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"Tu mihi percurres medicos, tua gramina, succos,

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Helleborumque, humilesque crocos, foliumque hyacinthi,
"Quasque habet ista palus herbas, artesque medentûm."
Ah pereant herbæ, pereant artesque medentûm,
Gramina; postquam ipsi nil profecere magistro!
Ipse etiam, nam nescio quid mihi grande sonabat
Fistula, ab undecimâ jam lux est altera nocte,
Et tum fortè novis admôram labra cicutis;
Dissiluere tamen ruptâ compage, nec ultra
Ferre graves potuere sonos: dubito quoque ne sim
Turgidulus, tamen et referam; vos cedite, silvæ.

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni.
Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per æquora puppes
Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniæ,
Brennumque Arviragumque duces, priscumque Belinum,
Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos:
Tum gravidam Arturo, fatali fraude, lögernen,
Mendaces vultûs, assumptaque Gorlöis arma,

By

brook derives its name from this river, or rather rivulet. Cassibelauni jugera we are to understand, as Mr. Warton informs me, Verulam, or St. Albans.

• In the fabulous history of Britain, Brutus, the grandson of Æneas, leads a colony of Trojans to this island, which he conquers and civilizes. He had previously married Inogen, the daughter of some Grecian king, called Pandrasus. Rutupium is Richborough on the coast of Kent. Armorica (or Bretagne) in France was conquered and occupied by the Britons, at the time, as it is generally supposed, when they were pressed by the Saxons. But we have no accounts of this emigration and conquest: and many ascribe the first British settlements in Armorica to the soldiers who followed Maximus from our Island; and who, after the defeat of their leader by Theodosius, in the 388th year of the Christian æra, established themselves in this maritime province of Gaul; where their numbers were increased by successive emigrations of their countrymen at different periods and under the impulse of various motives.

Uther Pendragon, being changed by the magic of Merlin into the likeness of Gorlois, prince of Cornwall, got possession of his wife, lögerne's bed; and Arthur was the offspring of the trespass.

Merlini dolus. O mihi tum si vita supersit,
Tu procul annosâ pendebis, fistula, pinu,

Multùm oblita mihi; aut, patriis mutata Camœnis,
Brittonicum strides: quid enim? omnia non licet uni,
Non sperâsse uni licet omnia, mi satis ampla
Merces, et mihi grande decus, (sim ignotus in ævum
Tum licèt, externo penitùsque inglorius orbi,)

Si me flava comas legat Usa," et potor Alauni,
Vorticibusque frequens Abra, et nemus omne Treantæ,
Et Thamesis meus ante omnes, et fusca metallis
Tamara, et extremis me discant Orcades undis.

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni,
Hæc tibi servabam lentâ sub cortice lauri,

Hæc, et plura simul: tum quæ mihi pocula Mansus,
(Mansus Chalcidicæ non ultima gloria ripæ,*)
Bina dedit, mirum artis opus, mirandus et ipse,

Et circum gemino cælaverat argumento:

In medio, rubri maris unda et odoriferum ver,
Littora longa Arabum et sudantes balsama silvæ:
Has inter Phoenix, divina avis, unica terris,

Usa, according to Camden, is the Ouse in Buckinghamshire. Alaunus is probably the Alan in Cornwall. Abra is a name which has been given to the Tweed, the Severn, and the Humber. With Milton, in this place, it designates perhaps the last of these 1ivers, though the proper name, as it is found in Ptolemy, for the a stuary, which is now called the Humber, is Abus. The Tamar, a Cornish river, is discoloured by running through metallic strata. Thule, a name which receded with the extension of the Roman geography farther to the north and was latterly given to Iceland, is here assigned to the Orkneys, the northern extremity of the limits proposed by the poet to his fame, as the Tamar forms the southern.

* Our readers can require no additional information, in this place, respecting. Manso, the amiable and literary Marquis of Villa. A colony of Greeks, partly from Cumæ in Æolia and partly from Chalcis in Eubœa, settled on the Coasts of Campania, where they built Cuma and Neapolis. From this circumstance the country of Naples called Chalcidian and, by Virgil, Euboean.

Cæruleùm fulgens diversicoloribus alis,

Auroram vitreis surgentem respicit undis.

Parte aliâ, polus omnipatens et magnus Olympus:

Quis putet? hîc quoque Amor, pictaque in nube pharetræ,
Arma corusca faces, et spicula tincta pyropo:

Nec tenues animas, pectusque ignobile vulgi,
Hinc ferit; at, circum flammantia lumina torquens,
Semper in erectum spargit sua tela per orbes
Impiger, et pronos nunquam collimat ad ictûs:
Hinc mentes ardere sacræ, formæque deorum.

Tu quoque in his, nec me fallit spes lubrica, Damon;
Tu quoque in his certè es, nam quò tua dulcis abiret
Sanctaque simplicitas, nam quò tua candida virtus?
Nec te Lethæo fas quæsivisse sub orco:

Nec tibi conveniunt lacrymæ, nec flebimus ultrà;
Ite procul, lacrymæ; purum colit æthera Damon,
Æthera purus habet, pluvium pede reppulit arcum;
Heroumque animas inter, divosque perennes,
Æthereos haurit latices, et gaudia potat

Ore sacro.

Quin tu, cœli post jura recepta,

Dexter ades, placidusque fave quicunque vocaris,
Seu tu noster eris Damon, sive æquior audis

y Diodotus, quo te divino nomine cuncti
Calicolæ nôrint, silvisque vocabere Damon.
Quòd tibi purpureus pudor, et sine labe juventus
Grata fuit, quòd nulla tori libata voluptas,
En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores:
Ipse caput nitidum cinctus rutilante coronâ,

y For the accommodation of his verse, the poet has in this place happily translated the name of his friend Deodati into Greek. But Milton was fond of these versions of a name, which was so susceptible of translation. In each of the two familiar letters to his friend, which are extant, he calls him Theodotus.

z Deodati died unmarried, and, in this respect, resembled Mr. King, the Lycidas of Milton's Muse. Some of the thoughts in the conclusion of this poem are easily discoverable in the Lycidas.

Lætaque frondentis gestans umbracula palmæ,
Æternum perages immortales hymenæos;
Cantus ubi choreisque furit lyra mista beatis,
Festa Sionæo bacchantur et Orgia thyrso.

DAMON.

AN EPITAPHIAL ELEGY.a

Ye Nymphs of Himera, (whose stream along
The notes have floated of your mournful song,

a Dr. Langhorne, whose elegant and polished, though not very powerful Muse has obtained perhaps less regard than she might rightfully claim, has translated a part of this pastoral: but I was unacquainted with his version till I had completed my own.*

The fate of Dr. Langhorne, as a poet, has been peculiarly and curiously unhappy; for he has been neglected by the public, and has experienced attention from Mr. Hayley. The imperfect translation in question is one of the least fortunate of its author's poetic efforts: but when it is to be prostrated before Mr. Cowper's version of the same poem, it is raised into fictitious consequence by Mr. Hayley, and selected for the object of his warm praise.† By this praise however, from the admirer and panegyrist of poor Percival Stockdale, Dr. Langhorne, if he could be sensible of it, would not probably be much gratified, or feel his vanity immoderately inflamed.

It was remarked by one of the public critics, (in the Monthly Review for March 1809,) that my version* of the, Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni, which may be called the burden of the pastoral, was unsuccessful, and injurious to the poetry with which it was associated. As I believe the critic's judgment in this instance to be right; and as I am certain that the frequent recurrence of the same couplet, however happily formed, must produce with its monotonous interruption an effect which

* Return unfed, my lambs, by fortune crost,
Your hapless master, now to you is lost.

† See Cowper's "Translations of Milton's Latin and Italian poetry."

As Daphnis or as Hylas you deplored,

Or Bion, once the shepherd's tuneful lord;)
Lend your Sicilian softness to proclaim

The woes of Thyrsis on the banks of Thame:
What plaints he murmur'd to the springs and floods,
How waked the sorrowing echoes of the woods,
As frantic for his Damon lost, alone

He roam'd, and taught the sleepless night to groan.

Twice the green blade had bristled on the plain,
And twice the golden ear enrich'd the swain,
Since Damon, by a doom too strict, expired,
And his pale eye his absent friend required:
For Thyrsis still his wish'd return delay'd;
The Muses held him in the Tuscan shade.
But when, with satiate taste and careful thought,
His long forgotten home and flock he sought,
Ah! then, beneath the accustom'd elm reclined,
All-all his loss came rushing on his mind.
Undone and desolate, for transient ease

He pour'd his swelling heart in strains like these.
Back to your fold, my lambs, unfed repair:
My care of you is lost in deeper care.

is far from good, and which will not in fact allow the lines to be recited more than once or twice in the whole poem, I have varied my translation of the repeated line, and have thus, by always offering the same thought with a change of diction, not only made what before fatigued with its cuckoo note subservient to the variety of the piece, but have adhered, in my own opinion at least, more faithfully to Nature; who, when she suggested at intervals to the mourning shepherd the same melancholy sentiment, 'would not be apt to suggest it, with too much artifice and accurate recollection for the disorder of grief, in precisely the same formal expression. Whether by following on this occasion the dictate of my own feeling I have deviated from that of true taste, or whether, by taking such a liberty with my author, I have been guilty of any actual offence, must be submitted to the decision of my readers.

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