APPENDIX.

I.

ON MILTON'S LYCIDAS.

"At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:

To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

Or all Milton's smaller poems, Lycidas is the greatest favourite with me. I cannot agree to the charge which Dr. Johnson has brought against it of pedantry and want of feeling. It is the fine emanation of classical sentiment in a youthful scholar— "most musical, most melancholy." A certain tender gloom overspreads it, a wayward abstraction, a forgetfulness of his subject in the serious reflections that arise out of it. The gusts of passion come and go like the sounds of music borne on the wind. The loss of the friend whose death he laments seem to have recalled, with double force, the reality of those speculations which they had indulged together; we are transported to classic ground, and a mysterious strain steals responsive on the ear, while we listen to the poet,

"With eager thought warbling his Doric lay."

I shall proceed to give a few passages at length in support of my opinion. The first I shall quote is as remarkable for the truth and sweetness of the natural descriptions as for the characteristic elegance of the allusions.

Together both, ere the high lawn appear'd

Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove a-field; and both together heard

What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft still the star that rose at evening bright

Towards Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Temper'd to the oaten flute :

Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long,
And old Dametas loved to hear our song.

But oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn.

The willows and the hazel copses green

Shall now no more be seen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worn to the weanling herds that graze,

Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear

When first the white-thorn blows;

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear!"

After the fine apostrophe on Fame which Phœbus is invoked to utter, the poet proceeds :

"Oh fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood,
Smooth sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood;

But now my oat proceeds,

And listens to the herald of the sea

That came in Neptune's plea.

He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds,

What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?

And question'd every gust of rugged winds

That blows from off each beaked promontory.

They knew not of his story:

And sage Hippotades their answer brings,

That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd,

The air was calm, and on the level brine

Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd."

If this is art, it is perfect art; nor do we wish for anything

better. The measure of the verse, the very sound of the names, would almost produce the effect here described. To ask the poet not to make use of such allusions as these is to ask the painter not to dip in the colours of the rainbow, if he could.In fact, it is the common cant of criticism to consider every allusion to the classics, and particularly in a mind like Milton's, as pedantry and affectation. Habit is a second nature; and, in this sense, the pedantry (if it is to be so called) of the scholastic enthusiast, who is constantly referring to images of which his mind is full, is as graceful as it is natural. It is not affectation in him to recur to ideas and modes of expression with which he has the strongest associations, and in which he takes the greatest delight. Milton was as conversant with the world of genius before him as with the world of nature about him; the fables of the ancient mythology were as familiar to him as his dreams. To be a pedant is to see neither the beauties of nature nor of Milton saw both; and he made use of the one only to adorn and give new interest to the other. He was a passionate admirer of nature; and, in a single couplet of his, describing the moon,

art.

"Like one that had been led astray

Through the heaven's wide pathless way,"

there is more intense observation, and intense feeling of nature (as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her,) than in twenty volumes of descriptive poetry. But he added in his own observation of nature the splendid fictions of ancient genius, enshrined her in the mysteries of ancient religion, and celebrated her with the pomp of ancient names.

"Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle airy, and his bonnet sedge,

Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.
Oh! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?
Last came and last did go,

The pilot of the Galilean lake."—

There is a wonderful correspondence in the rhythm of these lines to the ideas which they convey. This passage, which

alludes to the clerical character of Lycidas, has been found fault with, as combining the truths of the Christian religion with the fiction of the Heathen mythology. I conceive there is very little foundation for this objection, either in reason or good taste. I will not go so far as to defend Camoens, who, in his Lusiad, makes Jupiter send Mercury with a dream to propagate the Catholic religion; nor do I know that it is generally proper to introduce the two things in the same poem, though I see no objection to it here; but of this I am quite sure, that there is no inconsistency or natural repugnance between this poetical and religious faith in the same mind. To the understanding, the belief of the one is incompatible with that of the other; but, in the imagination, they not only may, but do constantly, co-exist. I will venture to go farther, and maintain that every classical scholar, however orthodox a Christian he may be, is an honest Heathen at heart. This requires explanation.-Whoever, then, attaches a reality to any idea beyond the mere name, has, to a certain extent (though not an abstract,) an habitual and practical belief in it. Now, to any one familiar with the names of the personages of the Heathen mythology, they convey a positive identity beyond the mere name. We refer them to something out of ourselves. It is only by an effort of abstraction that we divest ourselves of the idea of their reality; all our involuntary prejudices are on their side. This is enough for the poet. They impose on the imagination by all the attractions of beauty and grandeur. They come down to us in sculpture and in song. We have the same associations with them as if they had really been for the belief of the fiction in ancient times has produced all the same effect as the reality could have done. It was a reality to the minds of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and through them it is reflected to us. And, as we shape towers, and men, and armed steeds, out of the broken clouds that glitter in the distant horizon, so, throned above the ruins of the ancient world, Jupiter still nods sublime on the top of blue Olympus, Hercules leans upon his club, Apollo has not laid aside his bow, nor Neptune his trident; the sea-gods ride upon the sounding waves, the long procession of heroes and demi-gods passes in endless review before us, and still we hear