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'his volant touch

Instinct through all proportions low and high

Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue'

spare

on which the Clarendon editor notes: Professor Taylor's opinion of this passage was that its pregnant meaning can be fully appreciated only by a musician. "All other poets but Milton and Shakespeare make blunders about music; they never."' 13-14. spare To interpose them oft. Interpreted by Mr. Keightley to mean time to interpose them oft;" but surely rather the opposite-refrain from interposing them oft.'-Masson. See Drummond, cXIV, 8, for an instance of the word in precisely the same sense. 76-CLI. Cyriack Skinner, one of Milton's Aldersgate Street pupils, and his friend through after-years, was the grandson of the famous lawyer and judge, Sir Edward Coke, Chief Justice of England. The sonnet may be supposed to have been written somewhere about 1655. L. 6. This is the decent mirth of Martial: "Nox non ebria, sed soluta curis."-T. Warton.

Cp. Shakspeare (Romeo and Juliet, ii, 6, 81):

So smile the heavens upon this holy act,
That after-hours with sorrow chide us not!'

intends (MS.): 'intend' (1673).

77-CLII, 1-2. So in the Defensio Secunda (1654), transl, Symmons: 'The spirit and the power which I [formerly] possessed continue unimpaired to the present day; my eyes only are not the same; and they are as unblemished in appearance, as lucid and free from spot,as those which are endued with the sharpest vision in this instance alone, and much against my own inclination, am I a deceiver.' Hazlitt (Table Talk, p. 245, ed. 1869) remarks what seems to be a trait of character in these verses: that Milton had not yet given up all regard to personal appearance—‘a feeling to which his singular beauty at an earlier age might be supposed natually enough to lead.' 4-6. Cp. Paradise Lost, iii, 22-26,40 seq., and Samson Agonistes, 80 seq. L. 7. Heaven's: God's ' deleted (MS.) ; a:'one' (Phillips); 8-9. bear... onward: attend to steer Uphillward' deleted (MS.). 'Well might he, who, after five years of blindness, had the courage to undertake these two vast works, [his treatise on Christian Doctrine, and projected Latin dictionary,] along with Paradise Lost, declare that he did "not bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bore up and steered Uphillward." For this is the word which Milton at first used in his noble sonnet; though for the sake of correctness, steering uphillward being a kind of pilotage which he alone practist, or which at all events is only practicable where the clogs of this material world are not dragging us down, he altered it into right onward.'—(Guesses at

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John Milton.

Truth, p. 75, First Series, 3rd ed., 1847). conscience conscious-
ness; as e.g., our authorized Version, 1 Cor. viii, 7; and Heb. x, 2.
Perhaps Keats furnishes a late instance in CCCVIII, II. Ll. 10-11.
As early as 1644 Milton's sight had begun to decline, and in 1650,
while engaged on the (first) Defensio pro Populo Anglicano (1651),
one of his eyes being almost gone, he was warned by his physicians
that total blindness would certainly ensue if he proceeded with his
task. Our liberties know whether or not he did proceed; and after-
wards, in his Defensio Secunda, published in 1654 (the year before
that in which it is supposed the sonnet was written) in reply to the
Regii Sanguinis Clamor, &c. (1652), he could tell his coarse and
unfeeling adversary, who had mocked at his blindness, that the
dread penalty had been cheerfully incurred in preference to the de-
sertion of a sacred duty. 12. rings (Phillips): 'talks' (MS., adopted
by Newton). The echo from Sir John Harington's Orlando Furioso
(1591) seems to have escaped notice (Booke xlvi, st. 55, p. 399):
'Nor feates of Armes, in which he wan the prise,
And of the which all Europe now did ring.'

vain mask. Cp. Ps. xxxix, 6: 'Surely every man walketh in a vain
shew.'-Keightley. Cp. also LII, 3, and CXVIII, 5. See reference
to this sonnet under CXLV (p. 343).

77-CLIII. This sonnet is assigned by Keightley to February, 1658,

Milton's second and best-beloved wife, Catherine Woodcock, having died in childbed in the early part of that month in that year. 2-4. See the Alcestis of Euripides, or Mr. Browning's transcript, Balaustion's Adventure (1871). 5-6. 'It is nowhere said in the Scriptures that the Hebrew women were washed, or wore white at their purification after childbed: see Lev. xii. Perhaps however Milton does not make the latter assertion.'-Keightley. Milton does not do so: he refers to English usage. Speaking of the sonnets, in his admirable little handbook on Milton (1879, p. 69), Mr. Stopford Brooke justly observes: 'Because Milton was bitter against the bad woman in Dalila, because he held strong views on the supremacy of man, it has been too much forgotten how much he loved and honoured women . . . in the sonnets, he sketches, with all the care and concentration the sonnet demands, and each distinctively, four beautiful types of womanhood—the “virgin wise and pure;" the noble matron, "honoured Margaret; " the Christian woman, his friend, whose “works, and alms, and good endeavour" followed her to the pure immortal streams; the perfect wife, whom he looked to see in heaven

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"Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shine
So clear, as in no face with more delight.'

72-77-CXLIII-CLIII. These, with the exception of CXLV and the three specified under it (p. 343), are given from Poems, &c., Upon Several Occasions. By Mr. John Milton: Both English and Latin, &c. Composed at several times. With a small Tractate of Education To Mr. Hartlib. 1673: where they first appeared.

Thomas Edwards.

79-CLIV. The author of The Canons of Criticism, at whom Pope made an impotent thrust in the Dunciad for his Shakspearian studies, excelled much more as a critic than as a poet; yet he shares with Gray and Stillingfleet the honour of having preserved the tradition of the Sonnet at a time when it seemed threatened with absolute extinction. His experiments belong to that class of verse, usually the production of thoughtful and highly-cultivated minds, in which the lack of poetry's diviner attributes is in some measure compensated by what Coleridge calls 'weighty bullion sense.' In this instance must be added much practical wisdom, patriotism, and a manly, unaffected piety. Dyce, who takes five of his sonnets nevertheless, denies Edwards genius; nor perhaps does he possess genius in the strict sense; but, like Stillingfleet, he was a true disciple of Milton, and it really argues something akin to genius to have had in his day the sagacity to choose and the ability to echo such a master. His Sonnets, numbering about fifty in all, a moiety of which had apppeared in different editions of Dodsley's Collection of Poems (3rd ed., 1751), were collected and appended to The Canons of Criticism, 6th ed., with Additions, 1758, from which I select other two examples, in the former of which, Dyce remarks, Edwards 'rises to pathos and grandeur.' ON A FAMILY-PICTURE.

When pensive on that Portraiture I gaze,

Where my four Brothers round about me stand,
And four fair Sisters smile with graces bland,

The goodly monument of happier days;
And think how soon insatiate Death, who preys
On all, has cropp'd the rest with ruthless hand,
While only I survive of all that band,
Which one chaste bed did to my Father raise;
It seems that like a Column left alone,

The tottering remnant of some splendid Fane,
'Scap'd from the fury of the barbarous Gaul,
And wasting Time, which has the rest o'erthrown,
Amidst our House's ruins I remain

Single, unpropp'd, and nodding to my fall.

Thomas Edwards.

TO THE AUTHOR OF OBSERVATIONS ON THE
CONVERSION AND APOSTLESHIP OF ST. PAUL.

O Lyttleton, great meed shalt thou receive,
Great meed of fame, Thou and thy learn'd Compeer,
Who, 'gainst the Sceptic's doubt and Scorner's sneer,
Assert those Heav'n-born truths which you believe !
In elder times thus Heroes wont t'atchieve
Renown; they held the faith of Jesus dear,
And round their Ivy crown or Laurell'd spear
Blush'd not Religion's Olive branch to weave;
Thus Ralegh, thus immortal Sidney shone,
(Illustrious names!) in great Elisa's days.
Nor doubt his promise firm, that such who own
In evil times, undaunted, though alone,

His glorious truth, such He will crown with praise,
And glad agnize before his Father's throne.

The person to whom the sonnet in the text is addressed was the author of The Scribleriad (1751), of whom see a notice in Cary's Lives of English Poets, from Johnson to Kirke White. Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives. 1846. Cambridge retired about 1750 to his villa at Twickenham, where he died in 1802.

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Benjamin Stillingflect.

80-CLV, 14. echoes:' tidings' (Coxe). This noble sonnet, by much the best of the few written by 'Blue Stocking' Stillingfleet, grandson of the Bishop, was first printed by Todd in his edition of Milton's Poetical Works (1801, v, p. 445), where it is dated 1746. From the Literary Life by Coxe prefixed to Stillingfleet's Select Works, 1811, we learn that the amiable and eccentric person commemorated in it was the Rev. John Williamson, a man of great learning and varied accomplishments, whose extreme simplicity of character and ignorance of the world hindered his preferment. By the departure from Scotland of Lord Haddington and his brother Mr. Baillie, to whom he had formerly been travelling companion, Williamson was thrown out of employment; and Stillingfleet, his congenial and attached friend, amid many troubles of his own, made unceasing efforts to procure him some permanent establishment, but without much or any immediate success. Ultimately, however, Williamson received the appointment of Chaplain to the Factory at Lisbon. Coxe further informs us that among the memoranda for his History of Husbandry, Stillingfleet has an affectionate tribute to his friend's memory in which he compares him with--Xenophon: 'He was not inferior to the Grecian in simplicity, parts, or knowledge, as he might have shewn,

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had not a general calamity [the Earthquake at Lisbon, on which Stillingfleet published a small quarto of moral reflections in verse, 1750] deprived the world of his ingenious writings.' He seems to have been universally beloved. Neville, one of his friends, thus records his death: 'Early in the year 1763, this godlike man was, about his 50th year, relieved from all his infirmities, and gathered to his kindred angels. He left just enough to bury him, and would have left no more if he had been Archbishop of Canterbury.' Capel Lofft inserted the sonnet in his Laura (5 vols., 1813-14), with the remark that had Stillingfleet left nothing else behind him, it would have been sufficient to immortalize his name. Todd justly observes that it proves how attentively and how successfully Milton was studied at this time. So also, in its degree, does his sonnet (Select Works, ii, 163) .

TO DAMPIER.

Thrice worthy guardian of that sacred spring,
That erst with copious stream enrich'd this land,
When Cæsar taught our nobles to command,
Tully to speak, Mæonides to sing;

Till Fashion, stealing with unheeded wing
Into this realm, with touch of foreign hand,
Our girls embolden'd, and our boys unmann'd,
And drew all ages to her magic ring.

Yet shalt not thou be backward in thy sphere
To thwart a sickly world; the sceptre giv'n
Thou know'st to wield, and force the noble youth
To merit titles they were born to bear.

Thou know'st that every sceptre is from Heaven
That guides mankind to virtue and to truth.'

Thomas Gray.

80-CLVI. From The Poems of Mr. Gray. To which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings, by W. Mason, M.A. York: 1775. L. 2. 'I believe,' says Lowell (My Study Windows, Boston, 1871, p. 388), it has not been noticed that among the verses in Gray's "Sonnet on the Death of West," which Wordsworth condemns as of no value, the second is one of Gray's happy reminiscences from a poet in some respects greater than either of them (Lucret., iv, 405-6):

Jamque rubrum tremulis jubar ignibus erigere alte
Cum cœptat natura.'

14. Park (Heliconia, 1815, ii, 154) notes the following parallel in Fitzgeffrey's Life and Death of Sir Francis Drake, which was pub'Rev. Dr. Dampier, then one of the upper masters of Eton School, and afterwards Dean of Durham, an intimate and much respected friend of Mr. Stillingfleet,'—Coxe.