> ftrow the laureat herfe where Lycid lies, or so to interpofe a little ease, it our frail thoughts dally with false furmife. y me! Whilst thee the shores, and founding feas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd, 155 Whether beyond the ftormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide lifit'ft the bottom of the monstrous world; Or ys Statius of young Crenæus kill'd the fhore can hardly be faid to wash ghting in the river Ifmenos, IX. the body; and the expreffion is harsh and uncouth. $58. Richardfon. 153. Let our frail thoughts] Aler'd in the Manufcript from Let ur fad thoughts. 154. Whilft thee the fhores,] Alter'd in the Manufcript from floods. But Mr. Jortin fays hores is improper, and fancies it thould be holes, the fhallow waters, brevia. In the Mafk 115, The founds and feas the founds, freta. If Milton wrote fores, he perhaps had in his mind this paffage of Virgil, En. VI. 362. where Palinurus, who, like Lycidas, had perifhed in the fea, fays, Nunc me fluctus habet, verfantque in litore venti. On which line Pierius obferves, Litus non tam de ficco, quàm de afperginibus et extrema maris ora, intelligitur. But yet, though a dead body may be faid to be washed on the fhore by the returning tides, whilft thee the founding feas Wash far away, &c. Far away, that is, in some remote. place, whatfoever it be. He feems rather to mean in fome place, than to fome place. 156. Whether beyond &c] Whether thy body is carried northwards or fouthwards. Whether beyond the formy Hebrides, the western ilands of Scotland, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide, it is humming tide in Milton's Manufcript. Vifit ft the bottom of the monstrous world. Virgil En. VI. 729. Et quæ marmoreo fert monftra fub æquore pontus, Se Or whether thou to our moift vows deny'd, Where the great vifion of the guarded mount 160 Looks tow'ard Namancos and Bayona's hold; Weep So claffical is Milton in every part confequently toward Bayona's hold. of this poem. 160. Sleep ft by the fable of Bellerus old, &c] Milton doubting which way the waves might carry the body of Lycidas, drowned in the Irish fea, imagins it was either driven northward beyond the Hebrides, or else so far fouthward as to lie fleeping near the fable, or fabulous manfions of old Bellerus, where the great vifion of the guarded mount looks towards the coaft of Spain. But where can we find the place which is thus obfcurely defcribed in the language of poetry and fiction? The place here meant is probably a promontory in Cornwal, known at prefent by the name of the Land's End, and called by Diodorus Siculus Belerium promontorium, perhaps from Bellerus one of the Cornish giants, with which that country and the poems of old British bards were once filled. A watch-tower and light-house formerly ftood on this promontory, and looked, as Orofius fays, towards another high sower at Brigantia in Gallicia, and See Orofius and Camden, who concludes his account of this part of Cornwal with faying, that no other place in this iland looks direally to Spain. Meadowcourt. It may be farther observed, that Milton in his Manufcript had written Cortneus, and afterwards changed it for Bellerus. Corineus came into this iland with Brute, and had that part of the country affign'd for his fhare, which after him was named Cornwal. "To Corineus, " fays Milton in the first book of "his Hiftory of England, Corn 66 wal, as we now call it, fell by "lot; the rather by him lik'd, "for that the hugeft giants in "rocks and caves were faid to "lurk ftill there; which kind of "monfters to deal with was his old "exercise." Of this race of giants, we may fuppofe, was Bellerus: but whoever he was, the alteration in Milton's Manufcript was certainly for the better, to take a perfon from whom that particular promontory was denominated, rather than one who gave name to the county at large. The fable Weep no more, woful Shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas your forrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watry floor fable of Bellerus and the vifion of the guarded mount is plainly taken from fome of our old romances, but we may perceive what place is intended, the Land's End, and St. Michael's mount in Cornwal. 163. Look bomeward Angel now,] So the Paftoral Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney. Philifides is dead. O happy That now in Heav'n with bleffed 163. Are won with pity and unwonted ruth. 166 Flames " a dolphin took him up, and laid "his body on the shore at Corinth "where he was deified.” Richardfon. 165. Weep no more, &c] Milton in this fudden and beautiful transi→ tion from the gloomy and mournful ftrain into that of hope and comfort feems pretty plainly to imi-: tate Spenfer in his 11th Eclogue, where bewailing the death of fome calleth Dido, in terms of the utmost maiden of great blood, whom he grief and dejection, he breaks out all at once in the fame manner. Thyer. 168. So finks the day-ftar] The thought of a star's being wash'd in the ocean, and thence fhining brighter, is frequent among the ancient poets and at the firft reading I conceiv'd that Milton meant the morning star alluding to Virgil, Fairfax, Cant. z. St. 11. 164. And, O ye Dolphins, waft the baplefs youth.] Alluding to what Paufanias fays of Palemon toward the end of his Attics, "that Qualis ubi oceani perfufus Luci fer unda &'c: but upon farther confideration I rather think that he means the fun, whom in the fame manner he calls the Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: 171 So Lycidas funk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves, Where other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, And hears the unexpreffive nuptial fong, In the bleft kingdoms meek of joy and love. 175 There Qui rore puro Caftaliæ lavit 176. And hears the unexpreffive nuptial fong,] In the Manufcript it was at first Liff'ning the unexpreffive &c. This is the fong in the Revelation, which no man could learn but they who were t defiled with women, and were wirgins: Rev. XIV. 3, 4 The author had ufed the word unexpreffive in the fame manner before in his Hymn on the Nativity, St. 11. Harping in loud and folemn quire With unexpreffive notes to Heav'n's new-born heir. Nor are parallel inftances wanting in Shakespear. As you like it, Act 3. Sc. 2. The fair, the chafte, and unex preffive the. And in like manner infuppreffive is ufed for not to be fupprefs'd. Julius Cæfar, Act z. Sc. 2. Nor There entertain him all the Saints above, That fing, and finging in their glory move, Nor th' infuppreffive mettle of our fpirits. I have feveral times had the pleafare of making the fame remarks and obfervations as Mr. Thyer, and here we had both mark'd thefe inftances from Shakespear. 177. In the bleft kingdoms meek of joy and love.] That is in the bleft kingdoms of meek joy and love; a tranfpofition of the adjective, which we meet with alfo in the Paradife Loft, IX. 318. 180 185 Thus 183. Henceforth thou art the ge nius of the shore,] This is faid in allufion to the flory of Melicerta or Palæmon, who with his mother Ino was drown'd, and became a fea-deity propitious to mariners. Ovid, Met. IV. Faft. VI. Virgil Georg. I. 436. Votaque fervati folvent in littore nautæ Glauco, et Panopeæ, & Inoo Melicertæ. And as Mr. Jortin observes, it is pleasant to fee how the moft antipapistical poets are inclined to ca So fpake domestic Adam in his nonize and then to invoke their care, in which verfe domeftic is without doubt to be join'd to care, and not to Adam as the common opinion is. So alfo in the fame book, ver. 225. and th' hour of supper comes ugearn'd. Thyer. friends as faints. See the poem on the fair Infant. St. 10. |