to life Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, whose death had greatly vexed Diana. 21. "Academia." Here, as well as in the only other instance of the use of the word in Milton's Latin poems (Epilogue to Eleg. VII.), the penult is made short. ELEGIA TERTIA. The reference is to the 1625 and 1626. 3-8. "Protinus en subiit," etc. ravages of the Plague in England in 9-12. "Tunc memini," etc. The other recent calamities were the deaths of some of the conspicuous champions of Protestantism on the Continent in that early stage of the great Thirty Years' War the object of which was the recovery of the Palatinate for its hereditary Prince - Elector, nominally "King of Bohemia," husband of the English Elizabeth, daughter of James I. 49, 50. "Talis in extremis terræ Gangetidis oris Luciferi regis," etc. "Lucifer rex," as Steevens pointed out, is here not a name for Satan, as Warton imagined, but simply for the Sun or Light-bringer, whose home is placed by all poets in the far East. 63, 64. "Nate, veni," etc. Rev. xiv. 13. ELEGIA QUARTA. 3. Segnes rumpe moras." Quoted verbatim, as Mr. Keightley notes, from Virgil, Georg. III. 42, 43. 5, 6. "Sicanio frænantem carcere ventos Eolon." Copied, as Warton noted, from Ovid, Met. XIV. 224. 66 15, 16. "ab Hama," etc. According to Warton, 'Krantzius, a Gothic geographer, says that the city of Hamburg in Saxony took its name from Hama, a puissant Saxon champion, who was killed on the spot where that city stands by Starchater, a Danish giant." Hence the Cimbrica clava of line 16. 23-28. "Charior ille mihi quàm," etc. Here Milton helped himself, as Warton noted, with recollections from Ovid -Art. Amat. I., II and 337, Met. 11. 676 (where Cheiron is expressly called "Philyreius heros "), and Fasti, v. 379 et seq. (where "Philyreius heros" occurs again). 33-38. "Flammeus at signum ter," etc. Thrice had the flaming Æthon (one of the four heroes of the Sun, according to the enumeration in Ovid's Met. II. 153, 154) seen the sign of the Ram, and clothed its woolly back with new gold; and twice had Chloris or Flora overspread the old earth with new herbage; and twice had Auster, the South-wind, removed Flora's wealth; nor yet in this interval had it been permitted him to see Young's face, or hear him speak. Literally translated, this means that three vernal equinoxes, or 21sts of March, two summers, and two falls of the year, had passed since Milton and Young last met. 80. "ærisonam Diva perosa tubam": the goddess Eirene, or Peace. 66 97 100. vates terra Thesbitidis," etc., i.e. Elijah the Tishbite. See 1 Kings xix. "Sidoni dira" (voc.) is 103, 104. viii. 28-34. etc. "Piscosaque 113, 114. "Ille Sionæa," etc. 2 Kings xix. 35, 36. 115-132. "Inque fugam vertit quos in Samaritidas oras," A poetic rendering, in brief, of 2 Kings vii. 3-10. 125, 126. "Nec dubites," etc. The prophecy in these concluding lines was very soon fulfilled. Young's subsequent life, Introd. ELEGIA QUINTA. See sketch of I. "In se perpetuo Tempus revolubile gyro”: possibly a recollection of a line in Buchanan's "Maia Calenda"; which is, in fact, just such a poem on the Approach of Spring as this by Milton. 6-8. "Ingeniumque mihi munere veris adest," etc. Milton's own information, in his later years, to his nephew Phillips, was the very reverse of this. It was "that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal," i.e. from Sept. 21st to March 21st (Phillips's Memoir in 1694). If this is true, the approach of Spring actually checked Milton's ingenium. But that refers to about 1663, when Milton was between fifty and sixty years of age; and we are now at 1629, when he was but twenty. 30. "perennis." So in the edition of 1673. In that of 1645 the word was "quotannis"; which was a blunder of quantity, the last syllable being long. The blunder had not escaped Salmasius; and it was pointed out in his posthumous Responsio to Milton, published in 1660. 35. "Lycaonius . Bootes." Mr. Keightley remarks, "This is not a proper expression for Bootes, which had nothing to do with Lycaon, whose daughter was turned into the plaustrum cæleste." But Milton had strict mythological authority. Although the northern constellation Bootes was represented by some as the stellified Icarus, by others he was represented as the stellified Arcas, the eponymic hero of the Arcadians; and this Arcas, in some mythologies, was that very son of Lycaon whose flesh was served up by his father before Zeus, and whom the disgusted God restored to life, while he destroyed the rest of the house of Lycaon. In that case, he was a brother of Callisto alias Helice, daughter of Lycaon, who was stellified as the Greater Bear, or northern wain, or Arctos. Even if Arcas is not taken as the son of Lycaon, but as the son of Callisto or Helice by Zeus (which is one form of the myth), he was still Lycaonian, as being the grandson of Lycaon; and so anyway Milton hits right in the jumble. Both Bootes (Arcas, son or grandson of Lycaon) and Arctos, the plaustrum cæleste or Northern Wain (Callisto or Helice, daughter of Lycaon and sister or mother of Arcas), were Lycaonian offshoots up in heaven; and the only question, in this passage, is whether Bootes regarded the "plaustrum cæleste" which he was following as his sister or as his mother. 61, 62. “Ecce coronatur ... Idæam pinea turris Opim,” i.e. the lofty forehead of the Earth is crowned with wood, as that of Ops, or Cybele, the goddess of fertility, the great all-bearing mother, is crowned with a tower of pines. 74. "hinc titulos adjuvat ipsa tuos": because Phoebus I was also the God of Medicine. 125. "Manalius Pan." Mænalus was a mountain in Arcadia, the principal country of Pan; and hence he is called "Mænalius Deus" (Ovid, Fast., Iv. 650). 66 129. cupit malè tecta videri": from Virgil, Ecl. III. 66" Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri." ELEGIA SEXTA. 10. "Festaque califugam quæ coluere Deum." Milton means simply "these December festivities of yours"; but he recollects that the Roman Saturnalia, or festivities in honour of Saturn, and of the golden days of primitive equality when this god resided on earth, were held in the middle of December. 19, 20. "Naso Corallæis," etc.: i.e. "The poet Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso) sent bad verses from the scene of his banishment, the country of the savage Coralli; and the reason was that there was no feasting there, and no vines planted." The poems written by Ovid during his exile at Tomi on the Euxine sea (A.D. 8-18) were his Tristia, his Epistolæ ex Ponto, and his Ibis, besides parts of his Fasti; and these, in the judgment of critics, were not so good, or at least not so graceful, as his previous poems, all written in Rome, or elsewhere in Italy, amid the luxuries of civilized society. 21, 22. "Quid nisi vina . . . cantavit Tëia Musa," etc. From Ovid he passes to Anacreon, a native of the Greek city of Teos or Teios on the Ægean coast of Asia Minor, and hence called by Ovid "Teia Musa." By "brevibus modis" the short structure of the so-called Anacreontics is designated. 23-26. "Pindaricosque inflat numeros," etc. Teumesius Euan is the Boeotian Bacchus, called Euan, from the cry to him by his priestesses in their revels, and Teumesius, from Teumesus, a mountain in Boeotia; and the connexion of the passage is "Pindar's lyrics also, the Theban Pindar's, are inspired by the Bacchus of his native Boeotia." 27, 28. "Quadrimoque madens Lyricen Romanus," etc. Next in the list comes Horace, referred to by his Odes to Glycera and Chloe (1. 19 and 23). 37. "Thressa pheus was Thracian. barbitos." Thracian, because Or 39–48. “Auditurque chelys suspensa tapetia circum,” etc. In the whole of this passage we have a charming picture of a room, as it might be on a winter-evening, in some English country mansion in Milton's time, well-lit, elegantly furnished, and full of young people gracefully enjoying themselves. 55-66. "At qui bella refert, augur iture Deos." I have already called attention (Introd. p. 93) to the peculiarly Miltonic significance of this passage, coming so powerfully after the quiet grace of the preceding context. Here 71. "Sic dapis exiguus, sic rivi potor Homerus." Milton flatly contradicts Horace, who insists on it as an axiom that no good poet was ever a water-drinker, and argues, on internal evidence, that Homer cannot have been such (Epist. I. xix. 1-6). 79-90. "At tu si quid agam scitabere," etc. See Introd., and Introd. to Hymn on the Nativity. 21. ELEGIA SEPTIMA. "Talis in æterno juvenis Sigeius Olympo." The line, as Warton noted, is adapted from Tibullus, IV. ii. 13.—The "juvenis Sigeius" is Ganymede, son of Tros. 66 66 37, 38. Cydoniusque. venator, et ille," etc. The name Cydonius venator" (from Cydonia, a city in Crete, famous for its arrows) seems to be here indefinite, like the "Parthus eques" of the preceding line, and not to designate any particular person. The other person, "ille," is Cephalus, one of the legends about whom is that he shot his own wife Procris accidentally with an unerring arrow, the gift of Artemis. 46. "Nec tibi Phœbæus porriget anguis opem." Esculapius, the God of Medicine, son of Phoebus, came to Rome in the form of a snake, to stay a pestilence. 51, 52. "Et modò quà nostri spatiantur in urbe Quirites, et modò," etc. i.e. now the favourite walks of the citizens within London itself (Charter House Garden, the Temple Gardens, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Gray's Inn Gardens, etc.), now the more suburban places of resort (Hyde Park, Hampstead, etc.) 83, 84. "Talis et obreptum solem respexit Amphiaraus." The story of the hero Amphiaraus, who went unwillingly to the war against Thebes, fought bravely in it, but was at last swallowed up in a chasm of the earth as he was careering in his chariot from the pursuing enemy, is |