of verses also was first added in the second edition of the author's poems in 1673, and I suppose was made, when the Direčtory was establish'd, and disputes ran high between the Presbyterians and Independents in the year 1645, the latter pleading for a tolera

a tion, and the former against it. And in the Manuscript it is not in Milton's own hand, but in another, the same that wrote some of the Sonnets.

3. tbe widow'd whore] In the Manuscript it was at first the vacant whore.

7. with a classic hierarchy] In the Presbyterian form of government there were congregational, classical, provincial, and national assemblies. Sce what the author fays in his Observations on the Irish peace, p. 356. Vol. 1. Edit. 1738. “ Their next impeachment is,

" that we oppose the Presbyterial government, “ the hedge and bulwark of religion. Which “ all the land knows to be a most impudent “ falshood, having establish'd it with all free“ dom, wherever it hath been desir'd. Never

theless, as we perceive it aspiring to be a “ compulsive power upon all without excep" tion in parochial, classical, and provincial “ hierarchies, or to require the fleshly arm of

magistracy in the execution of a spiritual “ disciplin, to punish and amerce by any cor

poral infiction those whose consciences can“ not be edify'd by what authority they are

compell’d, we hold it no more to be the

bedge and bulwark of religion, than the Popish " and Prelatical courts, or the Spanish Inqui« lition.”

8. - by by mere A. S. and Rotberford ? ] I Gospel, and was intitled Gangræna, or a Cataknow not who is meant by A. S. Some book logue and Discovery of many of the errors, heremight have been publish'd fign’d by those let- fies, blafphemies, and pernicicus practices of the ters, and perhaps an equivoque might also be Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in Engintended. Sam. Rotherford was one of the land in these four last years. Scotch what d'ye commissioners of the church of Scotland. call might be perhaps the famous Alexander

12. By shallow Edwards &c] In the Manu. Henderson, or as that expression implies some script it was at first bare-brain'd Edwards. He hard name, George Gillespie, a Scotch minister wrote the Gangræna, a book in which the er- and commissioner at Westminster, called Garors, heresies, blasphemies, and lewd practice, laspe in Whitlock, and Galasp in one of our which broke out in the last four years (1642, author's Sonnets : and nothing could be ex.1643, 1644, 1645,) are recited : See Collier's press’d with greater contempt. Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 2. p. 855. Mr. 17. Clip your phylaéteries, though bauk your Thyer gives this account of it, that it was ears,] So we read as it is corrected in publish'd in 1646, and dedicated to the Parla- the table of Errata in the edition of 1673: in ment by Thomas Edwards minister of the all the editions it is falsly printed bank

your Ttt

ears.

cars. This line in the Manuscript was thus for the liberty of unlicenc'd printing. Vol. 1.at first,

P. 153. and the conclusion of his treatise inCrop ye as close as marginal P-s ears.

titled The Tenure of Kings and Magiftrates. He means Prynne who had been sentenc'd to The Sonnet is a species of poetry of Italian lose his ears, and afterwards was sentenc'd to extraction, and the famous Petrarch hath lose the remainder of them, so that he was gained the reputation of being the first author cropt close indeed : and the reason of his calling and inventor of it. He wrote a great number him marginal is express’d in his treatise of the in commendation of his mistress Laura, with likeliest Means to remove birelings out of the whom he was in love for twenty years together, church, “ 'And yet a late hot Querist for and whose death he lamented with the same “ tithes, whom ye may know by his wit's ly- zeal for ten years afterwards : and for the ten

ing ever beside him in the margin, to be derness and delicacy of his passion, as well as " ever beside his wits in the text; a fierce re. for the beauty and elegance of his sentiments “ former once, now rankled with a contrary and language, he is esteemed the great master “ heat, &c.” Vol. 1. p. 569. Edit. 1738. of love-poetry among the Moderns, and his

20. New Presbyter is but Old Priest] He ex- Sonnets are universally allow'd to be the stanpresses the same sentiment in other parts of his dard and perfection of that kind of writing. works. Bishops and Presbyters are the fome to The Sonnet, I think, consists generally of one us both name and thing. &c. See his Speech thought, and that always turn'd in fourteen

verses

00

verses of the length of our heroics, two stan- was almost extinct among us, till it was reza's or measures of four verses each, and two vivod of late with good success by an ingenious of three, the first eight verses having no more Gentleman in Dodsey's Miscellanies. than two rimes : and herein it differs from the We have observed elsewhere how fond our Canzone, which is not confin'd to any number poet was of the Nightingale, and this address of stanza's or verses. It is certainly one of to her is founded upon the same notion or trathe most difficult of all the lesser kinds of dition as Chaucer's verses of the Cuccoo and the poetry, such simplicity and such correctness Nightingale. being requir’d in the composition: And I have

But as I lay this othir night waking, often wonder'd that the quaintness and exact

I thought howe lovirs had a tokining, ness of the rimes alone did not deter Milton

And amonge 'hem it was a commune tale, from attempting it, but he was carried on by his love of the Italians and Italian poetry:

That it were gode to here the nightingale,

Moche rathir than the leudè cuccoo sing. &C. and other celebrated writers have been equally fond of copying Petrarch, as Bellay, Ronsard, 6. First heard before] Virgil Æn. IV. 24. Malherb &c among the French; Sidney, Spen

Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat, ser, Shakespear &c. among the English; but

Ante pudor quam te violo, aut tua jura renone of them have conformed fo exactly to the

solvo. Italian model as Milton : and he is the last who excell'd in this species of poetry, which See Cerda. Richardson.