In the year in which this was written,

interchange of numbers, which enchants and astonishes in the tragic solemnity of the chorus of the Grecian Muse, or in the wild roll of her dithyrambic. This preference of a system may be observed amongst all, even the latest of the Roman poets; though exceptions to it will be found in two or three choruses in Seneca's plays (Agam. 590. 810. dip. 403), which at the same time exhibit transgressions of every rule of metre and of rhythm. To disapprove then of the general plan and construction of this ode is only to admit that, in matters of this nature, innovation is dangerous and to be avoided: for, in compositions in the clas sical languages, what is without precedent may be contrary to principle; and in every department of knowledge the vague surmises of probability, which are doubtful, must not be balanced against the conclusions of necessity, which are certain. Next in order to be regarded is the execution of the ode, which need not have followed the licentiousness of the plan; and it would have been more becoming in our poet to adhere to authority in the former, than it was censurable to depart from it in the latter; for to deviate from authority in the former was to produce new fabrics of verse, and thus to indulge in a violence of innovation at which sound judgment must necessarily revolt. It was to be expected therefore that Milton would fortify each of his lines with example, or, in defect of example, would at least advance for his deed the plea of reason, and would attempt to conciliate criticism with the effect of harmony: but to neither of these dictates of prudence has he invariably attended. For some of his verses individual example will be sought for in vain, while in others, not strictly conformable to those models which they most nearly resemble, the less severe and fastidious will admit the principle of construction not to be wholly contrary to the genius of the Latin language, and will acknowledge that the rhythm distinguishes them from the asperity of their neighbours. With lines of this description may be classed the following:

(1646,) the wife of Milton produced her first

(The two last verses are not Phalacians, whatever Milton may call them)

Auctorum Graiæ simul ac Latinæ,

Phineamque abigat pestem procul amne Pegaseo.

Quo neque lingua procax vulgi penetrabit atque longè.

The five last lines are too cumbrous with spondees, but they are constructed after the manner of Pindar, the most beautiful and the most frequent of whose verses are formed by prefixing or postfixing trochaics to dactylics-e. g.

Πρωτεσίλα τὸ τεὸν δ ̓ ἀνδρῶν Αχαιών
Εμπυρα χαλκοαρᾶν ἔκλω θανόνλων.

So Seneca

Ut quondam Herculeâ cecidit pharetrâ.
Motam barbaricis equitum catervis.

These lines, though not very strictly formed on any model and indefensible by example, may be admitted as not deficient in rhythm: but others are to be found in this composition of Milton's not only unprotected by the strong bulwark of authority, but unrecommended also by the wily influence of harmony; monsters, such as Seneca, or whoever was the author of Edipus and Agamemnon, scarcely ever begot, or Georgius Fabricius christened. To reject disdainfully such specimens as are contained in the following list requires not the superbum aurium judicium. King Midas would have disapproved of them; and we may decide dogmatically, and may animadvert severely, without caution and without delicacy, on a fact which is so obvious and on uncouthness which is so barbarous.

child,' a daughter, baptized by the name of

Insons populi, barbitoque devius.
Modo quis Deus, aut editus Deo.
Pristinam gentis miseratus indolem.
Orbi notus per immensos.

Almaque revocet studia sanctus.
Fugere Lethen, vehique superam.
Sedula tamen haud nimii poeta.
Callo tereris institoris insulsi.

Quis te, parve liber, quis te fratribus.
Munditieque nitens non operosâ.
Quicquid hoc sterile fudit ingenium.
Jam serò placidam sperare jubeo.

Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras.

As Antispastics, (a measure though difficult and obscure, yet not lawless and licentious,) are in use only among the Greeks, and were rejected by the Latins, as unpleasant to their ears and repugnant to their accent, it would be in vain to justify the preceding lines by referring them to that metre, to which they may perhaps bear some shadowy resemblance: with any degree of resemblance, they could not be permitted to avail themselves of such far-fetched and foreign authority-citra mare nati.

Of the remaining lines of this ode, it will be sufficient to say that they are good and that most of them are well-known and well authorized, without entering into a tedious detail of the names of dactylics, iambics, trochaics, asclepiadeans, &c. &c. The dactylic, Clarus Erectheides, would sound fuller and better if the dipththong ei were resolved puncto dialyseos. Dawes has well observed that these words Τυδείδης, Ατρείδης, &c. never occur in Homer where they must be trisyllables, but only where they may be quadrisyllables. Add to this the words of Eustathius not far from the beginning of his Παρεκβολαι εἰς τὴν Ὁμήρε ποιησιν. Οι Αἰολεις πολλάκις ἐν ταις διφθόγγοις ἐκ ἀποβάλλεσιν, αλλ'

$ July 29.

Anne, who was lame either from her birth, or in consequence of some accident in her early infancy. In the following year, in which our author's father died, his allies, the Powells, returned to their own mansion, and his house, being once more resigned to literature," looked again," to use his nephew's expression, "like a house of the Musės." In this house however, in which his second child, Mary, was born," he did not continue long; exchanging it for one of smaller dimensions in High Holborn, the back part of which opened into Lincoln's Inn Fields.

t

ἀρχῶνται μόνη διαβάσει, ὡς ἐν τῷ ̓Ατρείδης, ̓Αιγείδης Αργέιος. Pindar sometimes uses the dialysis, and sometimes not. Γεφύρωσε δ' Ατρεϊδαισι νοστὸν.

Δόντες Οἰκλειδα γυναικα.

In the scolion to Harmodius and Aristogeiton.

Τυδείδην τε ἐσθλὸν Διομηδέα

Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet.

I cannot help admiring that Seneca should so studiously affect an anapæst in the fifth place of a senarius, to the almost entire exclusion of a tribrach and an iambus.

t

Philips, xxvii.

u October 25, 1648.

* The date of this change of residence is not precisely ascertained. It is said to have been soon after the march of the army, in April 1647, under Fairfax and Cromwell to suppress the insurrection, excited in the city by Massey and Brown. Milton's official appointment took place in 1649, soon after the establishment of the Council of State. He occupied his house, therefore, in High Holborn about two years.

His next removal of residence was occasioned by his acceptance of the office of Latin secretary, which rendered a situation nearer to Whitehall an object of convenience to him.

As those writings of Milton, which will soon occur to our notice, are intimately connected with the great political transactions of his time, it will be necessary to throw a cursory view upon these interesting events, before we proceed again in the prosecution of our more immediate subject.

The victory at Naseby, gained on the 14th of June 1645 by the army under Fairfax and Cromwell, may be considered as having terminated the war between the Parliament and Charles, a civil war honourably distinguished from every other by the general benignity of its spirit, and the admirable moderation of the victor. From the moment of this defeat the unhappy Monarch was, in truth, in the possession of his enemies; and he passed the few months, which interyened before his surrender to the Scots, in a species of captivity at Oxford.

In the April of the following year, he fled to the army of the Scots before Newark, under the command of the earl of Leven, by whom he was detained as a prisoner, and, in no