Then to come in spite of sorrow, 45 And at my window bid good morrow, Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, And to the stack, or the barn-door, Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn 45. Then to come in spite of sorrow,] These two poems, L'AI legro and Il Penseroso, are certainly the best of Milton's productions in rhyme, for the rhymes in Lycidas are irregular: but yet we may observe that several things are said, which would not have been said but only for the sake of the rhyme, and we have an instance, I conceive, in the line before us. Mr. Pope, I have been informed, had remarked several defects of the same kind in these two poems; and there may be some truth and justness in the observation, which Dryden has made in the dedication of his Juvenal, that kr rhyme was not Milton's talent, " he had neither the ease of doing "it, nor the graces of it;" but then it must be said, that he had talents for greater things, and there is more harmony in his blank verse than in all the rhyming poetry in the world. 46. And at my window bid good morrow,] Sylvester's Du Bartas, in the Cave of Sleep, p. 315. ed. 1621. -Cease, sweet chantecleere, VOL. III. Again, ibid. p. 70. But cheerful birds chirping him sweet good morrowes. T. Warton. Milton perhaps remembered Virgil in these descriptions of the morning, and the morning sounds; Evandrum ex humili tecto lux sus- Et matutini volucrum sub culmine And Gray certainly copied both The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, and the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. E. From the side of some hoar hill, Through the high wood echoing shrill: Some time walking not unseen 55 By hedge-row elms, on hillocs green, The nymphes with quivers shall Fairfax, cant. i. st. 72. adorne Their active sides, and rouse the morne With the shrill musicke of their horne. T. Warton. 57. Not unseen.] In the Penseroso, he walks unseen, v. 65. Happy men love witnesses of their joy; the splenetic love solitude. Hurd. 59. Right against the eastern gate, Where the great sun begins his state, &c.] Here is an allusion to a splendid or royal procession. Gray has adopted the first of these lines in his Descent of Odin. The eastern gate is a common image. See Milton's poem In Quintum Novembris, 133. Drayton, Polyolb. st. xiii. Shakespeare, Mids. Ñ. Dr. a. iii. s. 9. Compare also Browne, Brit. Past. b. i. s. v. and b. ii. s. iii. And Tasso, c. xiv. 3. T. Warton. 62. The clouds in thousand liveries dight,] And so in Il Pen seroso, And storied windows richly dight. Dight, dressed, adorned; a word used by Spenser, and our old writers. Faery Queen, b. i. cant. iv. st. 6. With rich array and costly arras dight. 60 So every one in arms was quickly dight. 62. Literally from a very puerile poetical description of the morning in one of his academic Prolusions. Ipsa quoque tellus in adventum solis, cultiori se induit vestitu, nubesque juxta variis chlamydata coloribus, pompa solenni, longoque ordine, videntur ancillari surgenti Deo. Pr. W. vol. ii. p. 586. This morning landscape of L'Allegro has served as a repository of imagery for all succeeding poets on the same subject. Much the same circumstances however, amongst others, are assembled by the author of Britannia's Pastorals, who wrote above thirty years before, b. iv. s. iv. p. 75. ed. 1616. By this had chanticlere, the village. clocke, Bidden the good wife for her maides to knocke: And the swart plowman for his breakfast staid, That he might till those lands were fallow laid: The hills and vallies here and there resound With the re-ecchoes of the deepemouth'd hound: Each sheapherd's daughter with her cleanly peale, Was come afield to milke the mornings meale; While the ploughman near at hand Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale. sheep, &c. It was suggested to me by the late ingenious Mr. Headley, that the word tale does not here imply stories told by shepherds, but that it is a technical term for numbering sheep, which is still used in Yorkshire and the distant counties. This interpretation I am inclined to adopt, which I will therefore endeavour to illustrate and enforce. Tale and tell, in this sense, were not unfamiliar in our poetry, in and about Milton's time. For instance, Dryden's Virgil, Bucol. iii. 33. And once she takes the tale of all my lambs. And in W. Browne's Shepheard's 65 Pipe, Egl. v. edit. 1614. 12mo. Signat. E. 4. v. 7. he is describing the dawn of day. When the shepheards from the fold All their bleating charges told; And, full careful, search'd if one Of all the flock was hurt, or gone, &c. And in Lilly's Gallathea, written 1592, Phillida, disguised like a boy, says, My mother said, I "could be no lad till I was "twentie, nor keepe sheepe till "I could tell them." A. ii. s. i. 66 But let us analyse the context. The poet is describing a very early period of the morning; and this he describes, by selecting and assembling such picturesque objects as accompany that period, and, such as were familiar to an early riser. He is waked by the lark, and goes into the fields. The sun is just emerging, and the clouds are still hovering over the mountains. The cocks are crowing, and with their lively notes scatter the lingering remains of darkness. Human labours and employments are renewed, with the dawn of the day. The hunter (formerly much earlier at his sports than at present) is beating the covert, and the slumbering morn is roused with the cheerful echo of hounds and horns. The mower is whetting his scythe to begin his work. The milk-maid, whose business is of course at day-break, comes Strait mine eye hath caught new pleasures Whilst the landscape round it measures, Russet lawns, and fallows gray, 70 Where the nibbling flocks do stray, abroad singing. The shepherd opens his fold, and takes the tale of his sheep, to see if any were lost in the night, as in the passage just quoted from Browne. Now, for shepherds to tell tales, or to sing, is a circumstance, trite, common, and general, and belonging only to ideal shepherds: nor do I know, that such shepherds tell tales, or sing, more in the morning than at any other part of the day. A shepherd taking the tale of his sheep which are just unfolded, is a new image, correspondent and appropriated, beautifully descriptive of a period of time, is founded in fact, and is more pleasing as more natural. T. Warton. 67. Some perhaps will cite, in opposition to Warton's argument, Milton's description of the shepherds in his Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, st. viii. The shepherds on the lawn 75 night," had no cause to tell the tale of their sheep in the morning. And this description is therefore as appropriate here, as it would be trite and general in the case of the English shepherd at the dawn of day. I have given Warton's note on the passage at full length, because I have sometimes found persons strangely reluctant to do Milton justice in this point. E. 69. Strait mine eye hath caught new pleasures] There is in my opinion great beauty in this abrupt and rapturous start of the poet's imagination, as it is extremely well adapted to the subject, and carries a very pretty allusion to those sudden gleams of vernal delight which break in upon the mind at the sight of a fine prospect. Thyer. 72. Where the nibbling flocks do stray,] Nibbling sheep is an expression in Shakespeare. Tempest, act iv. sc. 3. And stray is not in the sense of wander, go astray, but only signifies feed at Perhaps their loves, or else their large, as in Virgil, Ecl. i. 9. sheep, Was all that did their silly thoughts Ille meas errare boves, ut cernis, et ipsum Ludere quæ vellem calamo permisit agresti. Towers and battlements it sees 80 77. Towers and battlements it cite expectation by concealment, sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees.] This was the great mansion-house in Milton's early days, before the old-fashioned architecture had given way to modern arts and improvements. Turrets and battlements were conspicuous marks of the numerous new buildings of the reign of King Henry VIII. and of some rather more ancient, many of which yet remained in their original state: nor was that style altogether omitted in Inigo Jones's first manner. Browne, in Britannia's Pastorals, has a similar image, b. i. s. 5. p. 96. -yond palace, whose brave turret tops Over the statelie wood survay the copse. Browne is a poet now forgotten, but must have been well known to Milton. Where only a little is seen, more is left to the imagination. These symptoms of an old palace, especially when thus disposed, have a greater effect than a discovery of larger parts, and even a full display of the whole edifice. With respect to their rural residence, there was a coyness in our Gothic ancestors. Modern seats are seldom so deeply ambushed. They disclose all their glories at once; and never ex by gradual approaches, and by interrupted appearances. T. War ton. 80. The Cynosure of neighb'ring eyes.] As if he had said the pole-star of neighbouring eyes: an affected expression. Cynosura is the constellation of Ursa minor, or the little bear next to our pole, as in the Mask 342. I find the same expression in Democritus Junior, or Burton's treatise of Melancholy, as quoted by Mr. Peck. "It is the general hu mour of all lovers: she is his "stern, his pole-star, his guide, "his Cynosure, his Hesperus and "Vesperus, &c." p. 512. 80. But Shakespeare has "your eyes are lode-starres." Mids. N. Dr. a. i. s. 1. And our author, "But since he must needs be "the load-star of reformation." P. W. vol. i. 9. And this was no uncommon compliment in Chaucer, Skelton, Sydney, Spenser, and other old English poets, as Mr. Steevens has abundantly proved. See also Grey's Notes on Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 43. seq. Lond. 1754. And in the Spanish Tragedy, 1603. Led by the load-star of her heavenly looks. Milton enlivens his prospect by this unexpected circumstance, which gives it a moral charm. T. Warton. |