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Nay, quoth he, on his swooning bed out-stretch'd,
If I mayn't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetch'd,

But
vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers.

Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,
That ev'n to his last breath (there be that say't)
As he were press'd to death, he cried more weight;
But had his doings lasted as they were,

He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Link'd to the mutual flowing of the seas,

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase:
His letters are deliver'd all and gone,

Only remains this superscription.

Among Archbishop Sancroft's transcripts of poetry made by him at Cambridge, now in the Bodleian Library, is an anonymous poem on the death of Hobson. It was perhaps a common subject for the wits of Cambridge. I take this opportunity of observing, that in the same bundle is a poem on Milton's friend Lycidas, Mr. King, by Mr. Booth, of Corpus Christi, not in the published Collection.

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25

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Coll. MSS. Tann. 465. see pp. 235, 237. T. Warton.

I wonder Milton should suffer these two things on Hobson to appear in his edition of 1645. He, who at the age of nineteen had so just a contempt for

Those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight,

Which take our new fantastics with delight.

Hurd.

XIII.

L'Allegro.

HENCE loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,

*This and the following poem are exquisitely beautiful in themselves, but appear much more beautiful, when they are considered, as they were written, in contrast to each other. There is a great variety of pleasing images in each of them; and it is remarkable, that the poet represents several of the same objects as exciting both mirth and melancholy, and affecting us differently according to the different dispositions and affections of the soul. This is nature and experience. He derives the title of both poems from the Italian, which language was then principally in vogue. L'Allegro is the cheerful merry man; and in this poem he describes the course of mirth in the country and in the city from morning till noon, and from noon till night; and possibly he might have this in his thoughts, when he said afterwards in his in his Areopagitica"there be delights, there be re"creations and jolly pastimes "that will fetch the day about "from sun to sun, and rock the

" tedious year as in a delightful "dream." Vol. i. p. 154, 155. edit. 1738.

1. Hence loathed Melancholy, &c.] The beginning of this poem

is somewhat like the beginning of Kal. Décembres Saturnales of Statius, Sylvarum, lib. i.

Et Phoebus pater, et severa Pallas,
Et Musæ procul ite feriatæ :
Jani vos revocabimus Kalendis.
Saturnus mihi compede exoluta,
Et multo gravidus mero December,
Et ridens jocus, et sales protervi
Adsint, dum refero diem beatam
Læti Cæsaris, ebriamque partem.

1. Milton was too universal a scholar to be unacquainted with this mythology. In his Prolusions, or declamatory preambles to philosophical questions discussed in the schools at Cambridge, he says, Cæterum nec desunt qui Æthera et Diem itidem Erebo noctem peperisse tradunt. Prose Works, vol. ii. 585. See also his Latin ode on the death of Felton, Bp. of Ely, v. 31. and In quintum Novembris, v. 69. But as Melancholy is here the creature of Milton's imagination, he had a right to give her what parentage he pleased. See Observations on Spenser's F. Q. i. 73.

Milton in this exordium had an eye on some elegant lines of Marston, Scourge of Villanie, b.

iii. s. 10. ed. 1598.

Sleepe, grim Reproof! My jocund muse doth sing

In other keyes to nimble fingering;

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings;

There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

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And sullen frownes. Come sporting
Merriment,
Cheeke-dimpling Laughter, crowne
my verie soule
With jouisance.

See Observat. on Spenser's F. Q. i. 60. T. Warton.

2. Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,] The poet in making Melancholy the daughter of Cerberus might perhaps intend to insinuate, that she has something of the cynic, as well as something monstrous and unnatural, in her composition: but if this poem had not undergone two impressions in Milton's life-time, and one of them before he lost his sight, I should have imagined

that he had wrote Erebus, instead of Cerberus, as being more agreeable to heathen mythology; Erebus and Night are often joined together, as in Hesiod, Theog. ver, 123.

Ex Xasos ♪ Egabos te μsλawa sa Nuž
Νυκτος δ' αυτ' Αιθης τε και Ημερη εξε-

εγένοντο.

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Ούς τεκε, κυσσαμένη Έρεβει φιλοτητι

μιγείσα.

And several of their children, enumerated by Cicero, are much of the same nature and complexion as Melancholy. De Nat.

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Called so because darkness sets 6. Where brooding_darkness] the imagination on work, to create ideal forms and beings.

watch which fowl keep when -jealous] Alluding to the they are sitting. Warburton.

9. As ragged] In Titus Andron. of this pit." Ragged is not una. ii. s. 4. "The ragged entrails common in old writers, applied to rock. T. Warton.

10. In dark Cimmerian deșert] The Cimmerians were a people who lived in caves under ground, and never saw the light of the sun. See Homer, Odyss. xi. 14. and Tibullus iv. i. 65.

10. Cimmeriæ tenebræ were anciently proverbial. But Cimmerian darkness and desolation were a common allusion in the poetry

But come thou Goddess fair and free,

In heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister graces more
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;

that was now written and studied. See Fletcher's False One, act v. s. 4. Titus Andronicus, act ii. s. 3. Spenser's Teares of the Muses, and his Virgil's Gnat. But our Author might have had perhaps an immediate allusion to the cave of sleep in Ovid, Met. xi. 592. or to Homer, whom Ovid copies, Odyss. xi. 14. See also Statius, Theb. x. 84. And Chaucer, H. Fame, v. 70. p. 458. Urr. And to all or most of these authors Sylvester has been indebted in his prolix description of the cave of sleep. Du Bart. p. 316. ed. fol. 1621. And in that description we trace Milton, both here and in the opening of Il Pens.

Mr. Bowle compares this line of the text with a passage in Sydney's Arcadia, b. iii. Let "Cimmerian darkness be my only habitation." The execration in the text is indeed a translation of a passage in one of his own Academic Prolusions, Dignus qui Cimmeriis occlusus tenebris longam et perosam vitam transigat. Pr. W. vol. ii. 587. T. Warton.

11. But come thou goddess fair and free.] Compare Drayton, Ecl. iv. vol. 4. p. 1401.

A daughter cleped Dowsabell,

A maiden fair and free. In the metrical romances these two words thus paired together are a common epithet for a lady.

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As in Syr Eglamour. We have
also free alone, ibid. See also
Chaucer, March. t. v. 1655. Urr.
And Jonson, Epigram. lxxvi.
T. Warton.

12. In heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne,] Cleaped is called, named; Spenser, Faery Queen, b. iii. cant. xii. st. 19.

The other cleaped Cruelty by name. The letter is sometimes pre

y

fixed to lengthen it a syllable. B. iii. cant. v. st. 8.

And is ycleaped Florimel the fair.

Euphrosyne is the name of one of the three Graces mentioned by Hesiod, Theog. 909.

Αγλαΐην, και Ευφροσύνην, Θαλιηντ' ερα

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and by Spenser, Faery Queen, b. vi. cant. x. st. 22.

The first of them hight mild Euphro

syne,

Next fair Aglaia, last Thalia merry. The poet, in saying that she was called Euphrosyne in heaven, and Mirth by men, imitates Homer's manner of speaking, where the names in use among the learned are ascribed to the gods, and those in vulgar use are attributed to men. See Paradise Lost, v. 761. and the note there.

14. Whom lovely Venus at a birth &c.] The more ancient opinion, as we find it in Hesiod's Theogony, was that the Graces

Or whether (as some sager sing)

The frolic wind that breathes the spring,

Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a Maying,

There on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,

were the daughters of Jupiter
and Eurynome, and this Spenser
adopts in his Faery Queen, b. vi.

cant. x. st. 22.

They are the daughters of sky-ruling
Jove,

By him begot of fair Eurynome.
But Milton with great judgment
and a very allowable liberty fol-
lows the account of their being
sprung from Bacchus and Venus,
because the mythology of it suited
the nature of his subject better.
Thyer.

17. Or whether, &c.] Compare Sophocles, Ed. Tyr. 1098.

τις σε, τέκνον, τις σ' ετικτε
των μακραιωνων ; αρα
Πανος ορεσσιβατα που
προσπελασθείσ', η σε γε

τις θυγατηρ, Λοξίου; κ. τ. λ.
and not. ibid. Schaeferi de Eurip.
E.

17. Or whether (as some sager sing) &c.] No mythologist either ancient or modern that I can meet with gives this account of the birth of Euphrosyne; nevertheless we must do Milton the justice to own, that he could not possibly have invented better allegorical parents for her than Zephyrus and Aurora, or the gentle western gales of a fine morning in the spring, which, to use his own words in his Paradise Lost, iv. 154.

-to the heart inspire Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair.

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His pretence of authority in the parenthesis (as some suger sing) is introduced, in my opinion, only to give a more venerable authoritative air to his poem: and I have often suspected, that that passage in the tenth book of Paradise Lost, where the evil angels are described turned into serpents, and as the poet adds, ver. 575.

Yearly injoin'd, some say, to undergo This annual humbling certain number'd days,

is an instance of the same sort. Thyer.

As some sager sing. It is sages in Mr. Fenton's edition, but the old editions have sager. Both these genealogies were probably of the poet's own invention, but he rather favours the latter.

19. Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a Maying.] The rhymes and imagery are from Jonson, in the Maske at Sir William Cornwalleis's house at Highgate, 1604. Works, ed. fol. 1616. p. 881.

See who here is come a Maying?
Why left we off our playing.

This song is sung by Zephyrus,
and Aurora, and Flora. T. War-

ton.

22. And fresh-blown roses wash'd with dew.] So Shakespeare, Tam, Shr, act ii. s. 1.

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