THE

LYCIDAS AND EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS

OF

MILTON

EDITED, WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION
(INCLUDING A REPRINT OF THE RARE LATIN VERSION OF
THE LYCIDAS BY WILLIAM HOGG, 1694), BY

821-4

M

4301565 821147

PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE SECOND EDITION.

THE Notes to this edition have been carefully revised, and several inaccuracies corrected. In making these improvements I have had the advantage of consulting Prof. Masson's three-volume edition of Milton's Poetical Works (1874) and Prof. Hales' Longer English Poems, which latter work, though published while my first edition was in progress, I had not then seen. One note (on Lycidas 163) has been entirely recast, a mature reconsideration of the passage having convinced me that the view I had previously taken is untenable. I have only to add, that the favourable opinions I have received, both publicly and privately, from many eminent English authorities induce me to hope that my book, in its emended form, may be welcomed by all students of Milton as a real contribution to this department of our literature.

WINDLESHAM: June 1881.

C. S. J.

PREFACE

TO

THE FIRST EDITION.

THE two following poems have been selected as the only specimens of Pastoral Elegy that Milton has given to the world. Besides the Arcades and the Comus-which are dramatic1 pastorals-they are his sole contribution to a class of poetry which was in his age most fashionable, and whose influence is apparent in most of his poems, especially those of earlier date. The origin and history of the Pastoral, and its place in European literature, will form the subject of the first part of the following Introduction, in which I have endeavoured to give such preliminary information as may enable the reader

An attempt was made to dramatise the Lycidas in a piece entitled Lycidas, A Musical Entertainment, which appears to have been performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1767. It consists of Recitatives and Airs, For with a couple of Choruses. the Airs the words of the original are recast in short lines in a lyrical form; the following is a specimen, corresponding to . 113 foll. of

the Lycidas:

How well could I have spared for thee
The Swains, who lean and flashy Songs
Grate on their Pipes of wretched Straw!

The sheep look up and are not fed,
But swoln with the rank Mist they draw,

Rot and the foul contagion spreadNot so thy Flocks, O Shepherd dear; Not so thy Songs, O Muse most rare! For the credit of the play-going public of the last century it is to be hoped that this piece met with all the success it deserved.