Et faciam vero per tua damna fidem. Inscius uxori qui necis author erat. 37. Cydoniusque mihi, &c.] Perhaps indefinitely as the Parthus eques, just before. The Cydonians were famous for hunting, which implies archery. See Ovid, Metam. viii. 22. If a person is here intended, he is most probably Hippolytus. Cydon was a city of Crete. See Euripides, Hippol. v. 18. But then he is mentioned here as an archer. Virgil ranks the Cydonians with the Parthians, for their skill in the bow, Æn. xii. 852. Ibid. —et ille, &c.] Cephalus, who unknowingly shot his wife Procris. 38. Est etiam nobis ingens quoque victus Orion,] Orion was also a famous hunter. But for his amours we must consult Ovid, } 30 35 40 45 Art. Amator. i. 731. See Parthenius, Erotic. cap. xx. 46. Nec tibi Phabeus porriget anguis opem.] "No medicine "will avail you. Not even the serpent, which Phoebus sent to "Rome to cure the city of a pestilence." See Ovid, Metam. xi. 742. 66 Huc se de Latia pinu Phœbeius anguis Where see the fable at large. Here Love his golden shafts employs, His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings. Where see the note. Evolat in tepidos Cypridos ille sinus. Fallor? An et radios hinc quoque Phoebus habet? Hanc memor objecit nobis malus ille Cupido, Et facis a tergo grande pependit onus: 57. See note El. i. 50. In Milton's youth the fashionable places of walking in London were Hyde Park, and Gray's Inn walks. This appears from Sir A. Cokain, Milton's contemporary. Poems, Lond. 1662. 12mo. Written much earlier. A young lady, he says, p. 85. Frequents the theaters, Hide Park, or els talkes Away her pretious time in Gray's Inn walkes. Uror amans intus, flammaque totus eram. Ast ego progredior tacite querebundus, et excors, Findor, et hæc remanet: sequitur pars altera votum, Sic dolet amissum proles Junonia cœlum, Forte nec ad nostras surdeat illa preces! Ponar in exemplo primus et unus ego. Jam tuus O certe est mihi formidabilis arcus, 84. Vectus ab attonitis Amphia- parantes Mergit equos; non arma manu, non frena remisit; Sicut erat, rectos defert in Tartara Respexitque cadens cœlum, campum- The application is beautiful from a young mind teeming with classical history and imagery. The allusion, in the last couplet, to Vulcan, is perhaps less hapPy, although the compliment is greater. In the example of Amphiaraus, the sudden and striking transition from light and the sun to a subterraneous gloom, perhaps is more to the poet's purpose. Et tua fumabunt nostris altaria donis, Solus et in superis tu mihi summus eris. Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis amans: 100 HÆC ego, mente olim læva, studioque supino, Cincta rigent multo pectora nostra gelu. * 5 10 ibid. Captivum, dominæ restituitque meæ. Liber eram, vacuo mihi cum sub Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade This fiction is again pursued in Or with the tangles of Neœra's hair 2 - his Epigrams. Lib. i. xlv. p. 77. The Amaryllis, to whom Milton alludes, is the Amaryllis of Buchanan, the subject of a poem called Desiderium Lutetiæ. See Silvæ, iii. tom. ii. p. 50. Opp. Edinb. 1715. fol. It begins, O formosa Amarylli, tuo jam septima bruma Me procul aspectu, &c. The common poetical name, Amaryllis, might indeed have been accidentally adopted by both poets; nor does it at first sight appear, that Milton used it with any restrictive meaning. But Buchanan had another mistress whom he calls Neæra, whose golden hair makes a very splendid figure in his verses, and which he has complimented more than once in the most hyperbolical style. In his last Elegy, he raises the following extravagant fiction on the luxuriant tangles of this lady's hair. Cupid is puzzled how to subdue the icy poet. His arrows can do nothing. At length, he hits upon the stratagem of cutting a golden lock from Neæra's head, while she is asleep, with which the VOL. IV. corde Neæra Ex oculis fixit spicula missa suis: Deinde unam evellens ex auricomante capillum Vertice, captivis vincla dedit ma |