168—171. “O, mihi tum si vita supersit . . . Brittonicum strides." If Milton had carried out his great Arthurian project, then, as he here says, the simpler pastoral pipe which he had hitherto used most in his poetry would have been hung up and forgotten, and, as he also says, the Latin verse, which he had so much practised, would have been exchanged for native strains and the British war-screech. 171-178. " Quid enim? omnia non licet uni," etc. In this passage Milton still pursues the idea of his great intended Epic, and emphasizes the fact that it was to be in English. In that fact there was certainly a drawback, for it would limit his constituency of readers to his own countrymen. What then? He would be content with that constituency! Yes! let him be unknown all through the foreign world, if he should be read along all the rivers and all the shores of his own native island! The enumeration of British rivers and coasts in the present passage is very poetical, and may be compared with that in At a Vacation Exercise, 91-100. 181-197. "tum qua mihi pocula Mansus . . . bina dedit, mirum artis opus," etc. I do not see any other possible interpretation of this passage than that which accepts it as a description of an actual pair of cups or goblets, with designs painted or engraved on them, which the Neapolitan Manso had given to Milton as a keepsake, and which Milton had hoped to show to Diodati. 198-219. "Tu quoque in his," etc. This closing passage is in a strain of noble and surprising phrenzy. Observe the transition from the preceding description of one of the designs on the cups, -the Heaven of the gods, and Love not absent even there, but shooting his darts right up among the gods themselves. "Thou too art among them," he exclaims, addressing the dead Damon; and then, once on the track of his favourite idea of a mystic or divine Love active even in heavenly hearts among the heavenly hierarchies (see note, Comus, 999, et seq.), he remains in that idea to the end. Compare lines 165-181 of Lycidas and note there. AD JOANNEM ROUSIUM: Ode. Milton's Note on the Verse. The substance is that the Ode is a metrical whim, outraging all the traditions of Latin prosody, and falling back rather on that boundless license of the easy Greeks which Martial had envied. I-3. "Gemelle cultu simplici gaudens liber, Munditieque nitens non operosâ.” An exact description of the missing copy of the Moseley, or 1645, edition of Milton's Poems, which had been sent to Rous at Oxford (see Introd.) It was a double book, consisting of the English Poems and the Latin, separately paged, and with a separate title-page to the Latin Poems, but the two parts bound together in one neat volume. 7, 8. "Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras, Nunc Britannica per vireta lusit.” The poems had been composed partly in "Ausonian shades," i.e. in Italy, partly in "British green fields," i.e. in England. 66 10-12. mox itidem pectine Daunio," etc. Both Warton and Mr. Keightley understand this as a reference to the Italian Sonnets in the volume; but it seems more natural, in the context, to take Daunian as comprehending the Latin Poems with the Italian. The word Daunia applied strictly to a portion of Apulia in South-eastern Italy; and its extension either to ancient Italy generally or to modern Italy is a poetic license. 18. "Thamesis ad incunabula." Milton here adopts the popular fancy that the Thames begins to be the true Thamesis a little below Oxford, where the longer Isis, after being reinforced by the Cherwell, receives also the Thames as its tributary, and so starts afresh Londonwards as the Thame-Isis. The English poets were fond of this fancy and of its association with Oxford. See Spenser, F. Q., Iv. xi. 24-26. 29. "Tollat nefandos," etc. The civil wars had lasted since 1642; and, as Oxford had been the King's headquarters, the University there had especially suffered. 33-36. "Immundasque volucres figat Apollined pharetra, Phineamque abigat pestem," etc. As it was not Apollo that delivered Phineus from the Harpies, the phrase Apollined pharetra" is used with reference to the quiver which the deity who will perform the like service for England will bear. It will be the quiver of that monster-killing god who is also the God of Poetry. So also Thames, the seat of Oxford, is the "amnis Pegaseus," the river of the winged 66 Pegasus, the horse of the Muses, at the stroke of whose hoof sprang up the sacred Hippocrene. -Who, in 1646-7, were the harpies and unclean birds of England, in Milton's estimation, one can easily guess (see Sonnets XI. and XII., and On the New Forcers of Conscience, and Introductions and Notes to those pieces). Some of them had fastened especially on Oxford. But Milton must have had in view also the Royalists and Prelatists. 73-87. "Vos tandem. . . Roüsio favente." Warton and Mr. Keightley think that this Epode has in view chiefly the future fate of those of Milton's prose-writings that had been sent to Rous (see Introd.); but, though these are included, I do not see that he distinguishes between them and the poems he was now replacing in their companionship. IN SALMASII HUNDREDAM IN SALMASIUM. On these two scraps see Introd.-Salmasius ranked as an Eques or Knight on the continent, having, as Todd notes, been presented with the Order of St. Michael by Louis XIII. of France. —Of "Mungentium cubito virorum" Warton notes that this was a cant name among the Romans for fishmongers. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. TWO RECOVERED SCRAPS OF LATIN VERSE ON Some years ago, Mr. Alfred J. Horwood, when examining the family papers of Sir Frederick U. Graham, of Netherby, Cumberland, Bart., for the purposes of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, came upon an old Latin Common-Place Book of Milton's, a good deal of it in his own handwriting, containing jottings of books he had read, and notes and suggestions from them at various times of his life. Together with this Common-Place Book there was found a single loose leaf of foolscap paper, "much damaged by damp," on which was a short Latin prose-essay, headed "MANE CITUS LECTUM FUGE," with some appended Latin verses on the same subject. As the leaf bore the name Milton still distinctly legible on its left margin, and as the handwriting bore in parts a strong resemblance to some of Milton's, Mr. Horwood; concluded that the essay was a juvenile Academic Prolusion of Milton's on the subject of Early Rising, which he had not thought it worth while to print with the collection of his other Prolusiones Oratoria in 1674. Accordingly, when editing the Common - Place Book for the Camden Society in 1877, he appended the little essay and the verses, entitling the volume "A Common-Place Book of John Milton, and a Latin Essay and Latin Verses presumed to be by Milton." With the essay, as it is in prose, we have nothing to do here; but the verses, if only on the chance that they are an additional and accidentally recovered scrap of Milton's juvenile metrical composition in Latin, deserve reproduction. There are, in reality, two distinct pieces of verse, in different metres, though both on the subject of Early Rising, and both evidently intended as poetical appendages to the Prose Prolusion written on the same leaf : CARMINA ELEGIACA. Surge, age, surge! Leves, jam convenit, excute somnos ! Lux oritur; tepidi fulcra relinque tori. Jam canit excubitor gallus, prænuncius ales Et spargit nitidum læta per arva jubar. Cum premat imbellis lumina fessa sopor. Qui pote torpentem posse valere virum? [ASCLEPIADIC Verses.] Ignavus satrapam dedecet inclytum Hinc cædes oritur clamor et absonus. The text in both pieces is given as it stands in Mr. Horwood's transcript, save that the punctuation is corrected. There seem to be errors in some of the lines of the first piece. Neglecting these, we may say (1) that the internal evidence on the whole confirms the strong external evidence that the pieces are Milton's, and (2) that the style proves that in that case they must have been very early compositions of his. In all probability, they, and the Latin Prolusion to which they were attached, were done as a Latin theme when he was at St. Paul's School. If they were done later, they must have been among his very first exercises in Latin at Christ's College, Cambridge. |