SONG ON MAY MORNING. Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger, Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire 5 10 This beautiful little song presents an eminent proof of Milton's attention to the effect of metre, in that admirable change of numbers, with which he describes the appearance of the May Morning, and salutes her after she has appeared; as different as the subject is, and produced by the transition from iambics to trochaics. So in "L'Allegro," he banishes Melancholy in iambics, but invites Euphrosyne and her attendants in trochaics.—TODD. MISCELLANIES. ANNO ETATIS XIX. At a vacation Exercise in the College, part Latin, part English. The Latin HAIL, native Language, that by sinews weak Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee; I know my tongue but little grace can do thee: The daintiest dishes shall be served up last. I pray thee, then, deny me not thy aid 10 15 For this same small neglect that I have made : But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure, And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure; Written in 1627: it is hard to say why these poems did not first appear in edition 1645. They were first added, but misplaced, in edition 1673.-T. WARTON. ninisters and four areas a must ám a 1 pervical swembly, which received appeals from ne prema mi dasa Isirans, kit. These criances, which asceran the age of the hers before 18. k piace in 1641 and 1647. See Scobell, “* Col.” P. i. p. 34, 15) —I. Tatus. The independenta were now makening the stuerasie. In 1643 their principal leaders präiset a jamones via de me, “An Ayi gera Naratie of some Ministers formerly exles a the Netherlands, Dow members of the Assembly of Divines. Humbly ea basitted to the benuarasie Houses of Parlament" This piece was answered by one A. S. the person intended by Mis—I. Wares. Samuel Rutherford, or Rutherford, was toe of the chief commissioners of the church of Scotland, who sat with the Assembly at Westminster, and who concurred in settling the grand points of presbyterian discipline. He was professor of divinity in the university of St. Andrew's, and has left a great variety of Calvinistie tracts. He was an avowed enemy to the independents, as appears from his “ Disputation on pretended Liberty of Conscience, 1649." It is hence easy to see, why Rotherford was an obnoxious character to Milton. -T. WARTON. ↳ By shallow Edwards 66 It is not the "Gangrena" of Thomas Edwards that is here the object of Milton's resentment, as Dr. Newton and Mr. Thyer have supposed. Edwards had attacked Milton's favourite plan of independency, in two pamphlets full of miserable invectives, immediately and professedly levelled against the “ Apologeticall Narration” above-mentioned, “ Antapologia, or a full Answer to the Apologeticall Narration, &c., wherein is handled many of the Controversies of these Times. By T. Edwards, minister of the gospel. Lond. 1644.” However, in the "Gangrena," not less than in these two tracts, it had been his business to blacken the opponents of presbyterian uniformity, that the parliament might check their growth by penal statutes.-T. WARTON. 1 And Scotch what dye call. Perhaps Henderson, or George Gillespie, another Scotch minister with a harder name, and one of the ecclesiastical commissioners at Westminster.-T. WARTON. Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent. The famous council of Trent.-T. WARTON. k Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears. That is, although your cars cry out that they need clipping, yet the mild and gentle parliament will content itself with only clipping away your Jewish and persecuting principles.-WARBURTON. The meaning of the present context is, "Check your insolence, without proceeding to cruel punishments." To "balk," is to spare.-T. WARTON. 1 TRANSLATIONS. THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, LIB. I. WHAT slender youth bedew'd with liquid odours, In wreaths thy golden hair, Plain in thy neatness? O, how oft shall he Unwonted shall admire! Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold, Who always vacant, always amiable Hopes thee, of flattering gales Unmindful. Hapless they, To whom thou untried seem'st fair! Me, in my vow'd Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea. FROM GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. BRUTUS thus addresses DIANA in the country of Leogecia: GODDESS of shades, and huntress, who at will Walk'st on the rowling spheres, and through the deep: On thy third reign, the earth, look now and tell What land, what seat of rest, thou bidd'st me seek, What certain seat, where I may worship thee For aye, with temples vow'd and virgin quires. To whom, sleeping before the altar, DIANA answers in a vision the same night: Brutus, far to the west, in the ocean wide, FROM DANTE. Ан, Constantine! of how much ill was cause, YY 2 FROM DANTE FOUNDED in chaste and humble poverty, 'Gainst them that raised thee dost thou lift thy horn, FROM ARIOSTO. THEN pass'd he to a flowery mountain green, FROM HORACE. WHOм do we count a good man? Whom but he FROM EURIPIDES. THIS is true liberty when freeborn men, FROM HORACE. LAUGHING, to teach the truth, What hinders? as some teachers give to boys FROM HORACE. JOKING decides great things, Stronger and better oft than earnest can. FROM SOPHOCLES. 'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds, And your ungodly deeds find me the words. FROM SENECA. THERE can be slain No sacrifice to God more acceptable, BLESS'D is the man who hath not walk'd astray And in his law he studies day and night. To yield his fruit, and his leaf shall not fall; 5 10 15 WHY do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations Let us break off, say they, by strength of hand Their twisted cords: He, who in heaven doth dwell, And fierce ire trouble them; but I, saith he, On Sion, my holy hill. A firm decree I will declare the Lord to me hath said, The heathen; and as thy conquest to be sway'd, 5 10 15 Milton's father is a ■ Metrical psalmody was much cultivated in this age of fanaticism. composer of some of the tunes in Ravenscroft's Psalms.-T. WARTON. "A literal version of the Psalms may boldly be asserted impracticable; for, if it were not, a poet so great as Milton would not, even in his earliest youth, have proved himself so very little of a formidable rival, as he has done, to Thomas Sternhold." Mason's "Essays on English Church Music," 1795, p. 177. In the last of these translations, however, as Mr. Warton observes, are some very poetical expressions.-TODD. |