"Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, whose hearer and pupil he had "been in the University,-when, the ship in which he was having "struck on a rock, not far from the British coast, and being stove in 'by the shock, he, while the other passengers were fruitlessly busy "about their mortal lives, having fallen on his knees, and breathing "a life which was immortal, in the act of prayer going down with "the vessel, rendered up his soul to God, Aug. 10, 1637, aged 25."

The following were the contributors to the Latin and Greek collection, in the order of their pieces as they were printed :—Anon. ; N. Felton; R. Mason, of Jesus College; J. Pullen; William Iveson, B.A. of Christ's (Greek); John Pearson, of King's; R. Brown ; J. B.; John Pots, of Christ's (Greek); Charles Mason, of King's ; -Coke; Stephen Anstie; John Hoper; R. C.; Henry More, of Christ's (Greek); Thomas Farnaby, the former schoolmaster of the deceased; Henry King, one of the brothers of the deceased; J. Hayward, Chancellor and Canon-Residentiary of Lichfield Cathedral ; Michael Honeywood, Fellow of Christ's (two pieces); William Brierley, Fellow of Christ's; Christopher Bainbrigge, Fellow of Christ's; and R. Widdrington, of Christ's. The contributors to the English collection, also in the order of their pieces, were these thirteen: -Henry King, the deceased's brother, again; Joseph Beaumont, Fellow of Peterhouse, afterwards more known; Anon.; John Cleveland, of Christ's, afterwards known as poet and satirist; William More; W. Hall; Samson Briggs, M.A., Fellow of King's; Isaac Olivier; J. H. (J. Hayward, the Lichfield Canon, again, who addresses his lines to the deceased's sister, the Lady Margaret Loder); C. B. (perhaps Christopher Bainbrigge again); R. Brown, again; T. Norton of Christ's; and "J. M." This last is Milton, who signs with his initials only. The last piece in the collection, in fact, and much the longest, for it spreads over six pages (pp. 20—25), while only one of the others extends over more than two,-is Milton's Lycidas. It begins on the same page on which Norton's piece ends, and without any title, or other formal separation from the pieces that precede it. All the more striking must it have been for a reader who had toiled through the trash of the preceding twelve pieces (I have read them one and all, and will vouch that they are trash) to come at length upon this opening of a true poem :

"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due ;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear."

This poem of Milton's, published half-anonymously in 1638 in the Cambridge Volume of Memorial Verses to Edward King, was in circulation just as Milton was going abroad on his Italian journey. It, and his Comus, printed for him quite anonymously in the previous year by his friend Henry Lawes, the musician, were all but the only poems of Milton in print till 1645, when the first edition of his collected Poems was given to the world by Humphrey Moseley. In that edition, and in the subsequent edition of 1673, Lycidas is printed with its present complete title, thus: "LYCIDAS. In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately drown'd in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruine of our corrupted Clergie then in their height." A portion of this extended title (from "In this Monody" to the date "1637") appears in the original MS. draft of the poem at Cambridge, inserted, clearly by way of afterthought, in Milton's own hand under the heading LYCIDAS: the words "Novemb. 1637," which had originally accompanied that heading, being then deleted as superfluous.

The poem is a Pastoral. It is the most pastoral in form of all Milton's English poems, more so considerably than the Arcades and Comus. It is not a direct lyric of lamentation by Milton for the death of King; it is a phantasy of one shepherd mourning, in the time of autumn, the death of a fellow-shepherd. The mourning shepherd, however, is Milton himself, and the shepherd mourned for is King; and, through the guise of all the pastoral circumstance and imagery of the poem, there is a studious representation of the real facts of King's brief life and his accidental death, and of Milton's regard for him and academic intimacy with him.

VOL. I

Here is the recollection, pastorally expressed, of their companionship at Cambridge, their walks and talks together there, and their common exercises. In the same manner it has already been hinted to us that among those common exercises was poetry. One reason why Lycidas was now lamented in song was that he himself had known how "to sing and build the lofty rhyme." All the more inexplicable was his loss. Where had the Nymphs been when this loved votary of theirs was drowned? Not, certainly, anywhere near the scene of the disaster. Not on the steeps known to the old Bards and Druids (the mountains of North Wales), nor on the shaggy top of Mona (the Isle of Anglesey), nor by the wizard stream of the Deva (the river Dee and Chester Bay). The topographical exactness here, under the poetic language, is worthy of remark, and is one of Milton's habits. But, had the Nymphs been there, what could they have done? Had the Muse herself been able to save her son Orpheus? Dwelling a little on this thought, of the non-immunity of even the finest intellectual promise from the stroke of death, Milton works it into one of the most beautiful, and most frequently quoted passages of the poem, "Alas, what boots it,” etc. (lines 64-84). That strain, he says, at the end of the passage, had been "of a higher mood," rather beyond the range of the pastoral; but now he will resume his simple oaten pipe and proceed. There pass then across the visionary stage three figures in succession. First comes the Herald of the Sea, Triton, who reports, in mythological terms, which yet veil exact information, that the cause of King's death was not tempestuous weather, for the sea was as calm as glass when the ship went down, but either the unseaworthiness of the ship itself or some inherited curse in her very timbers. Next comes Camus, the local deity of the Cam, footing slowly like his own sluggish stream, and with his bonnet of sedge from its banks, staying not long, but uttering one ejaculation over the loss to Cambridge of one of her darling sons. Lastly, in still more mystic and awful guise, comes St. Peter, the guardian of that Church of Christ for the service of which King had been destined,—the apostle to whom the Great Shepherd himself had given it in charge

"Feed my sheep." Not out of place even his grave figure in this peculiar pastoral. For has he not lost one of his truest under-shepherds, lost him too at a time when such an under-shepherd could ill be spared, when false shepherds, hireling shepherds, knowing nothing of the real craft they professed, were more numerous than ever, and the flocks were perishing for lack of care, or by the ravages of the stealthy wolf? It is to the singularly bold and stern passage of denunciation here put into St. Peter's mouth (lines 113-131), and especially to the last lines of the passage, prophesying speedy vengeance and reform, that Milton referred, when, in the title prefixed to the poem on its republication in 1645, he intimated that it contained a description of the state of England at the time when it was written, and foretold the ruin of the corrupted English clergy then in their height. In 1638 it had been bold enough to let the passage stand in the poem, as published in the Cambridge memorial volume, without calling attention to it in the title. But, indeed, this passage too had transcended the ordinary limits of the quiet pastoral. Of that the poet is aware. Accordingly, when "the dread voice is past" that had so pealed over the landscape and caused it to shudder, he calls on Alpheus and the Sicilian Muse, as the patrons of the pastoral proper, to return, and be with him through the pensive remainder. Beautifully pensive it is, and yet with a tendency to soar. First, in strange and evidently studied contrast with the stern speech of St. Peter which has just preceded, is the exquisitely worded passage which follows (lines 143-151). For musical sweetness, and dainty richness of floral colour, it beats perhaps anything else in all Milton. It is the call upon all valleys of the landscape, and the banks of all the secret streamlets, to yield up their choicest flowers, and those dearest to shepherds, that they may be strewn over the dead body of Lycidas. Ah! it is but a fond fancy, a momentary forgetfulness. For where, meanwhile, is that dead body? Not anywhere on land at all, so that it can be strewed with flowers and receive a funeral, but whelmed amid the sounding seas, either sunk deep down near the spot of the shipwreck, or drifted thence, perhaps northwards to the Hebrides, or perhaps southwards to Cornwall and St. Michael's Mount. But let the surviving shepherds cease their mourning. Though that body is never again to be seen on earth, Lycidas is not lost. A higher world has received him already; and there, amid other groves and other streams, laving his oozy locks with the nectar of heaven, and listening

to the nuptial song, he has joined the society of the Saints, and can look down on the world and the friends he has left, and act as a power promoted for their good.

Here the Monody or Pastoral ends. The last eight lines of the poem do not belong to the Monody. They are not a part of the song sung by Milton in his imaginary character as the shepherd who is bewailing the death of Lycidas, but are distinctly a stanza of epilogue, in which Milton speaks directly, criticises what he has just written in his imaginary character, and intimates that he has stepped out of that character, and is about to turn to other occupations :

"Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still Morn went out with sandals grey;

He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay;
And now the Sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay.

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue :
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

Perhaps there is not in the whole of English Literature a more amazing piece of criticism than that on Lycidas in Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton. "It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion," wrote the sturdy man; "for passion runs not after remote allusions " and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle "and the ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of 'rough satyrs,' and 'fauns with cloven heel.' Where there is leisure "for fiction, there is little grief. . . . In this poem there is no nature, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, "vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply are "long ago exhausted, and its inherent improbability always forces "dissatisfaction on the mind. . . . We know that they never drove

a-field, and that they had no flocks to batten; and, though it be "allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning " is so uncertain and remote that it is never sought, because it cannot "be known when it is found. . . . Surely no man could have fancied "that he read Lycidas with pleasure had he not known its author."

Were readers horses, one is tempted to ask, when this criticism was written? That there should have been a time in the English world of letters when the dictator of that world could put it forth, and have it accepted, suggests strange thoughts respecting the changes