Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves", 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 P, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep For neither were ye playing on the steep, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard streams. n Thee, shepherd, thee, the woods, and desert caves, &c. The passage most similar, in all its circumstances, to the present, is in the opinion of Mr. Dunster, the lamentation for Orpheus in Ovid, "Met." xi. 43. Te mæstæ volucres, Orpheu; te turba ferarum, Te rigidi silices, tua carmina sæpe secutæ Fleverunt sylvæ; positis te frondibus arbos.-TODD. • The gadding vine. Dr. Warburton supposes, that the vine is here called "gadding," because, being married to the elm, like other wives she is fond of gadding abroad, and seeking a new associate. Tully, in a beautiful description of the growth of the vine, says, that it spreads itself abroad,"multiplici lapsu et erratico." "De Senectute."-T. WARTON. PAs killing as the canker to the rose. The whole context of words in this and the four following lines is melodious and enchanting. q Where were ye ? This burst is as magnificent as it is affecting. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high. In Drayton's "Polyolbion," Mona is introduced reciting her own history; where she mentions her thick and dark groves as the favourite residence of the druids. For the druid-sepulchres, in the preceding line, at Kerig y Druidion, in the mountains of Denbighshire, he consulted Camden's Britannia."-T. WARTON. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream. In Spenser, the river Dee is the haunt of magicians. Merlin used to visit old Timon, in a green valley under the foot of the mountain Rauranvaur in Merionethshire, from which this river springs. "Faerie Queene," 1. ix. 4. The Dee has been made the scene of a variety of ancient British traditions. The city of Chester was called by the Britons the "fortress upon Dee;" which was feigned to have been founded by the giant Leon, and to have been the place of king Arthur's magnificent coronation: but there is another and perhaps a better reason, why Deva's is a "wisard" stream. In Drayton, this river is styled the "hallowed," and the "holy," and the "ominous flood." In our author's "Vacation Exercise," Dee is characterised "ancient hallow'd Dee,” v. 91. Much superstition was founded on the circumstance of its being the ancient boundary between England and Wales and Drayton, in his Tenth Song, having recited this part of its history, adds, that, by changing its fords, it foretold good or evil, war or peace, dearth or plenty, to either country. He then introduces the Dee, over which king Edgar had been rowed by eight kings, relating the story of Brutus. Milton appears to have taken a particular pleasure in mentioning this venerable river. In the beginning of his first Elegy, he almost R R as ind's since on the backs of the Dee; which he me da uziling headlong over rocks Bus a mos beme to the text immediately lying Tim de sis of the Druids, dispersed over the GREG of Mina, and the wizard waters of saf wery. He died in the old British tra da seems to have been in some measure hers, in maiing Dayton; who, in the Ninth TEST PICKSOY enlarged, and almost at one view, time ai felcty of fancy, that Milton, in ne Kiss u kan, is subtrated places of the most na ni nemzed by the vishies of British bards; and ☛ made and moves Pupe, in his very correct sect my the far felis" of Isis, and the the same time there is an immediate propriety in the tut dit de fierce, and is not I believe obvious to Jerngisure, de Ise of Man, and the banks of the Dee, TRITON was shipwrecked. It is thus Theocritus Hei, via Debnis Eed, they were not in the re a me packs if the great terent Anapas, the sacred water of mur Em becus L. these were the haunts or the habitation These mes mi racks have a real connexion with the poet's eff 1. Tema vid actioes a thousand charms of poetry, *a ri 5* ď Oggeris iuen in pieces by the Bacchanalians :— IN MED IT BUT. And is merers are called "that wild rout," the macher of Orders. Lyndas, as a poet, is bere tacitly compared hies Ther weer bed veans of the water.-I. WARTON. Lies law been muce têm casă, and more popular than these; nor more justly * qui fà a burst and at, rudien baze. Sea - Paraise Regained,” b. i. 47:——“ For what is glory J.-I. FARTVIN, W Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life. Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." O, fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood, And listens to the herald of the sea That came in Neptune's plea: He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds o, w Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears. In Shakspeare are "the shears of Destiny "with more propriety, "King John," a. iv. 5. 2. The king says to Pembroke,— 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.-T. WARTON. But not the praise, &c. "But the praise is not intercepted." While the poet, in the character of a shepherd, is moralising on the uncertainty of human life, Phœbus interposes with a sublime strain, above the tone of pastoral poetry: he then, in an abrupt and elliptical apostrophe, at "O fountain Arethuse," hastily recollects himself, and apologises to his rural Muse, or in other words to Arethusa and Mincius, the celebrated streams of bucolic song, for having so suddenly departed from pastoral allusions, and the tenor of his subject: but I could not," he adds, "resist the sudden and awful impulse of the god of verse, who interrupted me with a strain of higher mood, and forced me to quit for a moment my pastoral ideas: but I now resume my rural oaten pipe, and proceed as I began.' In the same manner, he reverts to his rural strain, after St. Peter's "dread voice," with " Return, Alpheus."-T. WARTON. y Phœbus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears. Virgil, "Ecl." vi. 3: Cynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit-PECK. Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world. Perhaps with a remembrance of Shakspeare, "Henry IV." part 1. a. i. s. 2 :— And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, Shall show more goodly, and attract more eyes, Than that which hath no foil to set it off.-T. WARTON. Those pure eyes. Perhaps from Scripture :-"God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." And hence an epithet, sufficiently hackneyed in modern poetry, 'Comus," v. 213:-" Welcome, pure-eyed Faith."-T. WARTON. b0, fountain Arethuse. In giving Arethusa the distinctive appellation of " fountain," Milton closely and learnedly attends to the ancient Greek writers.-T. WARTON. e The felon winds. i. e. the cruel winds.-TODD. And „bestad Å every gust of ruzzed wings And sure Hippocades their answer brings", But in the eclipse, and ripp'd with earses dark, Nem Camos, reverend sire, went fucting slow ", THIÊN THU 2ch be, IV dearest pledge ! TA A PERC i Tenge the beak of a bird-T. WARTON. * Lutsen Flugrads their asse:r brings. E-I. WARTS. # The fral and perfdious bork, Fuit in de ecja, sad ring'`d with curses dark. 103 Cerit mentes the Le et ncfasto," and Mala soluta navis exit ar to this, yet he has not observed how much more BASSY ĐỂ MINE: that the ship was built in the eclipse, and ང 1:|::: at the enchantments of Macbeth:" Stips of yew, Stver & in the moon's eclipse. · Rost of hemlock dog'd in the dark.” The shipwreck De be a stem, bet by the bad conduct of the ship, unfit for so dangerous in ́s & Duser reserves, as meant to mark the sluggish course of the marty Candan's aescripcion of the Mincius,—" tardusque meatu Mincius.” * Figures dim. Aiming u de focious tračtens of the high antiquity of Cambridge: but how Cam dat zgusnet bra hairy mantle" from other rivers which have herds and flocks on KD. W 190, LIỀN the budge ductors of the Stoick fur," as Milton calls hat lent him their academic robes.—WARBURTON. 豐 Pole, that the hairy mantle," being joined with the "sedge bonnet," mesa is miser merks. It would be difficult to ascertain the meaning of Perluas the poet himself had no very clear or determinate idea; but, in ANUT 126 ITSMS as eness leaves something to be supplied or explained by the The marie hand the bennet sedge," are thus ably illustrated in a note by Mr. IMPCR, SKJOLDOd te his elegant Greek translation of Lycidas," 1797:-" Chlamydem SE VOUZ ONLŽOTA mezian, que coccose Camo innatat: petasum vero ex ulva notis quodamner füa beerts as simata, et ad marginem foliorum ferrata, more hyacinthini B-ig s la” may be considered as referring to the "sedge bonnet;" in vec acce M. Plume and Mr. Danster concur; and the latter also remarks, that at snige ieares, at figs, when dried, or even beginning to wither, there are not only certain 4. 15, 20 (DESIDES, and dusky streaks, but also a variety of dotted marks ("* scrawled over") va bat at dit written, on the edge, which withers before the rest of the flag.-Topa. The last part of Warton's note contains a sagacious observation, as to the spells of poetry, |