XII. Apologus de Rustico et Hero.* Mota solo assueto, protenus aret iners. Parva licet, grato dona tulisse animo! Possem ego avaritiam frænare, gulamque voracem: Nunc periere mihi et fœtus, et ipse parens. XIII. Ad CHRISTINAM SUEcorum ReginaM, nomine CROMWELLI.* BELLIPOTENS virgo, septem regina trionum, Poems, has printed a very loose but witty English Epigram under the name of Milton, which had long before appeared among the poems of Lord Rochester, who has every pretension to be its right owner. To this Miscellany Fenton has prefixed a long Dedication to Lord Dorset. See p. 286. *This piece first appeared in the edition 1673. *These verses were sent to Christina, Queen of Sweden, with Cromwell's picture, and are by some ascribed to Andrew Marvell, as by others to Milton: but 5 10 I should rather think they were These lines are simple and Cernis, quas merui dura sub casside rugas, pranks of Christina had neither Doctor Newton, whose opinion is weighty, ascribes these lines to Milton, as coinciding with his department of Latin Secretary to Cromwell. See also Birch's Life of Milton, p. lxii. Toland, by whom they were first printed, from common report, indecisively gives them either to Milton or to Andrew Marvell. Life, p. 38. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 38. Tol. I suspect, that Milton's habit of facility in elegiac Latinity had long ago ceased: and I am inclined to attribute them to Marvell, so good a scholar, as to be thought a fit assistant to Milton in the Latin Secretaryship, and who, as Wood says, was 66 very intimate and conversant "with that person." Ath. Oxon. ii. 818. Again, he calls Marvell, "sometimes one of John Milton's companions." Ibid. p. 817. And he adds, that Marvell was "cried up as the main wit"monger surviving to the fana"tical party." In other words, 66 Marvell satirised the dissipations and profligate amours of Charles the Second with much wit and freedom. I must however observe, that this Epigram appears in Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems, fol. Lond. 1681. p. 134. Where it follows other Latin poems of the same class and subject: and is immediately preceded by a Latin distich, entitled, In Effigiem Oliveri Cromwelli, "Hæc est quæ "toties, &c." Then comes this Epigram there intitled " In ean- . "dem [effigiem] regina Sueciæ "transmissam." Where the second distich is thus printed, Cernis quas merui dura sub casside rugas, Sicque senex armis impiger ora fero. And in To the Reader, these poems are said by his pretended wife, Mary, to be "printed ac"cording to the exact copies of 66 my late dear husband, under " his own hand-writing, &c." I think we may therefore fairly give them to Marvell. But see Marvell's Works, Lond. 4to. 1766. vol. iii. p. 489. Of Marvell's respect and friendship for Milton some proofs appear, among other anecdotes of Milton and his friends not gene-> rally known, in the Second Part of Marvell's Rehearsall Transprosed. Lond. 1673. 8vo. This book is an attack on Dr. Samuel Parker, famous for his tergiversation with the times, now an antipuritan in the extreme, and who died Bishop of Oxford, and King James's popish president of Magdalen College, Oxford. See Invia fatorum dum per vestigia nitor, p. 377. He reproaches Parker, 5 "you there used, he is too gene"rous to remember. But he “never having in the least pro"voked you, for you to insult "thus over his old age, to tra"duce him by your scaramuc"cios, and in your own person, "as a schoolmaster, who was "born and hath lived more in"genuously and liberally than "yourself; to have done all "this, and lay at last my simple "book to his charge, without "ever taking care to inform "yourself better, which you had "so easy an opportunity to do: "it is inhumanly and inhos"pitably done; and will, I hope, "be a warning to all others, as "it is to me, to avoid (I will not say) such a Judas, but a man " that creeps into all companies, "to jeer, trepan, and betray "them." The First Part of this Rehearsall was published 1672. This was in answer to a Preface written by Parker to Bishop Bramhall's Vindication of Himself, &c. Lond. 1672. 8vo. Reprinted by itself the next year. Parker replied in A Reproof, &c. Lond. 1673. Marvell answered in a Second Part of the Rehearsall Transprosed, cited above. And here it must be remarked, that Marvell was mistaken in supposing the Transproser Rehearsed, in which most of this abuse of Milton appears, to be written by Parker: it was written by R. Leigh, formerly of Queen's College Oxford, but now a player, Oxon. 1673, 12mo. In which the writer styles Milton the blind author of Paradise Lost, and talks of his groping for a Ast tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra : Nec sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces. beam of light, in the Apostrophe Hail, holy light, &c. p. 41. In another place, Milton is called a schismatick in poetry, because he writes in blank-verse, p. 43. See also p. 126. He is traduced seq. as a Latin Secretary and an English Schoolmaster, p. 128. Other scurrilities follow for several pages, too gross and ob scene to be recited. I must not forget, that in the Reproof, really written by Parker, Milton is called " a friend of ours." p. 125. Marvell was appointed assistant secretary to Milton in 1657. See Sec. P. Rehears. Transpros. ut supr. p. 127, 128. And Christina ceased to be queen of Sweden in 1654. At least therefore, when these lines were written, Marvell was not associated with Milton in the secretaryship. I must add, that neither Marvell nor Milton lived to read the abuse which Parker bestowed on both of them, in his posthumous Commentarii sui temporis, Lond. 1727. 8vo. I will translate a small part only. He is speaking of the pamphleteers against the royal party at Cromwell's accession. 66 Among these calum"niators was a rascal, one Mar"vell. As he had spent his 66 youth in debauchery, so from "natural petulance, he became "the tool of faction in the "quality of satyrist. Yet with more scurrility than wit, and "with a mediocrity of talents, "but not of ill-nature. Turned "expelled the university, a vagabond, a ragged and hungry poetaster, kicked and cudg"elled in every tavern, he was "daily chastised for his impu"dence. At length he was made "under-secretary to Cromwell, "by the procuration of Milton, "to whom he was a very ac" ceptable character, on account "of a similar malevolence of disposition, &c." B. iv. p. 275. This passage was perhaps written about the year 1680. Paradise Lost had now been published thirteen years, and its excellencies must have been fully estimated and sufficiently known; yet in such terms of contempt, or rather neglect, was its author now described, by a popular writer, certainly a man of learning, and very soon afterwards a bishop. See Life of Bathurst. To recur to the text, which perhaps has been long ago forgot. Milton, has a prolix and most splendid panegyric on queen Christina, dictated by the supposition that she dismissed Salmasius from her court on account of his Defence of the King. See Milton's Prose Works, ii. p. 329. What ground Mr. Warton had for his suspicion, that " Milton's "habit of facility in elegiac La"tinity had long ago ceased," he does not specify, nor is it easy to conjecture. I should not willingly persuade myself that our author could soon lose any faculty which he had acquired. Besides these verses must have been written before 1654, and only nine years before that, when he published a collection of his Latin and English poems in 1645, he had added to his seventh Elegy ten lines, which sufficiently shew that he then perfectly retained his Elegiac Latinity. It was also an employment which, we may well suppose, he was fond of, as at this time he certainly thought highly of Christina. He was indeed rather unfortunate in his selection of a favourite from among the crowned heads of his time; but he saw only the bright side of Christina's character, and considered her as a learned, pious, patriotic, disinterested princess, Dunster. Dr. Symmons concurs with Newton, Birch, and Dunster, in assigning these verses without hesitation to Milton. He remarks also, that at the time "when "Milton praised Christina, he "praised a queen who possessed "the affections of a happy peo"ple, who extended the most "liberal patronage to the learn"ed, and who was the theme of "almost unbounded panegyric "with all the princes of European literature." See Life of Milton, p. 427–431. ed. 2. E. |