The original MS. of Lycidas (together with those of the Arcades, Comus, and some of the minor poems) is preserved in the library of Trin. Coll., Cambridge. These were collected by Charles Mason and Thomas Clark, Fellows of Trinity, in 1736, having been found among MSS. formerly given to the College by Sir H. Newton Puckering, who was educated there, and who died in 1700 (Masson, vol. ii. p. 104). From them Todd in 1801 collected his various readings in the three poems above mentioned; but as his copy of them is not quite accurate, we append the following corrected list :— 1. 10. 'Who would not sing for Lycidas? he well knew.' 22. To bid faire peace,' &c. (To erased and And substituted.) 26. Glimmering corrected to opening. 30. 'Oft till the ev'n starre bright,' (altered to that rose in Ev'ning bright.) 31. 'his burnisht weele,' (altered to westring weele.) 47. 'Their gay buttons weare.' (beare is then written and erased, and wardrope weare substituted.) 51. 'yor (your erased) lov'd Lycidas.' 58. What could the golden-hayrd Calliope For her inchaunting son, When shee beheld (the gods farre sighted bee) After . 59 is written in the margin— 'Whome universal nature might lament, And heaven and hel deplore, When his divine head downe the streame was sent.' (Head is first altered to visage, and then divine to goarie.) 69. Hid in the tangles,' (changed to Or with, &c.) 85. . . . . thou smooth flood,' (altered to fam'd, and then to honour'd.) 'Soft-sliding Mincius,' (altered to smoothsliding.) 105. 'Scrauld ore with figures dim,' (changed to Inwrought.) 110. 'Tow massy keys,' &c. (also 'tow-handed' in l. 130.) 114. 'Anough of such,' &c. 129. '. little sed.' (nothing is first written, but erased.) 138. '. . . . stintly (?) looks.' (First sparely, which is erased and then replaced.) The first correction is obscured by the tail of the pin the superscribed sparely coming down in front of the first letter (which may be either for f). Mr. Aldis Wright, to whose courtesy I am indebted for these amended readings, believes the word to be faintly and not stintly. 1. 139. Bring hither,' &c., (corrected to Throw hither, &c.) 142 foll. originally stood thus : ‘Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies, And that sad floure that strove To write his own woes on the vermeil graine; Afterwards Milton inserted the garish columbine, but altered it to the well attir'd woodbine. 'The cowslip wan that hangs his pensive head, (First changed to sad escutcheon beares, then to im- 'Let Daffadillies fille thire cups with teares, Bid Amaranthus all his beautie shed.' (These two lines were transposed, and the let was altered to and.) The whole of the above passage is struck through with the pen, and the substituted lines are written below. 1. 153. 'Let our sad thoughts,' &c., (changed to fraile.) 154. '. . . . Ye floods,' &c., (changed to shoars.) 160. '. . . . Corineus old.' (Bellerus substituted.) 176. 'Listening the unexpressive nuptial song,' (altered to and heares, &c.) The unsettled state of orthography' in Milton's time makes In an article on English orthography in the Philological Museum, the writer remarks that the uniform system now in vogue came in about the middle of the 17th century; that it was settled by those who were more or less ignorant of the antecedents of our language, and maintained by compositors, by whose influence certain modes of spelling it unnecessary to notice in detail the varieties of spelling which occur in various editions of this poem. We shall presently (on 7. 129) remark upon sed and blew (l. 192) as illustrating the habit of writing to suit the eye as well as the ear ; in 7. 130 doore is changed to dore in the MS. to coincide with more in the next line. For those who are curious in such matters we append a few selected words from the four editions of 1638, 1645, 1673, and 1695 (Tonson's), from which it will be seen that in many instances the earlier ones had the correct orthography, which afterwards got altered; but this is purely accidental. In Milton's MS. the preterites and past participles in -ed are almost uniformly spelt with the apostrophe, as destin'd, honour'd, &c.; even mitre'd is thus given, where no vowel is omitted. Honied seems to be the only instance in Lycidas to the contrary. The forms in -t are sometimes with and sometimes without the apostrophe, as nurs't, danc't, &c., by the became established as the general usage. He further observes that no usage can make a blunder right, and that the right spelling is that which agrees best with pronunciation, etymology, and the analogy of a word to others of the same class to which it belongs. side of askt, freakt, &c. It should be noted that the use of the apostrophe began nearly about Milton's time, and continued to be usual till quite lately. Spenser very seldom employs it; he generally omits the e altogether, as joyd, cloyd, &c., sometimes placing it at the end, as spide, obeyde, &c. After k, n, p, s, &c., the letter is used, as pluckt, learnt, topt, tost, pusht, some of which forms are still to be met with. Originally, as in Chaucer, whenever -ed was written, it was meant to be sounded; hence arose these various contrivances to show when it was mute. Lycidas is the last poem, excepting the Sonnets, which Milton wrote in rime. In the preface, added in 1668 to Paradise Lost, he speaks of 'rime' as being nothing but 'the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre,' and congratulates himself upon having in that poem set the first example in English of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming.' Yet the skilful arrangement of rimes in Lycidas, and the exquisite cadences which his fine musical ear enabled him to produce, without rule and apparently without effort, are an evidence of how much may be done by means of an expedient which he afterwards so unsparingly denounced; and there is perhaps no poem which exhibits these qualities in equal profusion. The idea of the system, in which the rimes occur sometimes alternately, but more often at longer and irregular intervals, the ten-syllabled lines being now and then varied by shorter ones of six syllables, is derived from the Italians. The following extracts from choruses in Tasso's Aminta and Guarini's Pastor Fido will show what the originals were like, but it will be seen that Milton has made considerable variations upon his models. 1. From Aminta, Act iv. Scene 2 :— Ciò che morte rallenta, Amor, restringi, E del suo trionfar trionfi e regni, E quasi fai col tuo valor superno 2. From Pastor Fido, Act iv. Scene 9: O bella età dell' oro, Del pargoletto mondo, e culla il bosco ; Godean le gregge intatte, Nè temea 'l mondo ancor ferro nè tosco. Pensier torbido e fosco Allor non facea velo Al sol di luce eterna Or la ragion, che verna Tra le nubi del senso, ha chiuso il cielo. Ond' è che 'l peregrino Va l' altrui terra, e 'l mar turbando il pino. Peck, in his New Memoirs of Milton (1740), fancifully compares the Lycidas to a piece of music, consisting of so many bars, which are represented by the paragraphs; each rime being a chord, and the lines without any answering rime being discords. He cites the Pindaric odes of Cowley as examples of similar irregularity in riming, only that in these there are no discords or lines without rimes. The distinction between 'chords' and 'discords' (as if they were two different things in music) is of course erroneous; but, substituting phrases for 'bars' and concords for 'chords' in the above comparison, we may allow that the effect upon the ear of an occasional unrimed |