,' an opinion which 
is further developed in the Christian 
Doctrine, c. 31. 

121 herdmaxi'f] ('heard^mans' 
in the MS.), here = 'shepherd's.* 
The original meaning is simply *one 
who tends or watches ' (G. Herde, 
hirten, &c. ) either sheep or larger 
cattle, and the modem distinction 
was not always observed. Spenser, 
F. Q. VI. xi. 37, 39, uses * heards * 
and * heardgroomes ' for keeper of 
sheep, though he elsewhere [ib. ix. 
10) makes a difference — *ne was 
there heard fikQ was there shephearcPs 
swayne.' In the Bible the spelling 
is always *■ herdman ' (Gen. xiii. 
7 ; xxvi. 20 ; Amos i. I ; vii. 14, 
&c.) 

122 reekf it them] (O. £. rec, 
•care.*) Cf. ComuSy 401 ; Gower, 
Confessio Amantis, B. v., *hun 
recketh not.* The verb b generally 
personal, as in P. Z. ii. 50; ix. 
173; Spens. EcU vii. 34, *thou 
tikes much of thy swincke (toil).* 

they are iped] i.e. 'are provided 



for* (Keightley). So in the Mer- 
chant of Venice, ii. 9, the Prince of 
Arragon, reading his fortune on the 
scroll in the silver casket, finds the 
words * Begone, you are jp^Jo/.' In 
Judges V. 30 the mother of Sisera, 
awaiting the return of her son whom 
she supposed victorious, exclaims 
* Have tiiey not sped ? ' The same 
sense of the word lingers in the ex- 
pression * God speed you.* Of the 
luxurious habits of prelates Milton 
speaks in the Apology for Smectym- 
nuusj * They let hundreds of fami- 
lies famish in one diocese, while 
they themselves enjoy that wealth 
that would furnish all those dark 
places with ample supply.* 

123 when they list] i.e. even 
this miserable pittance is doled out 
to the flock only at such time as is 
convenient to the shepherds. That 
the ' lean and flashy songs * repre- 
sent unsound oral instruction is 
plain from the context ; but in the 
pastoral prototype singing and 
piping are the recreation, not the 
business of shepherds, and the 
meaning ought simply to be that 
the spiritual pastors amuse them- 
selves instead of tending their 
flocks. In that case however there 
would be no point in the allusion 
to the wretched quality of the 
music, which could in no way affect 
the welfare of the sheep. The con- 
fusion of metaphor thus involved 
needs simply stating to be apparent; 
the true analogy lies in the un- 
healthiness of pasture, to which a 
sudden transition is made in /. 126. 

flashy] Todd quotes from Mil- 
ton's Colasterion, in which he calls 
his opponent's arguments * the^fiashi- 
est, the fustiest that ever corrupted 
such an unswilled hogshead/ Dry- 



LYCIDAS. 



73 



Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 

But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw. 



"S 



den, Transl, ofPersiuSy Sat. i.,has 

* flashy wit,* and Bacon, Essay on 
Studies^ says 'distilled books are 
flashy things.' 

124] Imitated fiom Virg. Ed, iiL 
26, * stridenti miserum stipula dis- 
perdere carmen.' Plumptre trans- 
lates (keeping the alliteration) — 

ol KdKofuuSf c3t* iy y 494\oPTif Trorn-' 
pcus 

fwwra KptKOPTi, 

The word * scrannel ' does not seem 
to have been used by any previous 
writer ; Newlon does not remember 
to have seen it elsewhere at all. He 
might however have found it in 
Lsmghome's Fables of Flora (pub- 
lished shortly before his own edition 
of Milton in 1784), where it is said 
of an unearthly sound issuing from 
a cave — 

* But grinding through some scran- 

ndixzxa& 
Creaked from the bony lungs of 
death.' 

No doubt Langhome copied the 
word from Lycidas^ since he is 
known to have been a student of 
Milton, and a translator of the Epi- 
taphmtn Damonis and the Italian 
poems. In the Lancashire dialect 
it means ' thin' or ' meagre,' and it 
is a question whether Milton was 
aware of its existence there, or 
whether he coined it to express the 
sound, after the analogy of crane^ 
screech (G. schreien)^ &c. The 
former hypothesis is more probable, 
considering the extent of his infor- 
mation, and the improbability of 
his indulging in a license, which 
would be questionable in point of 
taste, and of which there would be 



no other instance in his poems, tt 
has also been suggested that the 
word may be connected with cranny^ 
and that if so, it would well express 
the squeaking noise produced from 
a pipe not perfectly air-tight. But 
this is doubtful. 

125] Cf. EpU. Dam. 67, where 
the sheep mourn in sympathy, 
' inque suum convertunt ora magis- 
trum.' 

are not fed] Cf. Reason of Church 
Gov,, ad fin, f *The swelling mood 
of a proud clergy, who will not 
serve or feed your souls with 
spiritual food.' One of the objec- 
tions to the Kin£s Letters of 1623 
(see on/. 119) ran thus — 'This is 
the way to starve souls, by confining 
them to one meal a day, or at best 
by giving them only a mess of milk 
for their supper' (in reference to the 
substitution of catechising for after- 
noon sermons). To which it was 
answered that 'milk is best for 
babes, which make up more than a 
moiety of every congregation.' 

126] Peck compares Dante, 
ParadisOy Canto 29 — 

' Si che le pecorelle, che non 

sanno. 
Toman dal pasco pasciute di 
vento, ' 

Cf. Viig. Georg. iii. 504 (of the 
cattle-plague), 'imaque longo Ilia 
singultu tendunt,' and the Khy^ kwi^ 
in Thucydides' description of the 
pestilence at Athens (ii. 49). Here 
of course there is a direct allusion 
to the * windy ' words of the 
preacher, which may be illustrated 
by the Homeric phrase kv^yAtihuk 
PdCeiv (II. iv. 355), and the Ger- 
man windreden ' to talk vainly.' 
For the ' rank mist ' cf. Song of 



u 



LYCIDAS. 



Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Beside what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said. 



the Priest of Pan in Fletcher's 
Faithful Shepherdess^ 

' Mists unsound. 
Damps and vapours fly apace, 
Hovering o'er the wanton face 
Of these pastures, where they 

come 
Striking dead both bud and 

bloom.' 

127] Milton may here have re- 
membered Lucretius, vi 11 29 (of a 
vitiated atmosphere) — 

' £t cum spirantes mixtos hinc duci- 
mus auras y 
Ilia quoque in corpus pariter sor- 
here necessest ; ' 

also j^. 1235— 

* nullo cessabant tempore apisci 
Ex aliis alios avidi contagia morbi.^ 

Becon in his Supplication uses simi- 
lar language of popish pastors, 
' Instead of thy blessed communion 
they feed thy sheep with vile stink- 
ing devilish masses ; and into these 
unwholesome and pestilent pastures 
they drive the sheep.* 

128] Those who with Pearce and 
Newton believe Abp. Laud to be 
the 'wolf' l^ere alluded to may 
compare the continuation of the 
passage just quoted — 'and if any 
refuse to taste of these pestilent 
poisons, him they accite to appear 
i^efore that great zew^rBp. Gar- 
diner], whose lips are fiill of deadly 
poison.' Reasons against this in- 
terpretation will be found in Ap- 
pendix II. ; here it may be noticed 
that the simile of wolves and sheep 
assumes three distinct forms in the 
New Testament — (i) the wolf in 
shapes clothing (Matt. vii. 15), who 
enters the fold under false pretences ; 
(2) the shepherd who for lus rapacity 



is said to devour the sheep (Acts 
xx« 29) ; (3) the real wolf prowling 
outside the fold and seeking an en- 
trance. The last appears to be the 
one here intended. 

privy pawl So Diggon in Spen- 
ser's 9th Eclogue, /. 160, designates 
popish priests as wolves *prruely 
proUing to and froe. ' * Privy ' as an 
adjective, though not used elsewhere 
by Milton, was common in his time, 
and occurs in the Bible and Apo- 
crypha (Ezek. xxi. 14; Susanna, 18 ; 
Bel and Dragon, 13, 21) ; also in the 
Litany, 'privy conspiracy.' Bacon 
in his Essay on Building speaks 
of 'privy lodgings and privy gal- 
leries.' 

129J The spelling 'sed' of the 
MS. (cf. V Allegro^ loi), altered to 
'said' in ed. 1638, was replaced 
in the editions of 1645 and 1673. 
Warton in his History of English 
Poetry observes that in the Elizabe- 
than period the spelling of final 
syllables was changed to satisfy the 
eye as well as the ear. Hence in 
Spenser we find such forms as 
'bight,' 'spight,' to rime with 
•delight,' *dore' with 'restore,' 
&c., &c. In the MS. of Lycidas 
the last word of /. 193 is written 
' blew ' for the same reason, and in 
the 7th Sonnet ' yeere ' and • neere * 
are made to rime with 'careere.' 
Even in Pope's Essay on Many 148 
(ed. 1751), sour is spelt *sowr' to 
rime with ' pow*r.' In the present 
passage some later editors, in ig- 
norance of this custom, or mis- 
taking the / for f altered ' sed ' to 
' fed,' to Uie destruction of the 
sense. ' Nothing ' was also changed 
to 'little' in 1638, but replaced in 
the next edition. On the facts of 
the case see Appendix II. 



LYCIDAS. 

But that two-handed engine at the door 
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.' 
Return, Alpheiis, the dread voice is past 



75 
130 



130] If the *wolf' is not any 
individual but a system, neither is 
the * two-handed engine ' the axe 
by which Laud was to lose his 
head ; an event which no one could 
easily have predicted in 1637. Mil- 
ton is merely using the familiar 
simile of ' the axe had to the root 
of the tree' (Matt iii. 10), which 
denotes a thorough and sweeping 
reformation^ Elsewhere he speaks 
more explicitly of ' the axe of God's 
reformation hewing at the old and 
hollow trunk of papacy/ and of the 
duty of cutting away ' the noisome 
and diseased tumour of prelacy ;' 
here he names neither institution 
precisely, but alludes in general 
terms to the religious corruptions of 
the age and their speedy abolition ; 
— 'it is near, even at the doors' 
(Matt. xxiv. 33). 

Two other interpretations may 
be dismissed as improbable— (i) 
that the 'engine' is the drawn 
sword of St. Michael standing on 
the Mount (1. 161), and the 'wolf 
Satan; (2) that it refers to the 
executioner Death with his scythe. 
Warburton supposes that ' St. 
Peter's sword is turned into the 
two-handed sword of romance/ 
and compares P. Ll vi. 251 ; but 
this idea was probably suggested by 
the identity of the epithet * two- 
handed ' in that passage, with 
which the present has nothing else 
in common. Keightley compares 
the ifi^4^totr ffiSiipw of Eurip. 
Ht^l. 780. 

engine] {ingiemum) commonly 
denotes a machine more or less 
elaborately constructed. In P. L, 
B. vi. the term is often used of 
artillery in war (cf. Ezek. xxvi. 9) ; 
Butler in Hudibras applies it also to 



a telescope, a fiddle, and to edged 
tools ; horses are cadled * live en- 
gines,' according to a theory that 
Uiey are machines made by geo- 
metry. Its application to a mere 
instrument wielded by the hand, as 
here, is less frequent. Cf Pope, 
Rape of the Lack, iii. 132 — 

' he takes the scissars and extends 
The little engine on his fingers' 
ends.' 

131 unite no more] Newton 
compares i Sam. xxvi. 8. The 
blow is to be sudden and decisive. 

132] As the return from the for- 
mer digression (/. 85) was marked 
by the invocation of Arethusa, so 
now the poet addresses Alpheus, 
her legendary lover (Moschus, Id, 7; 
Ovid, Met, v. 576 foil.) The stem 
invective, which had scared away 
the pastoral Muse, is now over, and 
Milton reverts lovingly and enthusi- 
astically to a strain more congenial 
to his feelings. Scott in his Critical 
Essays finds fault with the follow- 
ing Unes, chiefly on the ground that 
' too many flowers are specified, 
and spring flowers are injudiciously 
blended with summer ones — the 
primrose, cowslip, &c., with the 
pink and rose.' Milton at least 
must have thought otherwise, for 
no passage in the whole poem has 
been so carefully retouched as this 
(see Various Readings). Masson, 
vol. i. p. 614 note, remarks, * Mil- 
ton hovered over this passage with 
fisistidious fondness, touching every 
colour and fitting eveiy word, till 
he brought it to its present perfec- 
tion of beauty.' Of these two 
pieces of criticism utrum mavis 
accipe! 

the dread Yoiee, fte.] a passing 



76 



LYCIDAS. 



That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues. 
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks ; 
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks : 



135 



recognition of the superior power of 
Christianity over Paganism. The 
voice of St. Peter represents that of 
Christ himself speaking to the 
Church. Dunster cites Psalm civ. 
6. 

133] The * Sicilian Muse* is the 
muse of Theocritus. Cf Virg. Eel, 
iv. I ; vi. I. Bion and Moschus 
make a similar acknowledgment in 
2tKcA.6y yiiXos and 'Xm(Kikc^ Mourai. 
So Milton speaks of *Himerides 
N3rmph3e ' and * Sicelicum carmen * 
in the opening lines of the Epita- 
phium Damonis. Itmay be observed 
that Theocritus himself does not 
thus localise his muse ; he simplv 
says &px^^* /3»KoA<Kaf, MAcrai ^l- 
A.ai, dpxo*' dot5as. In Virgil the 
* Sicilian' epithet implies a pro- 
fessed imitation of his Greek origi- 
nal ; with Milton it has become a 
general literary designation of pas- 
toral f oetry. (See Introduction.) 

134 hither] i.e. on the hearse of 
Lycidas, as if his body were actually 
present (//. 152, 153). On the 
custom of pinning verses to the 
hearse see note on /. 151. 

136 nie] = 'haunt.* Cf. Spen- 
ser, F, Q. B. VI., Introd. ii. 17, 
'where never foot did use,^ May 
translates Virg. Georg. iii. 418, 
' Snakes that use within the house 
for shade * ( * tecto adsuetus coluber '), 
quoted by Newton and Todd. The 
reverse order of meaning appears in 
*wont,* which first signified * dwell- 
ing* (G*. wokfun)f and then 'cus- 
tom.* Cf. -P. Z. vii. 457, "the 
wild beast where he w(fns,* Both 



verb and noun in this sense are 
common in Spenser. Compare fjOta 
('haunts *), from l6o? (• custom *), in 
Homer and Hesiod. 

137 wanton winds] i.e. roving 
at will (see Appendix I.). Cf. Ar- 
cadeSf 47, ' wanton windings ;* P. L, 
ix. 517, 'many a wanton wreath.' 
Taken in its usual sense, the epithet 
may remind us here of the mytho- 
logical amours of the winds with 
n3nnphs, such as that of Boreas with 
Orithyia(Ovid, Ma. vi. 677 ; Plato, 
Phadrus^ c i), and of Zephyrus 
with Aurora [L* Allegro, 19). 

138 iwart-itar] the dog-star, 
* Sirius ardor * (Virg. y£«. x. 273), 
alluding to the effect of heat on vege- 
tation. Newton quotes Hor. Od. III. 
xii. 9, ' Te fiagrantis atrox hora Cani- 
culae Nescit tangere ; * he does not 
say (as Warton alleges) that ' Mil- 
ton had an eye to Horace here,* but 
merely compares the two passages. 
For 'swart* (O. E. sweari, G. 
sehwartz) cf. Comus, 436 ; Shaksp. 
I Hen, VI, i. 2, 'I was black and 
swari before;' Keats, Endymion, 
B. ii., * some jwar/ abysm.* Caed- 
mon speaks of 'the swart hell, 
a land void of light and full of 
flame.* 

iparely] the original MS. read- 
ing restored by Milton*s own hand. 
(See list of Various Readings. ) 

The simple occurrence of the 
word ' looks * is perhaps hardly suf- 
ficient to justify Warton*s conjecture 
that the astrological 'aspect' of a 
star is here intended ; yet such an 
allusion is possible (cf. Arcades^ 51 ; 



LYCIDAS. 



77 



Throw hither all your quaint-enamelled eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honied showers, 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 



140 



P. L, vi. 3x3). We know that 
astrology was much in vogue at this 
period, the most famous professor 
of the art being W. Lilly, who died 
in 1 68 1, and was satirised in Httdi- 
bras under the name of Sidrophel. 

139 qnaint] in its usual Miltonic 
sense of 'curious' or 'fantastic' 
Cf. P, Z. ix. 35 ; Arc, 47 ; Od, 
Nat. 194 In Spenser, F, Q, iv. 
vii. 45, * usage quaint ' = odd be- 
haviour. As applied to character 
it means 'ingenious* or 'artful.* 
Shaksp. 2 Hen. VI. iiL 2, *how 
quaint an orator you are ; * Merck, 
of Ven, iii. 4, 'quaint lies.* Its 
primary meaning is ' neat * (of dress 
or personal appearance), as in Much 
AdOy iii. 4, ' quaint graceful fash- 
ions,* from the Old French coint, 
which is usually considered to re- 
present the Latin comptus. Cf. 
Du Cange, Gloss. s.v., * Galli coints 
dicebant cultos, elegantes, comptos* 
But Wedgwood properly follows 
Diez in deriving it from cognitus^ the 
idea being that of ' amenities arising 
from civilised intercourse.* The va- 
rious stages of derivation are clearly 
shown in the case of acquaint from 
adcognitare, which latter word be- 
came in Old French acointer, and 
then ac{c)0inter, whence followed in 
due order acoint, acqueynt, and ac- 
quaint. Compare the different 
senses of 'couth* and 'uncouth* (/. 
186 and note). 

enamelled] painted as on enamel, 
a favourite word with the older 
poets. Cf. P. L. iv. 149 ; ix. 525 ; 
Arc, 84. Chaucer, Assembly of 
Ladies^ 'flowers of right fine en- 
amaile.' Drayton, Musei Elysium^ 
' the enameled bravery of the beau- 
teous spring.' 



140 honied] like its Latin equi- 
valent, mellitus, is one of the many 
instances of adjectives formed with 
the termination of a past participle, 
without the intervention of an ac- 
tually existing verb. Milton seems 
to have been very fond of this for- 
mation. Cf. 'mitred,* supra^ 112. 
The Nativity Ode alone contains 
seven or eight examples, as ' helm- 
ed,* 'sworded,* 'mooned,* &c. It 
is therefore strange that Dr. John- 
son, writing in 1780, should con- 
demn the practice in Gray*s Ode to 
Spring zs unscholarlike, or speak of 
it as having then but lately arisen. 
Peck also is mistaken in his mention 
of * honied * and ' roseate ' among 
the r.ew words coined by Milton, for 
the former occurs in Shakspere, If en. 
V. i. I ('honeyed sentences*), and in 
P. ¥\tic\i&^% Piscatory Eclogues, iii. 
14 (' thy honied tongue*), the latter 
in Drayton*s Muses' Elysium ('ro- 
seate anadem*), in Marlow*s Trans- 
lation of Ovid Eleg, iv. ('roseate 
buds *), and in a poem ascribed to 
Sir W. Raleigh, The Shepherd and 
the Flowers, written about 1590. 

X41 purple] usually 'empurple,* 
P. L. iii. 364. The uncompounded 
verb occurs P. L, vii. 30. Cf. 
Purple Island, x. 81, ^Purpling 
the scarlet cheek with fiery red.* 
Here, like purpureus, it denotes 
any bright colour, fix)m a dazzling 
white (Hor. Od. iv. i. 10) to a deep 
red (Virg. ^n, ix. 349). Cf. 
P, L. iv. 764, 'his purple wings;' 
Spenser, F. Q. v. x. 16, 'the mor- 
row next appeared with purple 
haire ; * Gray, Ode on Poesy, ' the 
purple light of love* (Viigil*s 'lu- 
men juventse purpureum,' ^n, i. 

594). 



78 



LYCIDAS. 



Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 



142] Milton may or may not have 
remembered the list of flowers in 
Spenser, Eel. iv. 136 foil., of which 
Mr. Bowles remarks that 'here is 
an undoubted imitation/ but he 
was certainly quite capable of in- 
venting the following description 
for himself. Many instances of a 
similar enumeration occur in the 
classics, e.g. the elegy of Rufinus in 
the Greek Anthology, beginning 
ir^/iirw <f^^ *Po8<$icA.«ta, r^Sc (rr^^f, 
&c. (where the Kvayairyis tov is named 
among others), and the list of 
flowers gathered by Proserpine and 
her maidens in Ovid, Fast, iv. 435 
foil. When strewn upon the hearse 
each had its own fancied signifi- 
cance : — 

' Here fresh roses lie, 
Whose ruddy blushes modest 

thoughts descry. 
The spotless lillies shew his pure 

intent ; 
The flaming marigolds his zeale 

present ; 
The purple violets his noble minde, 
Degenerate never from his princely 

kinde ; 
And last of all the hyacinths we 

throw. 
On which are writ the letters of 
our woe * (/. 106 note). 

{EUgy on Edward^ son of Lord 
Stafford^ by Sir J. Beaumont) Cf. 
Purple Island^ ix. 3x9, * And strewed 
with dainty flowers the lowly 
hearse.' 

rathe] (O. E. hra^), "early;* one 
of the rodly antiquated words in Ly 
cidas (see on /. 189). Spenser has 
*too rathe,' F, Q. ill. iii. 28; 
* rather ( = earlier) lambs,' Eel, xii. 
98. Cf. Wither, Shephtard's Hunt- 
ings 4th Ed. (1614), *so rathe a 
song.' Warton quotes "the rathe 
and timely primrose' from Eng- 
land's Helicon (161 4). Drydcn 



gives * rathe ripe ' as the translation 
oiprma (Virg. Georg, ii. 95), which 
Servius explains by pracoquee^ 
•early ripe.' Trench [English 
Past and Present, p. 98), lamenting 
the loss of this word, observes that 
it is 'embalmed in the Lycidas of 
Milton ; ' he also quotes an instance 
of the superlative ' rathest ' in Bp. 
Sanderson's Sermons. It is worth 
noticing that rathe is still a common 
word for early in certain districts of 
South Wales. 

fbrsaken] The first reading * un- 
wedded,' followed by the somewhat 
obscure line, 'Coloring the pale 
cheek of uninjoy'd love,' contained 
an allusion to the fabled amours of 
the Sun with certain flowers, and 
was doubtless suggested by the 
passage in Shakspere's IVinter's 
Tale, iv. 4— 

ypale primroses 
That die unmanied, ere they can 

behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength ;— > 

a malady 
Most incident to maids ^ 

But no such idea is involved in the 
epithet as it now stands, which 
merely suggests the modest nature 
of the flower, blooming in i^ired 
spots, and often fading unnoticed. 

143 foil.] See ori^nal reading, 
and cf. Quarks' Emblems, v. z-^ 

* The purple vVlet and the pale-fac'd 

lily, 
The pansy and the organ columbine. 
The flow'ring thyme, the gilt-breast 

diaffocUlly, 
The lowly pink, the lofty ^lantine ; 
The blushing rose, the queen of 

flowers and best 
Of Flora's beauty ; but above the 

rest 
Let Jesses sov'reign flower perfume 

my qualming breast.' 



LYCIDAS. 



79 



The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, 

The glowing violet, 

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 

And every flower that sad embroidery wears ; 

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 

And daffadillies fill their cups with tears. 



US 



ISO 



The last is a play upon * jessamine/ 
the real etymology of which is the 
Persian jasmin, 'fragrant.' The 

* crowtoe ' is perhaps the same as 

* crowfoot/ a ranunculaceous plant, 
the name being applied to those 
species which have divided leaves. 
It is also called the * kingcup.' 
Spens. EcL iv. 138 (LaAam's 
yifhns. Diet s. v.). Richardson 
identifies it with the hyacinth, the 

* sad flower, &c.' of the first drafV, 
which ¥ras probably discarded be- 
cause of the previous allusion to the 
same story in /. 106. A simple 
enumeration of the flowers is now 
substituted for the learned descrip- 
tions originally introduced. More- 
over, three additional flowers — ^jes- 
samine, pink, and musk-rose — are 
put in the place of the one (ffor- 
cissus) which is lost. 

144] Cf. Comtts, 851. The 
'pansv' is the flower of thought 
(pensAf), as Ophelia says in Hamlet, 
iv. 5 ; it is also called ' love-in- 
idleness ' {Mids. N, Dream<t iL i), 
and commonly 'heartsease.' 

freaked] »<fi:eckled,'Gael.3n^a^. 
Cf Thomson, Winter, 826, * fireaked 
with many a mingled hue. * Fraknes 
in Chaucer = fireckles. 

145] Plumptre translates Imv irva- 
vavyh turrov firom Rufinus, quoted 
on /. 142 above. 

146 well-attired woodbine] al- 
tered from 'garish columbine.' 
'Garish' now occurs only in // 
Pmtseroso, 141. Keightley com- 
pares Cowper, T<isk^ 167, * Meze- 



reon too. Though leafless, well' 
attired,* 

148 embroidery] fix>m Old French 
broder, to ornament with needle- 
work (Gael, brod, a needle) ; whence 
the Low Latin brodare^ ' acu pin- 
gere,' Ducange, Gloss, In P, L, 
iv. 700, it is used to describe a 
field set with' flowers. Cf. Chaucer, 
Prologue to Cant, Tales (of the 
Squire) — 

* Embrouded was he as it were a 

mede, 
Alle fill of freshe floures white and 
rede.' . 

The usual derivation from border 
is probably incorrect. Wedgwood, 
however, considers ^rv^ and bord to 
be identical, both meaning the ex- 
tremity of a thing. He' observes 
that the Icelandic brydda signifies 
both ' to sharpen ' and * to sew on 
an edging.' The first reading, 
•sorrow's liverie,' is illustrated by 
Todd firom Wither's JuvenUia and 
Habington's Castara, Cf. Fletcher, 
Purple Island, viii. 5, * night's sad 
livery, ' also r Allegro, 62. In P, L, 
i^* 599} Milton speaks of the ' sober 
livery * of twilight. 

r49 amaranthni] (d^ufparros), 
the unfading (i Peter i. 4), an em- 
blem of inmiortality. It is placed 
in Eden 'fast by the tree of life,' 
P, L, iii. 354. 

150] Keats, Endymion, B. iy., 
' brimming the water-lily cups with 
tears.' 'Daffodil 'is properly 'affbdi I' 
from dir^ScAos through Med. Latin 



8o 



LYCIDAS. 



To strew the laureate herse where Lycid lies. — 
For so, to interpose a little ease, 
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise ; 
Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 



affodiUus ; the origin of the d is 
doubtful. It is redly a species of 
narcissus. The form 'daffodilly* 
occurs in the Song to Pan in 
Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess ; 
Spenser, F, Q. III. iv. 29 ; £cL iv.6o; 
'daffariowndillies' in FcL iv. 140. 

151] 'The herse vf as a, platform, 
decorated with black hangings, and 
containing an effigy of the deceased. 
Laudatory verses were attached 
to it with pins, wax, or paste.* 
(Stanley, Memorials of Westminster 
Abbey ^ p. 341.) Cf King's Elegy on 
Donne — 

Each quill can drop his tributary 

verse. 
And pin it like the hatchments to 

the herse.' 

For the word see Appendix I. 

laureate] 'decked with laurel* 
{laureatus)j cf. /. i. Plumptre's 
rendering, Hcuffvlyay^ would mean 
' made of laurel * {laureus), a sense 
in which 'laureate* is sometimes 
used, e.g. 'laureat wreath,* Sonnet 
xvi. 19. Zaureatus is applied both 
to persons and things, but usually 
to the former, a^ a mark of honour ; 
hence the title 'poeta laureatus,' 
first officiedly conferred on B. Jon- 
son in 1619. 

Lycid] Cf. Keats, Sonnet ha. — 

'Of fair-haired Milton's eloquent 

distress. 
And all his gentle love for Lycid 
drowned.' 

The older poets were fond of short- 
ening classical names thus. Chau- 
cer has Creysyd, Pandare, Adon, 
&c. ; in Surrey we find Arge, Ide, 
Sichee, &c. ; in Spenser, Archimag, 
Acidale, Melibee, &c. Milton does 



not so frequently avail himself of 
this license, excepting in a few 
commoner forms, such as Dian, 
Hecat*, Ind, &c. ; otherwise the 
name * Erymanth ' in Arcades^ 100, is 
almost a solitary instance. 

152] 'For' connects this line 
with the preceding mention of the 
hearse of Lycidas ; ^for let us sup- 
pose his body to be lying here 
before us, though really it is £Eur 
away.' The structure of the next 
sentence (placing a semicolon after 
' surmise ') must be as follows : 
' Let our thoughts dally, &c [prin- 
cipal verb], while the seas wash 
thee far away, where'er thy bones 
are hurled — whether beyond the 
Hebrides (where thou visitest, &c.), 
or whether thou sleepest, &c. (where 
the great vision looks towards Na- 
mancos and Bayona).' On the per- 
son addressed in /. 163 see note 
there. 

153 daUy] i.e. ' play ' or « trifle,* 
akin to G. tdndeln and dahlen, to 
trifle. Cf. Shaksp. Hamiet^ v. 2, 
'you do but dally.* In the Apo- 
cryphal Book of Wisdom, xii. 26, 
God's judgments upon the Canaanites 
are spoken of as 'that coirection 
wherein he dallied with them . . . 
as children without the use of rea- 
son.' Skeat connects dally with 
M.E. dalien^ 'to be toolish.' 

BnrmiBe] here=* fancy,' usually 
• conjecture.' 

154 Ay me !] See on /. 56. 
Scott, Critical Essays^ notices the 

following lines as an instance of 
poetical imagination of the right 
kind, which 'should not produce 
impossible fictions, but explore real 
existence, and select from it cir- 
cumstances as occasion requires.* * 



LYCIDAS. 



8x 



Wash far away, — where'er thy bones are hurled, 
Whether beyond the stonny Hebrides, 
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 
Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 
Sleepest by the fable of Bellerus old, 



iSS 



1 60 



fhe shorM— waih, ftc] This ex- 
pression, though strange, is not the 
result of oversight, since Milton de- 
liberately substituted * shoars ' for 
'floods* in his MS. The obvious 
meaning is that the corpse visited 
different parts of the coast in its 
wanderings, and was not out at sea 
all the time. The word shore does 
however literally mean * that which 
dhiiUs the water from the land,* 
and therefore includes the portion 
ibometimes covered by the tide. So 
Celsos defines litusy 'quousque 
mazimus fluctus a mari pervenit.* 
Newton cites Virg. /En, vi. 362, 
' Nimc me fluctus habet, versantque 
in litore venti,* which is a case in 
point only on the assumption that 
the latter clause cannot mean ' cast 
up on the shore ; * a sense which 
Heyne and Conington both adopt, 
comparing Eur. Sec. 28, icci/uai 8^ 
hf awrcuf, &A\ot' iv ithvrott ci>Jtf, 
{In with the ablative occasionally 
denotes motion, as in Phsedrus, 
Fab. V. i. 15, *in conspectu meo 
audet venire.*) 

155 far away] here (according 
to Newton) » *a/ a great distance,* 
not to it. Keightley notes the ex- 
pression as 'ambiguous.* It pro- 
bably means ' &r from the scene of 
the shipwreck.' 

156 whether, fte.] Cf. Ode on 
Death of a Fair Infant^ 38 foil. ; 
Aristoph. Nubes\ 269 folL, referred 
to on /. 50. 

157] The first readmg, 'hum- 
ming,' for ' whelming,' was inappro- 
priate to the case of a dead man, 
who could not hear the sound of 



the waves. But Shakspere com* 
mits the same error when he makes 
Pericles (iii. i) apostrophise his 
dead queen with the woxtis, 'And 
humming vrater must o'erwhelm 
thy corpse.' Warton compares 
Virg. Georg. iv. 365, where AriK- 
tseus, in his mother's ocean cave, is 
said to be ' ingenti motu stupefactus 
aquarum.* 

158 monitroui] i. e. ' full of 
monsters,* the proper sense of the 
Latin ending -osus^ as in saxosus^ 
&c. Monstruosus itself, however, 
never bears this meaning, eg. 
'monstruosa bestia,' &c.; and Mil- 
ton elsewhere employs ' monstrous ' 
in its usual acceptation, P. L. ii. 
625 ; Comus, 605, &c. Here he 
seems to have remembered Hor. 
Od. I. iii. x8, and Virg. ySn, vi. 
729. Cf. Hom. Od. iii. 158, fi«- 
TOM^ea irSpTw. 

159 moist tows] i.e. 'vows ac- 
companied with tears * (Warton). 
ybta humida would be a correct 
expression in Latin, though it does 
not seem to occur. Martial, Epigr. 
X. Ixxviii. 8, has *udogaudio,' mean- 
ing 'joy mingled with weeping.* 
Plumptre*s translation, iy^cSs tH- 
XBus, is questionable. 

160 fable of Bellenu] » ' &bled 
abode of BeUerus' {sedes fabulosa) ; 
something like 'fahulae Manes.* Hor. 
Od, i.iv. 16 (for Manes fitbulosi)^ 'the 
ghosts of olden story.* The name 
is coined from Bellerium, now the 
Land*s End. Cf. Cowley, Plan- 
tarum Liber, vi., 'Belerii extremis 
a comibus Orcadas usque ; ' Pope, 
iVindsor Forest, 315, 'From oW 



82 



LYCIDAS. 



Where the great Vision of the guarded Mount 
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold : — 
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth, 



Belerium to the northern main.' The 
original reading was 'Corineus/ 
whom Milton mentions in his His- 
tory of Britain^ B. i., as a giant who 
came over with Brute the Trojan, 
and from whom Cornwall took its 
name, being 'assigned to him by 
lot,* or, as Drayton says {Polyolb. 
1st Song), given him for his victory 
over Gogmagog the Cornish giant. 
The change of reading may have 
been made for rhythmical reasons, as 
' Bellerus ' runs more smoothly in 
the line than * Cdrfneus.' 

A writer in the Edinburgh Re- 
view^ 1 82 1, has the following rer 
marks on Milton's treatment of 
early British legends : — * Milton was 
perhaps the first who dared dis- 
avow his belief of the legends which 
for centuries had been placed at 
the head of the early history of 
England. [See Hist, of Britain^ 
B. i.] Vet he deigns to relate them, 
because the very belief in them was 
characteristic of a nation ; because 
they might contain some traces of 
ancient tradition, and be an evidence 
of manners, if not of events ; and 
lastly as themes for the poet, on 
which he had himself once medi- 
tated to build a monument to the 
glory of his country. ' [See Epist ad 
Mansum, I. 78; Epit. Dam. /. 162. 1 
161] The *guaixied (fortified) 
Mount' is a steep rock opposite 
Marazion near Penzance, accessible 
from the land at low water. On it 
are the ruins of a fortress and a mo- 
nastery, with a church dedicated to 
Sl Michael; at the summit is a 
craggy seat called St. Michael's 
chair, in which several apparitions 
of the archangel are reported to 
have been seen ; hence the * great 
Vision ' in the text. Carew, in his 



Survey of Cornwall^ alludes to the 
Mount as a favourite resort of pil- 
grims, quoting the lines — 

* Who knows not Mighel's Mount 

and Chaire, 
The pilgrim's holy vaunt ?' 
Cf. Spenser, Eel. vii. 41 — 
*St. Michael's Mount who does 

not know. 
That guards the westeme coast ? ' 

162] The question as to the lo- 
cality of Namancos puzzled com- 
mentators not a little, until Todd 
(1809) referred to Mercator's Atlas 
of 1636, in which the place is 
clearly marked rather to the east 
of Cape Finisterre, with the Castle 
of Bayona on the south. Naman- 
cos also appears in Ojea's map of 
Galicia (1650), but seems to have 
been aftert^ards omitted, as it is 
not found in Nolin's map (1762), 
nor in that of Lopez (1784), nor in 
the Atlas Nacional de Espafia of 
1838. Todd in his edition of 180 1 
had suggested Numantia, and Dun- 
ster, adopting this view, took Bayo- 
na to be the French Bayonne ; but 
it is plain that no one oould * look 
towards ' both these places at once 
m a direct line from St. MichaePs 
Mount. Cf. Drayton, Polyolb. 
23rd Song — 

'Then Comwal creepeth out into 

the western nuiine. 
As lying in her eye she pointeth 
still at Spaine.' 

163] The obvious and striking 
contrast between the ' look irame- 
ward ' of this line «id the looking 
'towards Namancos, &c.' of the 
one preceding clearly justifies War- 
ton's supposition that St. Michael, 
and not Lycidas, is the person here 



LYCIDAS. 



?3 



And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. 



addressed. Still, the aignments in 
favour of the contrary interpretation 
ought to be fairly stated. It has 
been objected that if a full stop be 
placed at * surmise/ the present line 
is required to complete the sentence 
beginning at * whilst thee, &c.,' 
which would otherwise be unfinished, 
and of which Lycidas is the subject 
throughout ; and that, even with the 
semicolon there (see on /. 152), 
St. Michael's apparition is merely 
introduced parenthetically, as part 
of a local description, and never 
directly apostrophised. This is 
perhaps strictly true ; but a poet is 
not always bound by the strict laws 
of grammatical construction, and the 
sudden turn of address from Lycidas 
to the archangel (who is now a 
prominent figure in the description) 
spikes powcdidly upon the reader's 
imagination. Another argument 
(which at first sight appears plausible) 
is founded upon the coincidence of 
the present passage and of //. 183 
folL in structure, language, and 
sentiment, with certain lines in 
the 1st Eclogue of Sannazaro {circ, 
1520), in which a drowned man is 
thus addressed by his mourning 
friends : 

^ At tu, sive altum felix colis aethera, 

seuyaxn. 
Elysios inter Manes, &c. . . . 
Aspke nos mitisque veni, tu numen 

aquarum 
Semper eris^ semper latum piscanti- 

hv&omen.^ 

But even admitting, as we surely 
may (cf. especially /. 184), that 
Milton had the above passage gene- 
rally in view, we need not assume 
that he copied his original with 
such exactness, as to make the Sub- 
ject of his * look homeward ' corre- 
spond with that of ' aspice * in San- 
We do not however agree 



spond 
nazaro. 



with Warton's further objection, 
that an address to the departed 
spirit would be in itself inappro- 
priate. A few instances out ot 
many will suffice to show that the 
sentiment is both natural and com- 
mon. Spenser in his Elegy an Sir 
P, Sidney invokes the * happy 
sprite ' to ' look down awhile ' 
upon his friends ; Donne makes a 
similar appeal to the soul of Lord 
Harrington, and Habington en- 
treats the spirit of George, Earl of 
Surrey, to *look down with pro- 
pitious eyes and smile upon this 
sacrifice. ' The language of Cowley 
in his Deaih of Jiervey still more 
closely resembles that of Milton, 
when he imagines *the glorious 
saints' as beholding their friends 
•with holy pity\* and Young, in 
his Night Thoughts^ says of the 
dead, * They live . . . and from an 
eye of tenderness let heavenly pity 
faU.' 

ruth] Cf. Chaucer, Troilus and 
Creyseyde, 'have routh upon my 
pains ;' Sidney, Arcadia^ B. i. Eel. 
I, * thou my dog whose ruth (pity 
for the flock) and valiant might, 
&c.* Primarily the word means 

* sorrow,* from * rue ' (O. E. hreho- 
an, G. reuen), Cf. B. Jonsun, 
Epitaph on his Daughter, * her pa- 
rents' ruth.' *Pity and ruth' are 
joined in Milton's 9th Sonnet, I 8, 
and in Spenser, F, Q, i. vi. 12. 
For the verb in is secondary sense 
cf. Wyatt, 51st Psalm, *rtu on me. 
Lord ;' Watson (1593), 41st Sottnet, 

* rew and pittie my vexations.' 
' Ruthfiil' occurs in Shaksp. i Hen. 
VI, V. 5, and elsewhere ; * rueful ' 
and ' ruthless ' still survive. 

164] Richardson refers to Pau- 
sanias' statement about Palsemon, 

* that a dolphin took him up and 
laid his body on the shore at Co- 
rinth, where he was deified ' (c£. 



G 2 



84 



LYCIDAS. 



Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more, 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 



»6S 



//. 183-1&5). Stories of the amia- 
bility of dolphins were common in 
ancient times. Besides the familiar 
legend of Arion (Herod, i. 24 ; Ov. 
Fast. ii. 105 foil.), we have the one 
quoted from Apion by Gellius^ 
Nbct, Att. viL 8, of a dolphin who 
carried a boy on his back daily from 
Baiae to Puteoli, and on the death 
of the boy pined away with grief. 
Pliny, licU, Hist ix, 8, describes 
the animal as * maxime homini 
amicum' (cf. Arist. De Animalibus, 
ix. 35), and especially notices its 
care of its own species, when dead 
or wounded. Some of these tales 
about dolphins may (as Liddell and 
Scott suppose s. V. 5cA^fs) be due 
to the fact of their playing in 
stormy weather, and so warning 
mariners of danger ; the * curved 
back' (Ov. /. f. 137) might sug- 
gest the idea of carrying a burden. 
Cf. Shaksp. Ant, and Chop, 
V. 2— 

'his delights 
Were dolphin-like ; they showed 

his back above 
The element they lived in.' 

1 65-185] * The conmion conclu- 
sion of a funeral el^y is the beati- 
fication of the deceased' (Scott, 
Critical Essays). Here the classi- 
cal apotheosis forms an additional 
feature in the description (see on 
/. 183, and the concluding lines of 
the Epit. Damonis), What follows 
may be compared with Spenser, 
Eel. xi. 169 folL — 

*Dido is dead, but unto heaven 

hent ; . . . 
She reignes a goddess now emong 

the saintes ; . . . 
There drinckes she nectar with 
^ambrosia mixt, &c.' 

Cf. Watson, Eclogue on the Death 



of MeWxms (Sir F. Walsingham), 

* Injustlie judge we Melibceus' death. 
As though his worth was buried 

in his fate ; 
Now Meliboeus in comparelesse 

place 
Drinkes nectar, eates divine am- 
brosia.' 
Contrast the sentiment of Moschus, 
Epit. Bionis, 112-141, of a portion 
of which we offer the following 
paraphrase : 'Alas ! the herbs wi- 
ther and grow again ; while we the 
mighty and the wise, all speechless 
in the tomb, sleep the long endless 
slumber that knows no waking 
{irtpfiova viyyptrov thrvov). . . . But 
tune thou thy lay before the queen of 
Hades, if haply thy music may win 
a guerdon for thee, and thou mayest 
return to earth once more.' On 
the other hand, see Virgil's apotheo- 
sis of Caesar, under the name of 
Daphnis, Ed. v. 56 foil., only ob- 
serving that the glory which he 
reserves for an extraordinary hero, 
Milton, as a Christian, claims for 
all pious souls. For 'wofiil,' ap- 
plied to persons, cf. Sidney's Ar- 
cadia, B. ii., * the woeful Gynecia;' 
Daniel, CivU Wars, * How many 
woeful maidens left to mourn ! ' 

166 your sorrow] i.e. the object 
of your sorrow, ves^ dolor, Cf. 
Propert. I. xiv. 18, * Ilia etiam 
duris mentibus (potest) esse dolor J* 
So mea desideria^ 'my lov^* Cic. 
Epist. Fam. 

not defkd] Cf. Death of Fair In- 
font, I. 29. Warton quotes from 
the Lay of Clorinda (attributed to 
Spenser) the lines bqginning *Ah 
no, it is not dead ne can it die.' 
Cf. Epitaph on Sir W. Drury, by 
Bamabe Ritche, in the Paradise 
of Dayntie Deznsa, 1579! — 



LYCIDAS. 

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head. 
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 



8s 



170 



* Your Drury is not dead ! 
He liveth he amongst the blessed 

route. . . . 
Wherefore, you worthy wightes, 

leave of to wayle.* 

167 floor] (G. Flur) is any level 
surface {aquor), Cf. Arcadia^ B. i., 
'the morning did strew roses and 
violets in the heavenly floor.* 
Schiller, in his poem entitled Das 
Ideal und das Ld>en^ has *des 
Lichtes Fluren,' * fields of light.' 

x68J The * day-star* may pos- 
sibly, as Newton thinks, be the sun, 
which is called the * diurnal star ' in 
P, L, X. 1069. Cf. Pindar, Olymp, 
i. 9, /ibices' &\(ov CK&trti &XAo 0aA- 
wy^cpov. . , &(rrpoi^; Ovid, Fast 
vi. 718, where * Stella serena* is 
said of Phoebus ; also Met i. 429 ; 
TibuU. II. i. 47, where * sidus * is 
similarly used. The chief advan- 
tage of this interpretation would be 
to save Milton from the astronomi- 
cal blunder involved in making the 
same planet a morning and an even- 
ing star in one day ; but here, as in 
/. 30 (see note), he is most likely 
to have followed the usage of the 
ancients, who commonly speak of 
Lucifer and Hesperus in this M'ay. 
Catullus, Ixii. 34, describes the 
evening star as returning next morn- 
ing, * mutato nomine ; * Horace, 
Od II. ix. 10, measures a night's 
duration by the rising and setting of 
Hesperus; and Virgil, Eel. viii. 
17 and 30, makes Lucifer and Hes- 
perus appear during the same day. 
Moreover, the present passage is 
evidently copied from Virg.yfiw. viii. 
5^* ' Quahs ubi Oceani periusus 
Lucifer unda, &c.,' compared with 
the original in Horn. //. v. 6, thus 



translated by Lord Derby : — 

* like autumn's star, that 
brightest shines 
When newly risen from his ocean 
bath.* 

Compare also the closely similar 
language in Giles Fletcher's Chrises 
Triumph after Death ^ II. 89 foil.— 

'So fairest Phosphor, the bright 

morning-star. 
But newly washed in the green 

element. 
Before the drowsy night is half 

aware, 
Shooting his flaming locks with 

dew besprent. 
Springs lively up into the orient.' 

169 anon] »//i otu (moment), 
immediately. The word is com- 
mon in Shakspere ; see especially 
the scene at the Boar's Head Ta- 
vern, I Hen. IV. ii. 4. It occurs 
twice only in the authorised version 
of the Bible, Matt. xiii. 20, Mark 

i. 30- 

repairs] * refreshes,* from repa- 
rare^ to get a frssh supply in place ' 
of what is lost or damaged. Hor. 
Od. IV. vii. 13, *Damna tamen 
celeres reparantG3l^s&\!v^. lunse.* The 
line in Gray's Bard^ I. 137 (of the 
sun), * to-morrow he repairs his 
golden flood,' quoted by Wartuh, 
is probably a reminiscence of Milton. 

170 tricks] sets in order, adorns. 
Cf. n PenserosOy 123 ; Shaksp. 
Merry W. of Windsor, iv. 4, * trick- 
ings for our fairies.* Todd on // 
Pens. I. c. quotes from Sandys* 
Travels, B. i. (of a Turkish bride), 
* they trick her in her richest or- 
naments.* (On the etymology and 



S6 



LYCIDAS. 



Flames in the forehead of the morning sky : 

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high 

Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, 

Where, other groves and other streams along. 

With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 



175 



senses of the word see Appen- 
dix I.) 

apangled] from Gaelic spang^ a 
metal plate. Cf. Spenser, F, Q. 
IV. xi. 45, 'glittering spangs.' It 
is rather a favourite word with 
Milton (P, L. vii. 384, Od, Nat, 
21, Psalm cxxxvi. 35, &c.); like 
tinsd {Comus, 877) and others, it has 
now lost somewhat of its dignity. 
See Trench, Study of Words, p. 52 ; 
Eng, Past and Present, p. 130. 

* Spangled heavens ' occurs in Addi- 
son's well-known paraphrase of the 
19th Psalm. 

ore] «* golden radiance,' as in 

•Keats Endymion, B. iL, * a golden 

splendour with quivering ore.* For 

*ore' in the distinc^^ive sense of 

* gold * (probably owing to an erro- 
neous derivation from aurum) of. 
ComUSy 932 ; Shaksp. HamUt, iv. 
I, ' like some ore among a mineral 
of metals base.' It is applied to 
other metals, iron or copper, in 
P, L, xi. 570. The word properly 
signifies a vein of metal in die mine 
(Dutch aare, G. ader), P. Fletcher, 
Purple Island, ix. 25 1 , has the line — 

* And round about was writ in 
golden ore, 

171] Crashaw, Weeper, st. 2, 

* Whatever makes Heaven's fore- 
head fine.' Tenn3rson, Pelleas and 
Etarre, * the virgin forehead of the 
dawn.' Cf. *the eyelids of the 
day,' supr. /. 26, and see note 
there. 

173] See Matth. xiv. 22-23. 
Warton aptly observes that this is 
*a designation of our Saviour by 
a miracle which bears an immediate 
foference to the subject of the poem. ' 



174 other grovef, fte.] Le. in 
another and a better world. Todd 
comp. Dmmmond's Maliades^ /. 
175- 

* other hills and forrests, other 

towers. 
Amazed thou find'st excelling our 

poor bowers.* 

Cf. Italian poems, Cansunte, /. 8, 
^aiiri rivi, altriXv^x t' aspettan, &c., 
i.e. the streams and shores of his 
native land, as contrasted with those 
of Italy. 

along] = beside, amidst, without 
the usual idea of motion. So in the 
Circumcision Ode, I, 4, * sung your 
joy the clouds along.' 

1 75] Cf. Ode on Fair Infant, 49, 
*thy nectared head.' Nectar with 
ambrosia is said to have been used 
by way of ablution to preserve im- 
mortality, as well as for the food 
and drink of the gods. Hom. //. 
xiv. 170; xix. 39. In Comus, 836 
foil., the deification of Sabrina is 
effected by 'nectared lavers' and 
* ambrosial oils.' 

0017 looks] Since 'ooze' pro- 
perly means moisture of any kind 
(O.E. wos, * juice'), it would be 
possible to understand ' oozy ' of the 
effect of the nectar, according to 
the common classical figure called 
prolepsis ; like Virgil's * spicula 
lucida tergunt,' i.e. 'they scour 
their lances so as to mcJte them 
bright.' But as the word is gene- 
rally, if not invariably, used of 
slime or mud, it probably here re- 
fers to the sea water which is washed 
away by the nectar, and may be 
compared with Hom. II, xiv. L r.» 



LYCIDAS. 



87 



And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
There entertain him all the saints above, 
In solemn troops and sweet societies, 
That sing, and singing in their glory move. 
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more ; 
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore. 



180 



A^/utra irdfra KoBiipfv. Cf. Pope, 
Odyssey^ iv. 543, * His oozy 
limbs/ 

176 and hears] originally Mist'n- 
mgy with an ellipse of the preposi- 
tion, common in Elizabethan writers. 
Cf. Shaksp. Mcubethy ii. 2, * listen- 
ing their fear.' 

onezpreMive] not to be express- 
ed, Mnenarrabile carmen,' Od, Ad 
Pairem, 37. Cf. Od. Nat, 1 16. 
Shakspere has 'plausive,' *insup- 
pressive,' 'directive,' &c., used 
passively for ' plausible,' &c New- 
ton instances *■ the unexpressive 
she' (As You Like It, iii. 2). The 
grammatical terms ' derivative,' 
'adjective,' &c., are also cases in 
point. For the * nuptial song ' 
Newton refers to Rev. xiv. 3, 4; 
the reference should rather be Rev. 
xix. 6, 7, the song at * the marris^e 
sapper of the Lamb.' 

177] This line was omitted, pro- 
bably by a printer's error, in the 
edition of 1638 ; it is inserted in 
Milton's handwriting in his own 
copy of that edition, preserved in 
the Cambridge University Library. 
'Meek,' i.e. peaceful, is a suitable 
epithet of ' kingdoms,' and need not, 
as Thyer supposes, be referred by 
transposition to 'joy and love.' 
Nor is this interpretation supported 
by the passage which Newton quotes 
from P. L. ix. 318, where the epi- 
thet ' domestic ' belongs quite natu- 
rally to Adam as a loving spouse, 



and does not require to be taken 
with * care.' 

178] Warton's remark that ' even 
here Milton does not ijoake Lycidas 
an angelf* ought not to have been 
used by way of arg^ment in support 
of his explanation of /. 163. One 
of Drummond's elegies is addressed 
*to the Angel Spirit of the most 
excellent Sir Philip Sidney,' and 
the expression is amply justified by 
popular usage. 

179] There is no necessary allu- 
sion in this line to the 'angelick 
system,' which is set forth with 
some minuteness in the Peason of 
Church Government^ B. I. c. i. 
(cf. P, Z. v. 601 ; xi. 80), as 
' saints ' and not angels are here 
specified. The Christian doctrine 
of the Comnmnion of Saints needs 
no illu.stration. 

181] Rev. vii. 17 ; xxi. 4 ; Isai. 
XXV. 8, where the act is attributed 
to God Himself. 

183 J See quotation from San- 
nazaro on /. 163, and cf. Blacklock's 
Monody, PhUanthes : — 

* Still he, the genius of our green 

retreat, 
Shall with benignant care our 
labour cheer.' 

Many will agree with Todd in wish- 
ing that *■ after the sublime intima- 
tion of angels wiping the tears from 
the eyes of Lycidas Pie] had not 
been converted into the classical 



88 



LYCIDAS. 



In thy large recompense, and shalt be good 
To all that wander in that perilous flood. 
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks a^d rills. 



i8s 



Genius of the shore.* For although 
The individual Genius is a concep- 
tion in many pointa similar to that 
of the guardian angel, the Genius 
loci can have no counterpart in 
modem religious belief, being a 
product of that localising tendency 
of Pagan theology which it was one 
special aim of Christianity to abolish 
(John iv. 21 foil.). The mention of 
bim here serves, somewhat inartis- 
rically, to mark a return to the 
pastoral form in which the poem is 
chiefly set. Newton supposes an 
allusion to the story of Melicerta, 
told in the 6th book of Ovid's 
FasH^ and referred to by Virgil, 
Georg, i. 436 ; but the language in 
the text is perhaps hardly definite 
enough to make this reference cer- 
tain. 

184 in thy large reeompense] 
i.e. *by way of ample requital to 
thee (for thy sufferings).* The 
phrase is doubtful English, but it 
represents such Greek forms of ex- 
pression as h ohi r6%o\ = * regret 
for thee,* where the possessive 
stands for an oblique case of the 
personal pronoun. See note on /. 
166. 

shalt be good, ftc] Thyer com- 
pares Virg. £cl. V. 64, * Sis bonus 
o felixque tuis,* addressed to the 
deified Daphnis. 

185 peiiloui] pronounced as a 
dissyllable everywhere in Milton, 
except in P. L, ii. 420. Cf. Spen- 
ser, F. Q. II. vi. 38, *that perlous 
shard ;* Keats, Endymion, bk. iii., 
• in perilous bustle.* Hence the 
c6lloquial form * parlous,* Shaksp. 
Mids, N. Dreatn^ iii. i, ' a parlous 
fear,* especially in the sense of 
alarmingly clever ^ * a parlous boy,* 
K, Rich, III. ii. 4. 



186-194] 'The shepherd elegi- 
ast, who has not yet been formaUy 
introduced, is now set before us 
among his oaks and rills* (Scott, 
Critical Essays), Keightley, in his 
Life and Opinions of AiUton, ob- 
serves that these last eight lines 
form a perfect stanza in ottava rima, 
which is imitated by Mason in his 
JIfusaus, 

186 unconth] It is doubtful 
whether this wonl is to be taken in 
its literal sense of * unknown ' (O.E. 
cti^t p. part, of ciinnan)f or in the 
usual modem acceptation of * rude,* 

* uncultivated.' The former would 
be a natural expression of a young 
poet just entering upon a career of 
fame (cf. /. 3 and note), but Miltoa 
does not seem to have used the 
term elsewhere of persons with this 
meaning. In F, Z. ii. 407 Satan's 
journey towards this world is called 

* his uncouth way,* and in vi. 361 

* uncouth pain' means 'unusual.' 
Cf. Spenser, F, Q. I. xi. 20. In 
F. L, V. 98, and probably in VAl- 
l^g^^i 5» this sense is combined 
with the secondary one of * hideous,' 
to which the transition is complete 
in S. A. 333, where Manoah speaks 
of the prison at Gaza as ' this un- 
couth place.* The modem applica- 
tion to manners, from the idea of 

* strange * or * out of place,' is ob- 
vious and easy (see note on ' quaint, * 
/. 139). This and the following 
lines are thus imitated by M. Bruce 
in his Daphnis : — 

< A homely swain tending his little 

flock, 
Rudcy yet a lover of the Muses* 

lore. 
Chanted his Doric strain till dose 

of day.* 



LYCIDAS. 



89 



While the still Mom went out with sandals gray ; 
He touched the tender stops of various quills, 
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay ; 
And now the sun had stretcht out all the hills, 
And now was dropped into the western bay. 
At last he rose, and twitcht his mantle blue ; 
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. 



190 



187] Cf. P, R. iv. 426 :— 

' till morning fair 
Went forth with pilgrim steps in 
amice gray, 

188] A * stop 'is properly that 
which covers the ventholes in a 
flute or similar wind instrument ; 
hence it is applied to the holes 
themselves. The best illustration is 
that quoted by Warton from Ham- 
Uty iii 2 : — * Govern these vent- 
ages with your fingers and thum}). 
. . . Look you, these are the stops. ^ 
Cf. Comusy 346, whence Collins 
took his 'oaten stop or pastoral 
song,' Ode to Evenings I. i. The 
stops of an organ are only a more 
elaborate contrivance for applying 
the same principle to a number of 
pipes together ; these are mentioned 
in P, L, xi. 561. 

▼arions qoillt] in allusion to the 
varied strains of the elegy (at //. 
76, 88, 113. 132, 165). This al- 
most amounts to a recc^ition on 
the part of the poet of the irregula- 
rity of style, the mixture of different 
and even opposing themes, which 
some have censured as a defect. 
< Quill' (L. calamus, G. kiel) is lite 
rally a reed-pipe. So Spenser, Ed, 
vi. 67, speaks of the * homely shep- 
herd's quill ; ' Collins, Superstitions 
of the Highlands,, « thy Doric quill ; ' 
Fletcher, Purple Island, xL 10, 
' my oaten quill.' Johnson explains 
it of the plectrum with which the 
strings of the lyre were struck, in- 



stancing Dryden's Virg, yEn. vi. 
646, .*his harmonious quill strikes 
seven distinguished notes ' ( *pectine 
pulsat ebumo ') ; but this is not the 
usual sense of the word. 

189 Doric lay] Awpb &oiSi, Mos- 
chus, Epit. Bionis, 12, which is said 
to have perished with Bion. Here 
it stands for pastoral poetry, in re- 
ference to Theocritus (see on //. 
85, 133), not, as Newton supposes, 
to archaisms of language, which are 
not so frequent in this poem as to 
justify his remark quoted above on 
/. 4. 

190 stretoht out, fto.] Milton 
has here added something of his 
own to the Virgilian picture in Eel, 
i. 84, *majoresque cadunt altis de 
montibus umbra*.' 

192 twitcht] i.e. snatched up from 
where it lay beside him, Kvivtov 
V aipitp dKXjafifv ttixa (Plumptre's 
Translation). Or, according to 
Keightley, *drew tightly about him 
on account of the chillness of the 
evening.' In any case the word 
expresses haste, as if the setting sun 
had surprised him while * eager ' in 
his singing. 

blue] the colour of a shepherd's 
dress, and the poet impersonates a 
shepherd (Hales, Longer English 
Poems), It is not probable that 
Milton meant anything more than 
this, though other explanations, 
mjre or less fanciful, have been 
offered. 

193] Newton comp. Fletcher, 



90 



LYCIDAS. 



Purple Island^ vi. 538, * to-morrow 
shall ye feast in pastures new/ Pro- 
fessor Masson observes that this is 
' a parting intimation that the ima- 
j[inary shepherd is Milton himself, 
and that the poem is a tribute to his 
dead friend rendered passingly in 
the midst of other occupations' 
(see note on /. i). It is better to 
refer these words to the projected 
Italian tour, with which his mind 
must now have been occupied, than 
to any political intentions at this 
time. Milton could not have fore- 



seen the events of the ntttt few 
years ; and we know that the com- 
motions which began in 1638-9 
recalled him suddenly from abroad, 
where he had meant to stay for 
some time longer, and that the 
whole complexion of his future life 
was determined by them. It 
should be remembered that the 
next poem of any importancs which 
he wrote was the Paradise Lost^ 
begun probably in or about 1658, 
some two years before the Restora- 
tion. 



APPENDIX I. 



On the Etymology of some Words in the * Lycidas,^ 

Bima (/. ii). It is^ or ought to be, now generally known that the 
common spelling of this word {rhyme) owes its origin to a pedantic 
formation from pvBfioiy made by those who claimed for it a Greek 
derivation, but that it is really the O.E. rtm, 'number/ H.G. 
reim, Dutch rtj'm, &c., and that the true orthography is rime. 
Dr. Latham, in his new edition of Johnson's Dictionary, makes it 
a main ground of objection to this statement, that the Teutonic 
forms themselves may have been originally connected with pvOftd^ — 
a question obviously irrelevant to the matter in hand, which is 
simply to discover how and whence the word first came into our 
language. Nor is this a difficult task, since the older authorities 
all combine to prove that it was an English word from the first ; 
for instance, in Havelok, the Ormulum^ Shoreham, Hoccleve, and 
Horn (see Stratmann's Old English Dictionary), the spelling is always 
rim or ritpu. We find indeed in Chaucer, Spenser, &c., a variant 
form ryme^ but this is really of no importance, since i and y were 
constantly interchanged, as fire and fyre^ time and tyme^ &c. ; and 
ryme may have been so spelt for the special reason of distinguish- 
ing it from rimey 'hoar-frost.' This evidence from the earlier 
orthography ought to be decisive ; since an examination of the 
meaning and uses of the word leads to no certain conclusion either 
way. We know that it was at first a general term for ' verse ' (as 
in the present line), and that after the introduction of blank ¥ezae 
in the i6th century it was applied to 'rhyming' poetry for the 
sake of distinction. But this general primary sense would be com- 
patible either with a derivation from pvBfiAg or with one from 
rim, since in both words the ' measured intervals ' {numeri) of the 
verse form the leading idea. I had been unable to discover the 
exact date of the introduction of the ^ into the word rhyme^ but 



92 LYCIDAS. 

since writing the first draft of this note my attention has been 
directed to a letter from Mr. F. J. Fumivall in Notes and Queries^ 
Nov. 29, 1873, in which he cites a line from Daniel in 1595, ' Railing 
rhymes were sowed/ as the earliest instance of the false mode of 
spelling. If this be so, the case is complete in favour of Hme (or 
ryme\ and no one ought to hesitate about writing the word in one 
or other of these two ways. Another argument against the deriva- 
tion from pv9fi6i: is the parallel case of the Italian n'ma, which, like 
rime, meant poetry in general. Cf. Ariosto, Or/. Fur, i. ii., ' cosa* 
non detta in prosa mai ne in rima^ whence Milton took his line 
P, L, i. 16.* This, Diez truly observes, could never have come from 
pvBiioc, though he is wrong when he goes on to say that the Italian 
equivalent mus/ be * rimmo ' or ' remmo,' because, as a matter of 
fact, it happens to be *ritmo.' But when H. Wedgwood {Die/, 
Etym, s. v. Bhyme) objects to the former assertion of Diez on ac- 
count of the analogy of the French rime from the older form 
riihmey he seems to overlook an important difference between the 
two languages in their respective methods of derivation from the 
Latin. When the original word has two consonants coming 
together in successive syllables, the Italian either retains the first 
(changing aspirates to mutes), as in ritmo, atmosfera, &c., or else 
assimilates it to the second, as in ammirare from admirare, &c. ; 
while in modem French the former consonant usually disappears 
with compensation, as in route, soumis, avocat (true French avou/)^ 
from rupta, submissus, advocatus. Hence rhythmus would natu- 
rally pass through rithme into rime, whereas in Italian it could only 
produce ritmo (or else rimmo or remmo), but not rimo^ still less 
rima. There is, however, no reason for doubting that both rima 
and the French rime are cognate with the Teutonic forms rim^ 
reim, &c., above mentioned. 

Gnerdon (/. 73). The received etymology of this word is the 
O.H.G. widarlSn, 0.£. wi^rtean, which became in Low Latin 
widerdonum, by association with donum, ' a gift,' since the word 
originally meant ' a reward in return for services.' Burguy, in his 
Grammaire de la Langue d*Oil, gives the various forms gueredon^ 
geredon, werdon, and werredon, also the verbs guerredoner and 
re-werdoner ; and quotes a sentence from the Sermons of S. Ber- 
nard, *Li granz rewerdoneres est venuz,' i.e. *Le grand rimurUrateur 
est venu.' Another derivation, at first sight very plausible, is given 
by Manage, who refers the origin of the word to the Old German 
Werdufig^ which took the form Werdunia in Low Latin, and meant 



APPENDIX I. 93 

preHi ctstimalio. The existence of this latter word is shown by a 
passage which he quotes from Vossius, De Vitiis Sermonis Latini 
(B. ii. c. 2o)y where instances occur both of Werdunia and of a 
compound Cinewerdunia^ which Ducange also gives in his Glossary^ 
though Werdunia itself is not to be found there. The first part of 
this compound is of doubtful import and derivation. Chevallet has 
suggested what is really the same etymology, for he derives ^i^^r^;» 
from JfVr// (Modem German IVerik), meaning 'price* or 'value;' 
but this is rejected by Scheler {Die/, d^ Etymologie Fran^ise^ 
1863), who pronounces the derivation from widarldn to be 'au- 
dessus de toute contestation.' It is true that guerdon might come 
from Werdung according to the rule by which the letter w was 
regularly replaced by g or gu in those Teutonic words which the 
Franks introduced into Gaul (see Max Miiller, Lectures on the 
Science of Language^ 2nd Series, p. 265) ; but by the same rule it 
might equally well be derived from widarldn^ and that it was so 
derived seems to be a well-established historical fact The really 
fatal objection to Menage's theory is the existence of the Italian 
word guiderdone^ which could not possibly have bad its origin in 
Werdung^ though it would naturally be produced from widarldn 
by the change of w into gu above mentioned. The older spelling 
guerre-don no doubt arose from the idea that the term had some- 
thing to do with remuneration for service in war, 

Felon (/. 91). The derivation from fell^ mentioned in the note, 
is by no means proved. The word may be connected with the 
Gaelic y^a//, ' deceit/ for examples of which see H. Wedgwood's 
Diet, of Etymology^ s. v. felon. Du Cange indeed says that ^felo ' » 
' perfidus/ ' rebellis, * crudelis/ &c., from A,S.fei/ ; and Chaucer, in 
the Romaunt of the Rose^ takes pains to establish this connexion in 
the lines — * Daunger that is sofeloun /%f//j^purposeth thee to werrey, 
which is full cruely the sooth to say.' Cf. Lyndsay, Monarchies 
•that felloun flood;' Pope, Odyssey, iv. 712. 'his felon hate.' From 
this general sense of ' wickedness,' y^/^ny became a recognised legal 
term for the higher class of crimes ; and since such were formerly 
punished by the forfeiture of lands and goods^ feion was erroneously 
supposed to be a compound of fee and Ion, i.e. the price of a feof 
or beneficiary estate (Spelman in Blackstone's Commentary). The 
Italiany^^^ and the French fette, ' cruel,' are perhaps traceable to 
the same root. 

Wanton (/. 136). Authorities differ as to the origin of this 
word. H. Wedgwood (Diet, of Etymology, s. v.) considers it to be 



94 LYCIDAS. 

a compound of the O.E. negative prefix wan (as in wan-hope^ 
' despair ') and togen^ the past part, of teon (G. ziehen)^ ' to draw.' 
Its meaning would therefore be ' untrained/ and hence ' irregular 
in conduct.' This derivation is clearly proved by the existence 
of an intermediate form wantowen, of which Wedgwood quotes an 
instance from a Sermon on Miracle Plays — * We waxen wanttnuen 
or idil.' He also notes the expressions *untowen,* *wel itowen/ 
* ful itowen,' in the Ancren Riwle, a treatise of the 13th century 
on the Rules of Monastic Life. (But the meaning of the last word 
is not, as he gives it, * fully educated,' but * undisciplined 'or * ill- 
educated,' from the O.E. ful » * fouL' See the Ancren Riwle^ 
edited by the Rev. J. Morton for the Camden Society, pp. 108, 
140, 244, 368.) [An alternative derivation is that given by Webster 
and others, from a Welsh adjective gwantan^ * roving,' 'fickle/ 
which is referred to the verb gwanta, *to separate' (probably 
cognate with chwant, *lust,' Greek xaiv-co, Lat. hi-o, hisco, &c.). 
The precise similarity both in form and meaning between gwantan 
and wanton would no doubt go very far towards establishing a 
common origin ; we cannot, however, certainly say which is the 
older of the two, and it is more than probable that the Welsh may 
have borrowed the word from our language. But supposing that 
gwantan was the earlier form, and that from it wanton was derived, 
its resemblance to the real English word wantowen might very 
well give rise to the theory which Wedgwood adopts, especially ii 
at any time after its introduction wanton came to be spelt wantoun 
or wantownI\ All this, however, is purely hypothetical ; the history 
of the word, as traced by Wedgwood, is quite conclusive in favour 
of the first-named derivation. Notwithstanding, Edward Miiller 
in his Etymologisches Worterbuch der englischen Sprache (1867;, 
accepts the theory propounded by Webster. 

Herse {L 151). This word was employed in three distinct 
senses, of which the last now alone remains in use. These are 
(i) ihi^ funeral monument (Spenser, F. Q, 11. viii. 16) ; (2) the coj^n, 
as in Shaksp. i JC, Henry VI, i. i, where *a wooden coflfin' is 
presently spoken of as 'King Henry's hearse \^ (3) xhe funeral 
carriage. Richardson, wrongly supposing this last to be the 
primary meaning, derives the word from the O.E. hyrstan^ *to 
decorate ' (see also Home Tooke^s Diversions ofPurley), It really 
comes from the French hercej Low Latin hercia Qiirpicem)^ *a 
harrow' (Ducange, Glossary, s.v.), and originally meant a tri- 
angular frame for candles, placed at the head of the corpse. Thus 



APPENDIX I. 95 

in the account of the battle of Crecy in Froissart's Chronicles^ 
c. 130 (Lord Bemers' translation), we are told that 'the archers 
stode in maner of a kersey Le. in triangular form. And since 
this burning of candles was the distinctive feature in the obsequies, 
the term ' hearse ' came to be used either of the whole ceremony or 
of its various appurtenances (Wedgwood, Did, of EiymoL s. v.). 
In the Faery Queen^ ill. iL 4.8, Spenser has wrongly applied the 
phrase 'holy herse' to the church service, as if the word were 
connected with 'rehearse;' and perhaps the same mistake is made 
in the Shepheard^s Calendar ^ xi. 60, where 'herse' is explained in 
the glossary to mean ' the solemn obsequie in funeralles.' 

Triok (/. 170). The main senses of this word (as noun and 
verb) are — (i) Artifice, (2) Peculiar habit or manner (King Lear^ iv. 6, 
* The trick of that voice I do weU remember '), (3) Ornament (// 
PenserosOf 123; Shaksj^rt^JCing Henry V, iiL 6, ' trick up with new- 
tuned oaths;' Merry IV. of Windsor^ 'trickings for our fairies'), 
(4) Heraldic devices ( Jonson, Poetaster^ ' they are blazoned, they 
are tricked'), (5) Collection of cards taken up by the winner. All 
these find a common origin in the Dutch trek^ a 'draught,' 'pull,' 
or ' stroke,' which answers to our word ' draw' in all its senses, and 
has also the secondary meanings of ' deceit,' and of a ' feature' of 
the face or character. (Cf. trait from tractus^ which means in 
French both 'feature* and 'trick.' Faire des traits ^faire des tours.) 
To the same root trek Diez refers tricher (It treccare)^ * to cheat,' 
though he derives in-triguer^ trigaud^ &c., from the Latin verb 
tricari. This is unquestionably right, although at first sight 
tricher^ with its cognate triquer^ might seem a natural formation 
from tricariy like miche from mica^ indiquer from indicare, &c. 
But, as Diez observes, the radical e in the older form trecher is 
fatal to such a derivation, and the Teutonic origin of tricher may 
therefore be considered as established. There cannot be any con- 
nexion (however remote) between the Latin tricari and the root 
we have been considering; since we know that the former is 
derived from tricce^ originally Tricae, a small town in Apulia, whose 
name widi that of the neighbouring Apinae came to be used of 
anything trifling or insignificant. (C£ Pliny, NcU, Hist, iii. 16; 
Martial, Epigr, Xiv. i. 7, ' Sunt apinae tricaeque et si quid vilius 
istis;' Erasmus, CA//rW* Cent. 2, Adag. 43, 'Tricas et Apinas 
vulgo Tt&futiles et nugatorias dicebant.') Thus Cicero {adAtticum, 
X. viii. 9) contrasts 'domesticas tricas' with 'publicam cladem.' 
Hence tricari was applied to shuffling and petty meanness of con- 



96 LYCIDAS. 

duct (Cic. odAtt, xiv. xix. 4; xv. iii. 5), a sense which is accidentaUy 
almost the same with that of tricher and treccare. This may be 
noted as one of those curious coincidences, by which words without 
any etymological connexion obtain in different languages a similar 
form and meaning. A further illustration of this is seen in the 
German trugen {triegen), ^ to deceive/ regarded as a collateral form 
of tragen^ and thus connected with traho^ draw, dragy &c. Another 
meaning of tricce (that of * perplexity* or ' entanglement*) seems to 
have produced the later Latin trtcare, 'to loiter;' and this was 
absurdly derived from irica (ffpit), 'a, knot of hair/ for a full 
account of which see Ducange, Glossariuniy s. v. trioa. This verb 
also meant 'to deceive^* whence came tricatores ^' dectptores, qpx 
res impediunt vel implicant.* 

We may therefore assume trek to be the original of trick in all 
its senses, as well as of tricher and treccare ; it only remains to 
reject the derivation given by Dr. Johnson and Richardson of tricky 
in the sense of ornament, from the trica above referred to, since 
the idea of ornament springs most naturally from that of delineation^ 
especially when used of heraldic devices (see No. 4 supra). The 
Only instance given of the word as actually meaning ' a knot of 
hair* is from Jonson*s Poetaster^ 'your court curls or your tricks ;' 
but this need not be anything more than a general term for ' orna- 
ment* (See the quotation from Sandys* Travels^ given in the note 
upon /. 17a) 



APPENDIX II. 



On the allusions in IL 128, 129. 

Those who have read Professor Masson's examination of this 
passage in his Life of Milton (vol. i. p. 641 foil.) will hardly fail to 
agree with him in interpreting the * grim wolf' to mean that system 
of perversion to Romanism, which seems to have reached its height 
in or about the year 1637. The view partially adopted by Newton, 
that the Primate is the person here intended, might seem at first 
sight to be supported by an entry in Laud's diary, to the effect 
that in July 1637 a libel was pasted on the Cross at Cheapside, 
designating him * the arch-wolf of Canterbury.' But so common an 
expression as this is barely sufficient of itself to enable us to draw a 
positive conclusion, while the language which Milton here employs 
respecting the * wolf presents at least a twofold objection to such 
an interpretation. First, the evil is clearly an external one, being 
distinguished from the abuses previously mentioned as existing 
within the fold — the word ' besides ' indicates this — and secondly, 
the expression 'privy paw,' denoting secresy, would be a most 
unfit one, if it were intended to describe the doings of Laud and the 
High Commission Court, whose attacks on Nonconformity were 
open and undisguised ; nor was there perhaps any character more 
prominent at this time than that of the Archbishop. Both the 
required conditions are satisfied, if we adopt Newton's alternative 
explanation, * besides what the Popish priests privately pervert to 
their religion,' in support of which view Masson in his Life of 
Milton brings forward the instances of Sir Toby Matthews, Sir 
Kenelm Digby and others, who had been most active in this 
matter for some years before the publication of Lycidas, He goes 
on to show that Laud himself strongly disapproved of these per- 
versions, as appears from his letter of remonstrance to Sir K. 
Digby (March 27, 1636) upon his change of religion, and from his 

4 



98 LYCIDAS. 

strict injunctions to Dr. Bayly, Vice-chancellor of Oxford (Aug. 29, 
1637), to take strong measures against the Jesuits, who were 
seducing the students in that University. It may have been the case 
that ' as he valued his theory of a possible union of the churches, 
the floating off of atoms vexed and annoyed him ' (Masson /. c.) ; 
but even the fact that he did desire such a union is mainly sup- 
ported by the assertion of Montague, Bp. of Chichester, to Panzani, 
a Papal agent sent to decide certain disputes among the English 
Catholics, but with special instructions not to have any dealings 
whatever with Laud (Lingard, His/, of England^ voL vii. c. 5)^. 
Taken in connexion with this injunction, the circumstances attend- 
ing the offer of a cardinal's hat made to Laud a short time before, 
and rejected by him on the ground of dissatisfaction with Rome 
*as it then was* {Diary, Aug. 4, 1633), serve to show that the 
distrust between the two parties was at least mutual; for it is 
certain that this offer was made without cognisance of the Pope, 
who even refused to ratify it when the request to do so was laid 
before him. We know also that the news of Laud's death in 1646 
was hailed at Rome with great rejoicing, on the ground that ' the 
greatest enemy of the Church of Rome in England was cut off, and 
the greatest champion of the Church of England silenced.' (Tes- 
timony of Sir Lionel Tolmache, as reported by the Rev. J. Whiston, 
his chaplain about 1666). All this agrees very well with Laud's 
own assertions in answer to the charges brought against him by 
the Puritans in 1640, *that he hath traytorously endeavoured to re- 
concile the Church of England with the Church of Rome, and per- 
mitted a Popish hierarchy in this kingdom, &c.' To this he replies, 
*' I did never desire that England and Rome should meet, but with 
the forsaking of error and superstition, if some tenets of Rome on 
one side and some deep disaffections on the other have not made 
this impossible, as I much doubt they have. But that I should 
practise with Rome as it now stands is utterly untrue. Secondly, I 
have hindered as many from going to the Roman party, as any divine 
in England hath done. (Twenty-two names are here quoted, many 
of whom are of high rank and quality.) Thirdly, many Recusants 
think that / have done them and their cause more harm than tluy 
which have seemed more fierce against them,^ The obvious fact is 
that the vital differences between the religious theory of Laud and 
that of the Roman Church, patent to either party and too great to 
allow the possibility of a union, were ignored by the Puritans in their 
zeal against the Laudian movement, which they either did not care to 



APPENDIX II. 9^ 

distinguish from actual Popery, or considered as even something 
worse. (See speech of Lord Falkland, Feb. g, 1641.) Nor is it 
likely that Milton, young as he was at this time, surrounded by 
Puritan influences, and having a strong natural bias in the same 
direction, would be enabled to form a juster estimate of the facts 
than the rest of his party did ; it is therefore quite likely that he 
may have wished to include Laud among even the foremost of the 
Romanisers in the Church of England, though we deny that the 
allusion in the present passage is directly or exclusively intended 
for him. 

The expression 'nothing said' (altered from 'little said' of the 
first draft) is plainly an imputation upon the Court and hierarchy 
for their remissness in dealing with the evil we have just been con- 
sidering. As regards the latter, if we take Laud as its represen- 
tative, it is probable (to quote again from Professor Masson) that 
*the Puritans, not knowing his measures [against the Catholic 
agents], or not thinking them enough, found in the increasing, 
number of perversions a fresh condemnation of him and his ad- 
herents.' But the policy of Charles 1. towards the Papists was by 
no means uniform. His treaty of marriage with the Princess 
Henrietta in 1624 had contained a promise of immunity to the 
Catholics for the peaceable exercise of their worship, though he 
had sworn in conjunction with his father a few months before, that 
in case of his marriage with a Catholic the said immunity should 
extend only to herself and her own family. In 1629 he adopted 
a middle course, exempting them from the extreme penalties of 
recusancy in respect of fines for non-attendance at the services of 
the established Church, yet not allowing them absolute freedom in 
their own religious worship ; and even this concession was loudly 
reprobated by the Puritans. At the present time (1637) the queen's 
private influence was considerable. By the strenuous efforts of 
Con, the successor of Panzani, she had been induced to take a 
warm interest in the work of individual proselytism, which had 
superseded the former scheme of reunion of the Churches, and the 
autumn of this year was marked by a large accession of perverts 
to Rome. On the whole therefore we may conclude that Milton's 
words &ttig (or nothing) said are a rather moderate statement 
of the real grievance, and one with which the Puritans generally 
would by no means have contented themselves. 

Warton is surprised that the University should have allowed 
these lines, and that they should have escaped ' the severest anim- 

H2 



100 LYCIDAS. 

adversions' from the High Court of Commission and the Star. 
Chamber. But there had long been a decided Puritan element 
at Cambridge, the leading man at the time of Charles' accession 
being Dr. Preston, Master of Emanuel, 'the greatest pupil-monger 
in England' according to Fuller, formerly a favourite with the 
Duke of Buckingham, and one of the king's chaplains (Masson, 
vol. i. p. 94). As to the civil and spiritual tribunals, perhaps 
Milton was then too obscure to demand their notice ; we know at 
least that he afterwards managed to escape the fate which befell 
others of his party, and that even after the Restoration in 1660 he 
was included in the Act of Indenmity, and was released after three 
days' imprisonment^ although his Eiconoclastes and Defensio PapuU 
Anglicani were ordered to be burnt 



TRANSLATION OF LYCIDAS INTO LATIN 

HEXAMETERS, 

By William Hogg^ 1694. 



Parafhrasis Latina in duo Poemata {quorum alterum a MUtono^ 
alterum a Clievlando Anglice scrifitum fuit) quibus depio^ 
ratur Mars juvenis fraclari et eruditi, D. Edvardi King^ 
qui Nave^ quit vectabatur^ Saxo illisa in Oceano Hybernico 
submersus est. 

Authore Gulielmo Hogao. 

Author lamentatur amicum eruditum, infeliciter Mari Hyberao 
submersum, postquam a Cestria solvisset, 1637. Et, occasione 
oblata, corruptonim Clericonim ruinam praedicit, qui tunc temporis 
pro libitu in sublimi dignitatis gradu vitam agitabant : — 

Rursus odoratae myrti laurique virentes, 

Vestitas aureolos hedera serpente corymbos, 

Rursus ego vestras redeo decerpere baccas, 

Quanquam acidas, nee dum maturo sole recoctas ; 

£t vestras spoliare comas et spargere passim, 5 

Frigora quanquam absunt procul autumnalia, nee dum 

Hispidus arboreos Aquilo populatur honores. 

Me dolor, et duri necopina injuria fati 

Tempora vestra meis cogunt turbare querelis. 

Occidit heu ! tenerse Lycidas in flore juventae, 10 

Occidit heu ! dulcis Lycidas^ nuUumque reliquit 

Ille parem. Blandi Lycidae jam fimera justis 

Deplorare modis quis non velit ? Ipse canendi 

Arte Sophocleum didicit transire cothumum. 

Arva per aequorei infletum fluitare profundi 15 

Tene decet ? nuUis digna an tua fata querelis, 

Dum te fluctus habet,- versantque per aequora venti ? 

Nunc utinam eloquii charites, et vivida vocum 



102 LYCIDAS. 

Gratia, quas olim est veterum turba impia vatum 
Aonias mentita deas, mihi protinus adsint, 20 

Jucundaque novam modulentur arundine musam. 
Forsitan et nostras pariter comitabitur umbras 
Carmine Musa pio, cinerique precabitur hospes 
Prasteriens, ' Tacita placidus requiesce sub uma.' 
Unicus amborum pariter juvenilibus annis 25 

Mons nutritor erat, pariter quoque pavimus unum 
Ambo gregem gdidos jucundi fontis ad ortus, 
Aut rivi salientis aquas, aut arboris umbram. 
* Ambo simul teneras ad pascua laeta capellas 

Duximus, ante oculis quam pulchra Aurora reclusi& 30 

Reddiderat lucemque orbi rebusque colorem. 

£t simul exiguae jucundo murmure musca; 

Noctivagam resonare tubam exaudivimus ambo 

Per placidos Lunae cursus, jam rore recenti 

Nectareos spargente gregis per vellera succos. 35 

Saepe etiam baud serae libuit decedere nocti, 

Donee ab £oa nitido quae vespere lympha 

Stella exorta fuit medii transivit Olympi 

Culmen, et Hesperias cursum convertit ad undas. 

Interea, harmonicas digitis moderantibus auras, 40 

Agrestem inflamus calamum, choreasque pilosi 

In numerum ducunt Satyri, Faunique nequibant 

Capripedes nostris cohibere a cantibus aurem ; 

Ipse senex nostra Damcetas gestit avena. 

Heu male mutatae Fortunae injuria ! vadis, 45 

Vadis ad aetemas (nunquam heu ! rediture) tenebras. 
Te, Pastor, silvae umbriferae, viridesque recessus 
Antrorum, quot ubique thymo vd vite teguntur, 
Undique jure dolent, resonatque dolentibus Edio. 
Ah ! salices cessant virides humilesque myricae 50 

Nunc resonare tuas ramosque inflectere Musae. 
Ut nocet atra rosis aerugo, ut pestis acerba est 
(Estrum immane boum, glacialia frigora flores 
Qualiter infestant tunica variante decoros, 
Cum niveus primum florescere coepit acanthus ; 55 

Sic quoque pastores (triste ac miserabile !) lethi, 
O Lycida dilecte, tui dolor urit acerbus. 

Quae nemora, aut qui vos saltus habuere, puellae 
Naiades, immensis Lycidas cum est obrutus undis ? 



LYCIDAS. 103 

Nam neque duxistis choVeas super ardua rupis 60 

Culmina praerupts, Druidum monumenta priorum ; 

Nee vos saxosse tenuere cacumina Monae, 

Nee Deva fatidicas ubi late exporrigit undas. 

Cur ^o vana loquor ? praesens si vestra fuisset 

Tota cohors, huie ecquid opem auxiliumque tulisset ? 65 

Orphei Calliopea suo quam ferre valebat 

Tristis opem ? nil Musa suo succurrere nato, 

Cujus ad interitum rerum natura dolebat, 

Tunc potuit, cum femineae furor iraque turbae, 

Diseerptum latos juvenem quae sparsit in agros, 70 

Sanguineum caput Orpheia cervice revulsum, 

Hebre, tuis injeeit aquis, quod adusque cueurrit 

Littora, quae miseri letho bene nota Leandri. 

Quid juvat assiduis frustra tabescere curls, 
£t pastoralis studium contemnere vitae, 75 

£t vanum ingratas Musae impendisse laborem ? 
Nonne fuit satius sociorum more per umbras 
Suaviter arboreas seetari Amaryllida dulcem, 
Atque, Neaera, tuos leviter prensare capillos. 
Fama viros, quorum sublimi in peetore virtus 80 

Se generosa locat, eohibere libidinis aestum 
(Pessima nobilium solet esse haee lema virorum) 
Incitat, et duros etiam sufTerre labores. 
Ast ubi paene tibi illustris tetigisse videris 
Culmen honoris, adest Laehesis eum forcipe dira, 85 

£t fragilis vitae filum secat At mihi Phoebus 

* Fama tamen post fata manet, secura sepulchri ' 
Dixerat, et tremulas leviter mihi vellieat aures ; 

* Fama est planta solo minime prognata eaduco ; 

' Fortunas secura nitet, nee faseibus uUis >3 

* Erigitur, plausuve petit elareseere vulgi. 

' Judicis ante Jovae purissima lumina lueem 

^ Ilia eupit fulgere suam ; quieunque verendum 

' Illius ante thronum laudemque deeusque reportat, 

' Hujus in aethereo fama effulgebit Olympo.' 9; 

O Arethusa, et tu, fluvius eeleberrime, Minei, 
Undique vocali redimitus arundine frontem, 
Lene fluens, quae nunc recito mihi dicta fuerunt 
Haee longe graviore sono, graviore eothumo ; 
Sed mea propositam repetat nunc fistula Musam. 100 



104 LYCIDA& 

Tunc quoque caeruleus vada per Neptunia Triton 

Circumagebat iter liquidum, fluctusque sonoros, 

Perfidaque iEolios interrogat agmina ventbs, 

' Unde hsec sseva bono pecoris data fata magistro?' 

Quaecunque altisonis ullo de monte procellis 105 

Horrida flabra volant, ruptaeve cacumine nipis, 

lUe rogat ; miseri cuncta haec tamen inscia fati. 

Hippotadesque sagax cunctorum nomine tales 

Reddidit ore sonos, — ' NuUius flamina venti 

Nuper ab Mollis sese effudere cavemis,' 1 10 

Ridebant taciti tranquilla silentia ponti, 

£t placido lapsu Panope centumque sorores 

iEquora plana legunt stratamque sequaliter undam. 

Perfida navis erat, crudeli dedita fato, 

Quae rimis accepit aquam, sacrumque repente 115 

Mersit in ima caput, medioque sub aequore texit 

Proximus incessu senior tardissimus ibat 
Camus, et hirsuta velatus veste ; galerus 
Carice factus erat, variis obscura figuris 
Quem textura notat, quem circum vitta colori l2o 

Par, Hyacinthe, tuo, questus inscripte, cucurrit 

* Heu ! mihi quis rapuit carissima pignora ?' dixit 
Ultimus hue venit, rediitque hinc ultimus, undae 
Cui Galilaeanae custodia creditur ; ill! 

Duplex clavis erat duplici formata metallo, 12$ 

(Aurea portam aperit, subito quam ferrea claudit). 
Tempora turn nitida quassans omata tiara 
Talia fatus erat tetricae cum murmure vocis. 

* Quam bene nunc pro te, si vertere fata liceret, 

* Quam bene nunc pro te, juvenum carissime, muUos 150 
' Concessissem alios, stimulante cupidine ventris 

' Qui furtim ac tacite irrumpunt et ovilia scandunt ! 

' Unica cura quibus pecorum fuit usque magistri 

' Vi rapuisse epulas, avidique hausisse paratas, 

' Gonvivasque alios audaci pdlere dextra. 135 

* O caeci ventres, qui vix comprendere dextra 

' Pastorale pedum, aut aliquid didicere, fiddes 

' Quod juvat atque decet pecorum praestare magistros ! 

* Quid curant ? quid curae opus est ? bene vivitur illis ; 

* £t licet his, ubicunque libet, sub vindice nullo 140 



LYCIDAS. 105 

' Stridenti miserum stipula disperdere carmen. 

' Interea pecudes languentia lumina volvunt, 

* Tabescuntque fame, miseris quia pabula desunt ; 

^ Sed ventis nebulisque tument, sensimque putresctmt 

' Intenus, sparguntque sui contagia mprbL 145 

' Insuper et teneras vis quotidiana luporum 

^ Clam discerpit oves avidamque immergil in alvuln. 

' Machina sed gemmo ad portas armata flageUo 

' Protinus his uno parat ictu accersere fatum.' 

Nunc, AlpbeCy tuos iterum convertere cursus 150 

Incipe ! nunc vox dira abiit, vox dira quievit. 
Quae fluvium terrore tuum retro ire coegit 
Tu quoque, pastoris Siculi modulamine quondam 
Edita Musa, redi, nemorumque umbracla colores 
Hue florum innumeros simul injectare jubeto. 155 

Vos quoque nunc valles humiles, ubi florea Tempe 
£t venti placidis resonant fluviique susurris, 
Quarum baud saepe sinus Cancri ferns attigit ardor. 
Undique gemmantes oculos conferte, virenti 
Nectareos quicunque bibunt in cespite succos ; x6o 

Floribus et vernis totam depingite terranL 
Hue rosa, jucundi quae dicta est primula veris, 
Quae moritur, si spreta jacet, pulcherque hyacintbus ; 
Hue quoque cum niveis vaccinia nigra ligus^s, 
Hue quoque ^ylvarum cum garyopbillide cana 165 

Mosehitaeque rosae violarum et amabile germen^ 
Atque periclymenos fulgenti omatus amictu ; 
Paralysisque etiam, fulvo quae tota metallo 
Pallet, et in terrani pendente cacumine vergit, 
£t quicunque gerit tunieam flos luctibus aptam, 170 

Conveniant, pariterque locum glomerentur in unum. 
Hue, Amaranthe, veni, quem non borealia laedunt 
Frigora, quem aestiferi non torrent brachia Cancri ! 
Hue, Nareisse, veni, lacrimis tua poeula replens 
Suavibus ! hue flores veniant, quoscunque vocavi, 175 

Laurigerique tegant Lyeidae venerabile bustum. 
Gaudia sic moestis juvat interponere curis, 
Solarique animos ficta sub imagine nostros ; 
Dum te fluctus agit, ventisque sonantia volvunt 
iEquora vasta, trahuntque tuum retrahuntque cadaver. x8o 



io6 LYCIDAS. 

Sive ultra aestiferis ferventes Hebridas undis, 

(Hie tu forte lates rapido sub gurgite tectus, 

Imaque monstriferi visis penetralia mundi,) 

Sive remotus abes procul hinc, longumque soporem 

Carpis, ubi sedem tenuit Bellerus avitam, 185 

Pristina quern veterum celebrant mendacia vatum, 

Mons ubi prsesidio circumdatus undique spectat 

Namancon, spectatque tuos, Bayona, recessus ; — 

Ad patrias sedes precor o precor, Angele, rursus 

Respice nunc miseros non aversatus amicos ! 190 

Vos quoque, delphines, juveni supponite tergum, 

Perque plagas vasti vitreas portate profundi ! 

Nunc pecorum placidi fletus inhibete magistri. 
Non periit letho Lycidas cessitve sepulchri 
Legibus, aequorea jaceat licet obrutus unda. 195 

Haud aliter Phoebi se prsevia Stella profiindum 
Mergit in Hesperium, diversis rursus ab undis 
Mane novo surgens, multo spectabilis auro, 
£rigit ilia caput primoque ardescit £00. 
Sic Lycidas primum ima petit, dein ardua scandit, 200 

Praeside nempe illo, tumidi qui terga profundi 
Haud secus ac siccam pedibus peragravit arenam, 
Spumeaque intrepidis calcavit marmora plantis. 
Hie alios inter silvae nemoralis honores, 
Atque alios longe fluvios se nectare puro 205 

Obruit, atque suos miro lavit amne capillos, 
iCtheriosque hilari laetus trahit aure hymenaeos 
In regnis ubi floret amor et pura voluptas. 
Hie quoque Sanctorum chorus ilium ampleetitar omnis, 
Ordine qui juncti pariter coelestia cantant 210 

Carmina et aetherias ducunt cantando choreas, 
Atque oculis abigunt lacrymam procul illius onmem. 
Nunc pecorum placidi Lycidam lugere magistn 
Absistunt ; tu, littoreas dum carpis arenas, 
(Haec tibi in Elysiis durabunt praemia campis) 215 

Semper eris quovis meliorque et faustior astro 
Puppe periclosam trepida tranantibus undam. 

Talia concinuit peregrinus carmina pastor 
Quereubus alticomis fluviorum et lenibus undis, 
Dum croceis Aurora rotis invecta re4ibat ; 220 



LYCIDAS. 107 

Mutabatque sonos relegens, orisque recursu 
Dissimili tenuem variabat arundine ventum. 
Jam sol majores umbras super alta tetendit 
Culmina et Hesperiis post paulo absconditur undis. 
Tandem iterum rediit viridemque remisit amictum ; 225 
' Cras sylvas peragrare novas, nova pascua, cordi est' 



Notes. 

In /. 75 the English has end misprinted for tend. 
I. 92 Qy. Jovisl but Java is dearly printed. 
^' 96 ^.fluiMm {iotjluviorum) ? 

/. 213, Now Lycidas the shepherds weep no more in the 
English. 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



-•o*- 



Argumenium^ 

TitYRSis et Damon, ejusdem vicinise pastores, eadem studia sequuti, a 
puerida amici erant, ut qui plurimum. Thyrsis animi causa profectns 
peregre de obitu Damonis nuncium accepit. Demum postea reversus, 
et rem ita esse comperto, se suamque solitudinem hoc carmine de^ 
plCxrat. Damonis autem sub persona hie intelligitur Carolus Deodaius 
ex urbe Hetrurise Luca patemo genere oriundus, csetera Anglus; ingenio, 
doctrina, clarissimisque caeteris virtutibus, dum viveret, juvenis egregius. 

HiMERiDES nymphae (nam vos et Daphnin et Hylan, 

£t plorata diu meministis fata Bionis), 

Dicite Sicelicum Thamesina per oppida carmen : 

Quas miser effudit voces, quae murmura Thyrsis, 

Et quibus assiduis exercuit* antra querelis, * 5 

Fiuminaque, fontesque vagos, nemorumque recessus ; 



I Himeridei] of Himera in 
Sicily. Symmons, in his Life of 
Milton (appended to the Prose 
Works) y aptly observes that Warton 
should not call it *the famous bu- 
colic river of Theocritus,' since none 
of his scenes are laid there, and the 
river is only mentioned twice in the 
Idylls {y, 124; vii. 74). 

Hylan] The first syllable is short, 
as appears from Theocr. Id. vii. ; 
Virg. E, vi. 43, G, iii. 6. Milton 
himself has * raptus H j^las ' in 
EUg, vii. 24. Possibly he may 
have been thinking of Hylseus in 
Virg. G. ii. 457. Daphnis, Hylas, 
and Bion are lamented in Theocr. 
i. 13, and Moschus, Id. iii., respect- 
ively. 

3] Virg. G. ii. 176, 'Ascraeam- 
que cano Romana per oppida car- 



men.' < Thamesina' fixes the lodality 
to Horton and its neighbourhood, 
where the Colne (/. 149) joins the 
Thames. 

4 Tksrriii] (who of course repre- 
sents Milton himself) is also the 
name of the attendant Spirit in 
Comus. It is adopted from Theocr. 
Id. i. (/. c). 

5 exereuit antra] something like 
•exercere diem* in Virg. yEn. x. 
808. The notion is that of keeping 
the caves hard at work in echoing 
his lamentations. Cf. /. 8 and note. 

6 flaminaqae fontesque] an ob- 
vious imitation of Viig. ^n, iii. 91, 
Miminnque laurusque dei.' It is 
doubtful whether this instance jus- 
tifies the licence of the present line, 
Virgil's practice beine confined to 
those cases in which the next woid 



no 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



Dum sibi praereptum queritur Damona, neque altam 
Luctibus exemit noctem, loca sola pererrans. 
Et jam bis viridi surgebat culmus arista, 
Et totidem flavas numerabant horrea messes, 
Ex quo summa dies tulerat Damona sub umbras, 
Nee dum aderat Thyrsis ; pastorem scilicet ilium 
Dulcis amor Musae Tusca retinebat in urbe : 
Ast ubi mens expleta domum, pecorisque relicti 
Cura vocat, simul assueta seditque sub ulmo, 
Tum vero amissum tum denique sentit amicum, 
Coepit et immensum sic exonerare dolorem. 



lO 



"S 



begins with a liquid (as above), a 
double consonant, as * Eurique Ze- 
phyrique,* G, i. 371, or with the 
letter j, as *Chloreaque Sybarim- 
que,* JEh, xii. 363. Mr. Nettle- 
ship, in his Excursus at the end of 
the third volume of Conington's 
Virgil^ points out that in this re- 
spect Virgil has strictly followed 
Homer. 

8 exemit] * released' from the 
task of repeating his lament. Prof. 
Masson well translates the passage, 
* compelling even the midnight 
Into the sound of his woe.' * Luc- 
tibus ' is probably the ablative, that 
being the usual construction in 
the Augustan age; but the dative 
is used by later writers. Cf. Tac. 
Ann. xiv. 48, *ut morti eximeretur.' 

9 bii] i.e. in 1638 and 1639. 
The EpUaphium Damonis was writ- 
ten towards the end of the latter 
year, and Diodati seems to have 
died in the summer of 1 638 (Masson, 
Life of Milton^ vol. i. p. 776). 

13 Dnloii amor Xuse] See in 
the Argument the words ^ animi 
causa profectus peregre. * Milton here 
refers to his second visit to Florence 
in the beginning of 1639, which 
lasted two months. Of the first he 
thus speaks in the Defensio Se- 
cunda j^o populo Anglicatio I 'Illic 
multorum et nobilium sane et doc> 



torum hominum familiaritatem sta- 
tim contraxi, quorum privatas aca- 
demias assidue frequentavi. ' Among 
these friends were Carlo Dati and 
Francini (/. 137), the former of 
whom addressed to him the Latin 
letter inscribed *Joanni Miltoni 
Londiniensi, &c.' ; the latter the 
complimentary Italian ode beginning 

* Ergimi all' etra o Clio.' The 

* private academies ' were literary 
societies for the mutual acquaint- 
ance and friendship of learned men, 
for admission to which each member 
had to give some *proof of his talent 
or learning,' as MQton tells us in the 
Reason of Church Government. He 
probably there recited some of his 
early Latin poems, which won for 
him the encomiums above referred 
to (Masson, vol. i. pp. 719 foil.). 

15 asiueta sub ulmo] i.e. at his 
father's house at Horton; possibly 
the 'dilectas villarum ulmos' men- 
tioned in the seventh of the Proiu- 
stones Orcuoriay delivered at Cam- 
bridge. Elms still form a promi- 
nent feature in the scenery about 
Horton. Wart on compares the 'ac- 
customed oak,' II Penseroso, 60. 
For the postposition of -fue, cf. 
Propert. 11. xvi. 11, 'ferratam Da- 
naes transiliam^i^ domum ; ' TibalL 
I. iii. 55, ' Messalam terra dum 
sequitur^/^ mari.' 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. til 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Hei mihi ! quae terris, quae dicam numina coelo, 
Postquam te immiti rapuerunt funere, Damon ! 20 

Siccine nos linquis, tua sic sine nomine virtus 
Ibit, et obscuris numero sociabitur umbris? 
At non ille, animas virga qui dividit aurea, 
Ista velit, dignumque tui te ducat in agmen, 
Ignavumque procul pecus arceat omne silentum. 25 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Quicquid erit, certe nisi me lupus ante videbit, 
Indeplorato non comminuere sepulchro, 
Constabitque tuus tibi honos, longumque vigebit 
Inter pastores : lUi tibi vota secundo 30 

Solvere post Daphnin, post Daphnin dicere laudes, 
Gaudebunty dum rura Pales, dum Faunus amabit : 
Si quid id est, priscamque fidem coluisse piumque, 
Palladiasque artes, sociumque habuisse canorum. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 35 

Haec tibi certa manent, tibi erunt haec praemia, Damon ; 
At mihi quid tandem fiet modo ? quis mihi fidus 

23] Hor. Od. I. xxiv. 15 : * Non 28] Cf. Lycidas^ 14. VVartt)n 

vanae ledeat sanguis imagini, Quam quotes Ovid, 7m/. Iii. iii. 45. 

virga semel horrida . . . Nigra com- 31] Cf. Virg. E. v. 78-80, where 

pulerit Mercurius gregi* (/. 25). For Daphnis, the great pastoral hero, 

* aurea ' cf. Horn. Od. x. 277, where is promised divine honours equal 

Hermes is called xpva'Sji^earis. Lu- to those paid to- Bacchus and 

cian has the same simile, aitrhs . . . Ceres. 

&ffir9p n ol-wdKiov iBp6ovs aftrohs rf 33 priioamque fldem, ftc] * the 

^i/38f t <ro3vy. faith of the old and the loyal' 

25 lilentum] used absolutely of (Masson), i.e. the good old-fash - 

the dead in Virg. y£n. vi. 432. The ioned nistic faith. Keightley ques- 

Sgnavum pecus' is from G. iv. 168, tions the correctness of this use of 

where it has quite a different appli- * pium' as a substantive. It certainly 

cation. Keightley notes the expres- sounds somewhat harsh in connex- 

sion 'pecus' as 'strange,' but its ion with 'fidem,* but the expression 

use here is justified by * gr^ ' in the itself may be paralleled by the 

passage from Horace quot^ above. * honestum,' * utile,' &c., so common 

27 niti me, ftc.] i.e. 'if I do not in Cicero's philosophical treatises, 

lose my power of utterance.' See which are imitations of the Greek 

Virg. £. ix. 54 for the superstition rhKa\6v^ &c. 

that if a wolf saw a man first, the 37 modo] probably an adverb of 

latter became dumb. time = *now.' It is more common! v 



112 EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

Haerebit lateri comes, ut tu saepe solebas 

Frigoribus duns et per loca feta pruinis, 

Aut rapido sub sole, siti morientibus herbis? 40 

Sive opus in magnos fuit eminus ire leones, 

Aut avidos terrere lupos praesepibus aids ; 

Quis fando sopire diem, cantuque, solebit ? 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agnL 
Pectora cui credam ? quis me lenire docebit 45 

Mordaces curas, quis longam fallere noctem 
Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum sibilat igni 
Molle pyrum et nucibus strepitat focus, et malus Auster 
Miscet cuncta foris et desuper intonat ulmo ? 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 50 

Aut aestate, dies medio dum vertitur axe, 
Cum Pan aesculea somnum capit abditus umbra, 
Et repetunt sub aquis sibi nota sedilia nymphae, 
Pastoresque latent, stertit sub sepe colonus ; 
Quis mihi blanditiasque tuas, quis tum mihi risus 55 

Cecropiosque sales referet cultosque lepores? 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agnL 
At jam solus agros, jam pascua solus oberro, 
Sicubi ramosas densantur vallibus umbrae ; 

employed with past tenses than with There is a slight confusion between 

the fuUire. the notion of midday and that of 

39 fetapminii] Virg. ^n, i. 51, the earth's turning on its axis ; 

•locayS'to furentibus Austris.* 'medio' implying that the revolu- 

43 sopire diem] like ^ condere tion is half completed, 
soles/ Virg. E, ix. 52* 52] From Theocr. Id. i. 16, 

46] Todd comp. * eating cares,' where the goatherd refuses to accept 

L'Allegro, 135, and * curis morda- Thyrsis* invitation to sing, for fear 

cibos,' Lucan, Phars. ii. 681. of disturbing Pan during his midday 

48 nucihus] probably 'chest- siesta, 

nut»,' sc. 'castaneis.' Cf. Viig. ^. 53] A partial reminiscence of 

it 52. Virg. J£n, i. 167. *Sibi* is pro- 

49 ndsoet cuncta] < blurs all the bably to be taken after * nota,' but 
landscape.' (See also Masson'» is not wanted in the sentence- 
Translation.) Cf. Vug. G. i. 359, 56 Cecropios] = Atticos. Virg. 
jEn, iv. 160. (7. iv. 177. For * Attic salt' cf. 

51] Lucan. Phars, iii. 423, Mart. Epigr. in. xx. 9, Uepoxe 
'medio cum Phoebus in axe est.' tinctos Atticos salts.' 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

Hie serum expecto ; supra caput imber et EuruS 
Triste sonant, fractaeque agitata crepuscula silvae. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Heu, quam culta mihi prius arva procacibus herbis 
Involvuntur, et ipsa situ seges alta fatiscit ! 
Innuba neglecto marcescit et uva racemo, 
Nee myrteta juvant ; ovium quoque taedet, at illae 
Moerent, inque suum eonvertunt ora magistrum. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vaeat, agni. 
Tityrus ad corylos voeat, Alphesiboeus ad ornos, 
Ad salices Aegon, ad fiiunina puleher Amyntas; 
* Hie gelidi fontes, hie illita gramina museo, 



"3 

60 



65 



70 



60 lemm] Livy, vii. 8, ^ serum 
erat digi.* Neither Ovid nor Virgil 
appears to have used the word as a 
noun in this sense. 

61 agitata crepaicula lilva] 
» si/va per crepusadum agitata. 
Keightley explains it of <the twi- 
light or doubtful light caused by the 
foliage/ and refers to the 'shadows 
brown' of // Penseroso^ 134, and 
the * chequered shade' oiUAlUgrOy 
96. S3rmmons quotes also from 
Cowper, Task^ B. i. 347 — 

* so sportive is the light, 
Shot through the boughs, it dances 

as they dance, 
Shadow and sunshine intermingling 

quick.' 

64] Keightley well observes that the 
land' cracks (Estu not situ (Virg. G, 
i. 72)/ but he is wrong in supposing 
that ' seges' cannot mean the ground 
itself, since it is distinctly used in 
this sense by Virgil in G. i. 47 and 
iv. 129. In the former passage 
* seges ' is the land after ploughing, 
but before any seed is sown, and in 
the latter it is the soil with reference 
to its future produce. Here how- 
ever the addition of *alta' (which 
must mean taU) seems to force us to 



translate * seges' *a field of standing 
com,' which will not make any 
sense with 'fatiscit.' Masson's 
translation, 'the tall com sickens 
with mildew,' does not accurately 
render the Latin verb. 

65] For the ' marriage' of the vine 
with larger trees, see the passages 
cited on Lycidas^ 40; alsq P. L. 
V. 215 foil. 'Uva' here must be 
the vine itself, as in Virg. G ii. 60, 
' fert uva racemos.' It is difficult to 
see the force of Keightley's objec- 
tion to its being 'joined with "ra- 
cemo," which is a part of it* The 
latter is of course a modal ablative, 
or else the ablative absolute. 

67] Referred to on Lyd/tas^ 125. 

69] 'Tityms' &c. are all froih 
Virgil's Eclogues, * Milton may or 
may not have had particular ac- 
quaintances of his in view under 
these names' (Masson). 

71] Partly imitated from Gallus' 
invitation to Lycoris, Virg. E. 
X. 42 ; the original is i^ Theoc. v. 33. 
'Illita,' which means 'smeared' 
or ' spread on the surface,' does not 
accurately express the idea of moss 
gprowing among grass. Perhaps eon- 
siAif or intersita (omitting 'hie'), 
would have been better. 



"4 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



' Hie Zephyri, hie placidas interstrepit arbutus undas : ' 
Ista eanunt surdo, frutices ego nactus abibam. 

lie domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Mopsus ad haee — nam me redeuntem forte notarat — 75 

(Et callebat avium linguas, et sidera Mopsus,) 
* Thyisi, quid hoc?' dixit, * (juae te coquit improba bilis? 
' Aut te perdit amor, aut te male fascinat astrum ; 
' Satumi grave saepe fuit pastoribus astrum, 
' Intimaque obliquo figit praecordia plumbo.' So 

* Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Mirantur nymphae, et ' Quid te, Thyrsi, futurum est ? 



73] * Surdo cancre* was a pro- 
verb. Cf. Virg. £, X. 8, *non 
canimus surdis;' Propert. iv. viii. 
47, *cantabunt surdo/ Langhome 
ludicrously misunderstands the latter 
part of this line, when he translates it 
*/ Cfff my sArU^{l) and careless 
walked away.' 

76] So in Virg. ^n, iii. 360, 
iEneas addresses Helenus, 'qui 
sidera sentis, Et volucrum linguas 
et praepetis omina pennae ; * and in 
X. 176 Asilas is named as the seer 
* cui sidera parent £t linguae volu- 
crum.' Keightley is prolMibly right 
in observing that 'Hvium ' should be 
long by position, as ' ariete' &c. in 
Virgil. As an instance most closely 
resembling the one in the text, cf. 
Virg. G, i. 482, *fliiviorum rex 
Eridanus.' 

77] For 'coquere/ denoting men- 
tal disturbance, cf. Virg. y£n. vii. 
345, *cur3eque irseque coquebant;' 
also Silius Italicus, xiv. 103, 'quos 
ira mctusque coquebat.' 

78] For the lengthening of 'amor ' 
cf. Virg. £. X. 6g ; jEh, ii. 369, 
xi. 323, and other passages. Mr. 
Nettleship, in his Excursus re- 
ferred to on /. 6, ascribes this usage 
in Virgil to the influence of Ennius, 
•who always makes these endings in 
-or long because of the original 



Greek -tap ; but he thinks Viigil was 
ignorant of this reason, since he 
never indulges in the license except 
in arsi. Hogg has done the same 
in his version of Lycidas^ 208. 

fasoinat] said of the evil eye in 
witchcraft) Virg. E, iit 103. For 
the supposed influence of the stars, 
see on Lycidas^ 138. 

79] Warton quotes Propert. I v. 
i. 84, 'et grave Satumi sidus in 
omne caput,' as showing that this 
planet was considered to be gene- 
rally noxious ; although there is 
no apparent reason why sht^phcrds 
should be specially aflected by it. 
Possibly the Saturnine melancholy 
and gloom (see opening lines of // 
Pensavso) may be intended by way 
of contrast to the joyous ideal of 
pastoral life. 

80 obliquo] partly continues 
the allusion contained in 'fascinat,' 
the notion being that of a sidelong 
envious glance. Cf. 'obliquo oculo,' 
Hor. Ep, I. xiv. 37. * Plumbo,' 
because lead was Saturn's metal in 
alchemy. 

82 nymplitt et] For the hiatus 
cf. Virg. E. iii. 6 ; Cr. i. 4, * pecori 
et,' &c. 

quid te futurum eet] There 
seems to be no authority for this us« 
of the verb ' esse with' the ablative. 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 115 

* Quid tibi vis?' aiunt ; *non haec solet esse juventae 

* Nubila frons oculique truces vultusque severi ; 

* Ilia chores lususque leves et semper amorem 85 
'Jure petit : bis ille miser qui serus amavit* 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Venit Hyas Dryopeque et filia Baucidis Aegle, 
Docta modos citharaeque sciens, sed perdita fastu ; 
Venit Idumanii Chloris vicina fluenti ; 90 

Nil me blandidse, nil me solantia verba, 
Nil me si quid adest movet, aut spes ulla fiituri. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Hei mihi ! quam similes ludunt per prata juvenci, 
Omnes unanimi secum sibi lege sodales ! 95 

Nee magis hunc alio quisquam secemit amicum 
De grege ; sic densi veniunt ad pabula thoes, 
Inque vicem hirsuti paribus junguntur onagri : 
Lex eadem pelagi ; deserto in littore Proteus 

* Quid meJUt' would be an ordinary ever from the lines appended to the 
phrase, as well as Me me 'or 'mihi.' 7th Elegy, that the charms of the 

83 nubila frons] Cf. Hor. £p. other sex had no great attractions 

I. xviii. 94 *Demesupercilionubem.' for Milton. (See note on Lycidas, 

86 bU] is certainly short, as 68, 69.) 

appears from Ov. Met. xiv. 386, 89] From Hor. Od. ill. ix. 9, 

* Turn bis ad Occasum, bis se con- * Dulces docta modos et citharse 

vertit ad Ortum,* and from its com- sciens.' 

pounds, as *bifidus,' 'bimaris,' &c. 90 Idumanii fluenti] the Chel- 

i^or the sentiment, Langhome com- mer, in Essex. Drayton, Polyolbion, 

pares Guarini, Pastor Fido, Act i. 19th Song, 95 foil. 

Sc. i: 95 leeum libi] perhaps an un- 

' Che se t' assale a la canuta etate necessary pleonasm (as in /. 53), but 

Amoroso talento, scarcely * indistinct,' as Keightley 

Avrai doppio tormento ; objects. 

E di quel che potendo non volesti, 97 thoet] probably 'jackals,' 

£ di quel che volendo non potrai.' Pliny, N. H, viii. 34. ewes, Hem. 

88] * A^le Naiadum pulcherri- //. xiii. 103. 

ma,' Virg. E. vi. 20. Keightley 98 onagri] Virg. G, iiL 409. 

suggests that these may have been Keightley observes that ' the onager 

real ladies of Milton's acquaintance is not *'hirsutus." ' 

(see on /. 69). The particular de- 99] For the story of Proteus and 

scription which follows makes this the sea-calves, see Hom. Od. iv. 

very probable. We know how- 402 folL ; Virg. G, iv. 432 foU. 

I 2 



ii6 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



Agmina i^hocaruin numerat, vilisque volucrum 
Passer habet semper quicum sit, et omnia circum 
Farra libens volitet, sero sua tecta revisens ; 
Quern si sors letho objecit, seu milvus adunco 
Fata tulit rostro, seu stravit anindine fossor, 
Protinus ille alium socio petit inde volatu. 
Nos durum genus, et diris exercita fatis 
Gens homines, aliena animis et pectore discors, 
Vix sibi quisque parem de millibus invenit unum ; 
Aut si sors dederit tandem non aspera votis, 
Ilium inopina dies, qua non speraveris hora, 
Surripit setemum linquens in saecula damnum. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Heu quis me ignotas traxit vagus error in oras 
Ire per aerias rupes Alpemque nivosam ! 
Ecquid erat tanti Romam vidisse sepultam, 
(Quamvis ilia foret, qualem dum viseret olim, 
Tityrus ipse suas et oves et rura reliquit ; ) 
Ut te tarn dulci possem caruisse sodale ! 



lOO 



los 



no 



"5 



105 socio] can properly only 
apply to the bird when actually 
mated; yet this sense would be 
inconsistent with 'petit,' which 
describes the odj'ect of its flight. 

106] Cf. Virg. G. i. 63, * homines 
. . . durum genus.* 

exereita &tis] Virg. y£/f . v. 725, 
* Iliacis exercite fatis.' So 'exer- 
cita curis,' id. 779. 

107] By substituting a comma for 
the semicolon after 'discors,' the 
sentence *nos, &c.* becomes an 
anacoiulAon, continued by ' quisque 
. . .- invenit.* 

108 parem unvm] ' one kindred 
mind* (Cowper). 

114] According to Milton's own 
account of his travels {Definsio Se- 
cunda pro Pop, Angl.) he did not 
go into Italy over the Alps, but 



from Paris into Provence, and thence 
by ship from Nice to Genoa. 

115] Taken (as Warton remarks) 
from Virg. E, i. 27, ' £t quae tanta 
fiiit Romam tibi caussa videndi?' 
The direct reference to that passage 
in the next line makes this certain ; 
otherwise the present line is not so 
closely imitated from Virgil as to 
warrant Prof. Masson*s assertion that 
it is 'all but a quotation. ' The sense, 
is, ' Was it so well worth my while 
to visit Rome in ruins, even if it 
had been now as great as it was in 
the days of old ?* 

116 dum Tiseret] *in his desire 
to visit,* lit. ' so long as he might 
visit ;' dum » dumnufdo. Cf. Viig. 
G. iv. 457, *dum fiigeret ;' jEn, L 5, 
' dum conderet urbem.* 

118 lodale] usually *sodali,' be 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



117 



Possem tot maria alta tot interponere montes, 

Tot silvas tot saxa tibi fluviosque sonantes ! 120 

Ah certe extremnm licuisset tangere dextram, 

£t bene compositos placide morientis ocelios, 

£t dixisse, ' Vale, nostri memor ibis ad astra.' 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agnL 
Quamquam etiam vestri nunquam meminisse pigebit, 125 

Pastores Tusci, Musis operata juventus, 
Hie Charis, atque Lepos ; et Tuscus tu quoque Damon, 
Antiqua genus unde petis Lucumonis ab urbe. 
O ego quantus eram, gelidi cum stratus ad Ami 
Murmura, populeumque nemus, qua mollior herba, 130 

Carpere nimc violas nunc summas carpere myrtos, 
Et potui Lycidx certantem audire Menalcam ! 



cause originally an adjective. The 
abl. in e does however sometimes 
occur, e.g. Plin. Epist ii. 13, 
' sodale jucundius/ 

119] Warton compares Eleg. 
iv. 21 (to Diodati) — 

* Hei mihi, quot pelagi, quot montes 

interjecti 

Me fociunt alia parte carere 
mei;' 

on which he refers to Horn. //. 
i. 156— 

Irti^ ^A^JOL voAX& yjvro^ 

and to Ovid, Trist. iv. vii. 21 — 

' Innumeri montes inter me teque, 
viseque, 
Fluminaque et campi, nee freta 
pauca jacent* 

125] Keightley is mistaken in 
supposing that * vestri ' ought to be 

* vestrum/ Zumpt, in his Latin 
Grammar (§431 of Schmitz* trans- 
lation), draws the distinction thus : 

* The forms ending in -utn are used 



as partitive genitives, e.g. uterque 
nostrum^ &c. ; but miserere nostri^ 
&c.* He notes however that z«x/rwm 
does occur * without any partitive 
meaning, e.g. **frequentia vestrum 
incredibilis," Cic. in RulL ii. 21 ; 
but these are exceptional cases.' 

126] See note on /. 13. 

127 Tn cub] See on Diodati's 
family in the Introduction to Ly- 
cidas. 

128] Lucca was said to have been 
founded by Lucumon, an Etruscan 
king. During his second visit to 
Florence, Milton visited the place, 
no doubt on account of its connex- 
ion with Diodati (Masson, Life of 
Milton, vol. i. p. 771). 

132 certantem] i.e. at the * private 
academies' referred to on /. 13. 
*Lycidas' and *Menalcas' are of 
course pastoral names for members 
of these societies ; not ' unknown,' 
as Keightley asserts, for Milton, in 
the sketch of his own life quoted 
above, enumerates Gaddi, Fresco- 
baldi, Coltellini, Buonmattei, and 
Chimentelli, besides Dati and Fran- 
cini, who are mentioned below 



TiS 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



1 pse etiam tentare ausus sum ; nee, puto, multum 

Displicui ; nam sunt et apud me, munera vestra, 

FiscelldB calathique, et cerea vincla cicutse : 135 

Quin et nostra suas docuerunt nomina &gos 

Et Datis et Frandnus, erant et vocibus ambo 

Et studiis noti, Lydorum sanguinis ambo. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agnu 
Hsec mihi turn laeto dictabat roscida luna, 140 

Dum solus teneros claudebam cratibus haedos. 
Ah quoties dixi, cum te cinis ater habebat, 
Nunc canit aut lepori nunc tendit retia Damon, 
Vimina nimc texit, varios sibi quod sit in usus ! 
Et quae tum facili sperabam mente futura 145 

Arripui voto levis et praesenda finxi ; 
' Heus bone ! numquid agis ? nisi te quid forte retardat, 
Imus ? et aiguta paulum recubamus in umbra. 



(/. 137). Professor Masson (vol. i. 
p. 722 folL) has given a full and 
detailed account of every one of 
them. On what ioUows, he remarks 
(vol. ii. p. 90, note) that there is 
'a distinct reference to the two 
written encomiums by Dati and 
Francini,' and that the 'fiscelUe/ 
&c., are doubtless 'poetical names 
for little presents actually received 
from Florentine friends.' 

135 eerea vincla eioatCB]s*ci- 
cuta cereis vinculis compacta,' Viig. 

£' ii- 32, 36. 

136 docuenut, fte.] Cf. Virg. 
E, i. 5. 

138] For the tradition about the 
Ljr^an origin of the Etruscans, see 
Herod, i. 94: Tvp<niyhp, . . iaroirKitw 
Horh fiiov re koHL '^s (^ruaiv^.is % 
airutiaBai is ^Oiifipucohs, fpOa iviZp^- 
(Too'tfai voAfeu. Virg. ^En. viii. 479, 
'ubi Lydia quondam Gens bello 
praedara jugis insedit Etruscis.' 
Warton refers to Hor. Sat, I. vi. i. 

140 1l8BC] i.e. the thoughts ex- 



pressed in/. 143 foil. 
' roioida luna] Viig. G. ui. 337. 
Warton compares Lycidcu^ 29, and 
for 'cratibus' the * wattled cotes' 
in ComuSy 345, and Hor. Epod. 
ii. 45, ' claudensque textis cratibus 
Isetum pecus.' 

142 elniB ater] a confusion be- 
tween the mould of the grave and 
the ashes of the dead ; for which, 
however, Milton has die authority 
of Virgil, Mn, iv. 633. 

144] Virg. ^. ii. 71 : 

' Quin tu aliquid saltern pothxs quo- 
rum indiget usus 
Viminibus mollique paras detexere 
junco.' 

Possibly 'paras' in this passage 
may nave induced Milton to 
write * imus * and * recubamus * 
(/. 148) where we should expect 
•eamus' and * recubemus,' or else 
the iiiture ; since it is doubtful 
whether the pres, ind, can be so 
used without the 'quin.' As, how- 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



119 



' Aut ad aquas Colni aut ubi jugera Cassibelauni ? 

* Tu mihi percurres medicos, tua gramina, succos, 150 

* Helleborumque humilesque crocos foliumque hyacinthi, 
' Quasque habet ista palus herbas artesque medentum/ 
Ah pereant herbas, pereant artesque medentum, 
Gramina postquam ipsi nil profecere magistro 1 

Ipse etiam, nam nescio quid mihi grande sonabat 155 

Fistula, ab undecima jam lux est altera nocte, 



ever, ire (like Uvm) has in itself the 
sense of the future, * imns ' might 
be allowed to stand, and the actual 
form of its tense may have in- 
fluenced that of the other verb. 

149] The river Colne flows by 
Horton (see on /. 3). 'Jugera 
Cassibelauni' are the district of 
St. Albans, the dominions of the 
British king Cassibelaun. Cf. Caesar, 
B, G. V. II, ' Cassivellauno, cujus 
fines a maritimis civitatibus flumen 
dividit quod appellatur Tamesis.* 

150 foil.] in allusion to Diodati's 
practice of medicine (see Introduc- 
tion to Lycidas). He is the * shep- 
herd-lad,' in Comus^ 619, 'well 
skilled In ever}' virtuous plant and 
healing herb.' There is a charac- 
teristic passage bearing upon this 
subject in Milton's letter to Diodati 
dated Sept. 23, 1637 : * You wish me 
good h^th six hundred times, 
which is as much as I can desire, 
or even more. Surely you must 
lately have been appointed the very 
steward of Health's larder {saluHs 
condum promum), so lavishly do 
you dispense all her stores, or at 
least Health should now certainly 
be your parasite, since you so lord it 
over her {pro rege 1egeris\ and com- 
mand her to attend your bidding. ' 

153] Todd quotes the words of 
Phoebus to Daphne, Ovid, Mtt. i. 
524, * nee prosunt domino quae pro-' 
sunt omnibus artes.' 

155-178] For a detailed examina- 



tion of this interesting passage con- 
sult Masson, vol. ii. pp. 93-97. 
The two main points to be noticed 
are : (1) That Milton was already 
(in 1639) forming a plan of writing 
a British epic, which should extend 
from the l^endary times of the 
Trojan Brutus to the reign of King 
Arthur ; (2) That he had deter- 
mined henceforth to write no more 
in Latin, but in English, so as to be 
read by all his countrymen from the 
Thames to the Humber, and from 
Cornwall to the Orkneys. This idea 
had occurred to him even while in 
Italy, and was fostered, if not first 
suggested, by the compliments of 
his Florentine friends upon his 
former productions ; — * that by la- 
bour and intent study, joined with 
the strong propensity of nature, I 
might perhaps leave something so 
written to aftertimes, as they should 
not willingly let it die * {Reason of 
Church Government^ B. ii.). He 
soon afterwards abandoned the pro- 
ject in favour of a poem on a Scrip- 
tural subject, which ultimately took 
the form of the Paradise Lost^ the 
materials he had collected for the 
British Epic being employed in his 
History of Britain^ about 1649 or 
1650. 

155 grande, ftc] Cf. ' the strain 
of higher mood,' Lycidas^ 87. 

156] From Virg. E, viii. 39, 
'alter ab undecimo tum jam me 
acceperat annus ;' where Conington 



I20 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



£t turn forte novis admoram labra cicutis, 

Dissiluere tamen rupta compage, nee ultra 

Ferre graves potuere sonos : dubito quoque ne sim 

Turgidulus, tamen et referam ; vos cedite silvae. i6o 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per sequora puppes 
Dicam, et Fandrasidos regnum vetus Imogenise, 
Brennumque Arviragumque duces, priscumque Belinum, 
Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos ; 165 

Tum gravidam Arturo fatali fraude logemen, 
Mendaces vultus assumptaque Gorlois arma, 



remarks that the twelfth, and not 
the thirteenth, is meant, according 
to the * inclusive mode of counting.' 

159 grayes] applied both lite- 
rally to the low tones of the pipe, 
and metaphorically to the dignity 
of the subject. Cowper*s translation, 

* the deep-toned music of the solemn 
strain,' well expresses both these 
ideas. 

160 tnrgidnlai] inflated with 
pride ; but this use of the word is 
barely classical, though Hurgida 
oratio* is said of a 'bombastic 
speech.* 

oeditc liWaB] Cf Tiig. E, x. 
63, where Gallus bids farewell to a 
woodland life, because it cannot 
cure his passion, with the words 

* concedite silvae.' 

162 foil.] For the l^;ends con- 
nected with each of these names, 
see Milton's History of Britain^ B. 
i. ii., and Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
whence he derived the account. 
Brutus the Trojan, having rescued 
his countrymen from their servile 
condition under the Grecian prince 
FandrasuSy marries his daughter 
Imogen^ and sets sail with his fol- 
lowers towards the west. He finally 
lands in Britain, on what is now the 
Kentish coast (Ruttipina it^uora), 
and establishes a kingdom. Brcn- 



nus and Bdinus are the sons of 
Dunwallo Molmutius, king of 
Cornwall. Some twenty genera- 
tions after Brutus, Arviragusy son of 
Cunobelin (Cymbeline), by per- 
sonating his slain brother Guiderius, 
is said to have gained a victory over 
the Roman emperor Claudius. The 
* Armorici coloni * were Britons 
who fled from the Saxon invaders 
in the time of Vortigem to Anno*" 
rica, nowBretagne., The last legend 
(found in Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
but not told by Milton in his own 
History) is that of Uther Pendragon, 
who by Merlin's magic art assumed 
the form of Gorlois, king of Corn- 
wall, luid thus obtained access to 
his wife logeme at Tintagcl Castle, 
by whom he became the father oi 
the famous Arthur. 

165] Cf. P, Z. i. 581. Armorica 
was peopled in the fourth century 
by a Welsh colony, under the Ro- 
man general Maximus and Carron, 
prince of Meiriadoc or Denbigh - 
land. Thierry {Norman Conquest^ 
B. i. p. 16) says : 'They found 
people of their own stock there, and 
this agglomeration of branches of 
the Keltic race and language pre- 
served that western nook of France 
from the irruption ot the Roman 
tongue.' 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



121 



Merlini dolus. O mihi turn si vita supersit, 
Tu procul annosa pendebis, fistula, pinu, 
Multnm oblita mihi ; aut patriis mutata Camenis 
Brittonicnm strides, quid enim ? omnia non licet uni, 
Non sperasse uni licet omnia, mi satis ampla 
Merces, et mihi grande decus (sim ignotus in sevum 
Turn licet, extemo penitusque inglorius orbi,) 
Si me flava comas legat Usa et potor Alauni, 
Vorticibusque frequens Abra et nemus omne Treantse^ 
£t Thamesis meus ante omnes et fusca metallis 
Tamara, et extremis me discant Orcades undis. 
Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 



170 



17s 



169] Virg. £. vii. 24, *Hic 
arguta sacra pendebis fistula pinu,' 
a sign that he intended to sing no 
more. The sense should therefore 
be, 'Either I will abandon poetry 
altogether, or else change it from 
Latin verse into English.' But if 
Prof. Masson is right in explaining 

* fistula ' of Zaiin poetry in particu- 
lar, the alternative ' aut — aut ' is 
merely formal, the real meaning 
being this : * I will abandon Latin 
verse for English.' 'Patriis Ca- 
menis * will then signify * ifs native 
Muse,' Le. the Latin. 

171 itridesl in reference to the 
rougher warlike themes he was 
about to celebrate. See Masson's 
translation, * the British war- 
screech,' and compare the lines pre- 
fixed to Virgil's ^fuid, *Ille ^ 
... at nunc horrentia Martis.' 

* Strides * is the future of sfndOf a 
form which occurs in Virg. ^n. iv. 
689 ; viii. 420 ; Ovid, Met. ix. 
171, &c. 

172] Viiig. E. vii. 23, *non 
omnia possumus omnes.' 

173 in aBvnm] 'for all time,' 
Hor. Od, IV. xiv. 3. 

175 Uis] theOuse; but whether 
the Bucks or the Yorkshire nver is 



here intended is uncertain. The 
former supposition is slightly sup- 
ported by the fact of Milton's resi- 
dence in Buckinghamshire; while 
•on the other hand the names of the 
rivers immediately following seem 
to point to a northern locality. 
Keightley, who adopts the latter 
view, refers to the VaccUumExer- 
cisty I. 92, where the Ouse is men- 
tioned in company with the Tweed, 
Don, and Trent. The epithet 

* flava comas,' which applies gene- 
rally to the Saxon race, does not 
help towards deciding the question. 
The other rivers are the Alan in 
Northumberland, the Humber (pro- 
perly * Abus '), Trent, Thames, 
and Tamar in Cornwall, hence 
' fusca metallis.' With * potor 
Alauni' cf. Hor. Od. 11. xx. 20, 

* Rhodanique potor,' also I v. xv. 
21, 'qui Tanain bibunt.' 

1 76] * Treanta ' seems to be 
formed from the modem name of 
the river ; the Romans called it 
Trivona, 

177 Thamesis mens] Keightley 
compares Spenser, F. Q. IV. xi. 
41, * And MuUa mine whose waves 
I whilom taught to weep.* 



122 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



Haec tibi servabam lenta sub cortice lauri, 
Haec et plura simul ; turn quas mihi pocula Mansus, 
Mansus Chalcidicae non ultima gloria ripse, 
Bina dedit, mirum artis opus, mirandus et ipse, 



1 80 



180 I18BO] probably refers to 
the British poem, which when com- 
pleted he intended to submit to his 
friend for criticism. Thus in the 
6th Elegy (//. 79 foil.) he tells Dio- 
dati that he has been writing a hymn 
upon the Nativity, upon which he 
will ask his opinion — 

*Te quoque pressa manent patriis 

meditata cicutis ; 
Tu mihi cui recitem judicis instar 
eris.' 

See also his letter of Sept. 23, 
1637, containing an account of the 
studies in whidh he was then en- 
gaged. 

181-197] On the strength of this 
passage, Prof. Masson (adopting a 
suggestion of Warton's) asserts that 
Manso had actually given Milton a 
pair of chased goblets. Keightley 
on the other hand considers it to be 
merely a poetical description after 
Theocritus {Id, i. 27 foil.) and 
Virgil {E. iii. 36 foil.) of some other 
tokens of Manso's esteem. All we 
know for certain is that he had sent 
Milton a complimentary elegiac 
couplet— 

* Ut mens forma decor facies mos, 
si pietas sic, 
Non Anglus, verum hercle An- 
gelus ipse fores.' 

Also in the account of his travels, 
to which we have before referred, 
Milton says that Manso * gave him 
singular proofs of his regard,' 
which may reasonably be supposed 
to have taJcen some tangible form ; 
the more so, because it b further 
stated that Manso had excused him- 
self for not paying him greater per- 
sonal attention, on account of his 



free speaking on religious matters. 
With all due deference to Mr. 
Keightle/s opinion, as to the in- 
herent improbability of the matter, 
we should be disposed to say that a 

{)air of silver cups would be a very 
ikely present from a wetUthy Nea- 
politan virtuoso to his English 
friend ; nor is this likelihood really 
diminished by the mere fac^ of simi- 
lar representations in Theocritus 
and Virgil, especially when we bear 
in mind that no part of the details 
of Milton's description is in any 
way borrowed from theirs. And 
when we proceed to examine these 
details further, both the singularity 
of the subjects choren and the mi- 
nuteness of each point in the picture 
render it almost impossible to sup- 
pose that we have here a mere in- 
vention of the poet, and not an 
actual thing described. It is of 
course barely possible that such may 
have been the case, but the proba- 
bility seems to lie very strongly the 
other way. 

182] Naples (Neapolis) was 
founded by the Cumseans, who were 
originally colonists from Chalcis in 
Euboea. Cf. Livy. viii. 22, *Cu- 
mani ab Chalcide Euboica originem 
trahunt.' Hence the rock of Cumse 
is called ' Chalcidica arx ' in Virg. 
y£«. vi. 17. Milton may have 
purposely used the older name in 
recognition of the antiquity of Man- 
so's family. Cf. 'Lydorum san- 
guinis ambo,' /. iT^^iupra. Warton 
curiously quotes * Chalcidico versu,' 
Virg. E. X. 50, which alludes to 
Euphorion, a poet of Chalcis, but 
has nothing to do either with Cumse 
or with Naples. 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



123 



£t circum getnino caelaverat argumento : 

In medio rubri maris unda et odoriferum ver, 185 

Littora longa Arabum et sudantes balsama silvse ; 

Has inter Phoenix, divina avis, unica terris, 

Cseruleum fulgens diversicoloribus alis, 

Auroram vitreis surgentem respicit undis ; 

Parte alia polus omnipatens et magnus Olympus : 190 

Quis putet ? hie quoque Amor pictseque in nube pharetrse, 

Arma corusca faces, et spicula tincta pyropo ; 

Nee tenues animas pectusque ignobile vulgi, 

Hinc ferit ; at circum flammantia lumina torquens 

Semper in erectum spargit sua tela per orbes 195 

Impiger, et pronos nunquam coUimat ad ictus : 



184 easlayerat argnmento] 
Ovid, Met, xiii. 685. 

187] For the fable of the Phoenix 
see Ovid, Ma, xv. 391 foil. ; 
Amor. II. vi. 54; PUny, NcU, 
Hist X. ii. 2. 

anica terrii] Cf. P, L. v. 272, 
' that sole bird.' 

188] * Diversicolor ' is post-clas- 
sical ; the regular word is versi- 
color^ Viig. 3£n. X. 181 ; Livy, 
XXXIV. i. 3, &c. 

190 onmipatenfl] seems to be 
a word of Milton's own coining. 

191 Qnis putet t] expressing ad- 
miration ; something like the Greek 
ir«s Soiccif ; as in Aristoph. Nubes, 
881, kK t&v ai9i»tf fiorftdxovs iwolu, 

192] If 'arma corusca faces' is 
the right reading, it can only mean 
* arms gleaming with [the light of] 
his torches.' But this is a very bold 
use of the so-called Greek accusa- 
tive, and one which no existing ex- 
pression in any Latin writer seems 
to justify. Perhaps the nearest ap- 
proach to it is to be found in Hor. 
£p. I. vi. 74, * Pueri suspensi locu- 
los tabulamque ;' but this may be 



explained as a mere variety of the 
ordinary phrases ' indutus vestem,' 
&c., which will Imrdly include the 
instance before us. 'fhe insertion 
of a comma after * corusca,' thus 
making 'faces' the nominative, 
would remove the difficulty ; but I 
have not ventured to introduce this 
change of punctuation into the text. 
pyropo] a kind of bronze, of a 
fiery red colour, named from iriSp- 
wroSf which is an epithet of the 
lightning-bolt in iEsch. From. 667. 
Cf. Ovid, Mei. ii. 2, ' flammas 
imitante pyropo.' In Afel, i. 469 
Cupid is described with two darts, 
one tipped with gold, the other with 
lead — 

' fugat hoc, facit illud amorem. 
Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide 

fidget acuta ; 
Quod fiigat obtusum est, et habet 

sub arundme plumbum.' 

195 in ereetum] the neuter adj. 
used substantively, ' into an elevated 
region.' Cf. 'per arduum,' Hor. 
Od. II. xix. 21. 

per orboi] 'among the ^ars' 
(Warton). 



124 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



Hinc mentes ardere sacrae formseque deorum. 

Tu quoque in his, nee me fallit spes lubrica, Damon, 
Tu quoque in his certe es, nam quo tua dulcis abiret 
Sanctaque simplicitas, nam quo tua Candida virtus ? 
Nee te Lethseo fas qusesivisse sub oreo, 
Nee tibi eonveniunt laerimae, nee flebimus ultra : 
Ite procu]^ lacrimal ; purum colit aethera Damon, 
^thera purus habet, pluvium pede reppulit arcum ; 
Heroumque animas inter divosque perennes 
iCthereos haurit latices, et gaudia potat 
Ore saero. Quin tu, eoeli post jura reeepta, 
Dexter ades placidusque fave quicunque voearis, 
Seu tu noster eris Damon, sive ssquior audis 



20Q 



205 



196 eollimat] * takes aim.' The 
woid collimare is now understood 
not to exist ; it was formerly found 
in editions of Cicero, Gellius, &c., 
the supposed meaning being * to 
look sidelong at anything * (as if from 
the adj. Ismus), but it has been 
expunged everywhere as a mistake 
for collineare, 'to aim in a straight 
line.' 

197] Keightley remarks that *di« 
vine, not sensual love is here spoken 
of.* See P. Z. viii. 592; Comus^ 
1004 ; Quarles, Emblems^ ii. 8. 
Milton was doubtless familiar with 
the magnificent description of Celes- 
tial Love in Plato's Symposium (c. 8) 
and Fhadrus (c. 30 foil.). 

198-219] The mention of ' sacred 
minds and forms divine' leads the 
poet to describe that state of hea- 
venly bliss which he is assured that 
the soul of his friend is now enjoy- 
ing. This passage will bear a close 
comparison with that in Lycidas, 165 
foil., both as regards the general 
sentiment and some particular ex- 
pressions ; there is the same juxta- 
position of classical and Scriptural 
imagery, only here the former 
laigely predominates, as might be 



expected from the form of the poem 
and the language in which it is 
written. The apotheosis of Daphnis 
in Virgil's 5th Eclogue seems to 
have been chiefly before Milton's 
mind on both occasions. 

200 lanota simplioitai] Cf. 
/. 33. 

201 qiUBBiYiue] The perfect tense 
has great force here. The first im- 
pulse of grief was to mourn the 
departed one as lost and gone, but 
it is presently rejected for an ex- 
pression of belief in his immortality. 
See LycidaSf 165, 166, 204 ; Virg. 
■^•^.56, 57. The fine idea of spring- 
ing upvmrds from the arc of the 
rainbow is partly due to Virgil, C7. 
iv. 233, where Uie rising Pleiad is 
said to 'spurn with her foot the 
Ocean stream' (* Oceani spretos 
pede reppulit amnes '). 

205] Keightley comp. Hor. Od, 
III. iii. II, 'Quos inter Augustus 
rccumbcns Purpureo bibit ore nec- 
tar.' 

208] See note and rtff. oa Lycidas, 
184. 

209 audis] as in Hor. Sat. Ii. 
vi. 20, ' seu Jane libentius audis.' 
Different names of a god implied 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

DiodatuSy quo te divino nomine cuncti 
Coelicolae norint, silvisque vocabere Damon. 
Quod tibi purpureus pudor et sine labe juventus 
Grata fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas, 
En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores ; 
Ipse caput nitidum cinctus rutilante corona, 
Laetaque frondentis gestans umbracula palmae, 
Sternum perages immortales hymenseos ; 
Cantus ubi choreisque furit l)rra mista beatis, 
Festa Sionaeo bacchantur et Oigia thyrso. 



210 



215 



different attributes (Exodus vi. 3) ; 
whence arose the idea that one 
name would on certain occasions be 
more acceptable than another. Thus 
the Chorus in ^sch. Agam. 155 
exclaims : Zei>j, 5<rTif iror' iorfv, ci 
T<{8 avT^ ^ikov K€K\rifA4y(ff tovt6 

210 DiodatUB] * God-given,' 
hence * divino nomine.' One of 
Diodati's letters begins with the 
words SeocrMros Mi\Tttvi x^P*'^ 
(see Introduction, p. 31). 

211 flilvis] i.e. by us shepherds. 
212] Richardson comp. Ovid, 

Amor, I. iii. 14, * Nudaque simpli- 
citas purpureusque pudor.' The 
latter is the rosy blush of modesty ; 
cf. Virg. --£«. i. 591, 'lumenque 
juventae Purpureum' (see note on 
Lycidas^ 141). 

214] Warton observes that Dio- 
dati was unmarried, and quotes Rev. 
xiv. 3, 4. Cf. also Bp. Taylor, 
Holy Livings xi. 3 (quoted by Keble 
in the Christian Year^ Wednesday 
before Easter), *that little coronet 
or special reward, which God hath 
prepared for those "who have not 
defiled themselves with women, 
but follow the Lamb for ever." ' 



216 palmsB] Rev. vii. 9. 

217 hyxnexLflBOs] See Lycidas^ Vj^ 
and note. 

219 thyrso] the instrumental ab- 
lative, * under the inspiration of the 
thyrsus,* the instrument which ex- 
cited the Bacchantes to phrensy. 
We have here perhaps the most 
staitling instance to be found in 
Milton's poetry of that blending of 
sacred with pagan imagery, to 
which reference has so often been 
made. Such a conception as is here 
presented to us can only be account- 
ed for (and even then not wholly 
excused) on the hypothesis that 
partly from the custom of the period, 
partly from his own litcranr associa- 
tions, the images derived u-om clas- 
sical mythology had become so 
familiar to Milton's mind that their 
precise original import was for the 
time forgotten. To suppose that he 
would seriously have admitted any 
real comparison between the orgies 
of Dionysus and the joys of the 
saints in glory would be to contra- 
dict all that we know, from other 
sources, of his genuine piety and the 
intense sincerity of his devotion. 



TRANSLATION OF THE EPITAPHIUM 

DAMONIS. 

By Charles Symmons, D.D. Jesus Coll. Oxon., 1806. 



Damon^ an Epitaphial Elegy. 

Ye nymphs of Himera (whose stream along 

The notes have floated of your mournful song, 

As Daphnis or as Hylas you deplored, 

Or Bion, once the shepherds' tuneful lord;) 

Lend your Sicilian softness to proclaim 5 

The woes of Thyrsis on the banks of Thame; 

What plaints he murmured to the springs and floods, 

How waked the sorrowing echoes of the woods, 

As frantic for his Damon lost, alone 

He roamed, and taught the sleepless night to groan. 10 

Twice the green blade had bristled on the plain, 

And twice the golden ear enriched the swain, 

Since Damon by a doom too strict expired. 

And his pale eye his absent friend required. 

For Thyrsis still his wished return delayed; 15 

The Muses held him in the Tuscan shade. 

But when with satiate taste and careful thought 

His long-forgotten home and flock he sought, 

Ah ! then, beneath the accustomed elm reclined, 

All — all his loss came rushing to his mind. 20 

Undone and desolate, for transient ease 

He poured his swelling heart in strains like these : 

Return unfed^my lambs ; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost! 
What powers shall I of earth or heaven invoke^ 25 

Since Damon fell by their relentless stroke ? 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. t2j 

And shalt thou leave us thus ? and shall thy worth 

Sleep in a nameless grave with common earth ? 

But he whose wand the realms of death controls 

Forbids thy shade to blend with common souls. 30 

While these o'erawcd disperse at his conmiand, 

He leads thee to thy own distinguished band. 

Return unfed^ my lambs; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost! 
And sure, unless beneath some evil eye, 35 

That blights me with its glance, my powers should die, 
Thou shalt not slumber on thy timeless bier 
' Without the meed of one melodious tear.' 
Long shall thy name, thy virtues long remain 
In fond memorial with the shepherd train ; 40 

Their festive honours and their votive lay 
To thee, as to their Daphnis, they shall pay, — 
Their Daphnis thou, as long as Pales loves 
The springing meads, or Faunus haunts the groves; 
If aught of power or faith and truth attend, 45 

PaUadian science and a Muse thy friend. 

Return unfedy my lambs j by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost! 
Yes, Damon, thee such recompenses wait — 
But ah ! what ills hang gloomy o'er my fate ? 50 

Who now, still faithful to my side, will bear 
Keen frosts or suns that parch the sickening air, 
When boldly, to protect the distant fold, 
We seek the growling savage in his hold ? 
Who now, as we retrace the long rough way, 55 

With tale or song will soothe the weary day ? 

Return unfedy my lambs ; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost! 
To whom my bosom shall I now confide ? 
At whose soft voice will now my cares subside ? 60 

Who now will cheat the night with hamdess mirth. 
As the nut crackles on the glowing hearth. 
Or the pear hisses, — ^while without the storm 
Roars through the wood and ruffles nature's form ? 

Return unfedy my lambs; by fortune crost 65 

Your hapless master now to you is lost! 
In summer too, at noontide's sultry hour, 



xa8 EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

When Pan lies sleeping in his beechen bower ; 

When diving from the day's oppressive heat 

The panting Naiad seeks her crystal seat ; 70 

When every shepherd leaves the silent plain, 

And the green hedge protects the snoring swain ; 

Whose pla>'ful fancy then shall light the smile ? 

Whose Attic tongue relieve my languid toil ? 

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost 75 

Your hapless master tiow to you is lost/ 
Ah ! now through meads and vales alone I stray, 
Or linger sad where woods embrown the day ; 
As drives the storm, and Eurus o'er my head 
Breaks the loose twilight of the billowy shade. 80 

Return unfed, my lambs ; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost/ 
My late trim fields their laboured culture scorn, 
And idle weeds insult my drooping com ; 
My widowed vine in prone dishonour sees 85 

Her clusters wither ; — not a shrub can please. 
E'en my sheep tire me ; they with upward eyes 
Gaze at my grief, and seem to feel my sighs. 

Return unfed, my lambs ; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost! 90 

My shepheid friends, by various tastes inclined. 
Direct my steps the sweetest spot to find. 
This likes the hazel, that the beechen grove ; 
One bids me here, one there for pleasure rove. 
Aegon the willow's pensile shade delights, 95 

And gay Amyntas to the streams invites. 
' Here are cool fountains ; here is mossy grass ; 

* Here zephyrs softly whisper as they pass. 

* From this light spring yon arbute draws her green, 

' The pride and beauty of the sylvan scene.* 100 

Deaf is my woe, and while they speak in vain, 
I plunge into the copse and hide my pain. 

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost / 
Mopsus surprised me in my sullen mood, 105 

(Mopsus who knew the language of the wood ; 
Knew all the stars, could all their junctions spell.) 
And thus ; — ^ What passions in your bosom swell ? 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 129 

* Speak ! flows the poison from disastrous love ? 

* Or falls the mischief star-sent from above ? no 
' For leaden Saturn, with his chill control, 

* Oft has shot blights into the shepherd's soul/ 

Return unfed, my lambs j by fortune crost 
Your hapless master now to you is lost! 
The wandering nymphs exclaim — ' What, Thyrsis, now ? 1 1 5 

* Those heavy eyelids and that cloudy brow 

' Become not youth ; to youth the jocund song, 

' Frolic and dance and wanton wiles belong. 

^ With these he courts the joys that suit his state ; 

^Ah ! twice unhappy he who loves too late !' 120 

Return unfed j my lambs j by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost! 
With Dryope and Hyas, i£gle came, 
A lovely lyrist, but a scornful dame. 

From Chelmer's banks fair Chloris joined the train ; 125 
But vain their blandishments, their solace vain. 
Dead is my hope, and pointless beauty's dart 
To waken torpid pleasure in my heart. 

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost ! 130 

How blest where, none repulsed and none preferred^ 
One common friendship blends the lowing herd ! 
Touched by no subtle magnet in the mind, 
Each meets a comrade when he meets his kind. 
Conspiring wolves enjoy this equal love, 135 

And this the zebra's parti-coloured drove ; 
This too the tribes of ocean, and the fiock 
Which Proteus feeds beneath his vaulted rock. 
The sparrow, fearless of a lonely state. 
Has ever for his social wing a mate ; I40 

Whom should the falcon or the marksman strikei 
He soon repairs his loss and finds a like. 
But we, by Fate's severer frown oppressed, 
With war and sharp repulsion in the breast. 
Can scarcely meet amid the human throng 145 

One kindred soul, or met preserve him long. 
When fortune, now determined to be kind. 
Yields the rich gift, and mind is linked to mind, 

K 



i3o EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

Death mocks the fond possession, bursts the chain^ 

And plants the bosom with perennial pain. 150 

Return unfed^ my lambs; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost: 
Alas ! what madness tempted me to stray 
Where other suns on distant regions play ? 
To tread aerial paths and Alpine snows, 155 

Scared by stem Nature's terrible repose ? 
Ah ! could the sepulchre of buried Rome 
Thus urge my frantic foot to spurn my home ? 
Though Rome were now, as once in pomp arrayed 
She drew the Mantuan from his flock and shade ; 160 

Ah ! could she lure me from thy faithful side. 
Lead me where rocks would part us, floods divide, 
Forests and lofty mountains intervene. 
Whole realms extend and oceans roar between ? 
Ah, wretch ! denied to press thy fainting hand, 165 

Close thy dim eyes and catch thy ladt command ; 
To say—' My friend, O think of all our love, 
* And bear it glowing to the realms above !' 

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master n&w to you is lost / 170 

Yet must I not deplore the hpurs that flew. 
Ye Tuscan swains, with science and with you ; — 
' Each Grace and Muse is yours,' — and yours my Damon too. 
From ancient Lucca's Tuscan walls he came. 
With you in country, talents, arts the same. 175 

How happy, lulled by Amo's warbling stream. 
Hid by his poplars from day's flaring beam, 
When stretched along the fragrant moss I lay. 
And culled the violet or plucked the bay ; 
Or heard, contending for the rural prize, 180 

Famed Lycid's and Menalcas' melodies. 
I too essayed to sing, nor vainly sung ; 
This flute, these baskets speak my victor tongue — 
And Datis and Francinus, swains who trace 
Their Tuscan lineage to the Lydian race, 185 

Dear to the Muses both, with friendly care 
Taught their carved trees my favoured name to bear. 

Return unfed, my lambs; by fortune crost 

Your hapless master now to you is lost I 



1 



fiPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 131 

Then^ as the moonbeam slumbered on the plain^ 190 

I penned my fold, and sung in cheerful strain ; 
And oft exclaimed, unconscious of my doom. 
As your pale ashes mouldered in the tomb— 
' Now he is singing ; now my friend prepares 

* His twisted osiers or his wiry snares ! ' 195 
Then would rash fancy on the future seize, 

And hail you present in such words as these — 

' What ? loitering here ? unless some cause dissuade, 

* Haste and enjoy with me the whispering shade ; 

' Or where his course the lucid Colnus bends, 200 

* Or where Cassibelan's domain extends. 

* There shew what herbs in vale or upland grow, 
'The harebell's ringlet and the saffron's glow ; 

* There teach me all the physic of the plains, 

' What healing virtues swell the floret's veins.' 205 

Ah ! perish all the healing plants, confest 

Too weak to save the swain who knew them best I 

As late a new-compacted pipe I found, 

It gave beneath my lips a loftier sound ; 

Too high indeed the notes ; for as it spoke 210 

The waxen junctures in the labour broke. 

Smile as you may, I will not hide from you 

The ambitious strain ; — ^ye woods, awhile adieu I 
Return unfed^ my lambs ; by fortune crost 
Your hapless master now to you is lost J 215 

High on Rutupium's cliffs my muse shall hail 

The first white gleamings of the Dardan sail; 

Shall sing the realms by Imogen controlled. 

And Brennus, Arvirage, and Belin old ; 

Shall sing Armorica at length subdued 220 

By British steel in Gallic blood imbrued ; 

^d Uther in the form of Gorlois led 

By Merlin's fraud to logeme's bed. 

Whence Arthur sprang. If length of days be mine, 

My shepherd's pipe shall hang on yon old pine 225 

In long neglect ; or tuned to British strains 

With British airs shall please my native swains. 

But wherefore so ? alas ! no human mind 

Can hope for audience all the human kind. 

K 2 



13^ EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

Enough for me ; I ask no more renown 2)9 

(Lost to the world, to Britain only known). 

If yellow-tressed Usa read my lays, 

Alain and gulphy Humber sound my praise, 

Trent's sylvan echoes answer to my song, 

My own dear Thames my warbled notes prolong ; 235 

Ore-tinctured Tamar own me for her bard^ 

And Thule mid her utmost flood regard. 
Return unfedy my lambs; by fortune crost 
Your hapless tnaster now to you is lost I 

These lays, and more like these, for thee designed 240 

I wrote, and folded in the laurel's rind. 

For thee I also kept, of antique mould, 

Two spacious goblets, rough with laboured gold. 

(Rare was the gift, but yet the giver more, 

Mansus the pride of the Chalcidian shore). 245 

In bold existence, from the workman's hand. 

Two subjects on their fretted surface stand. 

Here by the Red Sea coast, in length displayed, 

Arabia pants beneath her odorous shade ; 

And here the Phoenix from his spicy throne, 250 

In heavenly plumage radiant and alone. 

Himself a kind, beholds with flamy sight 

The wave first kindle with the morning light 

There on another side the heavens unfold. 

And great Olympus shines in brighter gold. 255 

Strange though it seems, conspicuous on the scene 

The god of love displays his infant mien ; 

Dazzling his arms, his quiver, torch and bow. 

His brilliant shafts with points of topaz glow. 

With these he meditates no common wound, 260 

But proudly throws a fiery glance around ; 

And scorning vulgar aims, directs on high 

His war against the people of the sky; 

Thence struck with sacred flame the ethereal race 

Rush to new joys, and heavenly minds embrace. 265 

With these is Damon now, my hope is sure ; 

Yes ! with the just, the holy and the pure. 

My Damon dwells ; — ^'twere impious to surmise 

Virtues like his could rest below the skies. 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 133 

Then cease our tears ! from his superior seat 270 

He sees the showery arch beneath his feet ; 

And mixed with heroes and with gods above 

Quaffs endless draughts of life, and joy and love. 

But thou, when fixed on thy empyreal throne, 

When heaven's eternal rights are all thy own, 275 

O still attend us from thy starry sphere, 

Still as we call thee by thy name most dear, 

Diodatus above — but yet our Damon here J 

As thine was roseate purity, that fled 

In youth abstemious from the nuptial bed, 280 

Thy virgin triumphs heavenly spousals wait ; — 

Lo ! where it leads along its festal state ; 

A crown of living lustre binds thy brow, 

Thy hand sustains the palm's immortal bough ; 

While the full song, the dance, the frantic lyre, ) 285 

And Sion's thyrsus wildly waved conspire 

To solemnise the rites, and boundless joys inspire. 



THE SAME 

By Professor Masson, 1873.— Reprinted from ms 'Life 

OF MiLTpN/ Vol, II. p. 85. 



On the Death of Damon. 

The Argument, 

irHYRSis and Damon, shq)herds of the same neighbourhood, following 
the same pursuits, were friends from their boyhood, in the highest 
degree of mutual attachment. Thyrsis, having set out to travel for 
mental improvement, received news when abroad of Damon's death. 
Afterwards at length returning, and finding the matter to be so, he 
deplores himself and his solitary condition in the following poem. 
Under the guise of Damon, however, is here understood Charles 
Diodati, tracing his descent on the father's side from the Tuscan city of 
Lucca, but otherwise English — a youth remarkable, while he lived, 
for his genius, his learning, and other most shining virtues. 

Nymphs of old Himera's stream (for ye it was that remembered 
Daphnis and Hylas when dead, and grieved for the sad fate of Bion),^ 
Tell through the hamlets of Thames this later Sicilian story — 
What were the cries and murmurs that burst from Thyrsis the 

wretched, 
What lamentations continued he wrung from the caves and the 

rivers, 
Wrung from the wandering brooks and the grove's most secret 

recesses, 
Mourning his Damon lost, and compelling even the midnight 
Into the sound of his woe, as he wandered in desolate places. 
Twice had the ears in the wheat-fields shot through the green of 

their sheathing, 
As many crops of pale gold were the reapers counting as garnered. 
Since the last day that had taken Damon down from the Uving^ 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 



135 



Thyrsis not being by ; for then that shepherd was absent, 
Kept by the Muse's sweet love in the far-famed town of the Tuscan. 
But, when his satiate mind, and the care of his flock recollected, 
Brought him back to his home, and he sat, as of old, 'neath the 

elm-tree. 
Then at last, O then, as the sense of his loss comes upon him, 
Thus he begins to disburthen all his measureless sorrow : — 

Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Ah me ! what deities now shall I call on in earth or in heaven. 
After the pitiless death by which they have reft thee, my Damon ? 
Thus dost thou leave us ? thus without name is thy virtue departed 
Down to the world below, to take rank with the shadows unnoted ? 
No ! May He that disparteth souls with his glittering baton 
Will it not so, but lead thee into some band of the worthies, 
Driving far fh>m thy side all the mere herd of the voiceless ! 

Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds hot your 

bleating. 
Hap as it may, unless the wolf's black glance shall first cross me. 
Not in a tearless tomb shall thy loved mortality moulder ; 
Stand shall thine honour for thee, and long henceforth shall it 

flourish 
Mid our shepherd -lads ; and thee they shall joy to remember 
Next after Daphnis chief, next after Daphnis to praise thee, 
So long as Pales and Faunus shall love our fields and our 

meadows. 
If it avails to have cherished the faith of the old and the loyal, 
Pallas's arts of peace, and have had a tuneful companion ! 

Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Kept are these honours for thee, and thine they sAa/l be, my 

Damon ! 
But for myself what remains ? For me what faithful companion 
Now will cling to my side, in the place of the one so familiar. 
All through the season harsh when the grounds are crisp with the 

snow-crust, 
Or 'neath the blazing sun when the herbage is dying for moisture ? 
Were it the task to go forth in the track of the ravaging lions, 
Or to drive back from the folds the wolf-packs boldened by hunger, 
Who would now lighten the day with the sound of his talk or his 

singing? 



136 EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Whom shall I trust with my thoughts ; or who will teach me to 

deaden 
Heart-hid pains ; or who will cheat away the long evening 
Sweetly with chat by the fire, where hissing hot on the ashes 
Roasts the ripe pear, and the chestnuts crackle beneath, while the 

South-wind 
Hurls confusion without, and thunders down on the elm-tops ? 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Then, in the summer, when day spins round on his middlemost axle. 
What time Pan takes his sleep concealed in the shade of the 

beeches, 
And when the nymphs have repaired to their well-known grots in 

the rivers, 
Shepherds are not to be seen and under the hedge snores the rustic. 
Who will bring me again thy blandishing ways and thy laughter. 
All thy Athenian jests, and all the fine wit of thy fancies ? 

Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Now all lonely I wander over the fields and the pastures, 
Or where the branchy shades are densest down in the valleys ; 
There I wait till late, while the shower and the storm-blast above me 
Moan at their will, and sighings shake through the breaks of the 

woodlands. 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Ah ! how my fields, once neat, are now overgrown and unsightly, 
Forward only in weeds, and the tall com sickens with mildew ! 
Mateless, my vines droop down the shrivelled weight of their 

clusters ; 
Neither please me my myrtles ; and even the sheep are a trouble ; 
They seem sad, and they turn their faces, poor things, to their master ! 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Tityrus calls to the hazels ; to the ash-trees Alphesibceus ; 
iCgon suggests the willows : ' The streams/ says lovely Amyntas ; 
' Here are the cool springs, here the moss-broidered grass and the 

hillocks ; 
' Here are the zephyrs, and here the arbutus whispers the ripple.' 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 137 

These things they sing to the deaf; so I took to the thickets and 

left them. 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Mopsus addressed me next, for he had espied me returning 
(Wise in the language of birds, and wise in the stars too, is 

Mopsus) : 
' Thyrsis/ he said, ' what is this ? what bilious humour afflicts thee ? 

* Either love is the cause, or the blast of some star inauspicious; 
' Saturn's star is of all the oftenest deadly to shepherds, 

* Fixing deep in the breast his slant leaden shaft of sickness.' 

Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Round me fair maids wonder ; 'What will come of thee, Thyrsis ? 
' What wouldst thou have ?' they say : ' not commonly see we the 

young men 
'Wearing that cloud on the brow, the eyes thus stem and the 

visage : 
'Youth seeks the dance and sports, and in all will tend to be 

wooing : 

* Rightfully so : twice wretched is he who is late in his loving.' 

Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Dryope came, and Hyas, and JEgle, the daughter of Baucis 
(Learned is she in the song and the lute, but O what a proud 

one !) ; 
Came to me Chloris also, the maid from the banks of the Chelmer. 
Nothing their blandishings move me, nothing their prattle of 

comfort ; 
Nothing the present can move me, nor any hope of the future. 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Ah me ! how like one another the herds frisk over the meadows, 
AH by the law of their kind, companions equally common ; 
No one selecting for friendship this one rather than that one 
Out of the flock ! So come in droves to their feeding the jackals ; 
So in their turns pair also the rough untameable zebras. 
Such too the law of the deep, where Proteus down on the shingle 
Numbers his troops of sea-calves. Nay, that meanest of wing'd 

ones. 
See how the sparrow has always near him a fellow, when flying 



138 EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

Round by the bams he chirrups, but seeks his own thatch ere it 

darkens ; 
Whom should fate strike lifeless— whether the beak of the falcon 
Pin him in air, or he lie transfixed by the reed of the ditcher — 
Quick the survivor is off, and a moment finds him ronated. 
We are the hard race, we, the battered children of fortune, 
We of the breed of men, strange-minded and different-moulded ! 
Scarcely does any discover his one true mate among thousands ; 
Or, if kindlier chance shall have given the singular blessing, 
Comes a dark day on the creep, and comes the hour unexpected^ 
Snatching away the gift, and leaving the anguish eternal. 

Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Ah ! what roaming whimsy drew my steps to a distance. 
Over the rocks hung in air and the Alpine passes and glaciers ! 
Was it so needful for me to have seen old Rome in her ruins — 
Even though Rome had been such as, erst in the days of her 

greatness, 
Tityrus, only to visit, forsook both his fiocks and his country — 
That but for this I consented to lack the use of thy presence, 
Placing so many seas and so many mount'iins between us, 
So many woods and rocks and so many murmuring rivers ? 
Ah ! at the end at least to have touched his hand had been given 

me. 
Closed his beautiful eyes in the placid hour of his dying. 
Said to my friend, * Farewell ! in the world of the stars think of meV 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Albeit also of you my memory never shall weary. 
Swains of the Tuscan land, well-practised youths in the Muses, 
Here there was grace and lightness ; Tuscan thou too, my Damon, 
Tracing the line of thy race from the ancient city of Lucca ! 
O, how mighty was I, when, stretched by the stream of the Amo 
Murmuring cool, and where the poplar-grove softens the herbage, 
Violets now I would pluck, and now the sprigs of the myrtle. 
Hearing Menalcas and Lycidas vying the while in their ditties I 
/ also dared the challenge ; nor, as I reckon, the hearers 
Greatly disliked my trials — for yet the tokens are with me, 
Rush-plaits, osier nets, and reed-stops of wax, which they gave me. 
Ay more : two of the group have taught our name to their beech- 

woods — 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 139 

Dati and also Francini, both of them notable shepherds, 
As well in lore as in voice, and both of the blood of the Lydian. 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 

bleating. 
Then too the pleasant dreams which the dewy moon woke within 

me, 
Penning the young kids alone within their wattles at even ! 
Ah! how often I said, when already the black mould bewrapt 

thee, 
' Now my Damon is singing, or spreading his snares for the 

leveret ; 
' Now he is weaving his twig-net for some of his various uses.' 
What with my easy mind I hoped as then in the future 
Lightly I seized with the wish and fancied as present before me. 
*Ho, my friend!' I would cry: 'art busy? If nothing prevent 

thee, 

* Shall we go rest somewhere in some talk-favouring covert, 
' Or to the waters of Colne, or the fields of Cassibelaunus ? 

* There thou shalt run me over the list of thy herbs and their juices, 
' Foxglove, and crocuses lowly, and hyacinth-leaf with its blossom, 
' Marsh-plants also that grow for use in the art of the healer.' 
Perish the plants each one, and perish all arts of the healer 
Gotten of herbs, since nothing served they even their master ! 

/ too~ for strangely my pipe for some time past had been sounding 
Strains of an unknown strength — 'tis one day more than eleven 

since 
Thus it befell — and perchance the reeds I was trying were new 

ones : 
Bursting their fastenings, they flew apart when touched, and no 

farther 
Dared to endure the grave sounds : I am haply in this over- 
boastful ; 
Yet I will tell out the tale. Ye woods, yield your honours and 
listen ! 
Go unpastured, my lambs : your master now heeds not your 
bleating. 
/ have a theme of the Trojans cruising our southern headlands 
Shaping to song, and the realm of Imogen, daughter of Pandras, 
Brennus and Arvirach, dukes, and Bren's bold brother, Bdinus ; 
Then the Armorican settlers under the laws of the Britons, 
Ay, and the womb of Igraine fatally pregnant with Arthur, 



140 EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 

I/tiler's son, whom he got disguised in Gk)rlois' likeness, 
All by Merlin's craft. O then, if life shall be spared me, 
Thou shalt be hung, my pipe, far off on some brown dying pine- 
tree, 
Much forgotten of me ; or else yon Latian, music 
Changed for the British war-screech ! What then ? For one to 

do all things 
One to hope all tnings, fits not ! Prize sufficiently ample 
Mine, and distinction great (unheard of ever thereafter 
Though I should be, and inglorious, all through the world of 

the stranger), 
If but yellow-haired Ouse shall read me, the drinker of Alan, 
Hmnber, which whirls as it flows, and Trent's whole valley of 

orchards, 
Thames, my own Thames, above all, and Tamar's western waters* 
Tawny with ores, and where the white waves swinge the far 
Orkneys. 
Go unpasturedy my Iambs : your master now heeds not your 
bleating. 
These I was keeping for thee, wrapt up in the rind of the laurel, 
These and other things with them ; and mainly the two cups which 

Manso — 
Manso, not the last of Southern Italy's glories — 
Gave me, a wonder of art, which himself, a wonder of nature, 
Carved with a double design of his own well-skilled invention : 
Here the Red Sea in the midst, and the odoriferous sunmier, 
Araby's winding shores, and palm trees sweating their balsams. 
Mid which the bird divine, earth's marvel, the singular Phcenix, 
Blazing caerulean-bright with wings of different colours. 
Turns to behold Aurora surmounting the glassy-green billows : 
Obverse is Heaven's vast vault and the great Olympian mansion. 
Who would suppose it ? Even here is Love and his cloud-painted 

quiver. 
Arms glittering torch-lit, and arrows tipped with the fire-gem. 
Nor is it meagre souls and the base-bom breasts of the vulgar 
Hence that he strikes ; but, whirling round him his luminous 

splendours. 
Always he scatters his darts right upwards sheer through the star- 
depths 
Restless, and never deigns to level the pain of them downwards ; 
Whence the sacred minds. and the forms of the gods ever-burning. 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 141 

'Thou too art there — not vain is the hope that I cherish, my 

Damon — 
Thou too art certainly there ; for whither besides could have vanished 
Hoiy-sweet fancies like thine, and purity stainless as thine was ? 
No ; not down in Lethe's darkness ought we to seek thee ! 
Tears are not fitting for thee, nor for thee will we weep any longer ; 
Flow no more, ye tear-drops ! Damon inhabits the ether ; 
Pure, he possesses the sky ; he has spumed back the arc of the 

rainbow. 
Housed mid the souls of the heroes, housed mid the gods ever- 
lasting, 
Quaffs he the sacred chalices, drinks he the joys of the blessed. 
Holy-mouthed himself. But O, Heaven's rights being now thine, 
Be thou with me for my good, however I ought to invoke thee. 
Whether still as our Damon, or whether of names thou wouldst 

rather 
That of Diodati now, by which deep-meaning divine name 
All the celestials shall know thee, while shepherds shall still call 

thee Damon. 
For that the rosy blush and the unstained strength of young 

manhood 
Ever were dear to thee, and the marriage joy never was tasted, 
Lo ! there are kept for thee the honours of those that were virgin ! 
Thou, with thy fair head crowned with the golden, glittering 

cincture. 
Waving green branches of palm, and walking the gladsome pro* 

cession. 
Aye shall act and repeat the endless heavenly nuptials. 
There where song never fails, and the lyre and the dance mix to 

madness. 
There where the revel rages and Sion's thyrsus beats time.* 



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* This litUe volaxne oontafna 241 
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