razed to the ground with the exception of the Citadel and the house of Pindar, whose name, though he had been dead for over a century, secured safety for his dwelling-place and for his descendants.

13. sad Electra's poet: according to the tale told by Plutarch in his Life of Lysander, the Spartans having taken Athens in 404 B.C. were contemplating the entire demolition of the city, when a musician struck up a chorus from the Electra of Euripides, which so affected the conquerors that they contented themselves with pulling down the walls which connected the city with its harbour Piræus. Sad Electra was the theme of tragedies by Eschylus and Sophocles as well as by Euripides, but the dramas of the last two only are extant.

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Milton's blindness, which had been coming on for ten years, was complete in 1652 when he was forty-four years old. He never recovered his sight, but died blind at the age of sixty-six.

3. that one talent: i.e. his power of writing. Yet Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes were all written after this date. In the word talent there is of course a reference to the Parable of the Talents in Matthew xxv. 14-30, from which the second meaning of talent (capacity) is derived.

7, 8. Doth God, etc., is the object of 'I ask,' and the whole is the principal sentence to which the first six lines When I consider, etc. are introductory.

6

8. fondly:

foolishly."

SIR HENRY: WOTTON (1568-1639) was at different times of his life a traveller, James I's ambassador at Venice, and Provost of Eton. His tracts, letters, etc., were collected and published in 1651 under the title Reliquiae Wottoniande.

The earliest copy of this poem-which is the one followed here is to be found in the fift impression (apparently used for edition ') of A Wife by Sir Thomas Overbury, whereunto are added many witty Characters

written by himself and other learned gentlemen his friends, 1614.' The poem is there ascribed to 'H. W.' A very similar version is printed by J. P. Collier in his Memoirs of Edward Alleyn from a MS. in Ben Jonson's handwriting at Dulwich College, which has been assigned (D.N.B.) to the year 1616. Both these have many variations from the posthumous Rel. Wot. version. Palgrave in his first edition mainly followed Collier, though he adopted five readings from Rel. Wot. in his second.

6

6

4. silly simple'; see note to No. 62, 1. 92.

:

7. Untied: un- is here used in a negative, not a privative sense, see note to No. 18, 1. 8. Percy, who prints the poem in his Reliques, has not tied,' for which there seems to be no authority. 8. vulgar in its primitive sense,

belonging to the common people,' with no disparaging suggestion. Cf. the vulgar tongue.'

9. hath his life from rumours freed: i.e. never listens to gossip, nor retails it.

12. accusers: an informer under the Roman Empire was enriched, as he may be to some extent in this country to-day, out of the estate of the person against whom he had brought a successful accusation. Rel. Wot. reading is oppressors.'

The

14. who never understood: i.e. has never learnt by receiving praise to which he knew he was not entitled. The Rel. Wot. reading, which Palgrave here did not adopt in his second edition, is hath ever understood,' i.e. knowing the sting of undeserved praise, has been careful to abstain from giving it.

16. I.e. in his management of people is not guided by politic considerations but by a simple love of justice. 17. Who God: the 1614 version has Who unto God,' corrected in the sixt impression, 1615.'

18. I.e. to grant him spiritual rather than material benefits.

20. well-chosen

21. servile 'bands:

the Rel. Wot. reading is religious.'

6

enslaving chains."

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BEN JONSON (? 1573-1637) was one of the most learned men of his age and the author of many tragedies,

comedies, and masques, as well as of a number of elegies, epistles, lyrics, etc. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, where his tomb bears the terse inscription, 'O rare Ben Jonson.'

This extract is the seventh stanza from the ode To the immortal memory and friendship of that noble pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison, printed in a collection of Jonson's poems entitled Underwoods (1640).

3. Nor [is it] standing long [that doth make] an oak [better be].

4. bald in Underwoods this is by an obvious error -printed bold.'

6. fairer far sc. than the oak.

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GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633) was for some time Public Orator at Cambridge and later Rector of Bemerton in Wilts. He is chiefly remembered for his religious poems published in 1633 after his death under the title of The Temple. The heading of this beautiful little poem there is The Pulley,' i.e. the means whereby God lifts man to Himself.

6. made a way: entered into the composition of man.'

15. both i.e. both God and man.

16. keep the rest: all the other qualities.' The use of the word 'rest' in this sense is the one blemish in this otherwise perfect poem; for Rest was the one quality which God had refused to man. But probably Herbert, whose taste in such matters was not in advance of his age, deliberately used the word as a conceit.

HENRY VAUGHAN (1622–1695), who styled himself 'The Silurist,' from the Silures, the ancient inhabitants of South Wales, was a mystic and a doctor of medicine practising at Brecon. His poems are of very unequal merit. This one is taken from Silex Scintillans (1650). 4. my second race: the theory of pre-existence is no new one in the Christian Church, for it was held by several of the Fathers, notably by Origen (d. 253 ?). Vaughan apparently recognizes only one stage of existence before birth on this earth; others have

imagined with more reason that each of us has spent many lives here with glimpses of heaven between.

6. a white, celestial thought: practical experience would lead one to believe that very few children-if any are born with the dispositions of angels; and that those few do not become tainted with the world, for they very rarely arrive at maturity. The ordinary child appears to have neither morals nor manners until it has learnt, in one way or another, the advantages that come from their possession. To regard adolescence as a steady progress downhill is surely to indict not merely education but existence.

17. I.e. learnt, at the instigation of the Devil, to indulge each of my senses in its own peculiar pleasures. 18. several : separate.'

19. Wordsworth too seems to have been more conscious of his own immortality in his infancy than when he came to his full powers: see his Ode below, No. 287. It may be doubted whether the average child has any conception of death, much less of a future life.

24. my glorious train: i.e. the company of the

saints.

26. City of Palm trees: this was the name given to Jericho, the first city the Israelites took in the Promised Land.

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This sonnet was probably written in 1656, when Milton was totally blind. It was addressed to one of the sons-Masson says probably Henry, the second son-of Henry Lawrence, who, after sitting in the Long Parliament, became President of Cromwell's Council (1654) and one of his House of Lords (1657).

4, 5. I.e. taking such enjoyments as the weather permits.

6. Favonius: the West wind.

8. that neither sow'd, etc.: see Matthew vi. 28, Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.'

10. Attic taste: ' refined elegance.' The Athenians were distinguished by this quality over all the other peoples of Greece. Attica was the division of Ancient Greece in which Athens was, situated.

11. artful: 'skilful.' This word, like ' cunning,' has more commonly a slightly sinister meaning to-day. 12. Tuscan : 'Italian.' The music of Italy was then, even more than in the early nineteenth century, considered the best in Europe.

6

13, 14. spare To interpose them oft: avoid indulging in them too often.'

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Cyriack Skinner was a merchant's son of London, an ingenious young gentleman and scholar to John Milton' (Wood's Ath. Oxon.); other authorities make him the son of a Lincolnshire squire. In any case his mother was the daughter of Sir Edward Coke, the famous judge who opposed James I on a question of the royal prerogative and edited Littleton's work on Tenures.' The sonnet was probably written in 1655.

7, 8. I.e. lay aside your mathematics and your study of foreign politics. Archimedes was the famous geometrician of Syracuse who discovered the principle

since called after him-that a body immersed in water loses weight equal to the weight of the water it displaces. He was killed in the capture of Syracuse by the Romans (212 B.C.). Swede is here plural. Thanks to Gustavus Adolphus (d. 1632) Sweden was for a time raised to the level of a first-class power. This position she only lost when conquered by the Russians at Pultowa (1709).

11. other things: i.e. other than the pursuit of 'solid good.'

12, 13. that care That the former that' is a demonstrative and the latter a relative; a modern poet would probably have written the care... which.'

14. refrains: i.e. from enjoying it.