pect to their sex: but it is evident by what follows that these bearers of the Druid-offerings to Apollo were intended by Milton to be females; and it is extraordinary that this effect of my inadvertency should not occur to any one of my public or my private critics; or to myself, till my translation had passed twice through the press. On the subject of errors which I am solicitous to rectify, let me not omit to refer to one which may be regarded as of no trifling moment. In a letter to an eminent bookseller in London, which the writer desired his correspondent to communicate to me, Mr. J. Cooper Walker, whose name is known with so much distinction in the literary world, mentioned that "there was in the library of the college of Dublin a collection of Milton's pamphlets, bound in one volume, with an inscription in his own hand-writing to his friend Junius, to whom the book had been presented." Not doubting that this Junius was the kinsman of Isaac Vossius, and the writer of the treatise, "De Picturâ Veterum," who passed some time in England and was a friend of Milton's, I stated the fact according to my conception of it, and adduced Mr. C. Walker as my authority for the satement. Subsequently however, suspicious of the information which I had given, I wrote to Dr. Butson, the bishop of Clonfert, whose talents, erudition, and moral worth make me proud to challenge him as my friend, for some more specific intelligence on the topic in question; and to the kindness of this most respectable prelate am I now indebted for the power of correcting the mistake of which I have been guilty in the note to p. 396. The person, to whom is inscribed the volume preserved in the library of Trin. Coll. Dublin, was Patrick Young, the librarian of Charles I. The words and the arrangement of the inscription are the following: Ad doctissimum virum unum in fasciculum contentus. Patrick Young, who was a prebendary of St. Paul's, was probably Milton's neighbour, when the latter resided in St. Bride's Churchyard; and this circumstance, with the natural effect of learning to conciliate its votaries, might be sufficient to cement a friendship between these two great scholars, notwithstanding the opposition of their political principles. In the pure sunshine of Athens or of Rome, the republican Milton and the royalist Young might meet and entertain each other, without attending to the gloomy and pestilential atmosphere which, in that disastrous season, covered and diseased their native island. For these errors of oversight or misapprehension which I have acknowledged, and for many more of a similar nature which may have escaped my detection, I will entreat the pardon of my readers; and will hope that, imitating the candour of the great Roman critic and poet, while they see my faults they will suggest the venial cause of them in the common imperfection of the mind of man. Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus. Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens; Poscentique gravem persæpe remittit acutum: Nec semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus. HOR. De Art Poet. 347. But if, refusing the indulgence which I solicit, my readers will be strict in remarking the imperfections of my page, I can only address them in the terms, in which the great and the modest Locke addressed Bishop Stillingfleet: "I see that you would have me exact, and without any faults; and I wish that I could be so, the better to deserve your approbation." More than half of this volume had passed the press, before I obtained a sight of Mr. Todd's second edition of the poetical works of my author; and to this circumstance must be imputed my apparent inattention to this respectable publication. To Mr. Todd I have formerly professed obligations for the information with which he has supplied me; and had I been able to avail myself, at the proper period, of this new edition of his biographical and editorial labours, I might possibly have had more obligations of a similar nature to acknowledge. Of some of the new matter however, with which his industrious researches have enabled him to enlarge his biography, I was already possessed; and much of the rest I should not perhaps have been very solicitous to employ. With respect to his edition of our great poet, I must think that the variorum notes are much too numerous, and that their bulk might very advantageously have been diminished. In two instances, which have occurred to me on a hasty glance through the volumes, the commentary (the general character of which is redundancy) proves to be deficient. On that place in the 2d book of Paradise Lost, 592– A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog, the classical prototype is not cited; and we are referred to Herodotus and Lucan, in none of whose pages is to be found any authority for the assertion in the line dis tinguished by italics. The passage to which Milton immediately points on this occasion is in Diodorus. After describing the lake Serbonis, this historian says, διὸ καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν ἀγνοέντων τὴν ἰδιότητα τῇ τόπε, μετὰ ςρατευμάτων ὅλων ἠφανίσθησαν, τῆς ὑποκειμένης ὁδὲ διαμαρτόντες. "Wherefore many, wandering from the proper road, and not previously acquainted with the nature of this place, have, with their whole armies, been swallowed up in it." Dio. Sic. 1. 35. ed. Wessel. 1746. The other instance of omission, to which I allude, is in the 7th book of the Paradise Lost, l. 142 by whose aid, This inaccessible high strength the seat Of Deity supreme, us dispossess'd, He trusted to have seised, &c. In this passage, "us," by the invariable rule of the English Grammar ought to be, "we;" and yet the error is not noticed in the commentary. But it is not intended to throw trifles of this nature into the scale to weigh against the general merit of the edition. more consequence however is the neglect Of |