網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his fides.

Come, and trip it as you go,

On the light fantastic toe;

And Fletcher's FAITHFULL SHEPHERDESS, a piece which we fhall find frequent occafion to quote hereafter, A. i. S. i. vol. ïïi. p. 131. edit. ut fupr.

Not the smile

Lies watching in thofe dimples, to beguile
The eafie foul.

Shakespeare has pursued the fame fort of fiction to an unpardonable extravagance, in VENUS AND ADONIS, edit. 1596. Signat. A. iiij. At this Adonis fmiles as in difdainė,

That in each cheeke appeares a prettie dimple;
Love made those hollowes, if Himselfe were flaine,
He might be buried in a tomb fo fimple:

Foreknowing well, if there he came to lye,

Why there Love liu'd, and there he could not dye.

The radical thought might be traced backward to Horace, and from Horace to Euripides.

32. Ph. Fletcher's MIRTH is fo attended. PURPL. ISL. Cant. iv. p. 13. edit. 1633.

Here Sportfull LAUGHTER dwells, here ever fitting,

Defies all lumpish griefs, and wrinkled care;

And twentie merrie Mates, MIRTH-causes fitting,

And SMILES, which LAUGHTER's fonnes, yet infants are. Smiles are wreathed, because in a fmile the features are wreathed, or curled, twisted, &c.

33. Come, and trip it as you go,

On the light fantastic toe.] There is an old ballad with these lines,

Trip and go

On my toe, &c.

IN LOVE'S LABOUR LOST, is part of another, or the fame, "TRIP "and Go, my sweet." A. iv. S. ii. So alfo in Nafhe's SUMMER'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT, 1600.

TRIP ad Go, heave and hoe,

Up and down, to and fro.

See Note on COMUS, v. 961.

And

And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain nymph, fweet Liberty;
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;
To hear the lark begin his flight,

And finging startle the dull night,

[ocr errors]

35

40

36. The mountain-nymph, fweet Liberty.] Dr. Newton supposes, that Liberty is here called the mountain-nymph, "because the people in mountainous countries have generally preferved their liberties, longeft, as the Britons formerly in Wales, and the inha"bitants in the mountains in Switzerland at this day." Milton's head was not so political on this occafion. 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 Pifa are fo beautifully defcribed in Homer's Hymn to Pan. The allufion is general, to inacceffible and uncultivated scenes of nature, fuch as mountainous fituations afford, and which were beft 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 Swifs Cantons, in PARADISE LOST, B. i. 387. See alfo EL. V. 127.

Atque aliquam cupidus prædatur OREADA Faunus.

40. In unreproved pleasures free.] That is, blameless, innocent, not fubject to reproof. So in PARAD. L. B. iv. 492.

With eyes

Of conjugal attraction UNREPROVED.

And Spenfer has "UNREPROVED truth." F. Q. ii. vii. 16. And
Sandys has "
UNREPROVED kiffes." SOLOM. SONG. Cant. viii.
And Drayton, "I may fafely play and UNREPROVED." Ecl. iii.
vol. iv. p. 1393.

41. To bear the lark begin his flight,

And finging fartle the dull night.] See an elegant little fong in Lilly's ALEXANDER AND CAMPASPE, prefented before queen Elizabeth, A. v. S. i.

The larke fo fhrill and cleare,

How at heavens gate fhe claps her wings,

The morne not waking till fhe fings.

See

From his watch-tow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rife;
Then to come in fpite of forrow,
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,

45

50

See also Drayton, POLYOLB. S. iii. vol. ii. p. 707. Of the lark.

On her trembling wing

In climbing up to heaven her high-pitcht hymn to fing
Unto the springing day. -

And our author, PARAD. REG. B. ii. 289.

Thus wore out night, and now the herald lark

Left his ground-neft high towering to defcry

The morn's approach, and greet her with a fong.

Compare Doctor Newton's Note on PARAD. L. B. v. 198. There is a peculiar propriety in ftartle: the Lark's is a fudden fhrill burst of fong.

Both in L'ALLEGRO and IL PENSEROSO, there feem 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.

43. From his watch-tow'r in the fkies.] So in our author's ReFORMATION, &c. Of God." From his high wATCH-TOWER in "the HEAVENS." Pr. W. i. 22.

46. And at my window bid good morrow.] Sylvefter's Du BARTAS, in the Cave of Sleep, p. 315. edit. 1621.

Cease, sweet chantecleere,

TO BID GOOD MORROWE.

Again, ibid. p. 70.

But cheerful birds chirping him sweet GOOD MORROWES. 47, 48. Sweet-brier and Eglantine are the fame plant. By the .twisted Eglantine he therefore means the Honeyfuckle. All three are plants often growing against the fide or walls of a house.

49. While the cock with lively din

Scatters the rear of darkness thin.] Darkness is a person above, v. 6. And in PARAD, L. iii. 712.

And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly ftruts his dames before:
Oft lift'ning how the hounds and horn
Chearly rouse the flumb'ring morn,
From the fide of fome hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Some time walking, not unfeen,

Till at his fecond bidding DARKNESS fled.

And in Spenfer, F. Q. i. vii. 23.

Where DARKNESSE he in deepest dongeon drove.

And in Manilius, i. 126.

Mundumque enixa nitentem,

Fugit in infernas CALIGO pulfa tenebras.

See alfo F. Q. iv. xi. 4. vi. xii. 35.

55

But, if we take in the context, he seems to have here perfonified Darkness from ROMEO AND JULIET. A. ii. S. iii.

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

For here too we have by implication Milton's "dappled dawn,”
But more exprefsly, in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING,
S. iii.

v. 44.

A. v.

And look, the gentle day

DAPPLES the droufy eaft with fpots of gray.

So alfo Drummond, Sonnets, edit. 1616. Signat. D. z.

Sith, winter gone, the funne in DAPLED skie

Now fmiles on meadowes, mountaines, hills, and plaines.

54. Roufe the flumb'ring morn.] The fame expreffion, as Mr. Bowle obferves, occurs with the fame rhymes, in an elegant triplet of an obfcure poet, John Habington, CASTARA, edit. 1540, p. 8.

The Nymphes with quivers fhall adorne

Their active fides, and ROUSE THE MORNE
With the shrill musicke of their horne.

57. -Not unfeen.] In the PENSEROSO, he walks unfeen, v. Happy men love witnesses of their joy: the fplenetic love folitude.

G

65.

H.

By

By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate

Where the great fun begins his state,
Rob'd in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;

59. Right against the eastern gate.

60

Where the great fun begins his ftate, &c.] Gray has adopted the firft of thefe lines in his DESCENT OF ODIN. See alfo " Against "the eastern gate of Paradise." PARAD. L. iv. 542. Here is an allufion to a splendid or royal proceffion. We have the Eastern Gate again, in the Latin poem IN QUINTUM NOVEMBRIS, V. 133. Jam rofea Eoas pandens Tithonia PORTAS.

And in Drayton, POLYOL B. S. xiii. vol. iii. p. 915.

Then from her burnisht GATE the goodly glitt'ring EAST
Gilds every lofty top.

And juft afterwards the throftel or thrush, like Milton's lark, awakes the luftlefs fun," that is "the languid or drowsy fun." Shakespeare has alfo the Eaftern Gate, which is most poetically opened, MIDS. N. DR. A. iii. S. ix.

Even till the EASTERN GATE, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair bleffed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his falt-green ftreams.

And he has "the golden WINDOW of the EAST," in ROM. AND JUL. A. i. S. i. Compare alfo Browne, BRIT. PAST. B. i. S. v. p. 87. edit, 1616.

But when the Morne doth looke

Out of the EASTERNE GATES.

Again, B. ii. S. iii. p. 65.

The Morning now, in colours richly dight,
Stept o'er the EASTERN THRESHOLDS. ——

Taffo is ftill more brilliant, C. xiv. 3.

Non lunge a l'AUREE PORTE, ond' efce il fofe,
E cristallina porta in oriente, &c.

62. The clouds in thousand liveries dight.] Literally from a very puerile poetical defcription of the Morning in one of his academic Prolufions. "Ipfa quoque tellus in adventum Solis, cultiori fe in"duit veftitu, NUBESQUE juxta VARIIS CHLAMYDATÆ CO LORIBUS, pompa folenni, longoque ordine, videntur ancillari furgenti Deo." PROSE WORKS, ut fupr. vol. ii. 586. And just

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

before,

« 上一頁繼續 »