In willing chains and sweet captivity.
But fie, my wand'ring Muse, how thou dost stray!
Expectance calls thee now another way,
Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent
To keep in compass of thy predicament:
Then quick about thy purpos’d business come,
That to the next I may resign my room.

55

Then Ens is represented as father of the Predicaments

his ten sons, whereof the eldest stood for Substance

with his canons, which Ens, thus speaking, explains. GOOD luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth The fairy ladies danc'd upon the hearth;

60

52. In willing chains and sweet if we recollect, that every thing, captivity.) Tasso, Gier. Lib. c. vi. in the masks of this age, ap84.

peared in a bodily shape. Airy

nothing had not only a local haGiogo di servitu dolce e leggiero.

Boule.

bitation and a name, but a visible

figure. It is extraordinary that 56. -of thy predicament :] the pedantry of King James I. What the Greeks called a cate- should not have been gratified gory, Boëthius first named a pre- with the system of logic repredicament: and if the reader is sented in a mask, at some of his acquainted with Aristotle's Cate- academic receptions. He was gories, or Burgersdicius, or any once entertained at Oxford, in of the old logicians, he will not 1618, with a play called the want what follows to be explained Marriage of the Arts. As to the to him; and it cannot well be fairy ladies dancing, &c. it is the explained to him, if he is unac- first and last time that the sysquainted with that kind of logic. tem of the fairies was ever in

59. Good luck befriend thee, troduced to illustrate the docSon, &c.] Here the metaphysical trine of Aristotle's ten categories. or logical Ens is introduced as a Yet so barren, unpoetical, and person, and addressing his eldest abstracted a subject could not son Substance. Afterwards the have been adorned with finer logical Quantity, Quality, and touches of fancy, than we meet Relation, are personified, and with, v. 62. come tripping to the speak. This affectation will ap- room, &c. v. 69. a sibyl old, &c. pear more excusable in Milton, And in this illustration there is VOL. III.

A a

70

Thy drowsy nurse hath sworn she did them spy
Come tripping to the room where thou didst lie,
And sweetly singing round about thy bed
Strow all their blessings on thy sleeping head.
She heard them give thee this, that thou should'st still 65
From eyes of mortals walk invisible :
Yet there is something that doth force my fear,
For once it was my dismal hap to hear
A Sibyl old, bow-bent with crooked age, ,
That far events full wisely could presage,
And in time's long and dark prospective glass
Foresaw what future days should bring to pass ;
Your son, said she, (nor can you it prevent,)
Shall subject be to many an Accident.
O’er all his brethren he shall reign as king,
Yet every one shall make him underling,
And those that cannot live from him asunder
Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under,
In worth and excellence he shall out-go them,
Yet being above them, he shall be below them ;
From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing.

75

80

great elegance, v. 83. to find a exist, but as inherent in Subfoe, &c. The address of Ens is stance. From others he shall stand a very ingenious enigma on Sub- in need of nothing; he is still substance. T. Warton.

stance, with, or without, accident. 74. Shall subject be to many an Yet on his brothers shall depend Accideni.] A pun on the logical for clothing ; by whom he is accidens. O'er all his brethren he clothed, superinduced, modified, şhull reign as king; the Predica- &c. But he is still the same. ments are his brethren; of or to To find a foe, &c.; Substantia which he is the subjectum, al- substantiæ nova contrariatur, is a though first in excellence and school maxim. To harbour those order. Ungratefully shall strive that are at enmity; his accidents. to keep him under ; they cannot T. Warton,

85

To find a foe it shall not be his hap,
And peace shall lull him in her flow'ry lap;
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door
Devouring war shall never cease to roar :
Yea it shall be his natural property
To harbour those that are at enmity.
What pow'r, what force, what miglity spell, if not
Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?

90

The next Quantity and Quality spake in prose,

then Relation was called by his name.

RIVERS arise; whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulphy Dun,

84. And peace shall lull him in gulphy Dun, I find not in Spenher flow'ry lap;] So in Harring- ser, but suppose the Don is ton's Ariosto, c. xlv. 1.

meant, from whence Doncaster Who long were lollid on high in for.

has its name; and Camden's ac. tune's lap.

count of this river shows the See also W. Smith's Cloris, 1596. propriety of the epithet gulphy.

“ Danus, commonly Don and and Spenser's Tears of the Muses,

“ Dune, seems to be so called, Terpsich. st. i. and Par. Lost, iv.

" because it is carried in a low 254. T. Warton.

“deep channel, for that is the 91. Rivers arise; &c.] In in

« signification of the British voking these rivers Milton had his

" word Dan.” See Camden's eye particularly upon that admirable episode in Spenser of the Yorkshire. Or Trent, who like

some earth-born giant &c. This marriage of the Thames and the Medway, where the several ri- description is much nobler than

Spenser's, st. 35. vers are introduced in honour of the

And bounteous Tront, that in himceremony. Faery Queen, b.

self enseains iv, cant. 11. Of utmost Tweed ; Both thirty sorts of fish, and thirty so Spenser, st. 36.

sundry streams. And Tweede the limit betwixt Lo- The name is of Saxon original, gris land

but (as Camden observes in his And Albany.

Staffordshire) “ some ignorant Or Oose, either that in Yorkshire, " and idle pretenders imagine or that in Cambridgeshire, both “ the name to be derived from mentioned by Spenser. Or " the French word Trente, and

Or Trent, who like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirty arms along th' indented meads,

“upon that account have feigned Whose bad condition yet it doth

retain, “ thirty rivers running into it,

Oft tossed with his storms, which “ and likewise so many kinds of

therein still remain. “ fish swimming init.” However, this notion might very well be And the Medway and the Thame adopted in poetry. Or sullen

are joined together, as they are Mole &c. So Spenser, st. 32.

married in Spenser. I wonder

that Milton has paid no particular And Mole, that like a nousling mole compliment to the river flowing

doth make His way still under ground, till by. Cambridge (this exercise Thamis he o'ertake.

being made and spoken there) See the same account in Camden's

as Spenser has done, st. 34. Surrey. Or Severn swift &c.

Thence doth by Huntingdon and We shall have a fuller account of

Cambridge flit, this in the Mask. Or rocky Avon,

My mother Cambridge, whom as

with a crown Spenser more largely, st. 31.

He doth adorn, and is adorn'd of it But Avon marched in more stately

With many a gentle Muse, and path,

many a learned wit. Proud of his adamants, with which 91. I rather think Milton conhe shines

sulted Drayton's Polyolbion. It is And glisters wide, as als of wondrous

hard to say in what sense, or in Bath And Bristow fair, which on his waves what manner, this introduction of he builded hath.

the rivers was to be applied to the Or sedgy Lee, this river divides subject. -or Trent, &c. See the Middlesex and Essex. Spenser Polyolb. s. xii. vol. iii. p. 906. thus describes it, st. 29.

And thiriy several streames, from The wanton Lee that oft doth lose

many a sundry way Unto her greatness shall their wai'ry

tribute pay. Or coaly Tine, Spenser describes Indented meads. Indent, in this it by the Picts' Wall, st. 36. Or sense and context, in Sylvester's ancient hallowed Dee; so Spenser, Du Bartus, D. ii. W.i. st. 39.

Our silver Medway, which doth And following Dee, which Britons deepe indent long ygone

The flowerie medowes of my native Did call divine, that doth by Chester

Kent. tend.

And Drayton speaks of " creeks See Lycidas too, ver. 55. Or indenting the land." Polyolb. s. i. Humber loud &c. So Spenser or sullen Mole, &c. at Mickleham speaks of this Scythian king, and in Surrey the Mole during the of his being drowned in the

summer appears to sink through river, st. 38.

its sandy bed into a subterraneous And nam'd the river of his wretched current. Milton alludes to it in

one of his religious disputes.

his way.

95

Or sullen mole that runneth underneath,
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death,
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,
Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallow'd Dee,
Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythian's name,
Or Medway smooth, or royal tow'red Thame.

[The rest was prose.]

100

" &c."

III.
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.
* Composed 1629.

I. THIS is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of heav'n's eternal King, “ To make the word Gift, like drowned in Humber." Elegies, “ the river Mole in Surrey, to vol. iv. p. 1244. Or Mednay

run under the bottom of a long smooth; the smoothness of the “ line, and so to start up and to Medway is characterised in Spengovern the word presbytery, ser's Mourning Muse of Thestylis.

Animadv. Rem. Def. Pr. W. i. 92. -guilty of maiden's

The Medwaies silver streames

That wont so still to glide, death; Sabrina, see Comus, 827.

Were troubled now and wrotb. -Ancient hallowed Dee. We have irger üdus &c. in Apollonius The royal towers of Thames imRhodius and Theocritus; but ply Windsor Castle, familiar to Milton is not classical here. Milton's view, and to which he Dee's divinity was Druidical, and frequently makes allusions. T. is first mentioned by Gyraldus Warton. Cambrensis, from the popular

* To the title of this Ode we traditions, in 1188. -or Humber have added the date, which is loud &c.; the Scythian king, prefixed in the edition of 1645, Humber, landed in Britain 300 Composed 1629, so that Milton years before the Roman invasion, was then twenty-one years old. and was drowned in this river by He speaks of this poem in the Locrine, after conquering King conclusion of his sixth Elegy to Albanact. So Drayton, Polyolb. Charles Deodati : and it was s. viii, vol. ii.p. 796. Drayton has probably made as an exercise at made a most beautiful use of this Cambridge; and there is not tradition in his Elegy " Upon only great learning shown in it, " three Sons of the Lord Sheffield but likewise a fine vein of poetry.