網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

And all their echoes mourn.

The willows, and the hazel copses green,

Shall now no more be seen,

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flow'rs, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;

Such Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear.

45

51

Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas? For neither were ye playing on the steep,

in a beautiful description of the growth of the vine, says, that it spreads itself abroad "multiplici

66

lapsu et erratico." De Senect. S. XV. T. Warton.

45. As killing as the canker to the rose,] Shakespeare is fond of this image, and, from his very frequent repetitions of it, seems to have suggested it to Milton. T. Warton.

47. Or frost to flow'rs, that their gay wardrobe wear,] Milton had first written, their gay buttons wear; but corrected it in the Manuscript.

50. Where were ye, Nymphs, &c.] He imitates Virgil, Ecl. x. 9.

Quæ nemora, aut qui vos saltus habuere puellæ

Naiades, indigno cum Gallus amore
periret ?

Nam neque Parnassi vobis juga,
nam neque Pindi
Ulla moram fecere, neque Aonia
Aganippe.

as Virgil had before imitated
Theocritus, Idyl. i. 66.

Πα ποκ' αρ' ησθ' όκα Δαφνις εταπετο; πα ποκα νυμφαι;

Η κατα Πηνειω καλά τεμπία, η κατά
Πίνδω ;

Ου γαρ δη ποταμοιο μεγαν ῥέον εχετ
Avara,

Ουδ' Αιτνας σκοπιαν, ουδ' Ακέδος ἱερον
ύδωρ.

50. But see also Spenser's Astrophel, st. 22.

Ah where were ye the while his shepherd peares, &c.

52.

T. Warton.

-the steep, Where your old Bards, the famous Druids, lie, &c.] Mr. Richardson's conjecture upon this passage, I think, is the best I have seen, that this sleep, where the Druids lie, is a place called Kerig y Druidion in the mountains of Denbighshire, or Druids' stones, because of the stonechests or coffins, and other monuments there in abundance, supposed to have been of the Druids. See Camden. Mona is the isle of Anglesey, or the shady island as it was called by the ancient Britons. And Deva is the river Dee, the meaning of which word Deva is by some supposed to be divine water.

Where your old Bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:

See Camden's Cheshire. And
for the same reason that it is
here called wizard stream, it has
the name of ancient hallow'd Dee
in our author's Vacation Exercise;
and Spenser thus introduces it
among his rivers, Faery Queen,
b. iv. cant. 11. st. 59.

-And Dee, which Britons long ygone

Did call divine, that doth by Chester

tend.

And Drayton in his Polyolbion,
Song x.

A brooke it was, suppos'd much
bus'ness to have seen,

Which had an ancient bound 'twixt
Wales and England been,
And noted was by both to be an

ominous flood,
That changing of his foards, the
future ill or good

Of either country told, of either's war or peace,

The sickness or the health, the dearth

or the increase &c.

These places all look toward Ireland, and were famous for the residence of the Bards and Druids, who are distinguished by most authors, but Milton speaks of them as the same, and probably as priests they were Druids, and as poets they were Bards. For Cæsar, who has given us the best and most authentic account of the ancient Druids, says, that among other things they learn a great number of verses. Magnum ibi numerum versuum ediscere dicuntur. De Bel. Gall. lib. vi. c. 13.

54. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,] In Drayton's Polyolbion, Mona is introduced re

55

citing her own history; where
she mentions her thick and dark
groves as the favourite residence
of the Druids.

Sometimes within my shades, in
many an ancient wood,
Whose often-twined tops great Phe-
bus fires withstood,

The fearlesse British priests, under
an aged oake, &c.

Where, says Selden, "the British "Druids tooke this isle of An"glesey, then well-stored with "thicke woods and religious

groves, in so much that it was "then called Inis dowil, The "dark isle, for their chiefe resi"dence, &c." s. ix. vol. iii. p. 837, 839. Here are Milton's authorities. For the Druid-sepulchres, at Kerig y Druidion, he consulted Camden. T. Warton. 54. shaggy top] So P. L. vi. 645. The angels uplift the hills,

-By their shaggy tops.

T. Warton.

55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:] In Spenser, the river Dee is the haunt of magicians. Faery Queen, i. ix. 4. The Dee has been made the scene of a variety of ancient British traditions. The city of Chester was called by the Britons the Fortress upon Dee; which was feigned to have been founded by the giant Leon, and to have been the place of King Arthur's magnificent coronation.

But there is another and perhaps a better reason, why Deva's is a wizard stream. In Drayton, this river is styled the hallowed,

Aye me! I fondly dream

Had ye been there, for what could that have done?

and the holy, and the ominous flood. Polyolb. s. x. vol. iii. p. 848. s. ix. vol. iii. p. 287. s. iv. vol. ii. p. 731. Again, "holy "Dee," Heroicall Epist. vol. i. p. 293. And in his Ideas, vol. iv. p. 1271. And Browne, in his Britannia's Pastorals, b. ii. s. v. p. 117. edit. 1616.

Never more let holy Dee

Ore other rivers brave, &c.

Much superstition was founded on the circumstance of its being the ancient boundary between England and Wales: see Drayton, s. x. See also s. iii. vol. ii. p. 711. s. xii. vol. iii. p. 901. But in the Eleventh Song, Drayton calls the Weever, a river of Cheshire, "The wizard river," and immediately subjoins, that in prophetick Skill it vies with the Dee, s. xi. vol. iii. p. 861. Here we seem to have the origin and the precise meaning of Milton's appellation. In Comus, Wizard also signifies a Diviner where it is applied to Proteus,

v. 872.

By the Carpathian wizard's hook. Milton appears to have taken a particular pleasure in mentioning this venerable river. In the beginning of his first Elegy, he almost goes out of his way to specify his friend's residence on the banks of the Dee; which he describes with the picturesque and real circumstance of its tumbling headlong over rocks and precipices into the Irish sea. El. i. 1.

-Occidua Deva Cestrensis ab ora, Vergivium prono qua petit amne salum.

But to return to the text immediately before us. In the midst of this wild imagery, the tombs of the Druids, dispersed over the solitary mountains of Denbighshire, the shaggy summits of Mona, and the wizard waters of Deva, Milton was in his favourite track of poetry. He delighted in the old British traditions and fabulous histories. But his imagination seems to have been in some measure warmed, and perhaps directed ton; who in the Ninth and to these objects, by reading DrayTenth Songs of his Polyolbion has very copiously enlarged, and almost at one view, on this scenforce and felicity of fancy, that ery. It is, however, with great Milton, in transferring the classical seats of the Muses to Britain, has substituted places of the most romantic kind, inhabited by Druids, and consecrated by the visions of British bards. And it has been justly remarked, how coldly and unpoetically Pope, in his very correct pastorals, has on the same occasion selected only the fair fields of Isis, and the winding vales of Cam.

But at the same time there is an immediate propriety in the substitution of these places. They are in the vicinity of the Irish seas, where Lycidas was shipwrecked. It is thus Theocritus asks the Nymphs, how it came to pass, that when Daphnis died, they were not in the delicious vales of Peneus, or on the banks of the great torrent Anapus, the sacred water of Acis, or on the summits of mount Etna: because

What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself for her inchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His goary visage down the stream was sent,

all these were the haunts or the habitation of the shepherd Daphnis. These rivers and rocks have a real connection with the poet's subject. T. Warton.

56. Aye me! I fondly dream Had ye been there, for what

could that have done?] We have here followed the pointing of Milton's manuscript in preference to all the editions: and the meaning plainly is, I fondly dream of your having

been there, for what would that have signified? Mr. Thyer conjectured that the passage should be so pointed, and Milton has so pointed it, though he does not often observe the stops in his Manuscript. Mr. Jortin likewise perceived this to be the sense; and asks whether this transpoIsition would not be better than the common reading.

Had ye been there-Aye me, I fondly
dream

For what could that have done?
What could the Muse &c.

56. Perhaps the passage may be understood thus, "I fondly "dream of your assistance if ye "had been there, for what could "your presence have availed? "What could the Muse herself, " &c."

60

[blocks in formation]

but in his Manuscript he altered these lines with judgment. And afterwards his goary visage was a correction from his divine visage.

58. P. L. vii. 37. Of Orpheus torn in pieces by the Bacchanalians.

-Nor could the Muse defend
Her son.

And his murderers are called
"that wild rout," v. 34. Calliope
was the mother of Orpheus.
Lycidas, as a poet, is here tacitly

The printed copies of 1638, compared with Orpheus. T.

1645, and 1673, have it,

Aye me, I fondly dream!

Had ye been there-for what could

that have done?

VOL IV.

Warton.

[blocks in formation]

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?

Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?

Were it not better done as others use,

65

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spi'rit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind)

63. Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.] In calling Hebrus swift, Milton, who is avaricious of classical authority, appears to have followed a verse in the Æneid, i. 321.

-Volucremque fuga prævertitur He

brum.

But Milton was misled by a wrong, although a very ancient, reading. Even Servius blames his author for attributing this epithet to Hebrus, "Nam quietis"simus est, etiam cum per hyemem crescit." [See Burman's Virgil, vol. i. p. 95. col. i. edit. 1746. 4to.] Besides, what was the merit of the amazon huntress Harpalyce to outstrip a river, even if uncommonly rapid? The genuine reading might have been Eurum, as Rutgersius proposed. -Volucremque fuga prævertitur Eu

rum.

T. Warton.

66. And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?] Meditate the Muse, Virg. Ecl. i. 2. Musam meditaris. The thankless Muse, that earns no thanks, is not thanked by the ungrateful world: as ingratus in Latin is used in a passive as well as active signification. Sallust, Cat. xxxviii.

70

otium ingrato labori prætulerat. Virg. Æn. vii. 425.

I nunc, ingratis offer te, irrise, periclis.

68. To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?]

ocritus and Virgil. Neæra, EAmaryllis, a country lass in Thegon's mistress in Virgil's third Eclogue. Peck.

all probability Milton is here glancing at Buchanan, whose addresses to Amaryllis and Neæra were well known at the time. See note at the end of the Elegies. E.

But Mr. Warton shews, that in

69. Or with the tangles &c.] So corrected in the Manuscript from Hid in the tangles &c.

70. Fame is the spur &c.] The reader may see the same sentiment inlarged upon in the Paradise Regained, iii. 25. and confirmed in the notes by numerous quotations from the heathen philosophers.

71. That last infirmity of noble mind.] Abate Grillo, in his Lettere, has called " questa sete di "fama et gloria, ordinaria infir"mita degli animi generosi."

« 上一頁繼續 »