Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 10. Who would not sing for Lycidas?] Virgil, Ecl. x. 3. -neget quis carmina Gallo? He knew, in Milton's Manuscript it is he well knew. 10. He knew Himself to sing, &c.] At Cambridge, Mr. King was distinguished for his piety, and proficiency in polite literature. He has no inelegant copy of Latin iambics prefixed to a Latin Comedy called Senile Odium, acted at Queen's College Cambridge, by the youth of that society, and written by P. Hausted, Cantab. 1633. 12mo. From which I select these lines, as containing a judicious satire on the false taste, and the customary mechanical or unnatural expedients, of the drama that then subsisted. Non hic cothurni sanguine insonti rubeat, Nec flagra Megæræ ferrea horrendum 10 giacs, in the Genethliacum Acad. Cantabrig. ibid. 1631. 4to. p. 39. Of Latin iambics in Rex Redux, ibid. 1633. 4to. p. 14. See also EYNOAIA, from Cambridge, ibid. 1637. 4to. Signat. C. 3. I will not say how far these performances justify Milton's panegyric on his friend's poetry. T. Warton. 11. --and build the lofty rhime.] A beautiful Latinism. Hor. Epist. i. iii. 24. -seu condis amabile carmen. De Arte poet. 436. -si carmina condes. 11. Euripides says still more boldly, because more specifically, σε Αοιδας ΕΠΥΡΓΩΣΕ." Suppl. ν. 997. Hurd. The lofty rhyme is "the lofty "verse." See P. L. b. i. 16. T. Warton. 12. He must not float upon his wat'ry bier.] So Johnson, in Cynthia's Revells, acted by the boys of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, 1600, a. i. s. 2. -Sing some mourning straine. T. Warton. Indeplorato non comminuere sepul. Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin then, sisters of the sacred well, So may some gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destin'd urn, 15 20 14. Without the meed] With- Jupiter, as Hesiod says in the out the reward. Spenser, Faery Queen, b. ii. cant. iii. st. 10. -but honour, virtue's meed, nourable seed. 14. melodious tear.] For song, or plaintive elegiac strain, the cause of tears. Euripides in like manner, Suppl. v. 1128. 6. Πα δακρυα φερεις φιλα-ολωλότων. "Where do you bear the tears of "the dead, i. e. the remains or "ashes of the dead, which occa"sion our tears?" Or perhaps the passage is corrupt. See note on the place, edit. Markland. The same use of tears, however, occurs, ibid. v. 454. " Aangvad ετοιμαζουσι." Hurd. The passage is undoubtedly corrupt; I is superfluous, and mars the context. The late Oxford editor seems to have given the genuine reading, “Nar dangva Pigus Piλa,” [v. 1133.] T.War ton. 15. Begin then, sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,] He means Hippocrené, a fountain consecrated to the Muses on mount Helicon, on the side of which was an altar of Heliconian invocation for his poem on the generation of the Gods. Μουσάων Ελικωνιάδων αρχωμεν αείδειν, Αιθ' Ελικωνος εχουσιν όρος μεγα σε ζα θεοντε, Και σε περι κρηνην ιοιιδια ποσσ' απαλοι 18. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,] The epithet coy is at present restrained to Person. Anciently, it was more generally combined. Thus Drayton, Shepherd, these things are all too coy for me, Whose youth is spent in jollity and mirth. That is, "This knowledge is too "hard for me, &c." Eclogues, vii. Milton has the same use of coy in the Apology for Smectymnuus. "Thus lie at the mercy of a coy flurting style, &c." Pr. W. i. 105. ed. 1738. T. Warton. r 21. And as he passes turn,] He for the muse seems extraordinary. See Mr. Jortin's note on ver. 973, And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud. Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. of Samson Agonistes, where this change of the gender is considered. 21. It is probably a corrupt reading. The muse is feminine further on at ver. 58 and 59. And the mistake may have been caused by the concluding letter of the preceding word as being the same as the first of the word she. E. 22. And bid] So altered in the Manuscript from To bid &c. 23. For we were nurst &c.] This is assigned as a reason for what he had said before, Hence with denial vain, and coy ex cuse. 25. Together both, &c.] Here a new paragraph begins in the edition of 1645, and in all that followed. But in the edition of 1638, the whole context is thus pointed and arranged. For we were nurst upon the selfsame hill, Fed the same flock, by fountain, T. Warton. 25. Probably the new paragraph should begin at ver. 23. "For we &c." E. 26. the opening eyelids of the morn,] This personizing every thing that is the subject of imagination is a great part of the merit of ancient poetry. The 25 present place is from Job, the most poetical of all books. Job curses the day in which he was born. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark, let it look for light but have none, neither let it see the dawning of the day. The Hebrew (that Milton always follows) hath neither let it see the eyelids of the morning, iii. 9. Richardson. The opening eyelids was altered in the Manuscript from the glimmering eyelids. 26. Perhaps from Thomas Middleton's Game at Chesse, an old forgotten play, published about the end of the reign of James the First, 1625. -Like a pearl, Dropp'd from the opening eyelids of the morn Upon the bashful rose. Shakespeare has "the morning's "eye," Rom. and Jul. act iii. s. 5. Again, act ii. s. 3. The grey-eyed morn smiles on the 27. "We continued together "till noon, and from thence, &c." The gray-fly is called by the naturalists, the gray-fly or trumpetfly. Here we have Milton's horn, and sultry horn is the sharp hum of this insect at noon, or the hottest part of the day. But by some this has been thought the chaffer, What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, which begins its flight in the 27. We drove afield,] That is, "we drove our flocks afield." I mention this, that Gray's echo of the passage in the Churchyard Elegy, yet with another meaning, may not mislead many careless readers. How joyous did they drive the team afield. See the note, P. R. ii. 365. on Milton's delight in painting the beauties of the morning. In the Apology for Smectymnuus he declares,Those morning haunts are where they should be, at "home: not sleeping or con cocting the surfeits of an irre66 gular feast, but up and stirring, 66 in winter often before the "sound of any bell awakens σ men to labour or devotion; in 66 summer, as oft as the bird that "first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, "&c." Prose Works, i. 109. In L'Allegro, one of the first delights of his cheerful man, is to hear the "lark begin her flight." His lovely landscape of Eden always wears its most attractive charms at sun-rising. In the present instance, he more particularly alludes to the stated early hours of a collegiate life, which he shared, on the self-same hill, with his friend Lycidas at Cambridge. T. Warton. 28. What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,] By the gray-fly in this place is meant no doubt a brownish kind of beetle powdered with a little white, 30 commonly known by the name of the cock-chaffer or dor-fly. These in the hot summer months lie quiet all the day feeding upon the leaves of the oaks and willows, but about sunset fly about with just such a sort of noise as answers the poet's description. The author could not possibly have chosen a circumstance more proper and natural for a shepherd to describe a summer's evening by, nor have expressed it in a more poetical manner. Thyer. the same kind in his Macbeth, Shakespeare has an image of but he has expressed it with greater horror suitable to the occasion, act iii. s. 3, ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-born beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night's yawning peal, &c. 29. Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,] To batten is both neutral and active, to grow or to make fat. The neutral is most common. Shakespeare, Haml. act iii. s. 4. Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? And Drayton, Ecl. ix. vol. iv. ut supr. p. 1431. Their battening flocks on grassie leas to hold. Milton had this line in his eye. Batfull, that is plentiful, is a frequent epithet in Drayton, especially in his Polyolbion. T. Warton. 30. Oft till the star &c.] These two lines were thus in the Manu Tow'ard heav'n's descent had slop'd his west'ring wheel. Mean while the rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to th' oaten flute, Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with cloven heel But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, script before Milton altered Oft till the ev'n-star bright 31. his west'ring wheel] Drawing toward the west. Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide, b. ii. ver. 905. -the sonne Gan westrin fast, and dounward for to wrie. 31.] And Spenser has to west. F. Q. v. Introd. S. And twice hath risen where he now doth west And wested twice where he ought rise aright. T. Warton. 35 40 To th' waters fall their tunes attemper right. So P. L. vii. 598. Temper'd soft tunings. T. Warton. 34. Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns &c.] Virg. Ecl. vi. 27. Tum vero in numerum Faunosque ferasque videres Ludere Mr. Thyer adds another instance. Ye sylvans, Fauns, and Satyrs, that emong These thickets oft have daunc'd after Past. Ecl. on the death of Sir P. 36. And old Damætas lov'd to hear our song.] He means pro33. Temper'd to th' oaten flute,] bably Dr. William Chappel, who Boethius III. Metr. 12. Illic blanda sonantibus Richardson. Tempering their sweetest notes unto thy lay. And again, Poeticall Miscel. Camb. 1638. p. 55, Spenser also has, of birds. had been tutor to them both at Cambridge, and was afterwards Bishop of Cork and Ross in Ireland. 39. Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, &c.] This line was thus given in the edition of 1638. Thee shepherds, thee the woods, and desert caves. T. Warton. 40. With wild thyme, and the gadding vine o'ergrown,] Tully, |