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LYCIDA S.

In this MONODY, the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his paffage from Chefter on the Irish feas, 1637. And by occafion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their highth.

YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-fere,

Ver. 1. Yet once more, &c.] The best poets imperceptibly adopt phrafes and formularies from the writings of their contemporaries or immediate predeceffours. An Elegy on the death of the celebrated Countess of Pembroke, fir Philip Sidney's fifter, begins thus: "Yet once againe, my Mufe." See Songes and Sonnettes of Vncertain Auctours, added to Surrey's and Wyat's Poems, edit. Tottell, fol. 85. It is a remark of Peck, which has been filently adopted by doctor Newton, that this exordium, Yet once more, has an allufion to fome of Milton's former poems on fimilar occafions, fuch as, On the Death of a fair Infant, Epitaph on the Marchionefs of Winchester, &c. But why should it have a reftrictive reference, why a retrospect to his elegiack pieces in particular? It has a reference to his poetical compofitions in general, or rather to his last poem which was Comus. He would fay, "I am again, in the midst of other studies, unexpectedly and unwillingly called back to poetry, again compelled to write verses, in confequence of the recent disastrous lofs of my shipwrecked friend, &c." Neither are the plants here mentioned, as fome have fufpected, appropriated to elegy. They are fymbolical of general poetry. Theocritus, in an Epigram, i. 3, dedicates myrtles to Apollo. Doctor Newton, however, has fuppofed, that Milton, while he mentions Apollo's laurel, to characterife King as a poet, adds the myrtle, the tree

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude ;

of Venus, to fhew that King was also of a proper age for love. We will allow that King, whatever hidden meaning the poet might have in enumerating the myrtle, was of a proper age for love, being now twenty-five years old: and the ivy our critick thinks to be expreffive of King's learning, for which it was a reward. In the mean time, I would not exclude another probable implication: by plucking the berries and the leaves of laurel, myrtle, and ivy, he might intend to point out the paftoral or rural turn of this poem. T. WARTON.

Ver. 2. Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-fere,] Brown and black are claffical epithets for the myrtle. Ovid, Art. Amator. iii. 690.

"Ros maris, et lauri, nigráque myrtus olet.”

Horace contrafts the brown myrtle with the green ivy, Od. i. xxv. 17.

"Læta quod pubes edera virenti

"Gaudeat, pulla magis atque myrto.”

A notion has prevailed, that this paftoral is written in the Dorick dialect, by which in English we are to understand an antiquated style. Doctor Newton obferves, "The reader cannot but obferve, that there are more antiquated and obfolete words in this, than in any other of Milton's poems." Of the three or four words in LYCIDAS which even we now call obfolete, almost all are either used in Milton's other poems, or were familiar to readers and writers of verse in the year 1638. The word fere, or dry, in the text, one of the most uncommon of thefe words, occurs in Par. Loft, B. x. 1071, and in our author's Pfulms, ii. 27. T. WARTON.

Ver. 3. I come to pluck your berries &c.] This beautiful allufion to the unripe age of his friend, in which death “shatter'd his leaves before the mellowing year," is not antique, I think, but of thofe fecret graces of Sperfer. See Shep. Cal. Jan. ver. 37. The poet there fays of himfelf, under the name of Colin Clout," All fo my luftfull leafe is drie and fere."

RICHARDSON.

Milton had moft probably in his mind a paffage in Cicero

And, with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year: 5
Bitter constraint, and fad occafion dear,
Compels me to difturb your feafon due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his
Who would not fing for Lycidas? He knew 10
Himself to fing, and build the lofty rhyme.

peer:

De Senectute, where the death of young perfons is compared to unripe fruit plucked with violence from the tree, and that of old perfons to fully ripe mellow fruit that falls naturally: "Et quafi poma ex arboribus, cruda fi fint, vi avelluntur; fi matura et cocta, decidunt; fic vitam adolefcentibus vis aufert, fenibus maturitas." DUNSTER.

Ver. 5.

mellowing year:] Here is an inaccuracy of the poet. The mellowing year could not affect the leaves of the laurel, the myrtle, and the ivy; which laft is characterised before as never-fere. T. WARTON.

Ver. 6. Bitter constraint, and sad occafion dear,] Spenfer, as Mr. Richardfon obferves, Faer. Qu. i. i. 53.

"Love of yourfelfe, fhe faide, and deare constraint,
"Lets me not fleepe, &c."

And Sidney thus addreffes Time, Arcadia, lib. iii.

"Thou art the father of occafion deare." TODD.

Ver. 10. Who would not fing for Lycidas?] Virgil, Ecl. x. 3. 66 neget quis carmina Gallo?" PECK.

Ver. 11. and build the lofty rhyme.] A beautiful Latinifm. Hor. Ep. I. iii. 24. "Seu condis amabile carmen." And De Arte Poet. v. 436. "Si carmina condes." NEWTON.

Euripides fays ftill more boldly because more specifically, 'Aoida's 'EHYPINEE, Suppl. v. 997. HURD.

Milton, I conceive, penned this admired expreffion relating to Lycidas, not without an eye to the verfes of his beloved Spenfer, in the Ruines of Rome, ft. 25.

He must not float

upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of fome melodious tear.

"O that I had the Thracian Poets harpe ·
"Or that I had Amphions instrument
"Or that at least I could, with pencill fine,
"Fashion the pourtraicts of these palacis,
"By paterne of great Virgils fpirit divine!
"I would affay with that which in me is,
"To builde, with levell of my loftie ftyle,

"That which no hands can evermore compyle." TODD.

Ver. 12. He must not float upon his watery bier] So Jonfon, in Cynthia's Revells, 1600. A. i. S. ii,

"Sing fome mourning straine

"Over his watrie hearse." T. WARTON.

So P. Fletcher, of the dying fwan, Purp. I. c. i. ft. 30. "And, chaunting her own dirge, tides on her watry herfe."

66

Todd.

Ver. 14. melodious tear.] For fong, or plaintive elegiack ftrain, the cause of tears. Euripides in like manner, Suppl. v. 1128. Π. ΔΑΚΡΥΑ φέρεις φίλα—ολωλότων ; "Where do you bear the tears of the dead, i. e. the remains or ashes of the dead, which occafion our tears ?" Or perhaps the paffage is corrupt. See note on the place, edit. Markland. The fame use of tears, however, occurs, ibid. v. 454. AAKPYA δ' ἐτοιμάζεσι. ΗURD.

The paffage is undoubtedly corrupt; П is fuperfluous, and mars the context. Reifke, with little or no improvement, but justly rejecting the interrogation, propofed, wãi dáxpva. The late Oxford editor feems to have given the genuine reading, ΝΑΙ δάκρυα φέρεις φίλα. Τ. WARTON,

Tear, in this paffage, means a funeral elegy. Thus Harvey's Verfes on the death of Sir Thomas Smith are entitled "Mufarum Lachrymæ ;" whence his friend Spenfer might be led to affix, to his elegies of the nine Mufes, the name of Teares of the Mufes. So Drummond calls his elegy "On the death of Moe

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Begin then, Sifters of the facred well, That from beneath the feat of Jove doth fpring; Begin, and fomewhat loudly fweep the ftring. Hence with denial vain, and coy excufe:

liades [that is, Prince Henry,] Tears." A paraphrastick explanation may be added from an elegy on Dr. Donne's death, Poems, 1633. p. 393.

"Who fhall prefume to mourn thee, Donne, unlesse
"He could his teares in thy expreflions dreffe,

"And teach his griefe, that reverence of thy hearse,
"To weepe lines learned, as thy anniverse,

"A poeme of that worth, whofe every teare
"Deferves the title of a feverall yeare."

And Cleveland, in his Obfequy on Mr. King, the Lycidas of
Milton, gives us in other words, the melodious tear:

"I like not tears in tune; nor will I prife

"His artificiall grief, &c." TODD.

Ver. 15. Begin then, Sifters of the facred well,] Browne, in his Britannia's Paftorals, as Mr. Dunfter alfo notices, calls Helicon "the facred well," B. i. S. 5. ad fin. But Milton feems to have likewife borne in mind the poetry of Spenfer, both in regard to Helicon and the addrefs to the Mufes, in which opinion I am countenanced by Mr. Dunfter. See the Teares of the Mufes, where the "facred Sifters nine" are addressed as having poured forth their plaints as they "did fit befide the filver fprings of Helicone." And at the end of the addrefs, the poet calls on Clio to commence the doleful lay:

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Begin, thou eldest Sister of the crew." TODD.

Ver. 17. Begin, and fomewhat loudly fweep the string.] Tickell reads louder, in his edition of 1720, against the authority of the early editions, which have all loudly. He was perhaps thinking of a line in Dryden, an author whom he seems to have known better than Milton. "A louder yet and yet a louder ftrain." Fenton has also adopted Tickell's reading. T. WARTON. Tickell was mifled by Tonfon's edition of 1713. TODD.

Ver. 18.
VOL. VI.

C

coy] The epithet coy

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