North of Scotland, represented chiefly by two sons of the Marquis of Huntly, one of whom, Lord Gordon, had been slain in one of Montrose's battles. Another of Montrose's followers, indeed his Lieutenant-general, was a gigantic Highlander from the western Scottish Isles, belonging to the Scoto-Irish race of the Macdonnels, whose chief was the Irish Earl of Antrim. He rejoiced in a name which, when given properly and in full in Gaelic, was Alastair Macdonnel, Mac-Cholla-Chiotach, Mhic - Ghiollesbuig, Mhic - Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich, i.e. Alexander Macdonnel, son of Colkittoch, son of Gillespie, son of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. In the Lowlands, where the tongue could not manage such a name, he was spoken of as "Alexander Macdonnel the younger, son of Colkittoch, or sometimes as "young Colkittoch," with or without the addition of "Mac-Gillespie." The name Colkittoch," which means "left-handed," denoted a personal peculiarity of the young warrior, inherited from his father. This single Celt, therefore, legends of whose strength and fighting-prowess long survived in the Highlands, was Milton's Macdonnel, Colkitto, and Galasp, all in one. A very different person was George Gillespie, one of the Scottish Divines of the Westminster Assembly; but his name must have been very familiar to Milton too, and it is possible that in his Galasp he glanced at him as well as at his wilder namesake.- 66 Quintilian": the most famous teacher of Rhetoric among the Romans, in whose master-work on Education much is said about ele

66

gance in the choice of words.- "Sir John Cheek" (15141557) was the first Professor of Greek at Cambridge, fixed the English pronunciation of the language, and taught it privately to young King Edward VI. "like ours. should now write "unlike ours."

"We

SONNET XII.-"Latona's twin-born progeny": Apollo and Diana. When their mother, Leto or Latona, carrying them in her arms, and fleeing from the wrath of Juno, stooped in her fatigue to drink of the water of a small lake in Lycia, the rustics railed at her and puddled the lake with their hands and feet; for which, at the prayer of the goddess, they were turned into frogs.

ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE. - "A Classic Hierarchy": the Presbyterian system of Church-government, the first step in which is the association of congregations into

Presbyteries or Classes (see Memoir, pp. xxi.-xxii.) A.S. was a certain Adam Steuart, a Scotchman, living in London in 1644, where he took a leading part in the controversy against the Independents in pamphlets published with his initials A.S. Rutherford was Samuel Rutherford, one of the four Scottish Divines of the Westminster Assembly, and also a leading pamphleteer in favour of strict Presbytery. He became afterwards Professor of Divinity in St. Andrews, where he died in 1661, leaving many works, and a name still remembered with respect and affection."Shallow Edwards" was the Rev. Thomas Edwards, M. A., an Englishman by birth, then a preacher in London, and one of the most fluent and virulent writers in favour of strict Presbytery, and against Independency, the Sects, and Toleration. His Gangrana, published in 1645-6, is an extraordinary collection of personalities and scurrilities about the Sectaries of the time. Milton is attacked in it for his

Divorce heresy. "Scotch What-d'ye-call" is, I have no doubt, Robert Baillie, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, and afterwards Principal there. He was one of the Scottish Divines in the Westminster Assembly, and a leading man in the controversy against the Sects and Independents. In a large pamphlet, called "A Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time," he had named Milton prominently among the heretics of the day on account of his Treatises on Divorce. He is now best remembered by his "Letters and Journals," a rich, graphic, and, with all their Presbyterian prejudice, most authentic, account of many of the English and Scottish transactions of that time. Any description by Baillie of a scene at which he was himself present is worth any ten descriptions of the same by other people. Altogether the Scotch What d'ye call was a very memorable man. "Plots and packing worse than those of Trent." The meaning is that not even in the Council of Trent itself, which had settled and redefined the creed of the Roman Catholic Church after the Reformation (15451563), had there been so much intriguing and sharp practice as there had been in the Westminster Assembly since its first meeting in July 1643. The word packing seems to imply a belief that the Assembly had been unfairly constituted from the first, by the exclusion or imperfect representa. tion of elements of opinion unfavourable to Presbyterianism.

66

-“Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears," i.e. "punish you by clipping those badges of sanctity which you wear about your heads, like the phylacteries of the Pharisees (Matt. xxiii. 5), though sparing your ears, and so treating you more mercifully than you would treat your so-called heretics' if you had the power."- "New PRESBYTER is but old PRIEST writ large." This aphorism, which was to stand in the Parliamentary "charge" or indictment against the Presbyterians, turns on a play of words. The word "Priest" being simply a contraction of the Greek word "Presbyteros," an Elder," Milton's insinuation is that the change from Prelacy, or even from Roman Catholicism, to the new Presbyterianism devised for England, would be but giving up a slighter for a more extended form of the same article.- -Two corrections discernible in the Cambridge MS. of this remarkable "Tailed Sonnet" are worth noting. Instead of "Shallow Edwards," which is the name by which this London fanatic of 1646 will be remembered to the end of time, Milton had first written "haire-brain'd Edwards," which was probably as true. Again, the line "Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears" had been originally written "Crop ye as close as marginal P——'s ears," the allusion being to the celebrated William Prynne, the Lincoln's Inn lawyer, who had been twice pilloried and had his nose slit and his ears cut off for anti-Prelatic pamphlets, by sentence of the Star - Chamber during Laud's persecuting rule. Since his release from prison, at the opening of the Long Parliament in 1640, Prynne had been a conspicuous Presbyterian, enforcing his views in tract after tract of a dry and learned kind, always with references to his authorities running down the margins of the pages. Prynne's want. of ears and the margins of his pamphlets were subjects of popular jest; but Milton had a special grudge against him on account of a reference to himself in one of the "marginal" oddities.

SONNET XIII.- not to scan with Midas' ears, committing short and long": i.e. not to mis-match short syllables with long syllables (from the Latin sense of committere in such a phrase as committere pugiles, to match gladiators in the circus); which was the kind of scanning of which Midas may be supposed to have been guilty when he decided in favour of Pan in the musical contest between that god and

Apollo, and had his faulty ears changed into those of an ass in consequence. "lend her wing.' Send in the edition of 1673, but lend in the Cambridge MS. and in most recent editions.- —" or story." This is explained by a marginal note to the Sonnet as it was prefixed to Lawes's Choice Psalms, etc., published by Moseley in 1648. "The story of Ariadne set by him to musick," says the note; the words of the said story being by the poet Cartwright.- "Dante his Casella ... Purgatory.' The reference is to the passage in Dante's Purgatorio, Cant. II., where he represents himself as meeting, in a crowd of other souls, the musician Casella, who had been his dear friend in life, and asking him to sing, even there, if it were permissible, one of those lovesongs in which he excelled on earth. Casella complies, and sings a song of Dante's own. The shades of Purgatory are called "milder," in comparison with those of the Inferno, from which the poet had just emerged when he met Casella. SONNET XIV. Scripture texts in Milton's mind in the Sonnet are Rom. vii. 24; Rev. xiv. 13; Acts x. 4; Ps. xxxvi. 8, 9.

SONNET XV.-"though new rebellions raise their Hydra heads." These are the English Royalist risings for the Second Civil War.- -"and the false North displays her broken league," i.e. "though Scotland exhibits on her banner that Solemn League and Covenant which she says we have broken, while there may be a question whether she has not broken it herself" (see Memoir, p. xxxi). "to imp their serpent wings," i.e. to add strength to the said English Royalist risings, as a hawk's wing may be imped or mended by the insertion of new feathers for spoiled ones.

SONNET XVI.-" Darwen stream," i.e. the Darwen in Lancashire, which falls into the Ribble near Preston, the scene of Cromwell's great three days' battle, in which he routed the invading Scots under the Duke of Hamilton (Aug. 17-19, 1648).. -For "Dunbar Field" and "Worcester's laureate-wreath" (the last called Cromwell's "crowning mercy"), see Memoir, p. xxxvii. and Introd, to the Sonnet.

SONNET XVII.-"when gowns, not arms, repelled," i.e. in that period of Roman History when it was on statesmen rather than on warriors that the defence of the Commonwealth rested. "The fierce Epirot" is Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, a formidable enemy of the Romans from B.C. 280 to

B.C. 272; "the African bold" is Hannibal, their enemy from B.C. 220 to B.C. 182. The drift of hollow States," etc. An allusion to the dubious conduct of foreign powers, and especially the Dutch Republic, towards the English Commonwealth. Vane had much to do with the management of those foreign relations.

SONNET XVIII." The triple Tyrant," i.e. the Pope, with his three-tiared crown. Compare In Quintum Nov. 55. "the Babylonian woe." See Rev. xvii. and xviii. The Puritans identified the Papacy with the mystical Babylon of the Apocalypse. See In Quintum Nov. 156.

SONNET XIX. "Ere half my days.' For the date of Milton's blindness see Memoir, p. xxxviii. and Introd. to this Sonnet."that one talent," etc.: Matt. xxv. 14-30. Milton speaks of his eyesight as the "one talent" he had received. "thousands," viz. of Angelic beings.

SONNET XX. "Favonius": a poetical synonym for Zephyr, the West-wind. "that neither sowed nor spun,” Matt. vi. 26-29.- 66 spare to interpose them oft": interpreted by Mr. Keightley to mean "spare time to interpose them oft"; but surely rather the opposite--"refrain from interposing them oft." Parcere in Latin with a verb following had this sense of "refraining from," and "spare" in English was used in the same way.

SONNET XXI.- "Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, i.e. lay aside your mathematical and physical studies (see Introd.)

SONNET XXII.- -"this three years' day." See Introd., II. 308. "This day three years" is the prosaic form, and some have unwarrantably proposed that reading here.Milton is equally

though clear to outward view," etc.

"to

explicit on this point in a passage in his Def. Sec., where he discusses his blindness. - "Or sun or moon, or star," etc. Compare Par. Lost, III. 40 et seq., and Sams. Ag. 80 et seq. "conscience," i.e. "consciousness."have lost them overplied in Liberty's defence," i.e. in writing his great pamphlet Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, published in 1651 in reply to Salmasius, whose Defensio Regia pro Carolo I. had appeared in 1649. In that pamphlet itself Milton had said that, being in ill-health while he wrote it, he had been "forced to write by piecemeal, and break off almost every hour"; and in its sequel, the Defensio