forest, having been accidentally separated from her two brothers. They are the "gentle pair" for whom she inquires. -8. Thy Narcissus. Echo was in love with and slighted by the beautiful youth Narcissus. (See Ovid, Met. 3. 341 et seq.)

SONG, SABRINA FAIR.

a

125.-1. Sabrina, or Sabre, was a princess celebrated in the legendary history of Britain. She was the daughter of the King Locrine and the beautiful German Princess Estrildis, and was thrown with her mother into the river Severn by order of Queen Gwendolen, her mother's rival. In the passage preceding the song, Milton tells us how, in the waters of the Severn, Sabrina was kindly received by Nereus, the father of the water-nymphs, and how, undergoing quick immortal change," she became "goddess of the river." Milton tells the story in his History of Britain. Spenser makes use of the legend in The Faerie Queene, Bk. II. c. x., and Drayton in the Fifth Song of his Polyolbion.-10. Oceanus was the first-born of the Titans, and consequently an earlier deity than Neptune. His wife was Tethys, and their children the rivers and the Oceanides, or nymphs of the ocean.-14. Carpathian wizard, "the subtle Proteus, ever changing his shape: he dwelt in a cave in the island of Carpathus; and he had a 'hook,' because he was the shepherd of the sea-calves." (Masson.) For the rest, Triton and Thetis, mother of Achilles, were sea-deities, and Glaucus, Leucothea ("the white goddess"), and Melicertes, i.e. "her son that rules the strands," were originally mortals who, like Sabrina herself, had been drowned and converted into water-powers.

LYCIDAS.

126. Lycidas was written late in 1637. It is a lament for the death of Edward King, a young man of much promise, who had been a fellow student of Milton's at Cambridge some five years before. King was drowned while on his way to Ireland, -the ship striking a hidden rock off the Welsh coast and going down in a calm sea. A small memorial volume of poems in Greek, Latin, and English was prepared by King's friends, and Lycidas was Milton's contribution to the volume. The book was printed at Cambridge in 1638.

Lycidas is a pastoral elegy, made to conform in general to the classic models. It is not a passionate outburst of personal grief, like parts of In Memoriam, but rather as severely classic in its subdued tone and emotional restraint as it is in its

refined beauty, its indescribable but inimitable justness of phrase, and its perfect proportion of form. It is likely that Milton and King had seen little or nothing of each other for some years, and Milton's grief probably did not go beyond a sincere regret. There is no reason to assume that he mourned as another Cambridge man, Alfred Tennyson, did almost exactly two centuries later for his fellow student's untimely death. But while Milton does not exaggerate his grief for the sake of poetic effect, his tribute to King and to the memories of their college-days is doubtless sincere as well as beautiful.

The deepest feeling of the poem, however, is not expended on the death of King, but is poured out in the two famous passages, the first touching on the state of contemporary poetry (11. 64-84), the second on the corrupt condition of the Church (11. 107-132), which break in as episodes upon the regular progress of the poem. Two facts gave Milton some pretext for thus leaving the purely personal, and therefore more restricted, side of his subject, to plunge into those broad issues which were then absorbing the best powers of earnest men. First, King had written verse, he knew himself to sing," and second, he was destined for the Church. By these two slender threads the poem is connected with the mighty matters then pressing for solution, and to understand it we must imagine ourselves back in the England of 1637, when Charles was trying to force the English liturgy on the indignant Scots, and when Hampden was arousing the nation by his resistance to the payment of ship-money. In those days men's minds were growing more stern and uncompromising, the lines between the hostile forces of Puritan and Cavalier were becoming more sharply drawn, and already the country was moving towards revolution. The poem shows also a somewhat similar transition in Milton himself. In it he passes definitely from the poet of L'Allegro, with its touches of the romantic coloring of Spenser, to the sterner, severer, and sublimer poet of Paradise Lost.

Lycidas. "The name Lycidas, chosen by Milton for Edward King, is taken, as was customary in such elegies, from the classic pastorals. It occurs in Theocritus; and Virgil has the name for one of the speakers in his Ninth Eclogue." (Masson.) -1. Yet once more. Milton had probably written no poetry since Comus, produced three years earlier (1634). This period of his life was one of solemn and studious preparation for his work as a poet. He here indicates that although he did not feel himself prepared for his high task, yet the "bitter constraint" of this sad event has compelled him to turn again to poetry, unprepared as he was; or (in his figure) to pluck with

"forced fingers " the laurel, myrtle, and ivy, the emblems of the poet's calling, "before the mellowing year."-6. Occasion dear, i.e. the extremity of the situation. "Dear" has here the force of a superlative, as in Hamlet I. 2, " My dearest foe," etc. -10. Who would not sing, etc. An imitation of Vergil; Eclogues X. 3: Negat quis carmina gallo?-15. Sisters of the sacred well the Muses. One of the two places particularly associated with the Muses was the slope of Mount Helicon in western Boeotia. Here were the fountains Aganippe and Hippocrene, sacred to the Muses. Hales quotes the opening of Hesiod's Theogony, where the Muses of Helicon are described as dancing about Aganippe and the altar of the mighty Son of Kronos," i.e. the Seat of Jove."-20. Lucky words. Rather to be taken in the sense of words favorable to the repose of the departed than as involving any idea of chance. Such, according to the Roman rite, were the words sit tibi terra levis, uttered by the mourner as he sprinkled the earth three times over the dead. (See Hor. Odes I. xxviii.)— 23. For we were nursed, etc. Under the imagery appropriate to a pastoral elegy, Milton now shadows forth the early companionship of King and himself at Cambridge. Thus the Satyrs" and "Fauns" (34) are supposed to represent the undergraduates, and " Old Damætus" (36) one of the tutors of Christ's College.

64

127.-40. Gadding = to run about aimlessly here and there, to wander. The word here has both a freshness and exactness which show the master's hand.-50. Where were ye nymphs. After stating the occasion of his poem (1-15), invoking the Muse (15-23), recalling early companionship (23–50), Milton now passes to the fourth natural division of his poem ; the vain inquiry addressed to the indwelling spirits, rulers, or forces of Nature, asking why the loss of Lycidas was permitted, and endeavoring to find out to whom or to what it is attributable. This may be regarded as extending from 50 to 131, including the two episodes, or digressions (64-85 and 113– 131) already alluded to. The question to the nymphs is a reminiscence of Vergil, Eclog. X. 9-12, and of Theocritus, Idyls I. 65-9; a background of Welsh scenery being substituted for classical localities. Thus "the steep" is one of the mountainous heights of the Welsh coast; "Deva" is the Dee, out of the mouth of which King sailed on his way from Chester; and "Mona" is Anglesey, a great centre of Druidic religion in early times. (See Tacitus, Anal, XIV. 30.)—58. The Muse herself Calliope. According to some accounts, Orpheus was torn in pieces by the Thracian women at a Bacchanalian festival, his limbs strewn upon the plain, and his head cast into the river Hebrus.

128.-68, 69. Amaryllis-Neæra. No especial persons appear to have been intended. These names, borrowed from the classic pastorals, simply stand for young and beautiful maidens.-75. The Blind Fury. Milton departs here from the classic mythology, according to which the being whose office it was to cut the thread of life was Atropos, one of the Fates, and not one of the Furies. Milton not infrequently used the great poet's privilege of making, or altering, a myth to suit his purpose, and he doubtless had some definite purpose in this variation of the established version. His design is apparently to represent death as coming inopportunely, or blunderingly, marring what we would regard as the right order of events. Hence the vague image of a being "blind and uncontrolled may have been selected as better suited to his purpose than one of the Fates, suggestive as she would be of conforming to an appointed and inevitable order.-85, 86. Arethuse. Mincius. The first is in Ortygia off the coast of Sicily, an island associated with Theocritus, the second in northern Italy near the birthplace of Vergil. The first, as Masson remarks, consequently suggests the Greek, the second the Latin, pastoral. In the preceding digression Milton has gone far beyond the proper limits of the pastoral elegy; his strain has been in a higher mood." This address to the fountains, suggestive of the Greek and Latin masters of the pastoral, and the succeeding passage, inform us that he has resumed the oaten pipe of the true shepherd Muse. -89. Herald of the sea = Triton, who comes in behalf of Neptune.-96. Hippotades the son of Hippotas, i.e. Æolus.-99. Panope, or Panopea, was one of the Nereïds (see Verg. Æn. V. 240, etc.). By describing her as "sleek" and at play with her sisters, Milton indicates the smoothness of the sea.

101. Built in the Eclipse. Eclipses were considered by the ancients as out of the order of nature, and were supposed to exert a mysterious and disastrous influence. T. Warton quotes Mac. IV. 28, and Hales, Lear I. 2. 112, and Par. Lost, I. 5969.

129.–103. Camus. The god, or genius, of the Cam, the stream on which Cambridge is situated. 'He comes attired in a mantle of the hairy river-weed that floats on the Cam ; his bonnet is of the sedge of that river, which exhibits peculiar markings, something like the ai ai (alas! alas!) which the Greek detected on the leaves of the hyacinth, in token of the sad death of the Spartan youth from whose blood the flower had sprung." (Masson.) 109. The Pilot of the Galilean Lake = St. Peter; here represented, however, not as the fisherman of Galilee, but as the Bishop with mitre and keys of heaven (see St. Matt. xvi. 17-19 and St. Matt. xviii. 18.)

=

"Clearly this marked insistence on the power of the true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily what is to be charged against the false claimants of episcopate; or generally, against false claimants of power and rauk in the body of the clergy." (Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, §§ 20 et seq., q. v. for analysis of the entire passage,-111. Amain forcibly, with power. It indicates, I suppose, the final, effective manner in which the door is closed. (Amain A. S. on, an, or a, with, and maegene strength)-122. They are sped they are advanced in worldly prosperity. The original meaning of the noun speed is success, riches, and this word and the verb are connected with A. S. spowan to succeed. The phrase "you are sped" is employed by Shakespeare in an entirely different sense. The ideal of success entertained by the corrupt clergy is thus precisely the reverse of that laid down in the preceding digression on Fame, and the two passages are in effective contrast.-124. Scrannel lean, thin, or harsh sounding. A provincial word probably connected with "scrawny," but unusual in classic English. With "grates," "wretched," and "straw," "scrannel' obviously adds wonderfully to the grinding, jarring effect that the poet wished to produce.128. The grim wolf, i.e. the Romish Church.-130. Two-handed engine. This has been much discussed. The engine" has been thought to be the executioner's axe, and the passage taken as a prophecy of the execution of Archbishop Laud; others have thought it the sword of St. Peter; others, the two Houses of Parliament (an untenable interpretation); and others again have seen in it an allusion to the axe metaphorically spoken of in St. Matt. iii. 10, St. Luke iii. 9, which was to be laid to the root of the tree." The last interpretation is probably the least objectionable; nevertheless the passage remains obscure, the essential meaning being, of course, that the end is at hand, and the avenger with his instrument of destruction, a terrible and sudden weapon of retribution, stands even at the door.-132. Return, Alpheus. This invocation, like the preceding one to Arethuse (1. 85), sounds the note of recall to the stricter limits of the true pastoral. Alpheus likewise suggests the Sicilian muse. (See Class. Dict. for story of Alpheus and Arethusa, and Shelley's Arethusa.)

130.-138. The swart star Sirius, or the Dog-star. Coming at a hot time of the year, this star was anciently associated with, and even supposed by the Romans to cause, sultry weather. Here called "swart," i.e. dark, or swarthy, because of the burning or tanning effect of the summer suns. -142. Rathe early; the positive, now out of use, of rather, earlier, sooner.-148 Sad embroidery, i.e. the garb of mourning. Note how skilfully Milton has contrived to associate