May with their wholesome and preventive shears 16 Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears, And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge, New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large. He means Prynne, who had been sentenced to lose his ears, and afterwards was sentenced to lose the remainder of them, so that he was cropt close indeed: and the reason of his calling him marginal is expressed in his treatise of The likeliest Means to remove hirelings out of the Church. "And yet a late hot querist for tithes, whom ye may know by "his wit's lying ever beside him "in the margin, to be ever be"side his wits in the text; a "fierce reformer once, now "rankled with a contrary heat, "&c." Vol. i. p. 569. edit. 1738. 20 17. Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears,] That is, although your ears cry out that they need clipping, yet the mild and gentle Parliament will content itself with only clipping away your Jewish and persecuting principles. Warburton. The meaning is, "check your "insolence, without proceeding "to cruel punishments." To balk is to spare. T. Warton. 20. New Presbyter is but Old Priest] He expresses the same sentiment in other parts of his works. Bishops and presbyters are the same to us both name and thing, &c. See his Speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, vol. i. p. 153. and the conclusion of his treatise, entitled, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. 20. writ large.] That is, more domineering and tyrannical. Warburton. This is the sense implied, but certainly with the allusion, intimated by Dr. Newton, to the derivation of the word Priest by contraction from Presbyter. E. SONNETS. I. To the Nightingale. O NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray The Sonnet is a species of poetry of Italian extraction, and the famous Petrarch hath gained the reputation of being the first author and inventor of it. He wrote a great number in commendation of his mistress Laura, with whom he was in love for twenty years together, and whose death he lamented with the same zeal for ten years afterwards: and for the tenderness and delicacy of his passion, as well as for the beauty and elegance of his sentiments and language, he is esteemed the great master of love-poetry among the moderns, and his Sonnets are universally allowed to be the standard and perfection of that kind of writing. The Sonnet, I think, consists generally of one thought, and that always turned in fourteen verses of the length of our heroics, two stanzas or measures of four verses each, and two of three, the first eight verses having no more than two rhymes: and herein it differs from the Canzone, which is not confined to any number of stanzas or verses. [See note *, p. 182. Canzone.] It is certainly one of the most difficult of all the lesser kinds of poetry, such simplicity and such correctness being required in the composition: and I have often wondered that the quaintness and exactness of the rhymes alone did not deter Milton from attempting it, but he was carried on by his love of the Italians and Italian poetry: and other celebrated writers have been equally fond of copying Petrarch, as Bellay, Ronsard, Malherb, &c. among the French; Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, &c. among the English; but none of them have conformed so exactly to the Italian model as Milton: and he is the last who excelled in this species of poetry, which was almost extinct among us, till it was revived of late with good success by an ingenious gentleman in Dodsley's Miscellanies. 1. Guitone d'Arezzo, who flourished about the year 1250, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May. First heard before the shallow cuckow's bill, many years before Petrarch was Dr. Johnson remarks, that, for this reason, the fabric of the regular Sonnet has never succeeded in English. But surely Milton and others have shewn that this inconvenience may be surmounted, and excellence results from difficulty. T. Warton. Of the two stanzas, into which the first eight lines of the Sonnet are to be distributed, the first verse chimes with the last, and the two intermediate ones with each other. The six concluding lines may either be confined within terminations of two similar sounds alternately arranged, or may be disposed, with two additional rhymes, into a quatrain and a couplet. Milton has not always observed this arrangement of the terminations in the six concluding lines. See the Sonnets to Fairfax and to Cromwell. He seems to have regarded the order of this part of the sonnet as submitted in a great degree to his discretion. In the construction of the Sonnet Drummond seems to have been the peculiar object of Milton's applause and imitation. Symmons. 1. We have observed, P. L. 5 vii. 435. how fond our poet was But as I lay this other night waking, That it were gode to here the nightingale, Moche rathir than the leudè cuccoo sing &c. 4. While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.] Because the singing in April. So Sydney, nightingale is supposed to begin in England's Helicon, Signat. O. edit. 1614. The nightingale, so soone as Aprill bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect wak- While late bare earth proud of new T. Warton. 6. First heard before] Virgil, Æn. iv. 24. Sed mihi vel tellus obtem prius ima dehiscat, Ante pudor quam te violo, aut tua jura resolvo. See Cerda. Richardson. 6. First heard before the shallow cuckow's bill, &c.] That is, if they happen to be heard before the cuckow, it is lucky for the lover. But Spenser calls the cuckow the messenger of spring, and supposes that his trumpet Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate 10 II. DONNA leggiadra il cui bel nome honora De sui atti soavi giamai parco, E i don', che son d'amor saette ed arco, La onde l'alta tua virtu s'infiora. Quando tu vaga parli, o lieta canti Che mover possa duro alpestre legno shrill warns all lovers to wait upon Cupid, Sonn. xix. Jonson gives this appellation to the nightingale, in the Sad Shepherd, a. ii. s. 6. literally from a fragment of Sap- ΗΡΟΣ Δ' ΑΓΓΕΛΟΣ, ἱμερόφωνος αηδων. But best, the dear good angel of the hitherto the nightingale had not spring, The nightingale. Angel is messenger. And the whole expression seems to be preceded the cuckow as she |