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1. Invocation to laurels, ivy, and myrtles, of which the poet is to make a wreath for Lycidas (l. 1-14). These plants may be, as some think, emblems of poetry, learning, and beauty, but they have no such significance when used by Theocritus and Vergil.

2. Invocation to the Muses (ll. 15-18), and a personal digression (l. 19-22).

3. Story of the poet's association with Lycidas (11. 23-36).

4. His mourning for Lycidas (11. 37-49).

5. Appeal to the nymphs of the district in which Lycidas died, and allusion to the death of Orpheus (11. 50-63), with a digression on the lack of reward for poetry (11. 64–84).

6. Address to the Arethusa (a river in Sicily, where Theocritus lived) and the Mincio (in Italy, near Vergil's birthplace), as introductory to the story of Triton (1. 89), who has asked about the mishap and brought answer from Æolus (Hippotades, 1. 96) that there was no wind, that the sea-nymphs (1. 99) were playing about, and that the fault lay in the ship (ll. 100-102).

7. The lament of Camus (god of the river Cam), representing Cambridge and St. Peter (11. 109-110), representing the church (ll. 103-113). Digression on the corruption of the church (ll. 114131).

8. Address to the pastoral streams of Arcadia and Sicily to bid the valleys bring all their flowers for Lycidas (ll. 132-151).

9. Lament for the body tossed about the seas (ll. 152-164).

10. Comfort that Lycidas is in heaven (ll. 165– 185).

II. The shepherd's conclusion (ll. 186-193). Milton's choice of the name Lycidas may have been determined by several considerations. Shepherds of that name are celebrated by the chief pastoral poets, Theocritus (Idyls, VII), Bion (Idyls, II and VI), and Vergil (Eclogues, IX). Moreover, Lycidas is spoken of in Theocritus' Idyl as "the best of men" and is addressed thus: "Dear Lycidas, they all say that thou among herdsmen, yea and among reapers, art far the chiefest flute-player;" and in Bion's sixth Idyl the poet says: "If I sing of any other, mortal or immortal, then falters my tongue, and sings no longer as of old, but if again to Love and Lycidas I sing, then gladly from my lips flows forth the voice of song.

P. 196. 1. 36. Damætas is a shepherd in Theocritus, Idyls, VI and in Vergil, Eclogues, II, III; in Eclogues, II, 36-38, Corydon says: "A flute is mine, with seven unequal hemlock stalks, which Damotas

once gave me as a present, and dying said: "That flute has now for its master you, second to me alone.""

11. 50-55. Imitated from Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, and Vergil.

11. 58-63. The Mænads (Bacchantes) tore him to pieces for indifference to women after the death of Eurydice (Ovid, Metamorphoses, XI, 1-84) and Vergil, Georgics, IV, 507-527).

11. 68-69. Conventional expressions for a life of ease and pleasure. Amaryllis is one of the nymphs most praised in Theocritus and Vergil (esp. Idyls, III, 1, and Eclogues, I, 4 f.); Neæra is mentioned by Vergil, Eclogues, III.

1. 75. blind Fury. The Fate, Atropos, is called a Fury, because she has slain Lycidas.

1. 77. In similar manner Phoebus touches the ear of the poet and reproves him in Vergil, Eclogues, VI, 3 f.

11. 85, 132. The story of the river god Alpheus and the nymph Arethusa is charmingly told in the seventh Idyl of Moschus, and at greater length in Ovid, Metamorphoses, V, 572–661. Less simple is Shelley's Arethusa. The river Arethusa is invoked by Theocritus, Moschus, and Vergil as being to pastoral poetry and poets what the fountain Hippocrene was to epic poetry and poets, see especially Moschus, Idyls, III, where Homer and Bion are compared.

1. 106. The hyacinth, on the leaves of which are marks said to be AI, AI (alas); cf. Moschus, Idyls, III, "Now thou hyacinth, whisper the letters on thee graven, and add a deeper ai ai to thy petals; he is dead, the beautiful singer."

P. 197. l. 130-131. Three interpretations have been given:

1. The axe of the Bible (Matthew, iii: 10, Luke, iii:9) which cuts down the unrighteous – identified with the executioner's axe.

2. St. Michael's two-handed sword, which finally overcame Satan when "with huge twohanded sway Brandisht aloft the horrid edge came down Wide wasting" (Par. Lost, VI, 251-253).

3. Parliament, with its two Houses, which Milton hoped would check the evils of episcopacy. 1. 132. Alpheus is invoked as the lover of Arethusa, see Moschus, Idyls, VII. Alpheus and the Sicilian Muse (Arethusa) are called on to return after the digression and resume the pastoral lament. The "dread voice" is the voice of denunciation that has just shrunk the pastoral stream of verse.

ll. 159-162. In his History of England, Milton had told a "fable" of the wrestling match between a British hero Corineus and a giant whom he over

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came and hurled into the sea off the Cornish coast. The name Bellerus, used here instead of Corineus, seems to be coined from Bellerium, the Roman name of Land's End. St. Michael is supposed to have appeared in a vision, seated on a crag of the rocky island now called St. Michael's Mount. Milton conceives him as still sitting there and looking toward Spain (Namancos and Bayona, near Cape Finisterre). In 1. 163, Milton bids him look back towards England and sympathize.

1. 189. Doric, i.e., pastoral. Applied to the Sicilian poets, who were of Dorian extraction, and characterizing their affectation of simplicity.

1. 190. Perhaps an elaboration of what Vergil says of the shadows of the hills in Eclogues, I, 84, and II, 67, with a reminiscence of Hamlet's expression in Hamlet II, ii, 270.

1. 191. western bay, perhaps Chester Bay, from which King had sailed.

SONNETS

P. 198. Milton's sonnets return to the Italian form, but in matter they are, for the most part, absolutely original, and a direct expression of strong personal feeling. On Milton's relation to the earlier sonneteers, cf. Wordsworth's Scorn Not the Sonnet, p. 396.

WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY

Written in November, 1642, when an attack on London by the Royalist forces was expected. As Milton was an ardent Parliamentarian pamphleteer, his house, just outside one of the city gates, was in danger. The original title read: "On his dore when y city expected an assault," as if the sonnet had been really intended as a defence.

1. 13. A chorus from the Electra of Euripides, recited by a ministrel before the conquerors of Athens, caused them to spare the city.

TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL,
MAY, 1652

Cromwell had completed a series of victories over the Royalists on the river Darwen, and at Dunbar and Worcester, as a result of which Charles II was driven into exile. Meanwhile, the committee named in the subtitle was proposing religious reconstruction. Milton feared that the Presbyterians would establish a state system simi

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The thorough fusion in Milton of the spirit of the Renaissance, the love of classical themes and treatment, and the spirit of Puritanism, the struggle towards a higher ethical plane by means of a revival of Hebraism, is unique in English literature. His avowed purpose to write "Things unattempted yet in prose or rime" (1. 16), in order to "justify the ways of God to men" (1. 26), is equalled in its daring only by the plan of Dante's Divina Commedia. His poetical achievement, however, is quite apart from his theological purpose, and lies in his marvellous power of reproducing in sound and rhythm the visions that came to his imagination, and in the tremendous swing and wonderful flexibility of his blank verse. Note how he gets variety by inverting his sentence order, as, for instance, in ll. 44-47, and by varying the number of stressed syllables in a line, as, for example, in ll. 209-215. Cf. Gray's appreciation of Milton in The Progress of Poesy, ll. 95-102, p. 318.

Milton's classical training and his many years of handling official correspondence in Latin made him so familiar with that language that he continually uses words derived from the Latin in a sense fully warranted by their origin but uncommon in English. For example, in 1. 2, mortal

has the meaning deadly, not the more usual sense human; in l. 187, offend means injure, not anger. For this reason Milton's vocabulary must be studied with the greatest care if his meaning is to be fully understood.

11. 1-6. The subject of the poem is stated at once, as in the opening lines of the Iliad and the Eneid.

P. 201. ll. 197-209. The first example of the elaborately developed classical simile. For others, see ll. 230-238, 302-313, 338-346, 551-559, 768775, 780-792.

P. 202. 11. 288-290. Galileo with the telescope discovered the uneven surface of the moon. Fesole, or Fiesole, is a village three miles from Florence, and Valdarno is the valley of the river Arno, which flows through Florence. This is a personal reminiscence. Milton visited Galileo who lived at Arcetri, just outside Florence, and later described him as "a prisoner of the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." Here speaks the author of the Areopagitica.

Pp. 204 f. ll. 392-521. Of these one hundred and thirty lines given up to descriptions of Satan's host, only seven name Egyptian gods (ll. 476–482), and fourteen Greek (ll. 508-521). More than a hundred lines are devoted to the various Semitic gods that appear in the Old Testament. Perhaps Milton's early love of the Greek deities kept him from over-emphasizing their transformation into devils; but, in any case, the Semitic gods are more in harmony with his theme, and after nearly twenty years of association with men who thought and talked in terms of the Old Testament, he would naturally have drawn most of his material from that source. Some passages contain scarcely a word not found in the Bible. For instance, ll. 396422 are put together and fused out of I Kings, xi: 5,7; II Kings, xxiii: 4-14; II Samuel, xii: 26-27; Judges, xi: 13, and 19-33; Isaiah, xv-xvi; Jeremiah, xlviii; Numbers, xxv: 1-5; Deut., xxxii : 49. Lines 437-446 describe the idolatry of Solomon as told in I Kings, xi: 4-8; and in Jeremiah, vii : 18. Lines 446-457 tell about the worship of Thammuz (who is identified with the Greek Adonis, 1. 450) as it was revealed to Ezekiel (Ezekiel, viii: 6-14). Lines 457-466 refer to the overthrow of Dagon by the ark of God as told in I Samuel, v. Lines 467– 471 tell of the leper, Naaman the Syrian, II Kings, v: 1-18; and lines 471-476 of the idolatry of King Ahaz, II Kings, xvi: 7-18. Lines 482-489 refer to the worship of the golden calf (Exod., xxxii: 16; cf. xi: 2), Jeroboam's Calves (I Kings, xii), and to the slaying of the first-born in Egypt (Exod.,

xii: 29, 51). Lines 490-505 refer to the sins of the sons of Eli (I Samuel, ii: 12, 22), to the purposed outrage in Sodom (Gen., xix: 4-11), and that perpetrated at Gibeah (Judges, xix: 22-28). In l. 508 Milton connects the Ionian gods with the Old Testament (cf. Gen., x: 2).

P. 206. ll. 575-576. Cf. 11. 780-781. The pygmies were supposed to have been 3 inches tall. Their war with the cranes is mentioned by Homer, Aristotle, Ovid, and other writers.

11. 576-577. Phlegra, in Thrace; according to Pindar the scene of the battle between the gods and the giants.

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11. 582-587. Places celebrated in French and Italian epics and romances of Charlemagne and his knights: Aspramont, in Limburg; Montauban, in Languedoc; Trebisond, in Cappadocia; Biserta, in Tunis. The defeat alluded to was at Roncesvaux, a pass in the Pyrenees, in 778. Milton is wrong in saying that "Charlemain with all his peerage fell"; the fact seems to have been that his rearguard was attacked and routed by Basque mountaineers. The story was introduced into literature in the Chanson de Roland, an AngloNorman epic of the eleventh century, although ballads on the subject were sung earlier. William the Conqueror's minstrel, Taillefer, chanted a song of Roland as he went into the battle of Hastings (Senlac). This Roland, who in the Chanson is represented as Charlemagne's nephew and the hero of Roncesvaux, became one of the chief figures in the medieval French epics. As Orlando he became in Italy the hero of the famous poems of Ariosto and Boiardo. His name was also introduced into English literature and tradition (cf. Browning's poem, p. 556, the title of which comes from an old song alluded to in King Lear, III, iv, 187). Fontarabbia, modern Fuenterrabia, is probably introduced for the beauty of the name itself. It is many miles from Roncesvaux, but far more musical than Burguete, which is geographically correct.

MILTON'S PROSE

Pp. 208 ff. Milton's prose has more movement and color than Bacon's, more vigor and less studied elaboration than Browne's. He writes as a practical man whose mind is burdened with what he has to say. His long years of secretarial work for Cromwell, although they may scarcely be said to have moulded his English prose style, had the effect of keeping him in good fighting trim.

Of Education

Milton's essay on Education is a small tract of eight pages. It was published in 1644 in response to a request for his views from his friend Samuel Hartlib, a man of a good Polish family who had come to England about 1628 and amid all the civil strife of the time had devoted himself to scientific studies for the improvement of education, agriculture, and manufactures. Milton's plan of study, as set forth in his tractate, is too ambitious for all but students of extraordinary abilities, but it is noteworthy that, like Hartlib's, his conception of education was distinctly modern. Although himself a great classical scholar and linguist, he treats of the languages as tools, instruments for helping the student to a knowledge of things, and suggests that most of them can be learned incidentally in odd moments of leisure: He emphasizes the study of the sciences and of the arts (particularly music); and he lays great stress upon training students as men who are to bear a responsible part in the life and government of the nation. The section on Exercise shows that, although he makes little provision for play, - aside from the recreation of music, he believed in the cultivation of the body as well as of the mind. But in this he was in harmony with the general ideals of the Renais

sance.

Areopagitica

Pp. 210 ff. June 14, 1643, Parliament appointed various committees to control the licensing of books. This restriction of the freedom of the press was due partly to the desire of the Presbyterians in power to prevent such publications as Milton's own pamphlet on divorce, for example, and partly to the effort of the Stationers' Company (the organization of printers and publishers) to protect their copyrights. Milton was called to account in 1644 for disregarding the new regulations, and November 24 of that year he published the Areopagitica, itself unlicensed. The title means: matters befitting the high court of the Areopagus, the famous Athenian tribunal, here, of course, referring to Parliament. It is easy to see that the theme was one after Milton's own heart.

P. 210 a. Cadmus sowed, at Athene's command, the teeth of a dragon that he had slain and so obtained a crop of armed men to help him with the building of Thebes. Cf. Ovid's Metamorphoses, III, 1-137. A similar story is told of Jason.

P. 210 b. those confused seeds which were im

posed on Psyche. Psyche had fallen into the hands of Venus, who punished her, for having won the love of Cupid, by making her separate seeds of wheat, millet, poppy, vetches, lentils, and beans, mixed all together. She was to place each kind of seed in a separate heap and to finish the task by evening. As Psyche sat in despair, an ant took pity on her and summoning the whole tribe of ants, accomplished the work within the time set. The story of Cupid and Psyche is told in The Golden Ass of Apuleius, Bks. IV-VI.

P. 212 a. the old philosophy of this island. There was a theory that the Pythagorean and Zoroastrian doctrines were derived from the wisdom of the Druids, the priesthood of the early Britons.

as far as the mountainous borders of Russia and beyond the Hercynian wilderness. The mountains bordering Transylvania are a part of the Carpathians. The Hercynian wilderness was a mountainous tract of forest land in southern and central Germany (the name survives in Harz and Erzgebirge), many miles to the northeast of Transylvania. But Milton's geography is vague and rhetorical; he cared more for the sonority and associations of a geographical name than for its exact significance.

P. 212 b. muing her mighty youth, etc. Renewing her youth as an eagle renews its feathers by moulting. In mediæval bird-fable the eagle's keen sight was supposed to be actually kindled and her youth renewed by flying up near to the sun, as Milton says. See the Middle English "Bestiary" in Emerson's Middle English Reader, or in Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English. In Milton's figure the sun is truth; in the Middle English poem the sun is God and the eagle is the soul.

P. 213 a. Ye cannot make us, etc. You cannot make us again as we were before you gave us liberty. We, with our finer ideals, are the result of your own high ideals in the past, and to undo your good work now would be like a reversion to that barbarous ancient law which permitted parents to kill their own children. If you did, who would stand up for you and urge others to do so? Not such patriots as rose against illegal taxation.

Coat and conduct, the clothing and conveyance of troops. On this ground taxes were unjustly levied.

his four nobles of Danegelt, ship-money. Danegelt means literally Dane-money, and in Saxon times was a tax levied to protect England against the invasions of the Danes. It is not clear why Milton should have specified four nobles (26s. 8d.).

Lord Brook. Robert, second Lord Brooke, cousin and heir of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, the friend of Sidney and Spenser. Milton tells the chief facts about him. He was killed storming Lichfield, Jan. 7, 1643. The book mentioned is: A discourse opening the nature of that Episcopacie which is exercised in England. Wherein, with all Humility, are represented some considerations tending to the much desired Peace and long expected Reformation of this our Mother Church.

P. 214 a. old Proteus. Cf. note on Hero and Leander, l. 137, and especially Vergil, Georgics, IV, 387-414.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING

Cf. note on Waller, p. 717.

RICHARD CRASHAW

IN THE HOLY NATIVITY OF OUR LORD

GOD

Crashaw at his best is full of intense religious fire combined with some degree of Milton's power of visualization; but he has a subtlety quite unMiltonic and an extravagance of imagery that sometimes mars his work. See, for instance, l. 87, describing the Virgin's breast, 1. 90, her double nature; also ll. 91-93, describing courtiers, especially the extraordinary figure in 1. 93. It is interesting to compare Crashaw's Hymn not merely with Milton's, but with the simplicity of the early Christmas carols and Southwell's Burning Babe, pp. 92-94 and 161 above.

ll. 15-16. Observe that the shepherds have conventional classical names.

P. 215. 1. 46. The phoenix is, because of its uniqueness, a frequent symbol of Christ in early Christian poetry. According to fable, the phonix lives five hundred years, and, when it feels the time of its death approaching, gathers spices and fragrant woods, of which it builds a nest; it then sets fire to the nest and is consumed with it, but comes out from the ashes a young phoenix, new and yet the same. As the phoenix builds the nest for its own rebirth, so Christ himself chose where he would be born.

JEREMY TAYLOR

Pp. 216 f. Jeremy Taylor was a master of elaborate and involved prose rhythms and as such will always retain his place in the history of English

literature. Whether his fondness for themes of decay and death was due to a morbid liking for the subjects themselves, or to the value which religious teachers in general at that time attached to the contemplation of physical corruption, or whether such themes offered a specially favorable opportunity for lyrical movements in prose ending in minor cadences, may admit of discussion. Certainly one hears even in the most soaring strains of his eloquence the ground tone of the futility and vanity of life.

SIR JOHN DENHAM

P. 218. Denham was the first English poet after the Restoration who set out to be deliberately descriptive. To-day he seems colorless, but he was greatly admired in his own and the succeeding age, not so much for the descriptions themselves as for his moralization of his theme. See Pope's Essay on Criticism, II, 361.

RICHARD LOVELACE

Cf. note on Waller, p. 717.

THE GRASSHOPPER

Cf. Keats's sonnet The Grasshopper and the Cricket, p. 478.

ABRAHAM COWLEY

P. 219. Cowley's fame was greatest in his lifetime. His contemporaries buried him in Westminster Abbey by the side of Chaucer. But almost at once reaction set in, and he came to be recognized for what he was, a good verseartisan but one of the most shallow and artificial thinkers among the followers of Donne. It is supposed that it was his precocity which Milton contrasted with his own late and slow development (as it seemed to him) in the sonnet On his Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three (see especially 1. 8).

ANDREW MARVELL

Pp. 219 f. As Cowley is associated with the Stuart court, so is Marvell with Cromwell and the Protectorate. The vigor so striking in his work as a satirist and pamphleteer stiffens his lyrics and makes them to-day much fresher and more interesting than Cowley's work. His fancies are original and often quaint.

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