Imatges de pàgina
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L'ALLEGRO.*

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings",
And the night-raven sings:

There, under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,

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* These are airs, "that take the prison'd soul, and lap it in Elysium.”—Hurd.

• Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born.

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Erebus, not Cerberus, was the legitimate husband of Night. "Tenebræ, miseria, querela, somnia, quos omnes Erebo et Nocte natos ferunt."-Cicero, "de Nat. Deor." b. iii. 17. Milton was too universal a scholar to be unacquainted with this mythology: but as Melancholy is here the creature of Milton's imagination, he had a right to give her what parentage he pleased, and to marry Night, the natural mother of Melancholy, to any ideal husband that would best serve to heighten the allegory.-T. WARTON.

b Jealous wings.

Alluding to the watch which fowl keep when they are sitting.—WARBURTON.

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

It should be remembered, that "Cimmeriæ tenebræ" were anciently proverbial. The execration in the text is a translation of a passage in one of his own academic Prolusions: "Dignus qui Cimmeriis occlusus tenebris longam et perosam vitam transigat." "Pr. W." vol. ii. 587.-T. WARTON.

Two sister Graces.

Meat and Drink, the two sisters of Mirth.-WARburton.

• Some sager sing.

Because those who give to Mirth such gross companions as Eating and Drinking, are the less sage mythologists.—WArburton.

Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying.

The rhymes and imagery are from Jonson, in the Mask at Sir William Cornwallis's house at Highgate, 1604.

See, who here is come a-Maying:

Why left we off our playing?

This song is sung by Zephyrus and Aurora, Milton's two paramours, and Flora.—— T. WARTON.

There on beds of violets blue,

And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew %,
Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity;

Quips, and cranksh, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles i,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go 3,
On the light fantastick toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty k;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free 1;

To hear the lark begin his flight m,

And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew.

So Shakspeare, as Mr. Bowle observes, "Tam. Shr." a. ii. s. 1.:

She looks as clear

As morning roses newly wash'd with dew.-T. WARTON.

h Quips, and cranks.

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A "quip" is a satirical joke, a smart repartee. By "cranks," a word yet unexplained, I think we are here to understand cross-purposes, or some other similar conceit of conversation, surprising the company by its intricacy, or embarrassing by its difficulty. Our author has "cranks," which his context explains, "Pr. W." i. 165: "To show us the ways of the Lord, straight and faithful as they are, not full of cranks and contradictions." -T. WARTON. i Wreathed smiles.

In a smile the features are "wreathed," or curled, twisted, &c.-T. WARTON. 3 Come, and trip it as you go, &c.

An imitation of Shakspeare, "Tempest" a. iv. s. 2.

Come, and go,

Ariel to the spirits :

Each one tripping on his toe.-NEWTON.

The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty.

Dr. Newton supposes, that Liberty is here called the mountain-nymph, "because the people in mountainous countries have generally preserved their liberties longest, as the Britons formerly in Wales, and the inhabitants in the mountains of Switzerland at this day." Milton's head was not so political on this occasion: warmed with the poetry of the Greeks, I rather believe that he thought of the Oreads of the Grecian mythology, whose wild haunts among the romantic mountains of Pisa are so beautifully described in Homer's "Hymn to Pan." The allusion is general, to inaccessible and uncultivated scenes of nature, such as mountainous situations afford, and which were best adapted to the free and uninterrupted range of the nymph Liberty. He compares Eve to an Oread, certainly without any reference to Wales or the Swiss cantons, in "Paradise Lost," b. ix, 387. See also "El." v. 127. :

Atque aliquam cupidus prædatur Oreada Faunus.-T. WARTON]

1 In unreproved pleasures free.

That is, blameless, innocent, not subject to reproof. See "Paradise Lost," b. iv. 492. -T. WARTON. m To hear the lark begin his flight, &c.

There is a peculiar propriety in "startle: "the lark's is a sudden shrill burst of song.

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And singing, startle the dull night ",
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine° :
While the cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of Darkness thin P;
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before :
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn a,
From the side of some hoar hill,

Through the high wood echoing shrill;

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Both in "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" there seem to be two parts; the one a day piece, and the other a night piece. Here or with three or four of the preceding lines, our author begins to spend the day with mirth.-T. WARTON.

"Startle the dull night.

So in "King Henry V," a. iv. Chorus :

Piercing the night's dull ear.-STEEVENS.
• Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine.

Sweet-briar and eglantine fore means the honeysuckle. of a house.-T. WARTON.

are the same plant: by the "twisted eglantine" he thereAll three are plants often growing against the side or walls

P The rear of Darkness thin.

Darkness is a person above, v. 6: and in "Paradise Lost," b. iii. 712: and in Spenser, "Fa. Qu." 1. vii. 23:—

Where Darknesse he in deepest dongeon drove.

And in Manilius, i. 126:

mundumque enixa nitentem,

Fugit in infernas Caligo pulsa tenebras.

But, if we take in the context, he seems to have here personified Darkness from "Romeo and Juliet," a. ii. s. 3:—

The grey-eyed Morn smiles on the frowning night,
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And flecked Darkness, like a drunkard, reels
From forth day's pathway.

For here too we have by implication Milton's "dappled dawn," v. 44: but more expressly in "Much Ado about Nothing," a. v. s. 3:—

And look, the gentle day

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray.

So also Drummond, "Sonnets," edit. 1616:

Sith, winter gone, the sunne in dapled skie
Now smiles on meadowes, &c.-T. WARTON.

a Rouse the slumbering morn.

The same expression, as Mr. Bowle observes, occurs with the same rhymes, in an elegant triplet of an obscure poet, John Habington, "Castara," edit. 1640, p. 8:

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The nymphes with quivers shall adorne

Their active sides, and rouse the morne

With the shrill musicke of the horne.-T. WARTON.

I do not know why Warton calls William Habington, whom he misnames John, 'an obscure poet:" he was a very elegant one, and has latterly been again brought into notice and praise.

Milton was here indebted to Guarini, "Pastor Fido," where the "slumbering morn is roused," a. i. s. 1.-TODD.

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In the "Penseroso," he walks "unseen," v. 65. Happy men love witnesses of their joy: the splenetic love solitude.-HURD.

Right against the eastern gate,

Where the great sun begins his state, &c.

Gray has adopted the first of these lines in his "descent of Odin." See also "Paradise Lost," b. iv. 542. Here is an allusion to a splendid or royal procession. We have the eastern gate again, in the Latin poem "In Quintum Novembris," v. 133. Shakspeare has also the eastern gate, which is most poetically opened, "Midsummer Night's Dream," a. iii. s. 9:

Ev'n till the eastern gate, all fiery red,

Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,

Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.-T. WARTON.

The clouds in thousand liveries dight.

Literally from a very puerile poetical description of the morning in one of his academic Prolusions:-"Ipsa quoque tellus, in adventum solis, cultiori se induit vestitu; nubesque juxta, variis chlamydata coloribus, pompa solenni, longoque ordine, videntur ancillari surgenti Deo." "Pr. Works," vol. ii. 586. And just before we have "The cock with lively din," &c.-"At primus omnium adventantem solem triumphat insomnis gallus." An ingenious critic observes, that this morning landscape of "L'Allegro" has served as a repository of imagery for all succeeding poets on the same subject: but much the same circumstances, among others, are assembled by a poet who wrote above thirty years before, the author of "Britannia's Pastorals," b. iv. s. iv. p. 75. I give the passage at large :

By this had chanticlere, the village clocke,
Bidden the good wife for her maides to knocke:
And the swart plowman for his breakfast staid,
That he might till those lands were fallow laid:
The hills and valleys here and there resound
With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound:
Each sheapherd's daughter with her cleanly peale,
Was come afield to milke the mornings meale;
And ere the sunne had clymb'd the easterne hils,
To guild the muttring bournes and petty rills;
Before the laboring bee had left the hiue,
And nimble fishes, which in riuers diue,
Began to leape, and catch the drowned flie,

I rose from rest.-T. WARTON.

"And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

It was suggested to me by the late ingenious Mr. Headly, that the word "tale" does not here imply stories told by shepherds, but that it is a technical term for numbering sheep, which is still used in Yorkshire and the distant counties: This interpretation I am inclined to adopt, which I will therefore endeavour to illustrate and enforce. "Tale" and "tell," in this sense, were not unfamiliar in our poetry, in and about Milton's time for instance, Dryden's Virgil, "Bucol." iii. 33:

And once she takes the tale of all my lambs.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landskip round it measures;
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pide,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide:
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees ",

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And in W. Browne's "Shepheard's Pipe," Egl. v. edit. 1614. 12mo. He is describing the dawn of day :

When the shepheards from the fold
All their bleating charges told;
And, full careful, search'd if one

Of all the flock was hurt, or gone, &c.

But let us analyse the context. The poet is describing a very early period of the morning; and this he describes by selecting and assembling such picturesque objects as accompany that period; and such as were familiar to an early riser. He is waked by the lark, and goes into the fields: the sun is just emerging, and the clouds are still hovering over the mountains the cocks are crowing, and with their lively notes scatter the lingering remains of darkness: human labours and employments are renewed with the dawn of the day: the hunter (formerly much earlier at his sport than at present) is beating the covert, and the slumbering morn is roused with the cheerful echo of hounds and horns: the mower is whetting his scythe to begin his work: the milk-maid, whose business is of course at daybreak, comes abroad singing; the shepherd opens his fold, and takes the "tale" of his sheep, to see if any were lost in the night, as in the passage just quoted from Browne. Now for shepherds to tell tales, or to sing, is a circumstance trite, common, and general, and belonging only to ideal shepherds; nor do I know, that such shepherds tell tales, or sing, more in the morning than at any other part of the day: a shepherd taking the "tale" of his sheep which are just unfolded, is a new image, correspondent and appropriate, as beautifully descriptive of a period of time, is founded in fact, and is more pleasing as more natural.-T. WARTON.

▾ Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures.

There is, in my opinion, great beauty in this abrupt and rapturous start of the poet's imagination, as it is extremely well adapted to the subject, and carries a very pretty allusion to those sudden gleams of vernal delight, which break in upon the mind at the sight of a fine prospect.-THYER.

w Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees.

This was the great mansion-house in Milton's early days, before the old-fashioned architecture had given way to modern arts and improvements. Turrets and battlements were conspicuous marks of the numerous new buildings of the reign of king Henry VIII., and of some rather more ancient, many of which yet remained in their original state, unchanged and undecayed nor was that style, in part at least, quite omitted in Inigo Jones's first manner. Browne, in "Britannia's Pastorals," has a similar image, b. 1. s. v. p. 96 :Yond pallace, whose brave turret tops

Ouer the statelie wood suruay the copse.

Where only

Browne is a poet now forgotten, but must have been well known to Milton. a little is seen, more is left to the imagination. These symptons of an old palace, especially when thus disposed, have a greater effect than a discovery of larger parts, and even a full display of the whole edifice. The embosomed battlements, and the spreading top of the tall grove, on which they reflect a reciprocal charm, still farther interest the fancy from the novelty of combination: while just enough of the towering structure is shown to make an accompaniment to the tufted expanse of venerable verdure, and to compose a picturesque association. With respect to their rural residence, there was a coyness in our Gothic ancestors modern seats are seldom so deeply ambushed: they disclose all their glories

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