To scorn delights, and live laborious days; Την κενοδοξίαν, ὡς τελευταίον χιτώνα, TUX TEQURED TOTIderbal, says Plato. And Tacitus, Hist. iv. 5. " etiam sapientibus cupido gloriæ "novissima exuitur." See the note on P. R. iii. 47. Jortin. 73. But the fair guerdon] Prize, reward, recompense. A word from the French, often used by our old writers, and particularly Spenser. Faery Queen, b. i. cant. vii. st. 15. To gain so goodly guerdon. Cant. x. st. 59. That glory does to them for guerdon grant. 74. And think to burst out into sudden blaze,] He is speaking of fame. So in P. R. iii. 47. For what is glory but the blaze of fame, &c. T. Warton. 75 Milton here has made the Fates the same with the Furies; which is not quite destitute of authority, for so Orpheus in his hymns, two of which are addressed to these Goddesses, styles them, Αλλα θεαι μοιραι οφιοπλόκαμοι πολυμορ фо Sympson. In Shakespeare are the shears of Destiny, with more propriety. K. John, a. iv. s. 2. Think you I bear the shears of destiny? Milton, however, does not here confound the Fates and the Furies. He only calls Destiny a Fury. In Spenser, we have blind Fury. Ruins of Rome, st. xxiv. If the blinde Furie which warres breedeth oft. And in Sackville's Gordobucke, a. v. s. 3. O Jove, how are these people's hearts abus'd, And what blind Fury headlong carries them? See Observations on Spenser's Faery Queen, vol. ii. p. 255. edit. 2. T Warton. 77. Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears;] Virgil, Ecl. vi. 3. -Cynthius aurem. Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glist'ring foil Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, Of so much fame in heav'n expect thy meed. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood, And listens to the herald of the sea 79. Nor in the glist'ring foil] Spenser, Faery Queen, b. iv. cant. v. st. 15. As guileful goldsmith that by secret skill With golden foil doth finely overspread Some baser metal, &c. 85. O fountain Arethuse, &c.] Now Phoebus, whose strain was of a higher mood, has done speaking, he invokes the fountain Arethuse of Sicily the country of Theocritus, and Mincius, the river of Mantua, Virgil's country, which river he calls honoured flood to shew his respect to that poet, and describes much in the same manner as Virgil himself has done, Georg. iii. 14. -tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius, et tenera prætexit arundine ripas. It was the more necessary for him to call to mind these two famous pastoral poets, as now his own oaten pipe proceeds. 85. In giving Arethusa the distinctive appellation of Foun 80 85 tain, Milton closely and learnedly attends to the ancient Greek writers. See more particularly the scholiast on Theocritus, Idyll. i. 117. And Servius on Virgil, Æn. iii. 694. Ecl. x. 4. Homer says, Odyss. xiii. 408. Επι τε ΚΡΗΝΗ Αρεθούση. Compare Hesychius, and his annotators, v. ΚΟΡΑΚΟΣ, ΑΛΦΕΙΟΣ ΑΡΕΘΟΥEA. And Stephanus Byzant. Berkel. p. 162. T. Warton. 85.and thou honour'd flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, It was at first, --and thou smooth flood, Soft-sliding Mincius ; and then smooth was altered to famed, and then to honoured in the Manuscript; as soft-sliding was to smooth-sliding. 89.—the herald of the sea &c.] Triton. Hippotades, Æolus the son of Hippotas, called sage from foreknowing the weather. Panope, a sea-nymph: the word itself signifies that pure calm and tranquillity that gives an unbounded prospect over the That came in Neptune's plea ; He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds, They knew not of his story, And sage Hippotades their answer brings, Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, 90 95 100 smooth and level brine; there- enchantments in Macbeth, a. iv. 94.-each beaked promontory ;] Drayton has "The utmost end " of Cornwall's furrowing beak." s. 1. -Slips of yew Silver'd in the moon's eclipse. Polyolb. s. i. vol ii. p. 657. Again, in the same incantation, T. Warton. 101. Built in th' eclipse, &c.] Horace speaks much in the same spirit concerning the tree by whose fall he was in danger of being killed. Od. ii. xiii. 1. Ille et nefasto te posuit die &c. And so of a ship, Epod. x. 1. Mala soluta navis exit alite. And the misfortune is ascribed to the ship according to the Latin inscription at the beginning of the poem, -navi in scopulum allisa, et rimis et ictu fatiscente. Root of hemlock digg'd i' th' dark. The shipwreck was occasioned not by a storm, but the bad condition of the ship, unfit for so dangerous a navigation. T. War ton. 101. Mr. Warton adds, that "the ship, a very crazy vessel, "struck on a rock, and suddenly "sunk to the bottom with all "that were on board, not one "escaping." A more correct account of this disaster, given by Hogg, who in 1694 published a Latin translation of Lycidas, 101. Although Horace has two informs us, that several escaped passages similar to this, yet how in the boat from the sinking much more poetical and striking vessel; but that Mr. King and is the imagery of Milton, that some others, fatally unmoved the ship was built in the eclipse, by the importunities of their and rigged with curses. Dr. J. associates, continued on board Warton. and perished. Dr. Symmons, Evidently with a view to the Life of Millon, p. 108. That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 103. Next Camus, reverend sire, &c.] The river Cam is fitly introduced upon this occasion, and is called reverend sire, as both Mr. King and Milton were educated at Cambridge; and is described according to the nature of that river. Went footing slow, as it is a gentle winding stream, according to Camden, who says the British word Cam signifies crooked. It abounds too with reeds and sedge, for which reason his mantle is hairy, and his bonnet sedge, which as a testimony of his grief and mourning was inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge like to a hyacinth, that sanguine flower, as it sprung according to the poets from the blood of the boy Hyacinthus or of Ajax, inscribed with woe as the leaves were imagined to be marked with the mournful letters A. A. For these particulars you may consult the poets, and especially Ovid, Met. x. 210. Ecce cruor, qui fusus humi signave rat herbam, Desinit esse cruor; Tyrioque niten tior ostro Flos oritur, formamque capit, quam lilia, si non Purpureus color huic, argenteus esset in illis. Non satis hoc Phobo est; is enim fuit auctor honoris ; Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit; et 105 105. Inwrought with figures dim,] In the Manuscript it was first written Scrawl'd o'er: Inwrought is the marginal reading there. 105. figures dim,] Alluding to the fabulous traditions of the high antiquity of Cambridge. But how Cam was distinguished by a hairy mantle from other rivers, I know not. Warburton. It is very probable, that the hairy mantle, being joined with the sedge-bonnet, may mean his rushy or reedy banks. See Notes on Él. i. 89. It would be difficult to ascertain the meaning of figures dim. Perhaps the poet himself had no very clear or determinate idea: but, in obscure and mysterious expressions, leaves something to be supplied or explained by the reader's imagination. T. Warton. 107. Ah! Who hath reft, quoth he, my dearest pledge ?] Mr. Bowle compares this line with one in the Rime spirituali of Angelo Grillo, fol. 7. a. It is a part of the Virgin's lamentation on the Passion of Christ. Deh, disse, ove ne vai mio caro pegno? "Alas, quoth she, where goest "thou, my dear pledge?" And he cites also Spenser's Daphnaida, where the subject is the same. Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) He shook his miter'd locks, and stern bespake, 110 How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, And reft from me my sweet com panion, And hence perhaps the two keys, although with a different And reft from me my love, my life, application, which Nature, in my hart. T. Warton. 107.—my dearest pledge?] My dearest child, as children were simply called by the Latins pignora, pledges. Richardson. 109. The pilot of the Galilean lake, &c.] Milton finely raises the character of St. Peter by making him the pilot of the lake of Genesareth in Galilee. See how artfully he takes this hint from Luke v. The two keys (which he hath likewise painted poetically) Christ himself gave him. Matt. xvi. 19. But the mitre, which has so fine an effect in this picture, Milton would not have allowed him a very few years afterwards. See his treatise of Prelatical Episcopacy. Richardson. It seems somewhat extraordinary to introduce St. Peter after Apollo, Triton, &c. a Christian bishop among heathen deities; but here Milton's imagination was dazzled, his taste corrupted, and his judgment perverted by reading the Italian poets. 110. The golden opes,] Saint Peter's two keys in the Gospel, seem to have supplied modern poetry with the allegoric machinery of two keys, which are variously used. See Dante's Inferno, cant. xiii. and c. xxvii. Gray's Ode on the Power of Poe- -That golden key 112. He shook his miter'd locks,] It is much that this inveterate enemy of prelacy would allow Peter to be a bishop. But the whole circumstance is taken from the Italian satirists. Besides I suppose he thought it sharpened his satire to have the prelacy condemned by one of their own order. Warburton. King was intended for the church. T. Warton. 114. Enow of such &c.] As Milton has frequently imitated his master Spenser in this poem, so in this place particularly he has had an eye to Spenser's invectives against the corruptions of the clergy in his fifth, seventh, and ninth Eclogues. 114. Thus in P. L. b. iv. 193. So clomb this first grand theif into God's fold: So since into his church lewd hirelings climb. Where lewd signifies ignorant. |