Ah quoties vidi superantia lumina gemmas, Atque faces quotquot volvit uterque polus;

Collaque bis vivi Pelopis quæ brachia vincant,

Quæque fluit puro nectare tincta via, Et decus eximium frontis, tremulosque capillos,

Aurea quæ fallax retia tendit Amor; 60 Pellacesque genas, ad quas hyacinthina sordet

Purpura et ipse tui floris, Adoni, rubor! Cedite laudatæ toties Heröides olim,

Et quæcunque vagum cepit amica Io

vem;

Cedite Achæmeniæ turritâ fronte puellæ, Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniamque Ninon;

Vos etiam Danaæ fasces submittite nymphæ,

Et vos Iliacæ, Romuleæque nurus; Nec Pompeianas Tarpëia Musa columnas

Iactet, et Ausoniis plena theatra stolis. 70 Gloria virginibus debetur prima Britannis;

Extera sat tibi sit fœmina posse sequi. Tuque urbs Dardaniis, Londinum, structa colonis,

Turrigerum latè conspicienda caput, Tu nimium felix intra tua moenia claudis Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet. Non tibi tot cælo scintillant astra sereno, Endymioneæ turba ministra deæ, Quot tibi conspicua formâque auroque puellæ

Per medias radiant turba videnda vias. Creditur huc geminis venisse invecta columbis

81

Alma pharetrigero milite cincta Venus, Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis flumine valles,

Huic Paphon, et roseam posthabitura Cypron.

Ast ego, dum pueri sinit indulgentia æcci, Monia quàm subito linquere fausta paro; Et vitare procul malefidæ infamia Circes Atria, divini Molyos usus ope.

Stat quoque iuncosas Cami remeare paludes,

Atque iterum raucæ murmur adire Scholæ.

Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici,

Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos.

times have I seen eyes brighter than gems, brighter than all the fires that roll about either pole, necks whiter than the arms of Pelops, twice called to life, or the Milky Way that flows with pure nectar! And exquisite grace of brow, and floating locks, - golden nets which Love casts deceivingly, -inviting cheeks, to which the purple of the hyacinth, yea, even the blush of thy flower, Adonis, is dull! Yield, ye Heröides so praised of yore, and all ye loves that snared gadding Jove! Yield, ye Persian damsels with your turreted brows; and all ye who dwell in Susa, in Memnonian Nineveh! Even ye, maidens of Danaüs, lower the fasces; and ye Trojan brides, and ye of the race of Romulus! Let not the poet who lived by the Tarpeian rock [Ovid] boast the dames of Pompey's porch, nor the theatre full of Roman stoles. To the virgins of Britain first glory is due; suffice it, foreign woman, that thou canst follow them! And thou city of London, built by Dardanian colonists, thy towered head conspicuous far and wide, thou, too happy, enclosest with thy walls whatever beauty the pendulous Earth owns. Not so many stars twinkle over thee in the clear night sky, ministrant troops of Endymion's goddess, as through thy highways throng troops of girls, bright with beauty and with gold, drawing all eyes with their radiance. Men say that hither blessed Venus came, escorted by her quivered soldier-boy, drawn by twin doves, willing to love London more than Cnidos, or the vales watered by the stream of Simöis, or Paphos, or rosy Cyprus.

But for my part, while the blind boy grants me immunity, I make ready to leave these fortunate walls as quickly as I may; and avoid far off the evil halls of Circe the deceiver, using the help of moly, that heavenly plant. It has been arranged for me to go back to the bulrush swamps of Cam, and to the raucous murmur of the school. Meanwhile take this poor gift of a faithful friend, these few words constrained into the measure of elegy.

The person to whose memory this elegy is addressed, Richard Ridding, M.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge, died in the autumn of 1626, near the beginning of Milton's third year at the University. Three persons at Cambridge bear the title of Esquire Bedel (Latin praeco, herald or crier). Their duties are, to bear the mace before the Chancellor on solemn occasions, and to give summons. The office is one of considerable dignity, and has a TE, qui conspicuus baculo fulgente solebas Palladium toties ore ciere gregem, Ultima præconum præconem te quoque

life tenure. The opening lines of the elegy have a suspicion of humor in them, but it is safe to say that Milton's tribute was meant in all seriousness. At any rate, the passing away of a picturesque figure from the University life gave the young Latinist too good an opportunity for versifying to be neglected. The date-heading, anno ætatis 17, is here and elsewhere misleading; Milton was, in the autumn of 1626, near the end of his eighteenth year.

As beadle, you were wont, standing conspicuous with your shining staff, to assemble the flock of Pallas: but now Death, the ultimate beadle, savagely arrests you, too, beadle, and shows no favor even to his own office. "Tis true, the locks of your temples were whiter than the swan-plumes under which Jove is storied to have hid, but O, you deserved to grow young again like Æson, with the simples drawn by Medea from the flowers of Hæmonvale! Escula

pius, son of Coronis, heeding the goddess's prayers importunate, should have called you back with his healing art from the Stygian waves. Whenever you were ordered to go as a swift herald from your Apollo [the vice-chancellor of the university] and bring together the togaed hosts, you stood like wing-foot Hermes in the Trojan halls, sent from the ethereal citadel of his Father; or like the herald Eurybates, when before the stormy face of Achilles he delivered the stern demands of King AgaO thou great queen of sepulchres, handmaid of Avernus, too harsh to the Muses and the arts of Pallas, why shouldst thou not seize instead some human clod, some useless weight of earth? Against such rabble thy arrows might better be aimed. O Academe, grieve in mourning vestment for this good man, and bedew his dark bier with thy tears. Let complaining Elegy pour out her sad strains, and let a mournful dirge ring through all the schools.

memnon.

but had at one time been Master of Pembroke Hall. The tone of the elegy affords a curious contrast to Milton's later utterances, in his anti episcopal pamphlets, concerning this same bishop.

SAD and silent I sat, comradeless; and many griefs clung about my soul. Then suddenly, behold, there arose before me an image of the deadly plague which Libitina spread on English soil, when dire Death, fearful with his sepulchral torch, entered the glorious marble towers of the great, shook the walls heavy with jasper and gold, and feared not to lay low with his scythe the host of princes. Then I thought on that illustrious duke [Duke Christian of Brunswick, a victim of the War of the Palatinate] and his worshipped brother-in-arms, whose bones were consumed on untimely pyres; and I thought on those heroes whom all Belgia saw snatched away to the skies, saw, and wept her lost leaders. But for you chiefly I grieved, good Bishop, once the great glory of your Winchester. I melted in tears, and with sad lip thus complained: "Cruel Death. second among gods to Tartarean Jove, is it then not enough that the woods should feel thy wrath, and that power should be given thee over the green things of the fields? That, touched by thy pestilent breath, the lily withers, and the crocus, and the rose sacred to beautiful Cypris? Thou dost not permit the oak to stand forever by the stream, looking at the slipping-by of the water. To thee succumb the birds, as many as are borne on wings through the liquid sky, even the birds, though they give augury; and all the thousand animals that roam the dark forests; and the dumb herd that the caves of Proteus shelter.

Ditior Hesperio flavet arena Tago; Serpit odoriferas per opes levis aura Favoni,

50

Aura sub innumeris humida nata rosis: Talis in extremis terræ Gangetidis oris Luciferi regis fingitur esse domus. Ipse racemiferis dum densas vitibus umbras

Et pellucentes miror ubique locos, Ecce mihi subitò Præsul Wintonius astat! Sidereum nitido fulsit in ore iubar; Vestis ad auratos defluxit candida talos; Infula divinum cinxerat alba caput. Dumque senex tali incedit venerandus amictu,

Intremuit læto florea terra sono; Agmina gemmatis plaudunt cælestia pennis;

Pura triumphali personat æthra tubâ. 60 Quisque novum amplexu comitem cantuque salutat,

Hosque aliquis placido misit ab ore

sonos:

"Nate, veni, et patrii felix cape gaudia regni;

Semper abhinc duro, nate, labore vaca."

Envious! When so much power has been granted thee, what does it pleasure thee to steep thy hands in human slaughter, sharpen thy certain arrows to pierce a noble breast, and drive from its tenement a soul half-divine?"

While thus with tears I brooded in the depth of my heart, dewy Hesperus rose from the western waters; for Phoebus, having measured out his journey from the shores of dawn, had submerged his chariot in the seas beyond Spain. Forthwith I laid my limbs upon my pliant bed to be refreshed by sleep. Night and slumber had closed my eyes, when suddenly I seemed to be walking in a wide field. Alas, I have no gift to tell what I saw! There all things shone with a purpureal light, as when the mountain tops are flushed with the morning sun; and the earth gleamed with a vestment of many colors, even as when Iris scatters her wealth abroad. Not with so various flowers did Chloris, goddess loved of light Zephyr, adorn the gardens of King Alcinoüs. Silver streams laved the green champaign; the sand shone richer than Hesperian Tagus. Through the odorous leafage breathed the light breath of Favonius, rising humid from under bowers of roses. Such a place men fable the home of the King of Light to be, far on the shores beyond Ganges. As I stood wondering at the dense shadows of the clustered vines and the radiance of these places everywhere, behold, suddenly before me stood Winchester's bishop! His face shone with glory like the stars; down to his golden sandals his robe flowed all candid; a white fillet encircled his saintly head. As the old man, thus venerably clad, walked on, the flowery earth trembled with joyful sound; hosts of angels clapped their jewelled wings, and through the air rang out a clear, triumphal horn. Each angel saluted his new comrade with embrace and song; and from the placid lips of One came these words: "Come, son, enjoy the gladness of thy father's realm; rest henceforth from thy hard labors." As He

Dixit, et aligera tetigerunt nablia turmæ; At mihi cum tenebris aurea pulsa quies; Flebam turbatos Cephaleiâ pellice somnos. Talia contingant somnia sæpe mihi!

spoke, the winged choirs touched their psalteries. But from me my golden rest fled with the darkness, and I was left weeping that the Dawn, paramour of Cephalus, had stirred my sleep. May the like dreams come to me often again!

Thomas Young, a young Scotch divine who had come to England in the wake of King James, had been Milton's domestic tutor, and had probably continued in that capacity after the boy was sent to St. Paul's School. Two years before Milton left St. Paul's, Young accepted a position abroad as minister of a Protestant church supported by the English merchants resident at Hamburg in Germany. The present verse-letter, written in 1627, some years after Young's departure, shows by its tone of tenderness and solicitude that, in spite of his dilatoriness in writing, Milton still cherished a sincere affection for his former tutor. He compares his love for Young to that of Alcibiades for Socrates, and plainly states his debt to him for initiation into the delights of classical literature. Milton's references to the troubled state of Germany, and the danger to which Young is exposed, will be made clear by remembering that in 1627 the Thirty Years' War had entered upon its second stage, with Tilly and Wallenstein at the head of the Imperialist forces, and Christian IV. of Denmark as champion of the Protestant cause. When the present epistle was written,

CURRE per immensum subitò, mea littera,

pontum;

I, pete Teutonicos læve per æquor agros; Segnes rumpe moras, et nil, precor, obstet eunti,

Et festinantis nil remoretur iter. Ipse ego Sicanio frænantem carcere ventos Eolon, et virides sollicitabo Deos, Cæruleamque suis comitatam Dorida Nymphis,

Ut tibi dent placidam per sua regna viam. At tu, si poteris, celeres tibi sume iugales,

Vecta quibus Colchis fugit ab ore viri; 10

the Imperialist army was reported in Englan‍d to be on the point of laying siege to Hamburg. This circumstance serves to inflame Milton's indignation over the callousness of England, who had allowed one of her most righteous sons to be driven abroad for sustenance.

The prophecy with which the epistle closes, that Young would soon see his native shores again, was fulfilled in the same or the following year. He received a living at Stowmarket, Suffolk, and held it uninterruptedly until the close of his life in 1655. When the Long Parliament met to inaugurate a new state of things in the church, Young came forward with the famous pamphlet against Bishop Hall and his defence of Episcopacy. This pamphlet was signed Smectymnuus, a name made up from the initials of Young and the four other ministers who had collaborated in the production; it was the first of the remarkable series of Smectymnuan pamphlets to which Milton contributed. After Milton's break with the Presbyterians, and his embroilment in the divorce controversy, his intimacy with Young probably ceased.

RUN through the great sea, my letter; go, over the smooth waters seek the shores of Germany. Tarry not; let nothing, I pray, stand in the way of your going; let nothing impair your haste. I myself will pray to Eolus, who chains the winds in his Sicilian cave, and to all the green-haired gods, and to cerulean Doris with her nymphs, that they give you a quiet way through their realms. But do you, if possible, get for yourself that swift dragon-team, wherewith Medea fled from the face of her hus