Cedite Achæmeniæ turritâ fronte puellæ, Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniamque Ninon;

Vos etiam Danaæ fasces submittite Nymphæ,

Et vos Iliacæ, Romuleæque nurus; Nec Pompeianas Tarpeia Musa columnas

Jactet, et Ausoniis plena theatra stolis. 70 Gloria virginibus debetur prima Britannis;

Extera sat tibi sit fœmina posse sequi. Tuque urbs Dardaniis, Londinum, structa colonis,

Turrigerum latè conspicienda caput, Tu nimium felix intra tua moenia claudis Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet. Non tibi tot cælo scintillant astra sereno, Endymiones turba ministra deæ,

Quot tibi conspicuæ formâque auroque puellæ

Per medias radiant turba videnda vias. 80 Creditur huc geminis venisse invecta columbis

Alma pharetrigero milite cincta Venus, Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis flumine valles,

by unused. I visit the groves planted thick with elm, the suburban parks noble with shade. There often one may see the virgin bands go past, stars breathing bland fire. Ah, how many times have I stood stupefied before the miracle of some gracious form, such as might give old Jove his youth again! Ah, how many times have I seen eyes brighter than gems, brighter than all the fires that roll about either pole, necks whiter than the ivory shoulder of Pelops, and lips tinct and dewy with pure nectar! And exquisite grace of brow, and floating locks, golden nets which Love casts deceivingly, inviting cheeks, to which the purple of the hyacinth, yea, even the blush of thy flower, Adonis, is dull! Yield, ye Heröides so praised of yore, and all ye loves that snared gadding Jove! Yield, ye Persian damsels with your turreted brows; and all ye who dwell in Susa, in Memnonian Nineveh! Even ye, daughters of Danaüs, lower the fasces; and ye Trojan ones, and the betrothed of Romulus ! Let not the poet who lived by the Tarpeian rock [Ovid] boast the dames of Pompey's porch, nor the theatre full of Roman stoles. To the virgins of Britain first glory is due; suffice it, foreign woman, that thy place is second! And thou city of London, built by Dardanian colonists, thy towered head conspicuous far and wide, thou, too happy, enclosest with thy walls whatever beauty the pendulous Earth owns. Not so many stars twinkle over thee in the clear night sky, ministrant troops of Endymion's goddess, as through thy highways throng radiant troops of girls, drawing all eyes with the golden grace of their forms. Men say that hither blessed Venus came, with her quivered nymph attendant, drawn by twin doves, willing to love London more than Cnidos, or the vales watered by the stream of Simöis, or Paphos, or rosy Cyprus.

But for my part, while the blind boy grants me immunity, I hasten to leave these fortunate walls as quickly as I may ; and avoid far off the evil halls of Circe the deceiver, using at my need moly, that

ludes, Atque iterum Scholæ.

rauce murmur adire

Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici, Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos.

90

me to go back to the bulrush swamps of Cam, and to the raucous murmur of the school. Meanwhile take this poor gift of a faithful friend, these few words constrained into the measure of elegy.

The person to whose memory this elegy is addressed, Richard Ridding, M. A., of St. John's College, Cambridge, died in the autumn of 1626, near the beginning of Milton's third year at the University. Three persons at Cambridge bear the title of Esquire Bedel (Latin praeco, herald or crier). Their duties are, to bear the mace before the Chancellor on solemn occasions, and to give summons. The office is one of considerable dignity, and has a

life tenure. The opening lines of the elegy have a suspicion of humor in them, but it is safe to say that Milton's tribute was meant in all seriousness. At any rate, the passing away of a picturesque figure from the University life gave the young Latinist too good an opportunity for versifying to be neglected. The date-heading, anno ætatis 17, is here and elsewhere misleading; Milton was, in the autumn of 1626, near the end of his eighteenth year.

As beadle, you were wont, standing conspicuous with your shining staff, to assemble the gowned flock: but now, beadle, Death has summoned you; his fierceness does not favor even his own office. Tis true, the locks of your temples were whiter than the swan-plumes under which Jove is storied to have hid, but O, you should have grown young again like Eson, with the simples drawn by Medea from the flowers of Hæmonvale! Esculapius, son of Coronis, heeding the prayers of some importunate goddess, should have called you back with his healing art from the Stygian waves. Whenever you were ordered to go as a swift herald from your Apollo [the vice-chancellor of the university] and bring together the togaed hosts, you stood like wing-foot Hermes in the Trojan halls, sent from the ethereal domes of his Father; or like the herald Eury bates, when before the stormy face of Achilles he delivered the stern demands of Agamemnon. O thou great queen of sepulchres, handmaid of Avernus, too harsh to the Muses and the arts, why

but had at one time been Master of Pembroke Hall. The tone of the elegy affords a curious contrast to Milton's later utterances, in his anti-episcopal pamphlets, concerning this same bishop.

SAD and silent I sat, comradeless; and many griefs clung about my soul. Then suddenly, behold, there arose before me an image of the deadly plague which Proserpina spread on English soil, when dire Death, fearful with his sepulchral torch, entered the glorious marble towers of the great, shook the walls heavy with jasper and gold, and feared not to lay low with his scythe the host of princes. Then I thought on that illustrious duke [Duke Christian of Brunswick, a victim of the War of the Palatinate] and his worshipped brother, whose bones were consumed on an untimely pyre; and I thought on those heroes whom all Belgia saw snatched away to the skies, and wept her lost leadBut for you chiefly I grieved, good Bishop, once the great glory of Winchester. I melted in tears, and with sad lip thus complained: "Cruel Death, goddess second to Tartarean Jove, is it then not enough that the woods should feel thy wrath, and that power should be given thee over the green things of the fields?

ers.

- saw,

That, touched by thy pestilent breath, the lily withers, and the crocus, and the rose sacred to beautiful Cypris? Thou dost not permit the oak to stand forever by the stream, looking at the slipping-by of the water. To thee succumb the birds, as many as are borne on wings through the liquid sky, —even the birds, though they give augury; and all the thousand animals that roam the dark forests; and the dumb herd that the caves of Proteus shelter. Envious! When so much power has been granted thee, what did it pleasure thee to steep thy hands in human slaughter, sharpen thy certain arrows to pierce a noble breast, and drive from its tenement a soul half-divine?"

While I was brooding thus with tears, ruddy Hesperus rose from the western waters; for Phoebus, having measured out his journey from the shores of dawn, had submerged his chariot in the seas beyond Spain. I laid my limbs upon my bed to be refreshed by sleep. Night and slumber had embalmed my eyes, when suddenly I seemed to be walking in a wide field. Alas, I have no gift to tell what I saw ! There all things shone with a purpureal light, as when the mountain tops are flushed with the morning sun; and the earth gleamed with a vestment of many colors, even as when Iris scatters her wealth abroad. Not with so various flowers did Chloris, goddess loved of light Zephyr, adorn the gardens of King Alcinoüs. Silver streams laved the green champaign; the sand shone richer than Hesperian Tagus. Through the odorous leafage breathed the light breath of Favonus, rising humid from under bowers of roses. Such a place men fable the home of Lucifer to be, far on the shores beyond Ganges. As I stood wondering at the enticing nooks and the shades made dense with loaded vines, behold, suddenly before me stood Winchester's bishop! His face shone with glory like the stars; down to his golden sandals his robe flowed all candid; a white fillet encircled his head. As the old man, thus venerably clad, walked on, the flowery earth trembled with joyful sound; hosts of angels clapped their jew elled wings, and through the air rang out a

Thomas Young, a young Scotch divine who had come to England in the wake of King James, had been Milton's domestic tutor, and had probably continued in that capacity after the boy was sent to St. Paul's School. Two years before Milton left St. Paul's, Young_accepted a position abroad as minister of a Protestant church supported by the English merchants resident at Hamburg in Germany. The present verse-letter, written in 1627, some years after Young's departure, shows by its tone of tenderness and solicitude that, in spite of his dilatoriness in writing, Milton still cherished a sincere affection for his former tutor. He compares his love for Young to that of Alcibiades for Socrates, and plainly states his debt to him for initiation into the delights of classical literature. Milton's references to the troubled state of Germany, and the danger to which Young is exposed, will be made clear by remembering that in 1627 the Thirty Years' War had entered upon its second stage, with Tilly and Wallenstein at the head of the Imperialist forces, and Christian IV. of Denmark as champion of the Protestant cause. When the preCURRE per immensum subitò, mea littera, pontum;

I, pete Teutonicos læve per æquor agros; Segnes rumpe moras, et nil, precor, obstet eunti,

Et festinantis nil remoretur iter.

sent epistle was written, the Imperialist army was reported in England to be on the point of laying siege to Hamburg. This circumstance serves to inflame Milton's indignation over the callousness of England, who had allowed one of her most righteous sons to be driven abroad for sustenance.

The prophecy with which the epistle closes, that Young would soon see his native shores again, was fulfilled in the same or the following year. He received a living at Stowmarket, Suffolk, and held it uninterruptedly until the close of his life in 1655. When the Long Parliament met to inaugurate a new state of things in the church, Young came forward with the famous pamphlet against Bishop Hall and his defence of Episcopacy. This pamphlet was signed Smectymnuus, a name made up from the initials of Young and the four other ministers who had collaborated in the production; it was the first of the remarkable series of Smectymnuan pamphlets to which Milton contributed. After Milton's break with the Presbyterians, and his embroilment in the divorce controversy, his intimacy with Young probably ceased.

Run through the great sea, my letter; go, over the smooth waters seek the shores of Germany. Tarry not; let nothing, I pray, stand in the way of your going; let nothing impair your haste. I myself will