LYCIDA S.

In this MONODY, the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage. from Chefter on the Irish feas, 1637. And by occafion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their highth.

Y

ET once more, Ö ye laurels, and once more

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never fere,

V. 1. Yet once more, &c.] The best poets imperceptibly adopt phrafes and formularies from the writings of their contemporaries or immediate predeceffours. An Elegy on the death of the celebrated Countess of Pembroke, fir Philip Sydney's fifter, be gins thus.

Yet once againe, my Muse.

See SONGES AND SONNETTES OF VNCERTAIN AUCTOURS, added to Surrey's and Wyat's Poems, edit. Tottell, fol. 85.

It is a remark of Peck, which has been filently adopted by doctor Newton, that this exordium, Yet once more, has an allufion to fome of Milton's former poems on fimilar occafions, such as, ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT, EPITAPH ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER, &C. But why should it have a restrictive reference, why a retrospect to his elegiac pieces in particular? It has a reference to his poetical compofitions in general, or rather to his laft poem which was CoмUS. He would fay, "I am again, in the midst of other ftudies, unexpectedly "and unwillingly called back to poetry, again compelled to write "verses, in confequence of the recent difaftrous lofs of my fhip"wrecked friend, &c." Neither are the plants here mentioned, as fome have fufpected, appropriated to elegy. They are fymbolical of general poetry. Theocritus, in an Epigram which shall be cited in the next note, dedicates myrtles to Apollo. Doctor Newton, however, has fuppofed, that Milton, while he mentions Apollo's Laurel, to characterife King as a poet, adds the Myrtle, the tree of Venus, to fhew that King was alfo of a proper age for love. We will allow that King, whatever hidden meaning the poet might have in enumerating the Myrtle, was of a VOL. I. proper

Α

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;
And with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year:
Bitter constraint, and fad occafion dear,

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proper age for love, being now twenty-five years old: and the Ivy our critic thinks to be expreffive of King's learning, for which it was a reward. In the mean time, I would not exclude another probable implication: by plucking the berries and the leaves of laurel, myrtle, and ivy, he might intend to point out the pastoral or rural turn of his poem.

2. Ye myrtles brown.] Brown and Black are claffical epithets for the Myrtle. Theocritus, EPIGR. i. 3.

Ταὶ δὲ ΜΕΛΑΜΦΥΛΛΑΙ ΔΑΦΝΑΙ τὶν, Πύθιε Παίαν.

At nigra folia habentes myrti tibi, Pythie Apollo.

Ovid, ART. AMATOR. Lib. iii. 690.

Ros maris, et lauri, NIGRA QUE MYRTUS olet.

Horace contrafts the brown myrtle with the green ivy, OD. i. XXXV. 17.

Læta quod pubes edera virenti

Gaudeat, PULLA magis atque MYRTÓ.

ibid. With ivy never fere.] A notion has prevailed, that this paftoral is written in the Doric dialect, by which in English we are to understand an antiquated ftyle. Doctor Newton obferves, "The "reader cannot but obferve, that there are more antiquated and "obfolete words in this, than in any other of Milton's poems." Of the three or four words in LYCIDAS which even we now call cbfolete, almost all are either used in Milton's other poems, or were familiar to readers and writers of verse in the year 1638. The word fere, or dry, in the text, one of the most uncommon of thefe words, occurs in PARADISE LOST, B. x. 1071.

-With matter SERE foment.

And in our Author's PSALMS, ii. 27.

If once his wrath take fire like fuel SERE.

5. Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.] So in PARAD. L. B. x. 1066.

SHATTERING the graceful locks

Of these fair spreading trees.

Ibid.-Mellowing year.] Here is an inaccuracy of the poet. The Mellowing year could not affect the leaves of the laurel, the myrtle and the ivy; which last is characterised before as never fere.

Compels

;

Compels me to disturb your season due :
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not fing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to fing, and build the lofty rhime.

11. —To fing, and build the lofty rhyme.] Euripides fays ftill more boldly because more fpecifically, σε Αοιδας ΕΠΥΡΓΩΣΕ.” SUPPL. V. 997.

H.

The lofty rhyme is "the lofty verfe." This is unquestionably the sense of the word rhyme, in PARAD. L. B. i. 16.

Things unattempted yet in profe or rhyme.

From Ariofto, ORL. FUR. C. i. ft. ii.

Cofa non detta in profa mai, ne in RIMA.

Where Harrington for once is a faithful and intelligent tranflator.
A tale in profe ne VERSE yet fung or faid.

I cannot however admit bishop Pearce's reafoning, who fays, "Milton appears to have meant a different thing by RHIME "here from RIME in his Preface, where it is fix times men"tioned, and always spelled without an : whereas in all the Edi"tions, RHIME in this place of the poem was fpelled with an b. "Milton probably meant a difference in the thing, by making fo "conftant a difference in the fpelling; and intended we should "here understand by RHIME not the jingling found of like End

ings, but Verfe in general.". REVIEW OF THE TEXT OF PARADISE LOST, Lond. 1733. p. 5. At least in this passage of LYCIDAS, we have no fuch nicety of fpelling, but RHYME appears in the editions of 1638, 1645, and 1673. Nor are the bifhop's proofs of the true meaning of the word at all to the point, from Spenfer's Sonnet to Lord Buckhurst, and the FAERIE QUEENE, i. vi. 13. He rather might have alleged the following inftance from Spenfer's OCTOBER.

Thou kenst not, Percy, how the RIME should rage,
O, if my temples were distaind with wine,

And girt in girlonds of wilde iuie twine.

How should I reare the Muse on stately stage, &c.

That is, my poetry should then mount to the highest elevations "of the tragic and epic mufe." But Fletcher more literally, in an Ode to his brother Beaumont, on his imitations of Ovid, ft. ii.

The wanton Ovid whose enticing RIMES.

It is wonderful that Bentley, with all his Grecian predilections, and his critical knowledge of the precife original meaning of ΡΥΘΜΟΣ,

A z

He must not flote upon his watry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of fome melodious tear.

Begin then, Sifters of the facred well,
That from beneath the feat of Jove doth fpring;
Begin, and fomewhat loudly fweep the ftring.

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PYOMOZ, fhould in the paffage from PARADISE LOST, have wished to substitute SONG for RHIME. Gray, who studied and copied Milton with true penetration and tafte, in his MUSIC-ODE, ufes RHYME in Milton's fenfe.

Meek Newton's felf bends from his state fublime,

And nods his hoary head, and listens to the RHIME.

12. He must not flote upon his watry bier.] So Johnson, in CYNTHIA'S REVELLs, acted by the boys of queen Elizabeth's Chapel, 1600. A. i. S. ii.

Sing fome mourning ftraine

Over his WATRIE HEARSE.

13. Unwept, and welter, &c.] Thus in our author's EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS, a Latin poem on the death of another of his friends. v. 28.

INDEPLORATO non comminuere fepulchro.

14. Melodious tear.] For Song, or plaintive elegiac strain, the cause of tears. Euripides in like manner, SUPPL. V. 1128. σε Πα δάκρυα φέρεις φίλα-ολωλότων.” “ Where do you bear the tears "of the dead, i. e. the remains or ashes of the dead, which occafion our tears?" Or perhaps the paffage is corrupt. See Note on the place, edit. Markland. The fame use of tears, however, occurs, ibid. v. 454. σε Δάκρυα δ ̓ ἐτοιμάζεσι."

H.

The paffage is undoubtedly corrupt; Пa is fuperfluous, and mars the context. Reifke, with little or no improvement, but justly rejecting the interrogation, proposed, σε πᾶν, δάκρυα.” The late Oxford editor feems to have given the genuine reading, "Nai• dángua Pégeis Çina." Ita eft, lacrymas adfers charas. [v. 1133.]

17. Begin, and fomewhat loudly fweep the string.] Tickell reads louder, in his edition of 1720, against the authority of the early editions, which have all loudly. He was perhaps thinking of a line in Dryden, an author whom he seems to have known better than Milton.

A louder yet and yet a louder strain.

Fenton has adopted Tickell's reading in his edition of 1775.

Hence

Hence with denial vain, and coy excufe:
So may fome gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my deftin'd urn;
And as he paffes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my fable shroud.

For we were nurst upon the felf-fame hill, Fed the fame flock by fountain, fhade, and rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,

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18. Hence with denial vain, and coy excufe.] The epithet cor is at prefent restrained to Perfon. Antiently, it was more generally combined. Thus a fhepherd in Drayton's Paftorals,

Shepherd, these things are all too cox for me,
Whose youth is spent in jollity and mirth.

That is, "This fort of knowledge is too hard, too difficult for me, &c." ECLOGUES, vii. vol. iv. p. 1418. edit. Oldys, 8vo. Lond. 1753. Our author has the fame use and fenfe of cox in the APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS. "Thus lie at the mercy of "a coy flurting ftyle, to be girded with frumps and curtall "gibes, &c." PROSE WORKS, by Birch, i. 105. edit. 1738.

25. Together both, &c.] Here a new paragraph begins in the edition of 1645, and in all that followed. But in the edition of 1638, the whole context is thus pointed and arranged.

For we were nurst upon the felf-fame hill,

Fed the fame flock, by fountain, fhade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd, &c.

26. Under the opening eye-lids of the morn.] Perhaps from Thomas Middleton's GAME AT CHESSE, an old forgotten play, published about the end of the reign of James the first, 1625. Like a pearl,

Dropt from the OPENING EYELIDS OF THE MORN
Upon the bafhful rofe.

I find GLIMMERING, inftead of OPENING, in the first edition, 1638. And in the Cambridge manufcript at Trinity college. He altered the reading in the fecond edition, 1645. None of the variations in the edition of 1638, have hitherto been noticed. Shakespeare has the Morning's Eye. Roм. JUL. A. iii. S. v.

I'll fay yon grey

is not the MORNING'S EYE.

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