Oblivion lies hard by her drowsie brother, Confusedly about the silent bed Fantastick swarms of Dreams there hovered. They made no noyse, but right resemble may This page of Du Bartas was before Milton when he wrote as follows: Hence vain deluding joys Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. When Milton wrote, part huge of bulk Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gate, Stretch'd like a promontory, sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land. Il. Pens. P. Lost, b. VIL. 410. he had the following lines of Sylvester before him : "When on the surges I perceive from far, And when in combat these fell monsters cross P. 40 Dr. Young has borrowed Milton's term "to tempest (which was suggested by Du Bartas)" "those too strong Tumultuous rise and tempest human life." Night 1. Mr. Warton, in a note p. 186, vol. II. "History of English Poetry," says, that Milton, when he mentions the swan, the cock, and the peacock, together, Par. Lost, b. VII. 438, had his eye upon a passage in Douglas, a fine old Scotch poet: but I am inclined to believe him mistaken, and rather to have had his eye on a passage in Du Bartas, who mentions the crane, peacock, and cock, together: the crested cock, whose clarion sounds MILTON "There the fair peacock, beautifully brave, Milton had just before mentioned the crane. 1786, May and June. 1787, Dec. C. T, O. XC. Parallel Passages in Authors of Note. MR. URBAN, THE following miscellaneous observations are much at your service. C. T. O. MALLET, who is by no means despicable as a minor poet, deserves more credit for his Edwin and Emma than for any other of his works. He seems to have had Shakespeare in his eye in the following stanza: Nor let the pride of great ones scorn That sun which bids their diamond blaze See Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, scene 7. Ed. and Em. his court "The self-same sun that shines upon " The following passage from Daniel, which forms a part of a very beautiful and pathetic speech of Richard, during his confinement at Pomfret, is not unlike a passage in Shake speare. Thou sitt'st at home, safe by thy quiet fire, See Shakespeare, LXVI. Book iii. Civil Wars. 66 -let's away to prison : We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage; Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, M. Drayton, in the following passage, reminds us of a most spirited description in Shakespeare's Henry IV. Prince Edward all in gold, as he great Jove had been, The Mountfords all in plumes, like ostriches were seen. Page 342. fol. edit. -all furnish'd, all in arms, All plum'd like estridges, and with the wind Shakespeare. Drayton, in a passage where he personifies the Peak of Derbyshire, has the following idea, which reminds us of a very sublime passage in Shakespeare that becomes ridiculous from a single vulgar expression, as has been before remarked by Dr. Johnson, in his Rambler: O ye, my lovely joys, my darlings, in whose eyes See Macbeth-where he talks of the blanket of the night. Spenser seems to have suggested the leading idea in that well-known song in Cymbeline, beginning Hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings; without the hyperbole of heaven's gate ! Wake now my love, awake; for it is time; The merry lark her mattins sings aloft, VOL. II. Ah! my dear love, why do ye sleep thus long, It is singular that this passage should not be quoted in There is a similarity in the following expressions of Shakespeare and Cowley. that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, Cowley, speaking of this world Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7. Vain weak-built isthmus, which does proudly rise Cowley's Life and Fame. What Dr. Johnson has said of Akenside, Life, p. 442, reminds us of the following passages: The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. Johnson. And call the listning soul into the ear. Oldham's Ode on St. Cecilia. None was so marble; but, whilst him he hears, His soul so long dwelt only in his ears. Elegie on Dr. Donne, by Sir L. Cary. And here a female atheist talks you dead. Johnson's London. Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead. Pope's Essay on Crit. Celestial themes confess'd his tuneful aid; Goldsm. Epit. on Dr. Parnell. This last line contains the same thought with a stanza in Dr. Johnson's Elegy on Levett: His virtues walk'd their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void; The single talent well employ'd. Dr. Johnson has said, that gloriosus is never used in a good sense: we find it, however, used in a good sense by a very |