Then sing of secret things that came to pass But fie, my wandering Muse, how thou dost stray! Then quick about thy purposed business come, That to the next I may resign my room. 45 50 55 Then ENS is represented as father of the Predicaments, his ten sons, whereof the eldest stood for Substance with his canons, which ENS, thus speaking, explains : : Good luck befriend thee, son"; for, at thy birth, 60 Thy drowsy nurse hath sworn she did them spie Come tripping to the room where thou didst lie; And, sweetly singing round about thy bed, Strow all their blessings on thy sleeping head. She heard them give thee this, that thou shouldst still 65 Yet there is something that doth force my fear; For once it was my dismal hap to hear A sibyl old, bow-bent with crooked age, That far events full wisely could presage, 70 And in time's long and dark prospective glass Such as the wise Demodocus once told. He now little thought that Homer's beautiful couplet of the fate of Demodocus could, in a few years, with so much propriety be applied to himself. He was but too conscious of his resemblance to some other Greek bards of antiquity when he wrote the 'Paradise Lost.' See b. iii. 33, seq.-T. WARTON. h Good luck befriend thee, son, &c. Here the metaphysical or logical Ens is introduced as a person, and addressing his eldest son Substance; afterwards the logical Quantity, Quality, and Relation, are personified, and speak. This affectation will appear more excusable in Milton, if we recollect that every thing, in the masks of this age, appeared in a bodily shape. "Airy nothing" had not only a "local habitation and a name," but a visible figure.T. WARTON. For, at thy birth, The faery ladies danced upon the hearth. This is the first and last time that the system of the fairies was ever introduced to illustrate the doctrine of Aristotle's ten categories. It may be remarked that they both were in fashion, and both exploded, at the same time.-T. WARTON. 1 Shall subject be to many an Accident. A pun on the logical Accidens.-T. WARTON. m O'er all his brethren he shall reign as king, To harbour those that are at enmity". What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot? 73 85 90 The next, QUANTITY and QUALITY, spake in prose; then RELATION was called by his name. Rivers, arise; whether thou be the son Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulphy Dun, Or Trent, who, like some Earth-born giant, spreads Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath; O'er all his brethren he shall reign as king. 95 The Predicaments are his brethren; of or to which he is the Subjectum, although first in excellence and order.-T. WARTON. Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under. They cannot exist, but as inherent in Substance.-T. WARTON. From others he shall stand in need of nothing. He is still Substance, with or without Accident.-T. WARTON, Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing. By whom he is clothed, superinduced, modified, &c. : but he is still the same.T. WARTON. "Substantia substantia novæ contrariatur," is a school maxim.-T. WARTON. P To harbour those that are at enmity. His accidents.-T. WARTON. Rivers, arise, &c. Milton is supposed, in the invocation and assemblage of these rivers, to have had an eye on Spenser's episode of the nuptials of Thames and Medway, "Faery Queene," IV. xi. I rather think he consulted Drayton's "Polyolbion." It is hard to say, in what sense, or in what manner, this introduction of the rivers was to be applied to the subject.-T. WARTON. Or Trent, who, like some Earth-born giant, spreads His thirty arms along the indented meads. It is said that there were thirty sorts of fish in this river, and thirty religious houses on its banks. These traditions, on which Milton has raised a noble image, are a rebus on the name Trent.-T. WARTON. Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath. At Mickleham, near Dorking, in Surrey, the river Mole, during the summer, except in heavy rains, sinks through its sandy bed into a subterraneous and invisible channel. In winter it constantly keeps its current.-T. WARTON. Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death. The maiden is Sabrina. See Comus,' v. 827.-T. WARTON. Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee, Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallow'd Dee"; Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name '; [The rest was prose.] AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. WHAT needs my Shakspeare, for his honour'd bones, Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art, " Ancient hallow'd Dee. 5 10 15 Dee's divinity was Druidical. From the same superstition, some rivers in Wales are still held to have the gift or virtue of prophecy. See note on 'Lycidas,' ver. 55.—— T. WARTON. Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name. Humber, a Scythian king, landed in Britain three hundred years before the Roman invasion, and was drowned in this river by Locrine, after conquering King Albanact.-T. WARTON. "Or Medway smooth, or royal-tower'd Thame. The smoothness of the Medway is characterised in the "Mourning Muse of Thestylis." The royal towers of Thames imply Windsor castle, familiar to Milton's view, and to which I have already remarked his allusions.-T. WARTON. This is but an ordinary poem to come from Milton, on such a subject; but he did not yet know his own strength, or was content to dissemble it, out of deference to the false taste of his time. The conceit of Shakspeare's "Lying sepulchred in a tomb of his own making," is in Waller's manner, not his own. But he made Shakspeare amends in his 'L'Allegro,' v. 133.-HURD. Birch, and from him Dr. Newton, asserts, that this copy of verses was written in the twenty-second year of Milton's age, and printed with the Poems of Shakspeare at London in 1640. This therefore is the first of Milton's pieces that was published. We have here restored the title from the second folio of Shakspeare, printed 1632.— T. WARTON. This epitaph is dated 1630, in Milton's own edition of his poems in 1673.-TODD. y Dear Son of Memory. He honours his favourite Shakspeare with the same relation as the Muses themselves, for the Muses are called, by the old poets, "the daughters of Memory." Sce Hesiod, "Theog." v. 53.-NEWTON. The leaves of thy unvalued book. "Thy invaluable book." So in Shakspeare, "Rich. III." a. i. s. 4:— Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels.-TODD. RPP ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER, Who sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to HERE lies old Hobson; Death hath broke his girt, Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and the Bull: Had not his weekly course of carriage fail'd; But lately finding him so long at home, And thinking how his journey's end was come, In the kind office of a chamberlin " Show'd him his room where he must lodge that night, If any ask for him, it shall be sed, Hobson has supp'd, and 's newly gone to bed. ANOTHER ON THE SAME. HERE lieth one, who did most truly prove So hung his destiny, never to rot While he might still jog on and keep his trot, Time numbers motion; yet, without a crime Too long vacation hasten'd on his term. Merely to drive the time away, he sicken'd, Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quicken'd; ▪ In the kind office of a chamberlin, &c. 10 15 I believe the chamberlain is an officer not yet discontinued in some of the old inns in the city.-T. WARTON. b Hobson's inn at London was the Bull in Bishopsgate-street, where his figure in fresco, with an inscription, was lately to be seen. Peck, at the end of his "Memoirs of Cromwell," has printed Hobson's will, which is dated at the close of the year 1630. He died Jan. 1, 1630, while the plague was in London. This piece was written that year.-T. WARTON. 15 10 5 Nay, quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretch'd, But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers, As he were press'd to death, he cried, More weight! He had been an immortal carrier. Link'd to the mutual flowing of the seas; Yet, strange to think, his wain was his increase: Only remains this superscription. 20 25 30 ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT. BECAUSE you have thrown off your prelate lord, And with stiff vows renounced his liturgy, To seize the widow'd whore Plurality From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorr'd; To force our consciences that Christ set free, e * Because you have thrown off your prelate lord, &c. In railing at establishments, Milton condemned not episcopacy only: he thought even the simple institutions of the new reformation too rigid and arbitrary for the natural freedom of conscience; he contended for that sort of individual or personal religion, by which every man is to be his own priest. When these verses were written, which form an irregular sonnet, Presbyterianism was triumphant: and the Independents and the Churchmen joined in one common complaint against a want of toleration. The church of Calvin had now its heretics. Milton's haughty temper brooked no human control: even the parliamentary hierarchy was too coercive for one who acknowledged only King Jesus. His froward and refining philosophy was contented with no species of carnal policy: conformity of all sorts was slavery. He was persuaded that the modern presbyter was as much calculated for persecution an 1 oppression as the ancient bishop.-T. WARTON. And with stiff vows renounced his liturgy. The Directory was enforced under severe penalties in 1644. The legislature prohibited the use of the Book of Common Prayer, not only in places of public worship, but in private families.-T. WARTON. And ride us with a classic hierarchy. In the Presbyterian church now established by law, there were, among others, classical assemblies: the kingdom of England, instead of so many dioceses, was now divided into a certain number of provinces, made up of representatives from the several classes within their respective boundaries: every parish had a congregational or parochial presbytery for the affairs of its own circle; these parochial presbyteries were combined into classes, which chose representatives for the provincial assembly, as did the provincial for the national. Thus, the city of London being distributed into YY |