benefit of a year, and means at nineteen years of age," or between Dec. 9, 1627, and Dec. 9, 1628. In either case, the precise month is fixed by the Elegy itself as May. The date therefore is either May 1627 or May 1628.

The Elegy is more decidedly and thoroughly a love-poem than any of the others. In the First Elegy, Ad Carolum Diodatum, there is a gallant mention of the London beauties to be seen in the parks and public gardens; and in a part of the Fifth, In Adventum Veris, there is a poetical recognition of Cupid's activity as one of the phenomena of Spring. But the present Elegy is a loveconfession throughout, and quite precise and personal. It was May time, we are told, and Cupid had sworn to be revenged on Milton for his contempt of love and his boasts of being heart-whole. Fifty lines are taken up in telling this and describing the little love-god and his threats. Then, at line 51, the real story begins. Forgetting all about the love-god, he takes his walks, as usual, now in those parts of London where the citizens promenade, and now in the neighbouring country, with its hamlets and villas. He observes, in the streets more especially, the crowd of beauties, perfect goddesses, that pass and repass. He indulges in the sight, as often before, pleased, but little thinking what was to come of it this time. For alas! one fair one, supereminent among all, caught his glance, and the wound was fatal. It was but the sight of a moment, for she was gone, never again to be seen on earth; but her face and > her form were to remain with him a vision for ever. No longer now is he heartwhole, for he goes about sweetly miserable. Cupid has had his revenge, and

he acknowledges now that little god's power. Oh, if ever he and such a fair one should meet again, might one arrow transfix both their hearts!

A peculiar circumstance about this Elegy is that it is followed by a Postscript. For the ten lines, beginning "Hæc ego" and ending "ipsa Venus," which I have caused to be printed in italics in the present edition, are not, as might be supposed at first sight, and has been generally assumed, an epilogue to the whole series of Seven Elegies preceding them. If the Epilogue is carefully read, it will be seen that in no mood of sternness could it be applicable to all the seven numbered Elegies, or to most of them. There were some of them

of which, juvenile though they were, Milton could still approve in his manhood. But, in 1645, when he looked over those pieces before giving them to the printer for Moseley's volume, that love-confession of the Seventh Elegy delayed him. He thought it maudlin: perhaps he remembered the exact incident and its circumstantials with half a blush. Ought he to print the thing? His hesitation to do so accounts perhaps for its coming out of its proper chronological place; but at last he lets go, only adding the Postscript of recantation. That Postscript, therefore, has to be dated 1645, or eighteen years after the Elegy to which it is attached.

EPIGRAMS.

"IN PRODITIONEM BOMBARDICAM and IN INVENTOREM BOMBARDÆ.” – The anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot seems to have been a regular occasion for versifying in English Schools and Colleges in Milton's time." Among the Sylvæ there is a long poem in Hexameters by Milton on this subject, entitled In Quintum Novembris; and the four little pieces on the same subject among the Elegies may have been Milton's easier tributes to University custom on some one, or on several, of the Fifths of November of his Cambridge undergraduate

ship. They express rather wittily the popular Protestant horror of Guy Fawkes and his attempt. The fifth piece, not on the Gunpowder Treason, but on the Inventor of Gunpowder, is but a variation of the general theme: and the five together may be called the Gunpowder Group.

AD LEONORAM ROME CANENTEM."-These three pieces of compliment must have been written at Rome in one or other of Milton's two terms of resi dence in that city during his memorable Italian tour. His first visit, in October and November 1638, is the more likely time. An incident of that visit, recorded by Milton himself in one of his Familiar Epistles (Luca Holstenio, Roma, in Vaticano), was his presence at a magnificent musical entertainment given ty Cardinal Francesco Barberini in his palace. All the élite of Rome were present at this concert; but the courteous cardinal, receiving the crowding guests at the doors, had singled out the English stranger, and welcomed him with special attention. To Milton, with his love of music, this concert may have been an unusual pleasure, especially if it was there that he heard the singer Leonora to whom the present pieces are addressed. There or elsewhere in Rome he did hear that paragon of voices. For, throughout the world, or at all events the musical and Italian world, there was no singer then so renowned as Leonora Baroni. There is an article on her in Bayle's Dictionary, the substance of which, apart from minuter information in the notes, runs thus: " BARONI, LEONORA, an Italian lady, one of the finest voices of the world, flourished in the sever"teenth century. She was the daughter of the beautiful ADRIANA, a Mantuan, "and was so admired that an infinity of beaux esprits made verses in her praise. "There is a volume of excellent pieces, in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and 'Spanish, printed at Rome under the title of 'Applausi Poetici alle glorie della 46 Signora Leonora Baroni, Leonora went about usually with her mother the beautiful Adriana Baroni, and a sister called Katarina. Though Bayle makes the family Mantuan, it was originally Neapolitan, and had migrated from. Naples to Mantua. From 1637 onwards, however, Rome was the head-quarters of the fascinating three.

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"APOLOGUS DE RUSTICO ET HERO."-There is nothing to date this Apologue, except that its non-appearance in the edition of 1645 suggests that it was written after that year.

DE MORG. So we may entitle the lampoon on Milton's antagonist Merus, or Alexander More, which appeared in Milton's Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano (1654), and was reproduced in his Pro se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum (1655). More was a Frenchman, of Scottish parentage, born in 1616, who, after a varied career of celebrity as a Protestant preacher and Professor of Greek and of Theology in various parts of the Continent-at Geneva, in Holland, and again in France-died in Paris in 1670, four years before Milton. His collision with Milton dates from the year 1652, when he caused to be printed, at the Hague, a treatise against the English Commonwealth entitled "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos” (“Cry of the King's Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides"). In this treatise Milton was attacked for his Defences of the Regicide; and, though it was anonymous, and was really not by More, but by Peter du Moulin the younger, Milton made More responsible. In his Defensio Secunda and in his Frost Defensio he dragged More through a perfect ditch of invective, publishing all sorts of scandals against More's private character, which had come to him from correspondents in Geneva and elsewhere. The present distich, though now printed as Milton's, because used by him twice, was really by some Dutch wit.

AD CHRISTINAM, SUECORUM REGINAM, NOMINE CromwellI.-The lines printed with this title in most modern editions of Milton's poems are supposed to have been written for Cromwell in 1654, the first year of his Protectorate, to accompany a portrait of himself which he then sent to the eccentric, and then famous Christina, Queen of Sweden. Being in elegiac verse, they have their proper place here in the Elegiarum Liber, if they are Milton's. But, almost certainly, they are Andrew Marvell's. They appeared as his, with only slight verbal variations, in his Miscellaneous Poems, published by his widow in 1681, three years after his death.

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SYLVARUM LIBER.

IN OBITUM PROCANCELLARII MEDICI.

Anno ætatis 17.

In both Milton's editions this piece is dated "Anno ætatis 16." This date is a blunder. For, even if we allow Milton his ordinary liberty of dating, according to which the phrase must be translated "at the age of 16 years" and not in the 16th year of his age" (see Introductions to Elegies Second and Third), the dating will not correspond with the incident of the Poem. That incident was the death of John Gostlin, M.D., Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1618, and Vice-Chancellor of the University for the second time in the year 1625-6. His Vice-Chancellorship would have expired Nov. 3, 1626; but he died some days before that date, and still holding the office: viz. on the 21st of October, 1626. The Michaelmas Term of Milton's third academic year had just begun, and Milton was full seventeen years of age, and, in fact, verging on eighteen. This dating "anno ætatis 16" was, therefore, a slip of memory.-The Dr. Gostlin, whose death is lamented in the poem, in very pretty mythological language and in good Horatian verse, was a Norwich man by birth, educated at Caius College, admitted M.D. in 1602, and afterwards Regius Professor of Physic in the University. When his turn came round to be Vice-Chancellor, it was something of a rarity in the University to see an M.D. rather than the customary D.D. in that office. "Here comes

our medical Vice-Chancellor," one may fancy the Cantabs of 1625-6 saying to each other when they saw Gostlin in the streets. His death, just at the close of his year of office, and when the Colleges had reassembled for a new session, naturally occasioned versifying.

IN QUINTUM NOVEMBRIS.

Anno ætatis 17.

This is a Gunpowder Plot poem, written by Milton for Guy Fawkes's Day, or the Fifth of November, 1626. There are four Latin trifles on the same subject among the Elegies, but the present piece, in sustained Hexameters, is a much more elaborate performance. It is, indeed, one of the very best of Milton's things in Latin. The spirit, it is true, is that of the common popular Protestantism of England in Milton's time, which firmly believed in all the traditional details of the Plot of 1605, and regarded it as a wide-spread conspiracy of the Roman Catholics, characteristic of their principles and prompted by the Papacy itself. Naturally, such a poem (and there are minuter ferocities

against the Papacy in the filling-up) will be read in different humours by different persons. But the execution of the poem, the power of imagination and of language shown in it, cannot fail to strike even the reader who is least satisfied with its spirit. I would instance particularly the description of Satan flying through the air and beholding Britain (lines 7-47), that of the den of Murder and Treason (lines 139-156), and that of the Temple of Fame (lines 170-193). The ending of the poem is rather abrupt.

IN OBITUM PRÆSULIS ELIENSIS.
Anno ætatis 17.

On the 5th of October, 1626, or only a fortnight after the death of Dr. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, there died another prelate, Dr. Nicholas Felton, Bishop of Ely. Like Andrewes, he was a Cambridge man, of Pembroke Hall, and he had, like Andrewes, been for some time Master of that Hall before he was made a bishop. Milton, who had just written his Elegy on Andrewes's death (Elegia Tertia), paid a similar honour to his brotherbishop, but employed Iambic verse of alternate Trimeters and Dimeters instead of Elegiacs. Hence this piece on Felton comes among the Sylvæ.

NATURAM NON PATI SENIUM.

From one of Milton's Epistola Familiares, dated "Cambridge, July 2, 1628," and addressed to his former master at St. Paul's School, Alexander Gill the younger, it appears that these Latin Hexameters were one of the pieces of verse printed copies of which were distributed, according to custom, by the University Bedels at the Cambridge Commencement ceremonial, or annual meeting for the conferring of degrees, held in St. Mary's Church on Tuesday, the 1st of July, 1628.

The ceremonial, though held at the end of the academic year, was called the "Commencement," because those who graduated in Divinity, Arts, Law, Phy sic, and Music were then said to "commence" in their respective faculties, and were designated Inceptores. Part of the business in the graduation in each faculty consisted of what was called an Act or Disputation in that faculty, carried on in Latin between one appointed debater-in-chief called the Respondent (in the Divinity Act there were generally two Respondents) and other debaters who attacked him successively and were called Opponents. First, early in the morning, as soon as all had assembled in St. Mary's Church, the Vice-Chancellor presiding, there began the Divinity Act, or Debate, accompanied by a distribution of copies of verses, and ending in the ceremonious conferring of the degree of D.D. on all the candidates of the year for that degree. Next, and usually about mid-day, came on the Philosophical Act and Graduation in Arts. This was a richer and more diversified affair than the Divinity Gradua tion which had preceded it, not only because the candidates for the M.A. degre each year were a very numerous body, consisting of young men from all the Colleges, but also because custom tolerated a great deal of liberty and even of fun in the philosophical discussion. Here also, however, the backbone of the business was the Latin logomachy between the appointed representative of the Arts faculty, called the Respondent, and the Opponents who successively

attacked him; and here also the logomachy began with the reading of the Respondent's thesis, and the distribution of his verses, while he was reading it, by the University Bedels. After the Act was over, there was a specimen only of the actual graduation in Arts within the church, in the persons of the ten or twelve Commencers from King's College; and the rest were marched off to receive their M.A. degree in the Public School. For by this time it was growing late, and the Law Act, the Physic Act, and the Music Act, with their accompanying graduations, had still to come.

Milton may have been present already at three Commencements; but that of 1628 had a peculiar interest for him. Bainbrigge, Master of his own College of Christ's, was Vice-Chancellor of the University for the year 1627-8, and there was a relish for the undergraduates of Christ's in this fact, and in the prospect of his presidency in the Comitia of July 1628. Nor was that all. One of the Senior Fellows of Christ's, it appears, had been selected for the important post of Respondent in the Philosophical Act for that year; and he had found the bit of verse expected from him quite out of his habits, or had broken down over it at the last moment, and had asked Milton to help him out. With some pains, from the shortness of the time, Milton had furbished up what he thought would pass; and so the Christ's College people might congratulate themselves triply on the representation of their College at the Commencement of 1628. Not only would their Master preside as Vice-Chancellor, and not only would a Fellow of their College be Respondent in the Philosophical Act, but the Latin verses which the University Bedels would distribute in connexion with that Act would be (but perhaps it was a secret) by an undergraduate of Christ's. Actually the verses were put into print and distributed by the Bedels ; and on the 2nd of July, or the day after the Commencement, Milton was able to send a copy, or some copies, of them to Gill in London.

One would like now to know which of the thirteen Fellows of Christ's it was that begged Milton's poetical help, and what was the subject of the thesis which the verses were to illustrate. We have light only on the last point from Milton's lines. "That Nature is not subject to old age" is the proposition they maintain. They are, in fact, a powerful, and very eloquent and poetical, protest against the notion of a gradual decadence or deterioration of the physical Universe or visible frame of things. The verses being in this strain, we are led to think that the Philosophical Thesis which they were written to illustrate must have been some form of the same proposition. It is certainly known, at all events, that a question much debated in the speculative world of England about 1628 was the question whether there were signs of decay in Nature, whether the Present were necessarily inferior to the Past, or whether endurance, or even general progressiveness and improvement, might not be the rule. Bacon's influence, opposed as it was to that abject reverence for antiquity which had prevailed since the Revival of Letters, had given an impulse to what was still perhaps the heterodox sentiment, namely faith in the present and in the future.

DE IDEA PLATONICA QUEMADMODUM ARISTOTELES INTELLEXIT.

This is, clearly, also an academic exercise; but in which year of Milton's residence at Cambridge it was written, and for what occasion, I cannot determine. It answers exactly to its title, "On the Platonic Idea as understood by