Taught ye by mere A. S.' and Rotherford & ? May, with their wholesome and preventive shears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge; 10 15 twelve classes, each class chose two ministers and four lay-elders to represent them in a provincial assembly, which received appeals from the parochial and classical presbyteries, &c. These ordinances, which ascertain the age of the piece before us, took place in 1646 and 1647. See Scobell, "Col." P. i. pp. 99, 150.-T. WARTON. Taught ye by mere A. S. The Independents were now contending for toleration. In 1643 their principal leaders published a pamphlet with this title, "An Apologeticall Narration of some Ministers formerly exiles in the Netherlands, now members of the Assembly of Divines. Humbly submitted to the honourable Houses of Parliament." This piece was answered by one A. S., the person intended by Milton.-T. WARTON. Rotherford. Samuel Rutherford, or Rutherfoord, was one of the chief commissioners of the church of Scotland, who sat with the Assembly at Westminster, and who concurred in settling the grand points of Presbyterian discipline. He was professor of divinity in the university of St. Andrew's, and has left a great variety of Calvinistic tracts. He was an avowed enemy to the Independents, as appears from his "Disputation on pretended Liberty of Conscience, 1649." It is hence easy to see why Rotherford was an obnoxious character to Milton.-T. WARTON. By shallow Edwards. It is not the "Gangrena" of Thomas Edwards that is here the object of Milton's resentment, as Dr. Newton and Mr. Thyer have supposed. Edwards had attacked Milton's favourite plan of Independency, in two pamphlets full of miserable invectives, immediately and professedly levelled against the "Apologeticall Narration" above mentioned, "Antapologia, or a full Answer to the Apologeticall Narration, &c., wherein is handled many of the Controversies of these Times. By T. Edwards, minister of the gospel. Lond. 1644." However, in the "Gangrena," not less than in these two tracts, it had been his business to blacken the opponents of Presbyterian uniformity, that the parliament might check their growth by penal statutes.-T. WARTON. 1 And Scotch what d'ye call. Perhaps Henderson, or George Gillespie, another Scotch minister with a harder name, and one of the ecclesiastical commissioners at Westminster.-T. WARTON. Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent. The famous council of Trent.-T. WARTON. 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 of the present context is, "Check your insolence, without proceeding to cruel punishments." To "balk," is to spare.-T. WARTON. 1 Writ large. That is, more domineering and tyrannical.-WArburton. TRANSLATIONS. THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, LIB. I. WHAT slender youth bedew'd with liquid odours, In wreaths thy golden hair, Plain in thy neatness? O, how oft shall he Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold, Who always vacant, always amiable Hopes thee, of flattering gales Unmindful. Hapless they, To whom thou untried seem'st fair! Me, in my vow'd Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea. FROM GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. BRUTUS thus addresses DIANA in the country of Leogecia: Walk'st on the rowling spheres, and through the deep: What land, what seat of rest, thou bidd'st me seek, To whom, sleeping before the altar, DIANA answers in a vision the same night: Brutus, far to the west, in the ocean wide, Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, FROM DANTE. Ан, Constantine! of how much ill was cause, FROM DANTE. FOUNDED in chaste and humble poverty, 'Gainst them that raised thee dost thou lift thy horn, FROM ARIOSTO. THEN pass'd he to a flowery mountain green, FROM HORACE. WHOм do we count a good man? Whom but he FROM EURIPIDES. THIS is true liberty when freeborn men, FROM HORACE. -LAUGHING, to teach the truth, What hinders? as some teachers give to boys FROM HORACE. -JOKING decides great things, Stronger and better oft than earnest can. FROM SOPHOCLES. 'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds, And your ungodly deeds find me the words. FROM SENECA. -THERE can be slain No sacrifice to God more acceptable, PSALM 1. Done into verse, 1653. BLESS'D is the man who hath not walk'd astray Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat Of scorners hath not sat. But in the great PSALM II. Done August 8, 1653. Terzette. WHY do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations Muse a vain thing, the kings of the earth upstand Let us break off, say they, by strength of hand Their twisted cords: He, who in heaven doth dwell, Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell And fierce ire trouble them; but I, saith he, On Sion, my holy hill. A firm decree I will declare: the Lord to me hath said, : This day ask of me, and the grant is made; The heathen; and as thy conquest to be sway'd, Metrical psalmody was much cultivated in this age of fanaticism. Milton's father is a composer of some of the tunes in Ravenscroft's Psalms.-T. WARTON. "A literal version of the Psalms may boldly be asserted impracticable; for, if it were not, a poet so great as Milton would not, even in his earliest youth, have proved himself so very little of a formidable rival, as he has done, to Thomas Sternhold." Mason's "Essays on English Church Music," 1795, p. 177. In the last of these translations, however, as Mr. Warton observes, are some very poetical expressions.Todd. 5 With iron sceptre bruised, and them disperse Be taught, ye judges of the earth; with fear If once his wrath take fire like fuel sere, PSALM III. AUGUST 9, 1653.-When he fled from Absalom. Hast broke the teeth. This help was from the Lord; 20 5 10 15 20 PSALM IV. AUGUST 10, 1653. ANSWER me when I call, And set at large; now spare, Now pity me, and hear my earnest prayer. b My sustain. The verb converted into a substantive.-TODD. |