Had ye been there-for what could that have done? When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, Alas! what boots it with incessant care To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise, To scorn delights, and live laborious days; 65 70 And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies; Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." O, fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood, And listens to the herald of the sea That came in Neptune's plea: He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds, 75 80 85 90 58. Orpheus, torn in pieces by the Bac- than these; nor more justly instructive chanalian women, called the rout. 67. As others use. Warton supposes that Milton here had reference to the Scotch poet Buchanan, who unbecomingly prolonged his amorous descant to graver years. Amaryllis and Næra are two of Buchanan's lady-loves, and the golden hair of the latter makes quite a figure in his verses. In his last Elegy he raises the following extravagant fie tion on the luxuriant tangles of this lady's hair. Cupid is puzzled how to subdue the icy poet. His arrows can do nothing. At length he hits upon the stratagem of cutting a golden lock from Newra's heal, white she is asleep, with which the poet is bound, and thus entangled he is delivered a prisoner to Nera. 70. Fame is the spur. No lines have been more often cited and more popular and inspiring. 75. Fury, Destiny. 76. But not the praise. But the praise is not intercepted." While the poet, in the character of a shepherd, is moraliz ing on the uncertainty of human life, Phoebus interposes with a sublime strain, above the tone of pastoral poetry. He then in an abrupt and elliptical apos trophe, at "O fountain Arethuse," has tily recollects himself, and apologizes to his rural Muse, or in other words to Arethusa and Mincius, the celebrated streams of Bucolic song, for having so suddenly departed from pastoral allusions, and the tenor of his subject.-T. WARTON. 85. Arethuse: see note to line 31 of "Arcades." Mincius is a stream in Cisalpine Gaul, that flows into the Po, near Mantua, and is often mentioned by Virgil 91. The felon winds, the cruel winds. And question'd every gust of rugged wings And sage Hippotades their answer brings, Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, The pilot of the Galilean lake: Two massy keys he bore of metals twain; 110 The golden opes, the iron shuts amain: He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake: How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! 115 Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest! Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least 120 What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; 94. Beaked promontory, one projecting like the beak of a bird. 96. Hippotades, a patronymic noun, applied to Eolus, the god of winds, and son of Hippotas. 99. Punope, one of the Nereids. 100. That fatal bark. The ship in which "Lycidas" was wrecked. 103. Camus, the river Cam, that flowed by Cambridge university, where Lycidas (Mr. King) was educated." 104. The hairy mantle and sedge bonnet may refer to the rushy or reedy banks of the Cam; and the figures dim, to the in istinct and dusky streaks or sedge leaves or flags, when beginning to wither. Warton remarks that perhaps the poet himself had no very clear or determinate idea; but in obscure and mysterious expressions, leaves something to be supplied or explained by the reader's imag nation. 106. Sanguine flower. "Commentators," as Coleridge says, "have a notable trick of passing siccissimis pedibus (with the driest feet') over really difficult places," and no one has remarked upon the "flower" here alluded to. I think it is the Hyacinth, said to have sprung from the blood of the youth of that name, killed by Apollo. Ovid, a favourite author with Milton, in describing this event, (Met. Lib. x. Fab. vi. line 54,) uses almost the same language: "Ipse suos gemitus folils inscribit: et, ai, al, Flos habet inscriptum." his own lamentations upon its leaves, That is, "the God himself inscribes and the flower has ai, ai, written upon it" or, as Pliny explains it, its veins and fibres so run as to make the figure ai, the Greek interjection of grief. 107. Drarest pledge. Children were called by the Romans pignora, "pledges." 109. The pilot: Peter. Two massy keys: Alluding to Matt. xvi. 19. 114. Milton here animadverts on the So clomb the first grand thief into God's fold; Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw: But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise; 124. Scrannel, thin, lean, meagre. 129. Nothing sed. Here Milton probably alludes to those prelates and clergy of the established church who enjoyed fat salaries without performing any duties; who "sheared the sheep but did not feed them." Sed, for said. 130 and 131. In these lines our author anticipates the execution of Archbishop Laud, by a two-handed engine, that is, the axe; insinuating that his death would remove all grievances in religion, and complete the reformation of the church.-WARTON. The sense is, "But there will soon be an end of all these evils; the axe is at hand to take off the head of him who has been the great abettor of these corruptions of the gospel. This will be done by one stroke." 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160 133. That shrunk. In other words, "that silenced my pastoral poetry." The Sicilian muse is now to return, with all her store of rural imagery.-T. WARTON. 136. Use, to frequent, to inhabit. 138. Swart-star, the dog-star, so called because it turns the complexion swart, or brown. So Browne, in his pastorals, "the swart plowman." 154. Ah me! Here Mr. Dunster observes, the burst of grief is intinitely beautiful, when properly connected with what precedes it, and to which it refers. 158. Monstrous world; that is, the sea, the world of monsters. 159. Moist vows, our vows accompanied with tears. 160. Bellerus was the name of a Cor-. nish giant. On the south-western shores Where the great vision of the guarded mount Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more; 165 Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor: And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 170 Through the dear might of Him that walk'd the waves; of Cornwall there is a stupendous pile of rock-work called the "giant's chair;" and not far from Land's End is another most romantic projection of rock, called St. Michael's Mount. There was a tradition that the "Vision" of St. Michael, seated on this crag, or St. Michael's chair, appeared to some hermits. The sense of this and the following lines connected with the preceding, is this:-"Let every flower be strewed on the hearse where Lycidas lies, so as to flatter ourselves for a moment with the notion that his corpse is present; and this (ah me!) while the seas are wafting it here and there, whether beyond the Hebrides, or near these shores of Cornwall, &c. 162. Namancos is marked in the early editions of Mercstor's Atlas as in Galliia, on the north-west coast of Spain, near Cape Finisterre. Bayona is the strong castle of the French, in the southwestern extremity of France, near the Pyrenees. In that same atlas this castle makes a very conspicuous figure. gray; 175 180 185 190 163. Here is an apostrophe to the angel Michael, seated on the guarded mount. "Oh angel, look no longer seaward to Namancos and Bayona's hold: rather turn your eyes to another object: look homeward or landward; look towards your own coast now, and view with pity the corpse of the shipwrecked Lycidas, floating thither."-T. WARTON. 165. Weep no more. Milton, in this sudden and beautiful transition from the gloomy and mournful strain into that of hope and comfort, imitates Spenser, in his Eleventh Ecloque, where, bewailing the death of some maiden of great blood in terms of the utmost grief and dejection, he breaks out all at once in the 8ame manner.-THYER. 181. And wipe the tears. Isa. xxv. 8; Rev. vii. 17. 188. Stops, the holes of a flute. 189. This is a Dorick lay because Theocritus and Moschus had respectively written a Bucolic on the deaths of Daphnis and Bion. THE particular beauties of this charming pastoral are too striking to need much descanting upon; but what gives the greatest grace to the whole, is that natural and agreeable wildness and irregularity which run quite through it, than which nothing could be better suited to express the warm affection which Milton had for his friend, and the extreme grief he was in for the loss of him. Grief is eloquent, but not formal.-THYER. Addison says, that he who desires to know whether he has a true taste for history or not, should consider whether he is pleased with Livy's manner of telling a story; so, perhaps it may be said, that he who wishes to know whether he has a true taste for poetry or not, should consider whether he is highly delighted or not with the perusal of Milton's "Lycidas." If I might venture to place Milton's works, according to their degrees of poetic excellence, it should be perhaps in the following order: Paradise Lost, Comus, Samson Agonistes, Lycidas, L'Allegro, II Penseroso. The last three are in such an exquisite strain, says Fenton, that though he had left no other monuments of his genius behind him, his name had been immortal.-Jos. WARTON. In this piece there is perhaps more poetry than sorrow: but let us read it for its poetry. It is true, that passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of "rough Satyrs with cloven heel:" but poetry does this; and in the hands of Milton does it with a peculiar and irresistible charm. Subordinate poets exercise no invention, when they tell how a shepherd has lost his companion, and must feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in piping: but Milton dignifies and adorns these common artificial incidents with unexpected touches of picturesque beauty, with the graces of sentiment, and with the novelties of original genius. It is objected "here is no art, for there is nothing new." To say nothing that there may be art without novelty, as well as novelty without art, I must reply that this objection will vanish, if we consider the imagery which Milton has raised from local circumstances. Not to repeat the use he has made of the mountains of Wales, the Isle of Man, and the river Dee, near which Lycidas was shipwrecked; let us recollect the introduction of the romantic superstition of St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, which overlooks the Irish Sea, the fatal scene of his friend's disaster. But the poetry is not always unconnected with passion. The poet lavishly describes an ancient sepulchral rite, but it is made preparatory to a stroke of tenderness: he calls for a variety of flowers to decorate his friend's hearse, supposing that his body was present, and forgetting for a while that it was floating far off in the ocean. If he was drowned, it was some consolation that he was to receive the decencies of burial. This is a pleasing deception: it is natural and pathetic. But the real catastrophe recurs; and this circumstance again opens a new vein of imagination. Dr. Johnson censures Milton for his allegorical mode of telling that he and Lycidas studied together, under the fictitious images of rural employments, in which, he says, there can be no tenderness; and prefers Cowley's lamentation of the loss of Harvey, the companion of his labours, and the partner of his discoveries. I know not, if in this similarity of subject Cowley has more tenderness; I am sure he has less poetry: I will allow that he has more wit, and more smart similes. The sense of our author's allegory on this occasion is obvious, and is just as intelligible as if he had used plain terms. It is a fiction, that, when Lycidas died, the woods and caves were deserted, and overgrown with wild thyme and luxuriant vines, and that all their echoes mourned; and that the green copses |