character from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and English.-These places are introduced, as being near the scene of the shipwreck. Orpheus (1. 14) was torn to pieces by Thracian women. Amaryllis and Neaera (1. 24, 25) names used here for the love-idols of poets: as Damoetas previously for a shepherd. L. 31 the blind Fury: Atropos, fabled to cut the thread of life. Arethuse (1. 1) and Mincius: Sicilian and Italian waters here alluded to as representing the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Vergil. L. 4 oat: pipe, used here like Collins' oaten stop 1. 1, No. 186, for Song. L. 12 Hippotades: Aeolus, god of the Winds. Panope (1. 15) a Nereid. Certain names of local deities in the Hellenic mythology render some feature in the natural landscape, which the Greeks studied and analysed with their usual unequalled insight and feeling. Panope seems to express the boundlessness of the ocean-horizon when seen from a height, as compared with the limited sky-line of the land in hilly countries such as Greece or Asia Minor. Camus (1. 19) the Cam: put for King's University. The sanguine flower (1. 22) the Hyacinth of the ancients : probably our Iris. The Pilot (1. 25) Saint Peter, figuratively introduced as the head of the Church on earth, to foretell 'the ruin of our corrupted clergy,' as Milton regarded them, then in their heighth' under Laud's primacy. 1. 1 scrannel: screeching; apparently Milton's coinage (Masson). L. 5 the wolf: the Puritans of the time were excited to alarm and persecution by a few conversions to Roman Catholicism which had recently occurred. Alpheus (1. 9) a stream in Southern Greece, supposed to flow underseas to join the Arethuse. Swart star (1. 15) the Dog-star, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in ancient times occurred soon after midsummer: 1. 19 rathe: early. L. 36 moist vows: either tearful prayers, or prayers for one at sea. Bellerus (1. 37) a giant, apparently created here by Milton to personify Belerium, the ancient title of the Land's End. The great Vision:-the story was that the Archangel Michael had appeared on the rock by Marazion in Mount's Bay which bears his name. Milton calls on him to turn his eyes from the south homeward, and to pity Lycidas, if his body has drifted into the troubled waters off the Land's End. Finisterre being the land due south of Marazion, two places in that district (then through our trade with Corunna probably less unfamiliar to English ears), are named,-Namancos now Mujio in Galicia, Bayona north of the Minho, or perhaps a fortified rock (one of the Cies Islands) not unlike Saint Michael's Mount, at the entrance of Vigo Bay. PAGE NO. 73 89 1. 6 ore: rays of golden light. Deric lay (1. 25) Sicilian, pastoral. 75 93 The assault was an attack on London expected in 1642, when the troops of Charles I. reached Brentford. 'Written on his door' was in the original title of this sonnet. Milton was then living in Aldersgate Street. The Emathian Conqueror: When Thebes was destroyed (B. C. 335) and the citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar to be spared. 1. 2, the repeated air of sad Electra's poet: Plutarch has a tale that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B.C. took Athens, a proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect produced on the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from the Electra of Euripides sung at a feast. There is however no apparent congruity between the lines quoted (167, 168 Ed. Dindorf) and the result ascribed to them. 95 A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry ;-that written by thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, have left similar speci 78 98 These beautiful verses should be compared with Wordsworth's great Ode on Immortality: and a copy of Vaughan's very rare little volume appears in the list of Wordsworth's library.-In imaginative intensity, Vaughan stands beside his contemporary Marvell. 79 99 80 100 mens. Favonius: the spring wind. Themis: the goddess of justice. Skinner was grandson by his mother to Sir E. Coke :—hence, as pointed out by Mr. Keightley, Milton's allusion to the bench. L. 8: Sweden was then at war with Poland, and France with the Spanish Netherlands. 82 103 1. 28 Sidneian showers: either in allusion to the conversations in the 'Arcadia,' or to Sidney himself as a model of 'gentleness' in spirit and demeanour. 85 105 Delicate humour, delightfully united to thought, at once simple and subtle. It is full of conceit and paradox, but these are imaginative, not as with most of our Seventeenth Century poets, intellectual only. 88 110 Elizabeth of Bohemia: Daughter to James I, and ancestor of Sophia of Hanover. These lines are a fine specimen of gallant and courtly compliment. 89 111 Lady M. Ley was daughter to Sir J Ley, afterwards Earl of Marlborough, who died March, 1629, coincidently with the dissolution of the third Parliament of Charles' reign. Hence Milton poetically compares his death to that of the Orator Isocrates of Athens, after Philip's victory in 328 B.C. 93 118 A masterpiece of humour, grace, and gentle feeling PAGE NO all, with Herrick's unfailing art, kept precisely within the peculiar key which he chose,--or Nature for him,-in his Pastorals. L. 2 the god unshorn, Imberbis Apollo. St. 2 beads: prayers. 96 128 With better taste, and less diffuseness, Quarles might (one would think) have retained more of that high place which he held in popular estimate among his contemporaries. 99 127 From Prison: to which his active support of Charles I twice brought the high-spirited writer. L. 7 Gods thus in the original; Lovelace, in his fanciful way, making here a mythological allusion. Birds, commonly substituted, is without authority. St. 3, 1. 1 committed; to prison. 100 128 104 133 St. 2 1. 4 blue-god: Neptune. Waly waly: an exclamation of sorrow, the root and the pronunciation of which are preserved in the word caterwaul. Brae, hillside: burn, brook: busk, adorn. Saint Anton's Well: below Arthur's Seat by Edinburgh. Cramasie, crimson. 105 134 This beautiful example of early simplicity is found in a Song-book of 1620. 106 135 107 136 108 137 112 141 burd, maiden. corbies, crows: fail, turf: hause, neck; theek, thatch. The poetical and the prosaic, after Cowley's fashion, 113 142 The remark quoted in the note to No. 65 applies equally to these truly wonderful verses. Marvell here throws himself into the very soul of the Garden with the imaginative intensity of Shelley in his West Wind. This poem appears also as a translation in Marvell's works. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is rare, answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6: Alma Quies, teneo te! et te, germana Quietis, PAGE NO. 115 143 St. 3 tutties: nosegays. St. 4 silly simple. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. It is a striking proof of Milton's astonishing power, that these, the earliest great Lyrics of the Landscape in our language, should still remain supreme in their style for range, variety, and melodious beauty. The Bright and the Thoughtful aspects of Nature and of Life are their subjects: but each is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian manner. With that of L'Allegro may be compared a similar mythe in the first Section of the first Book of S. Marmion's graceful Cupid and Psyche, 1637. 116 144 The mountain-nymph; compare Wordsworth's Sonnet, No. 254. L. 38 is in apposition to the preceding, by a syntactical license not uncommon with Milton. 1. 14 Cynosure; the Pole Star. Corydon, Thyrsis, &c. Shepherd names from the old Idylls. Rebeck (1. 28) an elementary form of violin. 118 119 1. 24 Jonson's learned sock: His comedies are deeply coloured by classical study. L. 28 Lydian airs: used here to express a light and festive style of ancient music. The 'Lydian Mode,' one of the seven original Greek Scales, is nearly identical with our 'Major.' 120 145 1. 3 bestead: avail. L. 19 starr'd Ethiop queen: Cassiopeia, the legendary Queen of Ethiopia, and thence translated amongst the constellations. Cynthia: the Moon: Milton seems here to have transferred to her chariot the dragons anciently assigned to Demeter and to Medea. 121 122 123 Hermes, called Trismegistus, a mystical writer of the Neo-Platonist school. L. 27 Thebes, &c.: subjects of Athenian Tragedy. Buskin'd (1. 30) tragic, in opposition to sock above. L. 32 Musaeus: a poet in Mythology. L. 37 him that left half-told: Chaucer in his incomplete 'Squire's Tale.' The great bards: Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, are here 124 146 Emigrants supposed to be driven towards America by the government of Charles I. 125 1. 9, 10. But apples, &c. A fine example of Marvell's imaginative hyperbole. - 147 1. 6 concent: harmony. 128 149 A lyric of a strange, fanciful, yet solemn beauty :Cowley's style intensified by the mysticism of Henry More. St. 2 monument: the World. 129 151 Entitled 'A Song in Honour of St. Cecilia's Day 1697.' Summary of Book Third. It is more difficult to characterize the English Poetry of the Eighteenth century than that of any other. For it was an age not only of spontaneous transition, but of boll experiment: it includes not only such absolute contrasts as distinguish the Rape of the Lock' from the 'Parish Register,' but such vast contemporaneous differences as lie between Pope and Collins, Burns and Cowper. Yet we may clearly trace three leading moods or tendencies:--the aspects of courtly or educated life represented by Pope and carried to exhaustion by his followers; the poetry of Nature and of Man, viewed through a cultivated, and at the same time an impassioned frame of mind by Collins and Gray :-lastly, the study of vivid and simple narrative, including natural description, begun by Gay and Thomson, pursued by Burns and others in the north, and established in England by Goldsmith, Percy, Crabbe, and Cowper Great varieties in style accompanied these diversities in aim: poets could not always distinguish the manner suitable for subjects so far apart and 'he union of conventional and of common language, exhibited most conspicuously by Burns, has given a tone to the poetry of that century which is better explained by reference to its historical origin than by naming it artificial. There is, again, a nobleness of thought, a courageous aim at high and, in a strict sense manly, excellence in many of the writers :-nor can that period he justly termed tame and wanting in originality, which produced poems such as Pope's Satires, Gray's Odes and Elegy, the ballads of Gay and Carcy, the songs of Burns and Cowper. In truth Poetry at this, as at all times, was a more or less unconscious mirror of the genius of the age: and the many complex causes which made the Eighteenth century the turning-time in modern European civilization are also more or less reficcted in its verse An intelligent reader will find the influence of Newton as markedly in the poems of Pope, as of Elizabeth in the plays of Shakespeare. On this great subject, however, these indications must here be sufficient. PAGE NO. 134 153 We have no poet more marked by rapture, by the ecstasy which Plato held the note of genuine inspiration, than Collins. Yet but twice or thrice do his lyrics reach that simplicity, that sinceram sermonis Attici 91 atiam to which this ode testifies his enthusiastic devotion. His style, as his friend Dr. Johnson truly remarks, was obscure; his diction often harsh and unskilfully laboured; he struggles nobly against the narrow, artificial manner of his age, but his too scanty years did not allow him to reach perfect mastery. |
