pagitica, and History of England. We now propose to commence a series of three articles on his works collectively. The first and present, a Bibliographical account of the editions of his Poetical works, published in his life-time. Second, a Bibliographical account of his Prose works, and of the different controversial tracts which either occasioned or originated in them. Third, an accurate review of his different Biographers and Critical Editors. We think that these may form an interesting summary of literary facts concerning Milton, most important to the general reader, and probably little known to him. In the succeeding pages we shall borrow ad libitum, and acknowledge our obligations to a bibliographical introductory preface, prefixed to the latest and most complete edition of Milton's Poems, recently published by Pickering. We shall confine our notitia to the editions of the Poems published in the life-time, and under the personal superintendence, of the immortal author; and our readers will oblige us by particularly noticing the several title-pages and dates of publication accurately set out at the head of this article, and copied from original copies of the several editions now before us. We need not, then, use any unnecessary repetition of the titles, but merely refer to their respective dates. Before commencing our notice, however, of the above volumes, more immediately emanating from Milton, we must premise that the first printed and published poem of Milton's (that has yet been discovered) was his Comus, with the following title 66 "A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, on Michaelmasse night, before the right honorable the Earle of Bridgewater, Vicount Brackley, Lord Resident of Wales, & one of his Majesties most "honorable privie counsell. "Eheu! quid volui misero mihi? Floribus austrum "London. Printed for Humphrey Robinson, at the signe of the "three pigeons, in Paul's Church Yard, 1637. Quarto, pp. 30." It did not appear under Milton's name, but was published and edited by Henry Lawes, (a musician and gentleman of the Chapel Royal choir,) who composed the music to the drama, and performed the combined characters of the Spirit and the Shepherd Thyrsis. The Maske, a species of dramatic entertainment at that period fashionable among the nobility, was originally performed at Ludlow Castle : its origin and represen See Vol. VI. p. 87, and Vol. IX. p. 1. + The Poetical Works of John Milton. London. William Pickering, Chancery Lane; Nattali and Combe, Tavistock Street; Talboys and Wheeler, Oxford. MDCCCXXVI. 3 vols. post octavo. £1 4s. tation, before the family of Lord Bridgewater, then President of Wales and the Marches, need not be detailed, and will be found fully recorded in Mr. Todd's edition of Milton. Bishop Hurd critically observes, that the motto above quoted (Eheu, &c.) was worthy of Milton, and delicately chosen, whether we consider it as being spoken by the author himself, or by the editor Lawes. If by the former, the meaning is-I have, by giving way to this publication, let in the breath of public censure on these early blossoms of my poetry, which were before secure in the hands of my friends, as in a private enclosure. If we suppose it to come from Lawes, the application is not very different; only to floribus we must then give an encomiastic sense. The following dedication, prefixed by the Musician to this early relic of Milton's muse, is an interesting testimony to the character and estimation of the poem when circulating in manuscript: "To the Right Honourable, John Lord Viscount Bracly, son and heir apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater, &c. 66 'My Lord-This poem which receiv'd its first occasion of birth from yourself and others of your noble family, and much honour from your own person in the performance, now returns again to make a final dedication of itself to you. Although not openly acknowledg'd by the author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to the necessity of producing it to the public view; and now to offer it up in all rightful devotion to those fair hopes, and rare endowments of your much-promising youth, which give a full assurance to all that know you of a future excellence. Live, sweet lord, to be the honour of your name, and receive this as your own, from the hands of him, who hath by many favours been long oblig'd to your most honoured parents, and as in this representation your attendant Thyrsis, so now in all real expression, your faithful and most humble servant, "H. LAWES." Milton had resided in the neighbourhood of Ashbridge, the seat of Lord Bridgewater; indeed, his father's house and lands, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, were held under the earl; and his intimacy with that noble family probably originated in the intermarriage of Lord Bridgewater with the second daughter and coheir of the Earl of Derby; Milton having before written Arcades for the Countess of Derby, and it is supposed, while a student at Cambridge, his Elegiack Ode on the Marchioness of Winchester. "I have been informed from a manuscript of Oldys," says Warton," that Lord Bridgewater being appointed Lord President of Wales, entered upon his official residence at Ludlow Castle with great solemnity. On this occasion he was attended by a large concourse of the neighbouring nobility and gentry. Among the rest came his children; in particular Lord Bracley, Mr. Thomas Egerton, and Lady Alice 66 to attend their father's state, And new-intrusted sceptre.' They had been on a visit at a house of their relations, the Egerton family, in Hertfordshire; and in passing through Heywood forest were benighted, and the Lady Alice was even lost for a short time. This accident, which in the end was attended with no bad consequences, furnished the subject of a Maske, for a Michaelmas festivity, and produced Comus.”—Sir John Hawkins, (History of Musick, vol. iv. p. 52,) states that the poem "is founded in fact ;" and Lawes, in the dedication to Lord Bracley, above quoted, perhaps alludes to the accident, in stating that the "poem received its first occasion of birth from himself and others of his noble family." We must, however, resist the temptation of exceeding a bibliographical account of this exquisite poem. The Monody of Lycidas next appeared in a Cambridge collection of verses on the death of Mr. Edward King, fellow of Christ's College, printed at Cambridge, in a thin quarto, 1638.* This quarto collection, on the mournful loss of a fellow student of great promise, and distinguished proficiency in polite literature, consists of three Greek, nineteen Latin, and thirteen English, poems. The thirteen English are by Henry King, (brother of Edward King,) J.Beaumont, Anonymous, John Cleveland, the poet, William More, William Hall, Samson Briggs, Isaac Oliver, J. H., C. B., K. Brown, T. Morton, and MILTON, whose monody, entitled Lycidas, and subscribed with his initials only, stands last in the collection. Prefixed is a prose inscriptive panegyric on Mr. King, short notice of his life, family, character, and melancholy catastrophe; this preface is conjectured to have been composed either by Milton or Henry More, who, perhaps, were two of the most able masters in latinity which the university could produce. Edward King, the subject of this incomparable poetical lamentation, was sailing from Chester to Ireland, to visit his friends, when, in calm weather, not far from *That we may be consistently bibliographical, we here give the titles of this joint-stock collection. The Greek and Latin pieces have as follows, which serves for the title of the book: "Justa EDOV ARDO KING naufrago, ab Amicis mærentibus, amoris et μvéias xápis. Si recte calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est. Petron. Arb. CANTABRIGIE, Apud Thomam Buck et Rogerum Daniel, celeberrimæ Academiæ typographos, 1638." The English are thus entitled, "Obsequies to the memorie of Mr. Edward King, Anno Dom. 1638. Printed by Th. Buck & R. Daniel, printers to the Vniversitie of Cambridge. 1638." the English coast, the ship, a crazy vessel, a fatal and perfidious bark, struck on a rock, and suddenly sunk to the bottom, when all on board perished in the watery deep, August 10, 1637.* This poem, as appears by the Trinity manuscript, was written in November, 1637, when Milton was not quite twenty-nine years old. The poet had quitted the University about five years, and then resided with his parents at Horton. It is more probable that he was solicited to assist in this contribution, than that Lycidas was the voluntary offering of his muse. We may observe, however, without exceeding our prescribed limits in this article, that the short time in which this monody must have been composed, greatly adds to the merit of Milton, and that its superiority cannot but have established and blazoned his reputation not merely at Cambridge, but throughout the literary society of the kingdom. The first poetical publication under his name, was the small octavo volume of miscellaneous poems in 1645. From the publisher's preface, prefixed to this edition, it is again evident that the literary reputation of Milton was thus early known and appreciated: it appears, moreover, that to the judgment and taste of Moseley, the bookseller, the public were indebted for the volume, and not to the ambition or vanity of the Poet. We extract this interesting preface: 66 THE STATIONER TO THE READER. "It is not any private respect of gain, gentle reader, for the slightest pamphlet is nowadayes more vendible than the words of learndest men; but it is the love I have to our own language that hath made me diligent to collect, and set forth such peeces both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue and it's the worth of these, both English and Latin poems, not the flourish of any prefixed encomiums that can invite thee to buy them, though these are not without the highest commendations * Mr. King was undoubtedly a man of no ordinary force and accomplishment of mind. A Latin Comedy, entitled Senile Odium, Cantab. 1633. 12mo. is prefaced by an elegant copy of Latin iambics, from which we quote the following lines of judicious satire on the false taste, and the customary mechanical and artificial expedients of the drama, then subsisting. "Non hic cothurni sanguine insonti rubent, Nec flagra Megæræ ferrea horrendum intonant; Noverca nulla sævior Erebo furit ; Venena nulla, præter illa dulcia Amoris; atque bis vim abstulere noxiam Casti lepores, innocua festivitas, Nativa suavitas, proba elegantia," &c. and applause of the learndest academics, both domestic and foreign: and amongst those of our own country, the unparalleled attestation of that renowned provost of Eaton, Sir Henry Wootton: I know not thy palate how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is; perhaps more trivial airs may please thee better. But howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that encouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late choice peeces, hath once more made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these evergreen, and not to be blasted laurels. The author's more peculiar excellency in these studies, was too well known to conceal his papers, or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age, by bringing into the light as true a birth, as the muses have brought forth since our famous Spencer wrote; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated, as sweetly excell'd. Reader, if thou art eagle-eied to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal. "Thine to command, 66 HUMPH. MOSELEY." The first part of this edition contains his earlier minor poems-the Sonnets, Psalms, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, the Songs, Lycidas-his Ode to Shakspeare, under the date of 1630, &c. We cannot forbear, in enumerating these early productions of his muse, to extract the latter lines on the great dramatist: they were in fact his first printed poem, having been prefixed, though without his name or initials, to the folio edition of Shakspeare's plays in 1632, and also again in 1640, among other recommendatory verses prefixed to Shakspeare's poems. In the folio the lines are entitled "An Epitaph on the admirable dramaticke Poet W. Shakespeare❞— * What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones, Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid Under a Star-y pointing Pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. *"Poems: written by Wil. Shakespeare, Gent. Printed at London by T. Cotes, and are to be sold by John, Benson, dwelling in St. Dunstan's Church yard. 1640." small octavo. In L'Allegro, v. 133, Milton speaks of his illustrious literary predecessor "Or sweetest Shakspear, fancies childe, Warble his native wood-notes wilde." |