In solemn songs at king Alcinous feast, 50 way, Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent 55 To keep in compass of thy predicament: Then quick about thy purpos’d business come, That to the next I may resign my room. Then Ens is represented as father of the Predicaments his ten fons, whereof the eldest stood for Substance with his canons, which Ens, thus speaking, explains. G OOD luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth the hearth; 60 Thy drousy nurse hath sworn she did them spie 7 Come tripping to the room where thou didst lie, »T And sweetly singing round about thy bed, Strow all their blessings on thy Neeping head. She and Ulyffes and the rest are affected the Greeks called a category, Boëin the manner here describ'd. thius first named a predicament : and 56. -of thy predicament:] What if the reader is acquainted with Ari stotle's : She heard them give thee this, thạt thou shouldst fill From eyes of mortals walk invisible: 66 Yet there is something that doth force my fear, For once it was my dismal hap to hear A Sibyl old, bow-bent with crooked age, every one shall make him underling, 80 From others he shall stand in need of nothing, Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing. To find a foe it shall not be his hap, And peace shall lull him in her flow'ry lap; Yet stotle's Categories, or Burgersdicius, plain'd to him; and it cannot well or any of the old logicians, he will be explain'd to him, if he is unacnot want what follows to be ex- quainted with that kind of logie. 91. Rivers Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door 85 The St. 36. gris land 91. Rivers arise ; &c.] In in- who like some earth-born giant &c. voking thefe rivers Milton had his This description is much nobler eye particularly upon that admi. than Spenser's St. 35. rable episode in Spenser of the marriage of the Thames and the Med And bounteous Trent, that in way, where the several rivers are himself enfeams introduc'd in honor of the cere Both thirty sorts of fish, and mony. Faery Queen B. 4. Cant. thirty sundry streams. 11. Of uta:oft Tweed; fo Spenser The name is of Saxon original, but (as Camden observes in his And Twede the limit betwixt Lo- Staffordshire.)“ some ignorant “ and idle pretenders imagine the And Albany name to be derived from the « French word Trente, and upon Or Oole, either that in Yorkshire, “ that account have feign'd thirty or that in Cambridgeshire, both“ rivers running into it, and like. mention'd by Spenser. Or gulphy “wise so many kinds of fish {wimDun, I find not in Spenser, but fup ming in it." However this nopose the Don is meant from whence tion might very well be adopted in Doncaster has its name; and Cam- poetry. Or sullen Mole &c. So den's account of this river shows Spenser St. 32. the propriety of the epithet gulpby. “ Danus, commonly Don and And Mole, that like a noulling “ Dune, seems to be so callid, be mole doth make o cause it is carried in a low deep His way still under ground, till as channel ; for that is the signifi. Thaṁis he o'ertake. « cation of the British word Dan." See Camden's Yorkshire. Or Trent, See the same account in Camden's Surry. The next Quantity and Quality spake in profe, then Relation was call'd by his name. RIVERS arife; whether thou be the son Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulphy Dun, Of Trent, who like some earth-born giant spreads His thirty arms along th’indented meads, Or Surry. Or Severn swift &c. We See Lycidas too ver. 55. Or Humshall have a fuller account of this ber loud &c. So Spenser speaks of in the Mask. Or rocky Avon, Spen- this Scythian king, and of his befer more largely St. 31. ing drown'd in the river, St. 38. Bút Avon marched in more ftate And nam'd the river of his wretchly path, ed fate; Proud of his adamants, with Whose bad condition yet it doth which he shines retain, And glifters wide, as als of won Oft tossed with his storms, which drous Bath therein still remain. And Bristow fair, which on his waves he builded hath, And the Medaway and the Thame are juin'd together, as they are Or fedgy Lee, this river divides Mid- married in Spenser. I wonder dlefex and Effex. Spenser thus that Milton has paid no particular compliment to the river flowing by Cambridge (this exercise being The wanton Lee that oft doth made and spoken there) as Spenser describes it, St. 29. lose his way. has done St. 34. Or coaly Tine, Spenser describes it tons long ygone Chester tend. Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge hit, as with a crown of it With many a gentle Muse, and many a learned wit. To 95 · Or sullen Mole that runneth underneath, [The rest was prose.] 100 III. On the MORNING of CHRIST'S NATIVITY, Compos'd 1629. I. TW HIS is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King, That he our deadly forfeit should release, That * To the title of this Ode we pos'd 1629, so that Milton was have added the date, which is pre- then 21 years old. He speaks of fixed in the edition of 1645, Com- this poem in the conclusion of his |