ין Here follows a description at once poetically picturesque, and strictly natural; the moon having that appearance of positive descent, as the kind of clouds bere described break and disperse around her.-DUNSTER. This finely descriptive epithet is adopted from the "sullen bell" in Shakspeare's "King Henry IV." P. II. or "the surly allen bell" in his seventy-first Sonnet.-TODD. Observe that the toll of bells always comes across a spreading water with extraordinary melancholy. Thus I have been long accustomed to listen to it across the lake of Geneva with deep emotion. This mention of the curfen is much finer even than the noble line which opens Gray's “ Elegy,” though that has always been so justly admired. แ a Some still removed place will fit. That is, some quiet, remote, or unfrequented place will suit my purpose." moved" is the ancient English participle passive for the Latin remote.-T. WARTON. Or the bellman's drowsy charm, "Re Anciently the watchman, who cried the hours, used sundry benedictions.-T. WARTON. * Be seen in some high lonely tower. The extraneous circumstance "be seen," gives poetry to a passage, the which is only, "Let me study at midnight by a lamp in a lofty tower." is created which strikes the imagination.-T. WARTON. simple sense of Hence a picture This is one of those happy observations so characteristic of Thomas Warton. When the midnight wanderer sees through the dark a distant light in a high tower, it much engages his eye, and moves his imagination, if he has any mind and sensitiveness: and this appli cation of mind to the description of scenery is what alone gives it the force of a high order of poetry. The spirit of Platot, to unfold Or what, though rare ", of later age This shows what sort of contemplation he was most fond of. Milton's imagination made him as much a mystic as his good sense would give leave.—HURD. And of those demons, &c. Undoubtedly these notions are from Plato's "Timæus" and "Phædon," and the reveries of his old commentators; yet with some reference to the Gothic system of demons, which is a mixture of Platonism, school-divinity, and christian superstition.-T. WARTON. Sometimes let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by. By "sceptred pall," Dr. Newton understands the palla honesta of Horace, “Art. Poet." v. 278. But Horace, I humbly apprehend, only means that Eschylus introduced masks and better dresses. Palla honesta is simply a "decent robe." Milton means something more by clothing Tragedy in her "sceptred pall," he intended specifically to point out regal stories as the proper arguments of the higher drama and this more expressly appears, from the subjects immediately mentioned in the subsequent couplet.— T. WARTON. w Though rare. Just glancing at Shakspeare.-HURD. x Might raise Musaus from his bower! Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing, &c. Musaeus and Orpheus are mentioned together in Plato's "Republic," as two of the genuine Greek poets. To Orpheus or his harp our author has frequent allusions.T. WARTON. Or call up him that left half-told Hence it appears, that Milton, among Chaucer's pieces, was most struck with his "Squire's Tale" it best suited our author's predilection for romantic poetry. Chaucer is here ranked with the sublime poets: his comic vein is forgotten and overlooked.T. WARTON. From Trauer, the finer of Eigist wery, and who is bere distinguished by a story The Tr de vins of a read ie weth seems to make a very pertinent Ostin u Sener vise Fury Queene," although it externally prois a traff purements nu de zisces of krightly valour, of fictitious forests and Zetic actantes segir interes a remote meaning concealed under be of a PLUS ad, and if a pomal murative, which is not immediately permrel. Soetser as a se ut stiena ranes,” with respect to his morality, and the deur of a SHIZI. the mean time, it is a be remembered, that there were other pat meis. mi of ae you cas, vis sung in such tanes, and who " mean more fan nees de not" Bed Tisst ni Anosta pretend to an allegorical and mysterious | meaning - and is moet vrat, de most conspicuous fiction of the kind, might | have been here andet. Ünessesed that Miten should have delighted in romances: the images of feum, and raya, die with those books afford, agreed not at all with his system.-T. W1ATIS. • Turi mere is meant fhon meets the ear. Seneca, Epist. 114 BowLa - In quibus plus ineligendum est quam audiendum."— ↳ Thus, Night, ut see me in thy pale career. Hitherto we have seen the night of the melancholy man: here his day commences: accordingly, this second part or division of the poem is ushered in with a long verse.— T. WARTON. • TV" circ-vited Morn appear. Plainly from Shakspeare, as Dr. Newton and Mr. Bowle have separately observed, Romeo and Juliet,” a. ii. s. 4 :— Come, civil Night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black. Where "civil" is grave, decent, solemn.-T. WARTON. Not trick'd and frounced. The meaning of "frounced" seems most commonly to signify an excessive or affected dressing of the hair: it is from the French froncer, to curl.-T. WARTON. "Trick'd" also should be explained, which means dressed out.-TODD. ! Or usher'd, &c. Dr. Johnson, from this to the 154th verse inclusively, thus abridges our author's ideas: "When the morning comes, a morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark trackless woods, falls asleep by some murmuring water, and, with melancholy enthusiasm, expects some dream of prognostication, or some music played by aerial pet Ending on the russling leaves, Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke, With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep; 130 135 140 145 formers." Never were fine imagery and fine imagination so marred, mutilated, and impoverished by a cold, unfeeling, and imperfect representation! To say nothing, that he confounds two descriptions.-T. WARTON. If he had gone out in a morning of rain and wind, and laid himself down by some murmuring stream, he would have subjected himself to that modern plague, the cholera: but the poet says that it was not till "the sun began to fling his flaring beams," that he went forth to groves and sylvan scenery. Thus it is that Johnson is commonly vague, and full of pompous and empty sounds, when he attempts to describe; yet on such loose descriptions have his fond eulogists given him credit for poetical imagination. Warton saw this with disgust, and here speaks out. How often must the nice and exquisite classical scholarship of this accomplished and genuine critic have been revolted by the rude pedant's coarse and unfeeling pomposity! g Still. i. e. gentle, as this word was once commonly understood.-TODD. h With minute drops from off the eaves. A natural little circumstance, calculated to impress a pleasing melancholy; and which reminds one of a similar image in a poet who abounds in natural little circumstances. Speaking of a gentle spring-shower," "Tis scarce to patter heard," says Thomson, "Spring," ver. 176.-Jos. WARTON. He means, by "minute drops from off the eaves," not small drops, but minute drops, such as drop at intervals, by minutes, for the shower was now over: as we say, minute guns, and minute bells. In "L'Allegro," the lark bade good morrow at the poet's window, through sweet-briars, honeysuckles, and vines, spreading, as we have seen, over the walls of the house: now, their leaves are dropping-wet with a morning-shower.-T. WARTON. 1 Day's garish eye. The "garish eye" is the glaring eye, of Day. So, in "Rom. and Jul." a. iii. s. 4. as Dr. Newton has observed, the garish sun." It is a favourite word with Drayton, who applies it, in the sense of fine, gaudy, to "fields," in his "Owle," 1604; and to "flowers," in his "Nymph." v. 1630; whence perhaps "the garish columbine" of Milton.-TODD. So Virgil, “Ecl." i. 56 :— While the bee, &c. Hyblæis apibus florem depasta salicti On the hill Hymettus, the haunt of learning, the bee is made to invite to meditation, with great elegance and propriety, " Paradise Regained," iv. 247, &c. Compare also Drayton's Owle," 1604.-T. WARTON. 44 Pa, enclosure. Miton is fond of the singular 1408220, 2e high-embowed roof.”—T. WARTON. SEVE YINS is 30 convey the meaning of the poet, viz. the savvur à Miton's Life, molently objects to this interpretation, SAP, YU SUPORT (Ia. Milton's illusion is to the cloisters of St. Paul's cathe ls we met MY MÌ MẤY mace, when a scholar of the celebrated school The sai à ses were de bust of the oventry, as we learn from Stowe's Surver # Laur #nx. 2338, 3, 264 —“ About this eloyster was artificially and richly mi the race of Matuary, or Duce of Destà, commonly called the Dance of St. Paul's; the Dike where i was pred about St. Innocent's clovster at Paris. The metres or poesie of this iance were translated out of French into English by John Lidgate, monk of Bury, and with the picture of Death leading all estates, painted round the cloister." But we are gouged to isoel so pleasing a delusion :- In the year 1549, on the 10th of April, the chapel of Becket, by commandment of the Duke of Somerset, was begun to be pulled down, with the whole cloister, the Dance of Death, the tombs and monuments, 80 that nothing thereof was left but the bare plot of ground, which is since converted (says Stowe) into a garden for the petty canons." So that the “cloister's pale," i, e. boundary, only was still to be traversed in Milton's time. We learn from Hime, that this desecration was to supply stones for the erection of the protector's palace in the Strand, called Somerset-house. (Hist. anno 1549.) It was fearfully expiated in 1552.-J. B. |