TOUR, Sentimental, and defcrip- W 'ALES, Prince of, account TOWERS's Memoirs of the King of the Island bearing that 71 WHITING'S Gentleman's and 174 WIDOW of Kent, 171 ARIETY, a Collection of Ef- V1 fays, VENICE, Father PAUL SARPI VERHANDELINGEN Van het Ba- WRIGHT on Brotherly Love, 91 In Two large Volumes Octavo, Price 15s. in Boards, From its Commencement, to the End of the Seventieth Volume. COMPILER OF THE CATALOGUE OF UNDESCRIBED MANUSCRIPTS Containing a Catalogue of the Books and Pamphlets charac- Sold by T. BECKET, Pall Mall. AT length this Compilement, fo long and fo frequently called "The FIRST Volume contains an Index to the Titles, AUTHORS' "In respect to the Prices of Books and Pamphlets, they are given For the accommodation of those who may wish to know what "In the SECOND VOLUME is given an INDEX to the principal To what Mr. A. hath observed, we need only to add one re- It may be further obferved, with respect to those whofe fets of REV. March, 1786. THE MONTHLY REVIEW, For JULY, 1788. ART. I. Poems upon feveral Occafions, English, Italian, and Latin, with Tranflations, by John Milton: viz. Lycidas, l'Allegro, il' Penferofo, Arcades, Comus, Odes, Sonnets, Mifcellanies, Englih Pfalms, Elegiarum Liber, Epigrammatum Liber, Sylvarum Liber. With Notes critical and explanatory, and other Illuftrations, by Thomas Warton, Fellow of Trinity College, and late Profeffor of Poetry at Oxford. 8vo. 8s. Boards. Dodfley. 1785. WE E fhould deem it neceffary to begin this article with of fering fome apology to the Public for having fo long poftponed the account of the work now before us, were we not perfuaded that all our Readers muft do us the juftice to recollect, that our labours, like thofe of other men, will fometimes meet with unavoidable interruptions. Of this, indeed, the late appearance of Mr. Warton's edition of the fmaller poems of Mil, ton, in our monthly Journal, may be adduced as an inftance: for this is not a work which we could have overlooked, but the confideration of which has been hitherto protracted, from circumftances painful to our recollection. That thefe Juvenile Poems should have attracted Mr. Warton's attention, we may mention as a proof of an elegant tafte, while the many notes with which he has enriched them entitle him to confiderable, though not to unalloyed, praife. Milton is undoubtedly the moft learned of all our English poets; and he has fo interwoven his learning with his poetry, that his readers will gladly accept the affiftance of an able annotator. For this office his prefent Editor is peculiarly qualified, being not only converfant with the elegant remains of Grecian and Roman learning, but intimately acquainted likewife, as his valuable Hiftory of English Poetry fufficiently teftifies, with thofe treafures of Gothic and old English literature with which Milton, in his younger years, appears to have been fingularly delighted, and to which frequent allufions are made even in the Paradife Loft. VOL. LXXIX. B Confiderable Confiderable pleasure have we received from this learned attempt to illuftrate the obfcurities, and to display, and give additional effect to, the beauties of our great poet; who, little dejected by the neglect of his cotemporaries, looked forward with the calmness and confidence of confcious merit, to the impartiality of a future generation ;-perfuaded that a cordatior atas was not far diftant, when a juft tribute would be paid to his poetical abilities. Tum (fays he in his Ode to Roufe) livore fepulto, Si quid meremur fana pofteritas fciet. To behold the fulfilment of fuch predictions always affords pleafure;-in the cafe of Milton we contemplate it with fingular fatisfaction. Thofe violent party-prejudices which are well known to have been induftriously propagated after the Reftoration, both against the political and religious principles he espoused (and which, fo far from being extinct, have excited the acrimony of his lateft Critic and Biographer), contributed to render thofe of his own and the following age infenfible to the exquifite charms of his Mufe. The poems, we find, which are here prefented to the Public, accompanied with the annotations and illuftrations of Mr. W. were published almoft thirty years before the appearance of the Paradife Loft: during which interval they were fo totally difregarded, at leaft by the general reader, as fcarcely to confer on their author the reputation of a writer of verfes, much less the diftinction and character of a true poet; and even after the publication of that immortal work, they long continued to remain in their original ftate of neglect and obfcurity. How little he was esteemed as a poet, or at leaft how extremely averse the writers of that period were to contribute to his poetic fame, may be inferred from a circumstance or two that are mentioned by Mr. Warton in his ingenious Preface: In an old Mifcellany, quaintly called NAPS ON PARNASSUS, and printed in 1658, there is a recital of the moft excellent English poets, who, according to this Author's enumeration, are Chaucer, Lydgate, Hardyng, Spencer, Drayton, Shakespeare, Jonfon, Donne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sandys, Cowley, and Cleveland, with fome others then living, and perhaps in fashion, but now forgotten. But there is not a fyllable of the writer of L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, and COMUS. Nor is there the quantity of an hemiftich quoted from any of these poems in the collections of thofe who have digefted the beauties or phrases of the English Poets, from 1655 to 1738 inclufively; though the author of one of thefe collections promises to give the reader the great images that are found in our poets who are truly great, as well as their topics and moral reflections;" and the compiler of another profeffes chiefly to confider "neglected and expiring merit, and to revive and preferve the excellencies which time and oblivion were upon the point of cancelling, rather than to repeat 66 what |