140

Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that

ty
The hidden foul of harmony;
That Orpheus self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heapt Elysian flow’rs, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regain'd Eurydice.
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

145

150

Il

1

this charming paffage, but in every other where oblectatione animos corroborabat. And so
he has occasion to describe the power of music, Dryden in his excellent Ode on St. Cecilia's
which shows how fond he was of it, and finely day.
exemplifies Horace's maxim,

Several OCCASIONS.

XIV.

IL PENSEROSO. HENCE vain deluding joys,

The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys? Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, Or likest hovering dreams

5

The

sionate Shepherd to his Love, and

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd;

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love. These two poems are printed at length in the notes upon the third Act of the Merry Wives of Windsor in Mr. Warburton's edition.

Wherein you spend your folly:
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wife to see't,

But only Melancholy,

Oh sweetest Melancholy.
Welcome folded arms, and fix'd eyes,

,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that's fastend to the ground,
A tongue chain'd

up

without a sound.

Il Penserofo is the thoughtful melancholy man; and Mr. Thyer concurred with me in observing that this poem both in its model and principal circumstances is taken from a song in praise of melancholy in Fletcher's Comedy call’d the Nice Valor.or passionate Madman. The reader will not be displeas'd to see it here, as it is well worth transcribing.

Hence all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights

Fountain heads, and pathless groves,
Places which pale paffion loves ;
Moon-light walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly hous’d, save bạts and owls;

A midnight bell, a parting groan,

These are the fourds we feed upon; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley, Nothing's so dainty sweet, as lovely Melancholy.

.

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus train.
But hail thou Goddess, fage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose faintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view

15
O'er-laid with black, staid wisdom's hue;
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseen,
Or that starr’d Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauties praise above

The 2. The brood of folly without father bred.] called because he feigns tas moppas, the very He assigns the fame kind of origin to these countenances, words, manners and gestures of fantastic joys, as Hesiod does to dreams, which mankind, and exhibits them in dreams. So he says the Night brings forth without a father. Ovid Met. XI. 634. Theog, 212.

Excitat artificem simulatoremque figuræ - ετικε σε φυλον ονειρων

Morphea, Peck.
Ου τινι κοιμηθεισα θεα τεχε Νυξ ερεβεννη.
Mr. Thyer had made the same observation

18. Prince Memnon's fifter ] Memnon, king with me; and we may be the more certain of of Ethiopia, son of Tithonus by Aurora, rethis allusion on account of the following com- pairing with a great host to the relief of Priam parison likest bovering dreams.

king of Troy, was there Nain by Achilles.

Peck. 7. As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,]

19. Or that starrid Ethiop queen &c ] Caf

& A fimilitude copied from Chaucer. Wife of siope, wife of Cepheus king of Ethiopia, afBath's Tale. ver. 868.

ter having triumphed over all the beauties of

her age, daring to compare herself to the NeAs thik as motis in the sunné beme.

reids, raised their indignation against her to 10. The fickle pensioners of Morpheus train. ) such a degree, that they sent a prodigious Morpheus, the minister of Somnus or Sleep, so whale into the country, so that to appease them

Bb b

The

20