many learned men, in that one colledge of St. Johns, at one tyme as I beleeve, the universitie of Louaine, in many yeares was never able to affourd." Ascham's Scholemaster, 1st booke, 1576.

1786, March.

LXXXIX. Critical Remarks on Milton.

MR. URBAN,

IF the following remarks on Milton are worth insertion, they are much at your service.

C-T-O.

Mr. Warton, in his entertaining and masterly remarks on Spenser, very properly takes occasion to censure an expression in Milton, in the following words: "Milton, perhaps is more blameable for a fault of this kind.

Now had they brought the work, by wondrous art
Pontifical.

10 B. P. Lost. As the ambiguous term pontifical may be so easily construed into a pun, and may be interpreted popish as well as bridge-making, besides the quaintness of the expression." To this remark of Mr. Warton let me add the following epigram from the Poems of Sannazarius:

"De Jucundo Architecto.

Jucundus geminos fecit tibi, Sequana, pontes,
Jure tuum hunc possis dicere pontificem."

Milton's idea of Sin and Death's creeping from the mouth of Error is generally supposed to be copied from Spenser, 1 C. 1 B. 16. It might have had its origin from P. Fletcher, of whom Milton was equally a borrower. See P. Island, 12. Cant. 27.

"The first that crept from his detested maw
Was Hamartia, &c. &c."

There is a passage of great sublimity in Milton's Vacation exercise.

The deep transported mind may soar

Above the wheeling poles, and at heaven's door.
Look in.

Molinæus, Milton's old antagonist, has an idea somewhat similar. See his Pacis cœlestis Anticipatio.

"Quo tendis anime? Tene dum carnis scapha
Vectus laboras in procelloso mari,

Penetrare cælos, et fores celsissimæ
Serenitatis pulsitare fas putas?"

The following, amongst Milton's many obligations to Ariosto, seems to have been unnoticed:

As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabæan odours from the spicy shore

Of Araby the blest; with such delay

Well pleas'd they slack their course, and many a league, Chear'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.

Par. Lost, B. iv. v. 159.

"Dal mar sei miglia, o sette, a poco a poco

Si va salendo in verso il colle ameno.

Mirti, e cedri, e naranci, e lauri il loco,
E mille altri soavi arbori han pieno.
Serpillo, e persa, e rose, e gigli, e croco
Spargon dall' odorifero terreno

Tanta soavità, che'n mar sentire
La fa ogni vento, che da terrà spire.”

Cant. xviii. 138.

I hate when vice can bolt her arguments.

Comus, 760.

Of this plain, and seemingly intelligible passage, I have heard it observed (and I believe Mr. T. Warton has sheltered the opinion under his authority) that the word bolt here is an expression taken from the boulting mill, and means, to sift, to clear. But surely this cannot be the meaning Milton intended it to convey. The word here seems simply to convey the idea of darting, and is a borrowed term from archery. It is thus literally used by B. Jonson in his "Volpone:"

"But angry Cupid bolting from his
Hath shot himself into me." "

eyes

Act ii. scene 4.

In Shakespeare it is thus metaphorically used in Milton's

sense, where Imogen awakes and finds herself near the dead body of Cloten :

"I hope I dream,

For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,

And cook to honest creatures; but 'tis not so,
'Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes."

See likewise Marston's "What you will," 1607:

"Ignorance should shoot

Her gross-knobbed bird bolt."

Cymb.

This last passage I found in a quotation, and am unable therefore to determine whether the meaning is literal or metaphorical.

It is hoped the following passages, which are intended to illustrate my meaning still further, will not be deemed unnecessary.

"Orator quoque maximus et jaculator.”

JUV. SAT. vii. 193.

Jaculator here must mean arguer.

"Aut curtum sermone rotato

Torqueat enthymema."

Juv. SAT. vi. 448.

"Quis color, et quod sit causæ genus, atque ubi summa Quæstio, quæ veniant diversa parte sagitte.”

JUV. SAT. vii. 155.

Where the great vision of the guarded mount, &c. &c. Lycidas, 161.

Mr. T. Warton has most happily, and most poetically, explained this passage. It seems to have been called the mount by way of eminence. See Daniel's Panegyrick on the King's Majesty, 19 stan.

"Could'st thou but see from Dover to the mount,
From Totness to the Orcades;-"

Their lean and flashy songs.

Lycid. 123.

Flashy is here used in a bad sense, as indeed it always is in English. The word vibrans in Latin is used in a good sense when applied to composition. See Cicero de Oratore, “et erat oratio cum incitata et vibrans tum etiam accurata et polita," speaking of Hortensius.

With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown.

Lycid. 40.

This epithet of gadding is singularly expressive. He has an expression equally happy in Comus, see 545, "flaunting honey-suckle." This Thomson has adopted, and applies to the woodbine:

86 nor in the bower

Where woodbines flaunt."

Spring, 976.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas? 50.

This idea, which is taken originally from Theocritus, and has been repeatedly remarked, is likewise in Spenser's Astrophel.

"Ah where were ye, this while, his shepherd peers,
To whom alive was nought so dear as he?
And ye, fair maids, the matches of his year,
Which in his grace did boast you most to ne?
Ah! where were ye, when he of you had need,
To stop his wound that wond'rously did bleed ?"

SPENSER.

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead.

Spenser thus finely exclaims:

Lycidas, 165.

"O what is now of it become, aread:
Aye me! can so divine a thing be dead?
Ah, no, it is not dead, ne can it die,

But lives for aye in blissful paradise.”

In Cleaveland's Poems, edit. 1665, there are some bad verses" on the memory of Mr. Edward King, drowned in the Irish seas;" the same probably whom Milton laments,

The idea of Uriel's descending on a sun-beam, Par. Lost, book IV. which has been proved to be borrowed in Milton, seems to have given a hint to Dr. Young, when he said,

"Perhaps a thousand demigods descend
On ev'ry beam we see, to walk with men.”

See Par. Regained, b. II. 293.

Night 9.

And enter'd soon the shade

High roof'd, and walks beneath, and alleys brown,
That open'd in the midst a woody scene;
Nature's own work it seem'd, (Nature taught Art)
And, to a superstitious eye, the haunt

Of wood-gods and wood-nymphs.

See Drayton's Polyolbion, 26 song.

"And in a dingle near (even as a place divine,
For contemplation fit) an ivy-ceiled bower,
As Nature had therein ordain'd some Sylvan power."

Surging waves, Par. Lost, lib. VII. 214. Drayton has unsurging seas. See folio edit. p. 200, col. 2. This word, which seldom occurs in any of our later poets, is to be found likewise in the Mirror for Magistrates, edit. 1610. Sir Neptune's surging seas, p. 197. Amongst Milton's Latinisms we find facile gates, Par. Lost, b. IV. 967. This word occurs in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, see p. 85. facile

means.

In full harmonic number join'd, their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heaven.

Par. Lost, b. IV. 687.

"Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, And lift my soul to heaven."

SHAKESP. Hen. VIII.

Iris there, with humid bow,
Waters th' odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue, &c.

Comus, 992.