of Naples is inferior to the Salsilli and the Selvaggi of Rome. But the intrinsic or the relative merit of these short, and perhaps almost extemporaneous effusions is not an object of our consideration. They must be viewed by us with reference not to their authors but to their object; and they cannot fail to excite our surprise when we consider them as the homage of acute men, accustomed to contemplate and appreciate the highest efforts of the human mind, to a young traveller, on a short visit from a distant country, who was not made illustrious by wealth or by connexions, but who extorted these bursts of admiration solely by the display of talents and erudition. It has been observed also that, in the intercourse of praise with our author, the Italians gained more valuable commodities than they gave. If this remark be just, as it indisputably is, with respect to the compliment of Salsilli, it is still more prominently true when referred to that of Manso. Latin poem, in which Milton addresses this venerable friend and patron of the Muses, is a high and admirable composition, which to the praised friend of Marino and of Tasso, The Manso is named by Tasso, in the 20th book of his great poem, among the princes of Italy. Tasso has also addressed to offers incense, kindled with a more celestial flame than any with which he had hitherto been propitiated. The production is so beautiful that we may perhaps be pardoned by our readers if we present it to them entire. MANSUS. Hæc quoque, Manse, tuæ meditantur carmina laudi Post Galli cineres et Mecanatis Hetrusci. Tu quoque, si nostræ tantùm valet aura Camœnæ, Te pridem magno felix concordia Tasso him five sonnets and his dialogue on Friendship. Manso was one of the founders and was also president of the academy of the Otiosi at Naples. h Milton alludes to the principal poem of Marino, Il Adone. i A monument was erected to Marino at Naples by Manso. Marino belonged to the academy of the Otiosi, of which Manso, as we have mentioned, was the founder. Hence the propriety of the epithet alumnus,' applied to Marino in his relation to Manso. Nec satis hoc visum est in utrumque, et nec pia cessant * Manso became the biographer of his two friends Tasso and Marino. 'Mr. Warton's note on this passage is certainly unfortunate, and must be inserted as a specimen of his critical and literary ability. "Mycalen qui natus ad altam," &c.-" Plutarch who wrote the Life of Homer. He was a native of Boeotia, where Mycale is a mountain. It is among those famous hills that blazed at Phaeton's conflagration, Ovid. Metam. ii. 223.-The allusion is happy; as it draws with it an implicit comparison between Tasso and Homer. In the epithet, "facundus," there is much elegance and propriety. Plutarch is the great master of ancient biography." [Milton's Juvenile Poems, p. 529. 2d ed] From the two concluding sentences of this curious note, the unlearned reader might be led to conclude that" facundus" was the Latin representative of ancient biography; or, (if his dictionary should acquaint him with the meaning of this epithet,) that ancient biography was a species of composition altogether distinct from modern; which his common sense and the experience of his English reading would assure him to be in no way inseparably and vitally connected with eloquence, or the beauties of composition. But the whole note is peculiarly unlucky. Not a word in the two lines of Milton is applicable to Plutarch, and every word is applicable to Herodotus. The epithet," facundus," which is admirably appropriate to the latter, cannot without some compulsion of its meaning be assigned to the former. Of the two lives of Homer, which are extant, it is more probable that the Ionic was written by Herodotus than that the Attic was by Plutarch. Mycale is a mountain not in Boeotia, as Mr. W. affirms, but in Ionia near the borders of Caria, the native country of Herodotus. Ovid, whom Mr. Warton quotes on this occasion, is no evidence respecting the situation of Mycale. In the cited passage his mountains are thrown together without any other re Rettulit Æolii vitam facundus Homeri. Brumalem patitur longâ sub nocte Boöten. Nos etiam colimus Phoebum, nos munera Phoebo, ference than to that of metre; and Mycale succeeds to the Phrygian Dindymus: Dindymaque et Mycale, natusque ad sacra Citharon. Mycalessus is noticed by* Pliny as a mountain of Boeotia; and this circumstance may possibly have induced Mr. Warton's mistake. For whatever convincing reasons the Life of Homer imputed to Herodotus may now be rejected as spurious, Milton either entertained no doubts of its authenticity or did not allow them to prevent him from alluding to the suspected work, in the passage on which Mr. Warton has here commented. When I say that the Ionic Life was more probably written by Herodotus than the Attic was by Plutarch, I am far from intending to assert the genuineness of the former production: for if I could not from my own small fund of classical knowledge adduce reasons to lead me to an opposite conclusion, I should be withheld from so erroneous an opinion by the judgment of more than one of the great scholars of the present day, whom I am proud to rank either among my friends or my near connexions. m Chaucer, who travelled into Italy, is distinguished in Spenser's pastorals by the name of Tityrus. * L. 4. c. 7. n Flaventes spicas et lutea mala canistris Halantemque crocum, perhibet nisi vana vetustas, Fortunate senex, ergo, quacunque per orbem Tu quoque in ora frequens venies plausumque virorum, Dicetur tum sponte tuos habitâsse penates Cynthius, et famulas venisse ad limina Musas. At non sponte domum tamen idem, et regis adivit Upis, Loxo, and Hecaërge are the names of the daughters of Boreas, who offer presents to Apollo in Callimachus's hymn to Delos. ἀπὸ ξανθων αριμασπών Ουπις τε λοξώ τε και ευαίων εκαεργη Υμν' εις Δήλον. The fable of Apollo, driven by Jupiter from heaven and compelled to tend the flocks of Admetus king of Thessaly, is too well known to require a repetition of it. Mr. Warton has observed, before me, that Milton in this passage has imitated a beautiful chorus in the Alcestis. I wish however that Milton on this occasion, preserving the moderation of Euripides, had restricted to the animal creation the effects of Apollo's melodies: but perhaps it was not necessary that any limitation of power should be prescribed to the lyre of a god. |