headed "MANE CITUS LECTUM FUGE," with some appended Latin verses on the same subject. As the leaf bore the name Milton still distinctly legible on its left margin, and as the handwriting bore in parts a strong resemblance to some of Milton's, Mr. Horwood concluded that the essay was a juvenile Academic Prolusion of Milton's on the subject of Early Rising, which he had not thought it worth while to print with the collection of his other Prolusiones Oratoria in 1674. Accordingly, when editing the Common - Place Book for the Camden Society in 1877, he appended the little essay and the verses, entitling the volume "A Common-Place Book of John Milton, and a Latin Essay and Latin Verses presumed to be by Milton." With the essay, as it is in prose, we have nothing to do here; but the verses, if only on the chance that they are an additional and accidentally recovered scrap of Milton's juvenile metrical composition in Latin, deserve reproduction. There are, in reality, two distinct pieces of verse, in different metres, though both on the subject of Early Rising, and both evidently intended as poetical appendages to the Prose Prolusion written on the same leaf: CARMINA ELEGIACA. Surge, age, surge! Leves, jam convenit, excute somnos ! Lux oritur; tepidi fulcra relinque tori. Jam canit excubitor gallus, prænuncius ales Et spargit nitidum læta per arva jubar. Cum premat imbellis lumina fessa sopor. Qui pote torpentem posse valere virum? [ASCLEPIADIC Verses.] Ignavus satrapam dedecet inclytum Torpentes Rutilos castraque Volscia : The text in both pieces is given as it stands in Mr. Horwood's transcript, save that the punctuation is corrected. There seem to be errors in some of the lines of the first piece. Neglecting these, we may say (1) that the internal evidence on the whole confirms the strong external evidence that the pieces are Milton's, and (2) that the style proves that in that case they must have been very early compositions of his. In all probability, they, and the Latin Prolusion to which they were attached, were done as a Latin theme when he was at St. Paul's School. If they were done later, they must have been among his very first exercises in Latin at Christ's College, Cambridge. NOTES TO PRELIMINARY MATTER. I. COMMENDATORY VERSES PREFIXED TO THE Latin Verses by S.B., M.D.-The author was Dr. Samuel Barrow, a physician. He was principal physician to the army of General Monk in Scotland in December 1659, when Monk was negotiating for the Restoration; and he was afterwards Advocate-General and Judge-Martial under the Restoration Government, and Physician in Ordinary to Charles II. He died March 21, 1681-82.--He has taken the liberty, in the title to his verses, and in the first line, of making Paradisus feminine, whereas the Greek and Latin writers make the word masculine. English Verses by A. M. (i.e. Andrew Marvell).-Marvell's intimacy with Milton had begun in 1652; and he had been Milton's assistant or colleague in the Latin Secretaryship to Cromwell from September 1657, and had retained office with him, after Cromwell's death (Sept. 1658), till the very eve of the Restoration. The present verses are but one out of many testimonies of Marvell's profound and affectionate regard for his illustrious friend. When they appeared, Marvell was about fifty-four years of age, had been M. P. for Hull in the Restoration House of Commons for about fourteen years, and was a marked public man both for his political honesty and for his literary ability. The last he had recently exhibited, with much popular effect, in his celebrated satirical invective, The Rehearsal Transprosed (1672-3), directed against Dr. Samuel Parker, who, after a youth of peculiarly strict Puritan professions, had turned renegade at the Restoration, was receiving ecclesiastical pro |