In willing chains and sweet captivity. But fie, my wand'ring Muse, how thou dost stray! Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent 55 Then Ens is represented as father of the Predicaments his ten sons, whereof the eldest stood for Substance with his canons, which Ens, thus speaking, explains. GOOD luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth 52. In willing chains and sweet captivity.] Tasso, Gier. Lib. c. vi. 84. Giogo di servitu dolce e leggiero. Bowle. 56. of thy predicament:] What the Greeks called a category, Boëthius first named a predicament: and if the reader is acquainted with Aristotle's Categories, or Burgersdicius, or any of the old logicians, he will not want what follows to be explained to him; and it cannot well be explained to him, if he is unacquainted with that kind of logic. 59. Good luck befriend thee, Son, &c.] Here the metaphysical or logical Ens is introduced as a person, and addressing his eldest son Substance. Afterwards the logical Quantity, Quality, and Relation, are personified, and speak. This affectation will appear more excusable in Milton, VOL. III. 60 if we recollect, that every thing, in the masks of this age, appeared in a bodily shape. Airy nothing had not only a local habitation and a name, but a visible figure. It is extraordinary that the pedantry of King James I. should not have been gratified with the system of logic represented in a mask, at some of his academic receptions. He was once entertained at Oxford, in 1618, with a play called the Marriage of the Arts. As to the fairy ladies dancing, &c. it is the first and last time that the system of the fairies was ever introduced to illustrate the doctrine of Aristotle's ten categories. Yet so barren, unpoetical, and abstracted a subject could not have been adorned with finer touches of fancy, than we meet with, v. 62. come tripping to the room, &c. v. 69. a sibyl old, &c. And in this illustration there is ла Thy drowsy nurse hath sworn she did them spy Strow all their blessings on thy sleeping head. She heard them give thee this, that thou should'st still 65 From eyes of mortals walk invisible: Yet there is something that doth force my fear, For once it was my dismal hap to hear A Sibyl old, bow-bent with crooked age, great elegance, v. 83. to find a foe, &c. The address of Ens is a very ingenious enigma on Substance. T. Warton. 74. Shall subject be to many an Accident.] A pun on the logical accidens. O'er all his brethren he shall reign as king; the Predicaments are his brethren; of or to which he is the subjectum, although first in excellence and order. Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under; they cannot 70 75 80 To find a foe it shall not be his hap, And peace shall lull him in her flow'ry lap; To harbour those that are at enmity. What pow'r, what force, what mighty spell, if not 85 90 The next Quantity and Quality spake in prose, then RIVERS arise; whether thou be the son deep channel, for that is the "signification of the British "word Dan." See Camden's Yorkshire. Or Trent, who like some earth-born giant &c. This description is much nobler than Spenser's, st. 35. And bounteous Trent, that in himself enseains Both thirty sorts of fish, and thirty sundry streams. The name is of Saxon original, but (as Camden observes in his Staffordshire) "some ignorant "and idle pretenders imagine "the name to be derived from "the French word Trente, and Or Trent, who like some earth-born giant spreads His thirty arms along th' indented meads, " upon that account have feigned "thirty rivers running into it, "and likewise so many kinds of "fish swimming init." However, this notion might very well be adopted in poetry. Or sullen Mole &c. So Spenser, st. 32. And Mole, that like a nousling mole doth make His way still under ground, till Thamis he o'ertake. Whose bad condition yet it doth retain, Oft tossed with his storms, which therein still remain. And the Medway and the Thame are joined together, as they are married in Spenser. I wonder that Milton has paid no particular compliment to the river flowing by Cambridge (this exercise being made and spoken there) as Spenser has done, st. 34. Thence doth by Huntingdon and My mother Cambridge, whom as He doth adorn, and is adorn'd of it With many a gentle Muse, and many a learned wit. 91. I rather think Milton consulted Drayton's Polyolbion. It is hard to say in what sense, or in what manner, this introduction of the rivers was to be applied to the subject. -or Trent, &c. See the Polyolb. s. xii. vol. iii. p. 906. And thirty several streames, from Indented meads. Indent, in this Our silver Medway, which doth The flowerie medowes of my native And Drayton speaks of " creeks indenting the land." Polyolb. s. i. or sullen Mole, &c. at Mickleham in Surrey the Mole during the summer appears to sink through its sandy bed into a subterraneous current. Milton alludes to it in one of his religious disputes. Or sullen mole that runneth underneath, Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death, Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallow'd Dee, Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythian's name, Or Medway smooth, or royal tow'red Thame. [The rest was prose.] III. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. *Composed 1629. I. THIS is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of heav'n's eternal King, "To make the word Gift, like "the river Mole in Surrey, to "run under the bottom of a long line, and so to start up and to "govern the word presbytery, " &c." Animadv. Rem. Def. Pr. W.i. 92. guilty of maiden's death; Sabrina, see Comus, 827. -Ancient hallowed Dee. We have iger idag &c. in Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus; but Milton is not classical here. Dee's divinity was Druidical, and is first mentioned by Gyraldus Cambrensis, from the popular traditions, in 1188.—or Humber loud &c.; the Scythian king, Humber, landed in Britain 300 years before the Roman invasion, and was drowned in this river by Locrine, after conquering King Albanact. So Drayton, Polyolb. s. viii. vol. ii. p. 796. Drayton has made a most beautiful use of this tradition in his Elegy Upon "three Sons of the Lord Sheffield 95 100 " drowned in Humber." Elegies, vol. iv. p. 1244. Or Medway smooth; the smoothness of the Medway is characterised in Spenser's Mourning Muse of Thestylis. The Medwaies silver streames That wont so still to glide, The royal towers of Thames imply Windsor Castle, familiar to Milton's view, and to which he frequently makes allusions. T. Warton. *To the title of this Ode we have added the date, which is prefixed in the edition of 1645, Composed 1629, so that Milton was then twenty-one years old. He speaks of this poem in the conclusion of his sixth Elegy to Charles Deodati: and it was probably made as an exercise at Cambridge; and there is not only great learning shown in it, but likewise a fine vein of poetry. лаз |