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VII.

At a Solemn Music.

BLEST pair of Sirens, pledges of heav'n's joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,

Wed
your divine sounds, and mix'd pow'r employ
Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce,
And to our high-rais'd phantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure concent,

the Circumcision,) were not at first printed together. I believe they were all written about the year 1629. T. Warton.

2. Sphere-born harmonious sisters, voice and verse.] So, says Mr. Bowle, Marino in his Adone, c. vii. 1.

Musica e Poesia son due sorelle.

T. Warton. 3. Wed your divine sounds, &c.] In the manuscript it appears that he had written these lines thus at first.

Mix your choice words, and happiest sounds employ

Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce,

And as your equal raptures temper'd

sweet

In high mysterious happy spousal meet,
Snatch us from earth a while,
Us of ourselves and native woes beguile,
And to our high-rais'd phantasy pre-
sent, &c.

3. Jonson has amplified this idea, Epigr. cxxix. on E. Filmer's Musical work, 1629.

What charming peals are these?-
They are the marriage-rites
Of two the choicest pair of man's
delights,

Musick and Poesie:

French Air and English Verse here wedded lie, &c.

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Compare L'Allegro, 137. See also King James's Furies in the Invocation.

-marrying so my heavenly verse
Unto the harpe's accorder.

In that King's Poeticall Exercises,
Edinb. 4to. no date, printed by
R. Waldegrave. T. Warton.

6. of pure concent,] So we read in the manuscript, and in the edition of 1673, and we prefer the authority of both to the single one of the edition in 1645, which has of pure content.

6. Concent, not consent, (which Tonson first reads, ed. fol. 1695.) is the reading of the Cambridge manuscript. Hence we should correct Jonson, in an Epithalamium on Mr. Weston, vol. vii. 2. And in the Foxe, a. iii. s. iv. p. 483. vol. vii. Works, ed. 1616. And perhaps Shakespeare, K. Henr. V. a. i. s. 2.

For government, tho' high, and low, and lower

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, &c.

And Lilly's Midas, 1592. a. iv. s. 1. And Fairfax's Tasso, c. xviii. 19. Concent and concented occur in several places of Spenser.

The undisturbed song of pure

Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne
To him that sits thereon

With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud up-lifted angel-trumpets blow,
And the cherubic host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,

With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms

Singing everlastingly;

That we on earth with undiscording voice
May rightly answer that melodious noise;

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14. Compare P. L. vi. 882. and the Epitaph. Damon. 216. Lætaque frondentis gestans umbracula palmæ. T. Warton. 17-25. That we on earth, &c. -renew that song] Perhaps there are no finer lines in Milton, less obscured by conceit, less embarrassed by affected expressions, and less weakened by pompous epithets. And in this perspicuous and simple style are conveyed some of the noblest ideas of a most sublime, philosophy, heightened by metaphors and allusions suitable to the subject. T. Warton.

18. May rightly answer that melodious noise ;] The following lines were thus at first in the manuscript.

By leaving out those harsh ill sounding jars

Of clamorous sin that all our music

mars

And in our lives, and in our song
May keep in tune with heav'n, till
God ere long &c.

As once we did, till disproportion'd sin
Jarr'd against nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made

To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway'd
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood

In first obedience, and their state of good.

O may we soon again renew that song,

And keep in tune with heav'n, till God ere long
To his celestial consort us unite,

To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light.

18. Noise is in a good sense music. So in Ps. xlvii. 5. "God is gone up with a merry noise, and the Lord with the sound of the trump." Noise is sometimes literally synonimous with music. As in Shakespeare, "Sneak's noise." And in Chapman's All Fools, 1605. Reed's Old Pl. iv. 187.

-You must get us music too, Calls in a cleanly noise. Compare also the ode on Christ's Nativity, st. ix. 96. and Spenser, F. Q. i. xii. 39. See more instances in Reed's Old Pl. vol. v. 304. vi. 70. vii. 8. x. 277. And in Shakespeare, Johns. Steev. vol. v. p. 489. seq. Perhaps the lady in Comus, 227, does not speak quite contemptuously, though modestly, "such noise as I can "make." Caliban seems, by the context, to mean musical sounds, when he says, the "isle is full of "noises." T. Warton.

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-Sin that first
Distemper'd all things, &c.
Nature's chime is from one of
Jonson's Epithalamions, vol. vii.
2.

It is the kindlie season of the time,
The month of growth, which calls all
creatures forth

To do their offices in nature's chime, &c.

Jonson alludes also to that original harmony, which Milton notices, v. 21. Sad Shepherd, a. iii. s. 2.

-giving to the world

Again his first and tuneful planetting. See ode on the Nativity, st. xii. xiii. T. Warton.

23. In perfect diapason,] Concord through all the tones, dia warwy. Plin. lib. ii. sect. 20. Ita septem tonos effici, quam diapason harmoniam vocant, hoc est, universitatem concentus. Richardson.

28. To live with him, and sing &c.] In the manuscript the last line stands thus,

To live and sing with him in endless morn of light.

VIII.

An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester *. THIS rich marble doth inter

The honour'd wife of Winchester,

A Viscount's daughter, an Earl's heir,
Besides what her virtues fair
Added to her noble birth,

More than she could own from earth.
Summers three times eight save one
She had told; alas too soon,

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After so short time of breath,

To house with darkness, and with death.

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Yet had the number of her days

Been as complete as was her praise,

Nature and fate had had no strife
In giving limit to her life.
Her high birth, and her graces sweet
Quickly found a lover meet;

*This Lady was Jane, daughter of Thomas Lord Viscount Savage, of Rock-Savage in the county of Chester, who by marriage became the heir of Lord Darcy Earl of Rivers; and was the wife of John Marquis of Winchester, and the mother of Charles first Duke of Bolton. She died in childbed of a second son in the twenty-third year of her age, and Milton made these verses at Cambridge, as appears by the sequel.

4. Besides what her virtues fair, &c.] In Howell's entertaining letters there is one to this lady which may justify our author's

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panegyric. It is dated Mar. 15, 1626. He says, he assisted her in learning Spanish: and that nature and the graces exhausted all their treasure and skill in

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framing this exact model of "female perfection." He adds, "I return you here the Sonnet

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your Grace pleased to send me "lately, rendered into Spanish, "and fitted for the same ayre it "had in English both for ca"dence and feete, &c." Howell's Letters, vol. i. sect. 4. Let. xiv. p. 180. T. Warton.

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15. Her high birth, and her

graces sweet

Quickly found a lover meet;]

The virgin quire for her request

The God that sits at marriage feast;

He at their invoking came

But with a scarce well-lighted flame;
And in his garland as he stood,!
Ye might discern a cypress bud.
Once had the early matrons run
To greet her of a lovely son,

And now with second hope she goes,
And calls Lucina to her throws;
But whether by mischance or blame
Atropos for Lucina came;

Her husband was a conspicuous
loyalist in the reign of Charles I.
His magnificent castle of Basing
in Hampshire withstood an ob-
stinate siege of two years against
the rebels, and when taken was
levelled to the ground, because
in every window was flourished
Aymez Loyauté. He died in 1674,
and was buried at Englefield in
Berkshire; where, on his monu-
ment, is an admirable Epitaph
by Dryden. It is remarkable,
that husband and wife should
have severally received the ho-
nour of an epitaph from two
such poets as Dryden and Milton.
Jonson also wrote a pathetic
poem, entitled, An Elegie on the
Lady Anne Pawlett, Marchioness
of Winton;
Underw. vol. vii. 17.
But Jane e appears in the text of
the poem, with the circumstance
of her being the daughter of
Lord Savage. She therefore
must have been our author's
Marchioness. Compare Cart-
wright's poems, p. 193. There

VOL. III.

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