VI. Giovane piano, e simplicette amante Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono, De pensieri leggïadro, accorto, e buono ; Quando rugge il gran mondo,e scocca il tuono, Tanto del forse, e d'invidia securo, Di timori, e speranza, al popol use, Lady, to you a youth unknown to art, (Who fondly from himself in thought would fly,) And firm yet feeling temper of his heart; Proved strong by trials for life's arduous part: When shakes the world, and thunders roll on high, Erect, unconscious of the guilty start: Not more above fear, envy, low desire, And all the tyrants of the vulgar breast, Than prone to hail the heaven-resounding lyre, High worth, and Genius of the Muse possest: Unshaken and entire,-and only found Not proof against the shaft when love directs the wound. An eye, like Milton's, created for the enjoyment of beauty in all her shapes, and an imagination, which was ever solicitously vagrant for gratification, even in the regions of Arabian fiction and of Gothic romance, wealth, high rank and eminent character, tainly more remarkable for the height of its praise, than for the goodness of its verse, or the justness and the originality of its thought. Generally known as it is, it shall be given to our readers, with an apology for the attempted translation of a pun. Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic, With mind, mien, temper, face did faith agree, It has been remarked, and not without malignity, that the complimentary offerings of the Italian wits to our illustrious traveller, are not distinguishable for their merit as compositions. We will not dispute the truth of this observation; or affect to discover much beauty in the latin prose of Dati; or, though this be rather of a higher order, in the Italian verse of Francini. We will even allow that as the praise grows, the poetry dwindles; and that in this last distich, in which the climax of compliment is complete, the Manso of Naples is inferior to the Salsilli, and the Selvaggi of Rome. But the intrinsic or the The conceit, such as it is, is borrowed from Gregory the Archdeacon, and afterwards Pope, in the sixth century. Quà potes, atque avidas Parcarum eludere leges. Sed neque nos genus incultum, nec inutile Phobo, * Manso became the biographer of his two friends Tasso and Marino. ▾ Mr. Warton is peculiarly unfortunate in his note on this passage. Not a word in the two lines of Milton is applicable to Plutarch, and every word is applicable to Herodotus. For the former no epithet can be conceived as more unhappily selected than facundus:' to the latter it is admirably appropriate. Of the two lives of Homer, which are extant, it is more probable that the Ionic was written by Herodotus, than that the Attic was the production of Plutarch. Mycale is a mountain not in Boeotia, as Mr.W. affirms, but in Ionia near the borders of Caria, the native country of Herodotus. Ovid, whom Mr. Warton quotes on this occasion, is no evidence respecting the situation of Mycale. In the cited passage his mountains are thrown together without any other reference than to that of metre ; and Mycale succeeds to the Phrygian Dindymus : Dindymaque et Mycale, natusque ad sacra Citharon. Chaucer, who travelled into Italy, is distinguished in Spencer's pastorals by the name of Tityrus. 2 Brumalem patitur longâ sub nocte Boöten. Halantémque crocum, perhibet nisi vana vetustas, Fortunate senex, ergo, quacunque per orbem Tu quoque in ora frequens venies plausumque virorum, Dicetur tum sponte tuos habitâsse penates Cynthius, et famulas venisse ad limina Musas. At non sponte domum tamen idem, et regis adivit Rura Pheretiadæ, cœlo fugitivus Apollo; Upis, Loxo, and Hecaërge are the names of the daughters of Boreas, who offer presents to Apollo in Callimachus's hymn to Delos. ἀπὸ ξανθων αριμασπών Ουπις τε λοξώ τε και ευαίων εκαεξγη Υμν' εις Δηλον. b The fable of Apollo, driven by Jupiter from heaven, and compelled to tend the flocks of Admetus king of Thessaly, is too well known to require a repetition of it. Mr. Warton has observed, before me, that Milton in this passage has imitated a beautiful chorus in the Alcestis. I wish, however, that Milton on this occasion had preserved the moderation of Euripides, and restricted to the animal creation the effects of Apollo's melodies: but perhaps no limitation of power need necessarily be prescribed to the lyre of a god. |