LITERARY SUPPLEMENT The Best Guide to the Litera- The Times Literary Supplement is an Every Thursday. Price 6d. The Times Literary Supplement may be obtained through LONDON, SEPTEMBER 9, 1922. CONTENTS.-No. 230. NOTES:-The Milton-Ovid Script, 201-Race-course Jargon, taining Latin verses of Posthius, and the colophon with printer's device. Each numbered folio shows an engraved plate illustrating some metamorphosis described by Ovid or a scene relating thereto. Above each engraving is printed & quatrain in Latin, and, below, a similar quatrain in German, summarizing the scene. QUERIES:-Date of Hull Hall-marks on Silver, 200-The The verso of each folio is blank and un 296-An Early Army List-Signs of Old London, 207The Grassington Glass-Alexander Cruden's Bibliography, 208-A Country Recreation in Queen Anne's Time-Southwark's Last Cowshed, 209. Hog in the Pound, Oxford Street-Bromley's Collection Antiques-Rev. Francis Gilbart-Charles Franks-Scrope of Letters-Pendebury of Lanthony Abbey-Unidentified numbered. In the present copy, the scribe Saint-Herenden Family-Jacobite Cards Gun-Pints- has written on each blank verso a stanza of William Woty-Rev. Alfred Starkey, 210-Rev. John Thomas, Carmarthenshire-Wright of Derby-Macaulay English verse, interpreting the succeeding and the Swooning Heroine The Inman Collection of Indian plate. The reproduction published to-day Fleming-Oldacre Family-Christian Name: Frusan, 211 (vide infra, p. 203) shows the verso of folio 11 and the recto of folio 12. In nearly every case the stanza has eight lines, in two cases it has ten, and in one case there is an extra verse of four lines. The lines are always Drayton, 213-The Marie Celeste The Mistletoe Bough, grouped in the rhymed decasyllabic couplet 214 Duel: Malden-Hawkins-Anana: Pine-apple Slates used by Milton in his Paraphrase of in Schools-Tennyson's May Queen': Parody-Identifi- Psalm 114,' Vacation Exercise,' • Hobson Hublack of Aberystwyth Sandilands Drinkwater-Dalton, Verses,' 'At a Solemn Musick,' and 216-Garibaldi Biscuit-Fishing from Houses The Friar occasionally in' Comus.' Author wanted--" Ni sitis boni Aleatores," 212. cation of Arms, 215-R. Brooke, York Herald-Mrs. of Orders Gray '-Lady Catherine Brabazon-Dignam -Superstitions concerning Salt-Cadby, 217--Rabbits in Australia-" Couvade "-Frogs and Snails as Puriners of Water, 218-Dacier-The Harcourt Pedigree-Mace The present copy is not complete; sig. El, folio 25, is now missing, but was in Family Antiquity of Public Schools-Robert Burdett its place when the scribe wrote; the stanza interpreting the missing plate is the verso of folio 24. The stanza Cleary (McCleary)--Author of Quotation wanted, 219. NOTES ON BOOKS: Essays on the Depopulation of on Melanesia The Beginnings of English Secular and relating to the plate of folio 26 is unfor Romantic Drama.' Notices to Correspondents. Notes. THE MILTON-OVID SCRIPT. In a letter published in The Times Literary Supplement of Jan. 26, 1922, the writer gave some account of this script, and stated his belief that it was a juvenile work of Milton. Further investigation has fully confirmed this belief, and seems to justify a more extended statement. The script is written in a small octavo volume printed at Frank fort in 1563; the title is IOHAN. POSTHII GERMERSHEMII TETRA- | STICHA IN OVIDII METAMOR. LIB. XV. quibus accesserunt Vergilii Solis figurae | elegantiss. & jam primùm in lucem editae. | And the collation of a complete copy is :- in Sigs. B to Z (omitting J, U, W) in eights, and a, a2, folios numbered 1 to 178, containing the text proper. Sigs. a3 to a8, six folios unnumbered, con tunately lost, as this was on the verso of the missing folio 25. The four leaves, sigs. 18, K1, K2, K3, folios 64, 65, 66, 67, are also missing, but on the verso of folio 63 we find the stanza interpreting the plate on the missing folio 64; this folio was, therefore, present when the scribe wrote. The four but the plate to which the fourth stanza subsequent stanzas are unfortunately lost, referred is seen on folio 68. .The eight leaves, sigs. Z3 to a2, folios 171 to 178, are missing, but on the verso of folio 170 the stanza is written which interprets the plate of the missing folio 171; we must conclude, therefore, that eight more stanzas are lost. Finally, sig. a8 is also lost from this copy. Of the 178 stanzas presumed to have been present when the volume was complete, 13 have therefore been lost and 165 remain. The book had apparently come more or less to pieces, and these leaves had been irretrievably lost, when it fortunately came into the hands of someone who thought the remainder worth preserving and had it rebound; the sheets were carefully resewn, not pinned or glued together, though the cover is plain half-calf with paper sides, now rather shabby. It was probably when this was done that the fore-edges were slightly The earth o'respread with slimey mud and durt I should place the date of the rebinding in the first half of the nineteenth century, but the watermark in the binder's end fly-leaf would no doubt fix it more closely if one had time and opportunity to trace it; it apparently represents head and shoulders of a military man in uniform with tall head-dress. On the front fly-leaf there is this pencilled note in the fine-pointed handwriting of the same period: "A very curious and scarce translation of Ovid with an English version in MS. written about 1600." The English verse is not really a translation, either of the foreign quatrains or of Ovid's text. The composition is original though the subject is prescribed by the plate, which the scribe has closely studied; speceled dragon great faithfully depicts the beast shown in the plate reproduced to-day. 66 Milton's biographers bear ample testimony to his great interest in Ovid. Brydges seems to do so with reluctance, but is none the less convincing on that account. In discussing the English and Latin poems of Milton's undergraduate years, he says His Latin poems want the solemnity, the sublimity, the enthusiasm, the wildness, the imaginativeness of these English in which the spirit of Dante and Spenser already began to show itself, moulded up with a character of his own. But Ovid was a poet of a more whimsical and undignified kind, of whom it was strange that he should have been fond, but whom his Latin verses almost everywhere show to have been a great favourite with him. Later, he says:— Milton's Latin epistles are written in the style borrowed from him. of Ovid, but the matter and language not servilely It seems to me extraordinary that Milton should have taken Ovid for his model. I agree with Warton, that it would have been more probable that he would have taken Lucretius and Virgil, as more congenial to him. And in the same chapter he says‡ : lish poems prove that at times it was grave and At this period, Milton's mind, though his Engdeep, yet occasionally showed all the playfulness of his youthful age. I am not sure that I like his Ovidian graces. Symmons § testifies to the same effect: "Of the Latins, Ovid, as we are certain, possessed a prime place in his regard." Milton, moreover, did write notes, and inscribe verses, in books. One such inscription, described (and reproduced) by Sotheby refers to the Metamorphoses,' and may be Chaplain to his Matie The point is not altogether without sig-quoted here :nificance. We know Milton's views on trans- On Mel Heliconium written by Mr Rosse lation. In the Postscript to his English version of The Judgment of Martin Bucer touching Divorce,' he says: Others may read him in his own phrase on the first to the Corinthians, and ease me who never could delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions; whether it be natural disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator. He does, however, make apt quotations in his History, &c., and when necessary does English them. We have also his early literal translation of Horace's Ode i. 5. On each numbered folio of the book, underneath the general running headline, there is a particular headline in Latin for each plate. The scribe has written an English rendering of this at the foot of the folio, and his rendering often shows a happy choice of English equivalent; thus the headline on folio 42, "Jovis cum Semele congressus," is rendered The accompaning of Jupiter with Semel." Those shapes, of old transfigured by ye charmes Of wanton Ovid, wakned wth th'alarmes Of powrefull Rosse gaine nobler formes; and try The force of a diviner Alchimy Soe the queint Chimist wth ingenious powre ffrom calcyn'd hearbes extracts a glorious flowre Soe bees to fraight their thimy cells produce ffrom poisnous weedes a sweet and wholsome Jyuce The stanza is signed J. M., is undated, and was probably written in 1646/7. We may feel confident that Milton would have been unable to resist the appeal of the blank verso in the Ovid volume if the book had ever come into his hands; and this it might so easily have done from his early tutor, Thomas Young, who did send the boy books from the Continent. The a priori argument, therefore, is not unfavourable to Milton authorship. The argument from penmanship and orthography points stongly to the same origin this will be more conveniently developed in future issues, with illustrations which will enable readers to judge for themselves. The argument from the text itself makes the case, as a whole, conclusive. Vocabulary, style, rhythm, temperament, all tell the same story; I can recall no literary feature to which attention has been directed by previous critics of Milton which is not foreshadowed in these stanzas. Indeed, their chief interest lies in the evidence they afford that the boy was so truly the father of the man. Incidentally, they also throw new light on some disputed points to which reference will be made in a later issue. fourth syllable in one case and after the fifth Not truly penitent, but chief to try Procris growes jellous of her Cephalus Incidentally, the verses show two other Milton To justify the present claim, every stanza will in turn be presented and briefly discussed, but before commencing the series, it will be well to inquire what literary features The scribe does the same :have been, or can be, regarded as Miltonic. Milton has to some extent answered this question in the note prefixed to 'Paradise Lost.' That note has so much bearing on the present question and is so often ignored that I beg leave to reproduce most of it. Milton there describes "rime as "no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse " but a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight ; he speaks of "the troublesome and modern bondage of rimeing," and asserts that this has made poets of the day express themselves worse than they would otherwise have done. Not content with destructive criticism, he tells us in what true musical delight does consist, namely, "in apt numbers, fit quantity of The break in the scribe's verse after Aire syllables, and the sense variously drawn out is an example of a Milton break described by from one verse into another, not in the Mr. Bridges. The stanza continues :jingling sound of like endings." The arrangement of words so that the syntactical pause does not coincide with the end of the line is considered to be very characteristic of MilRaleigh* calls it his "secret." The scribe shared the secret, as this example shows: ton. To pleasure him; when silent darknesse spreads To pause after spreads would make nonsense ; *Life of Milton.' There in close covert by some Brook, . . she hid Her selfe i'th woods to see the faults he did Rusling the bowes | he thinkes some beast lay there. And in amongst them rashly casts his speare. Here we find the "drawing out" into the following verse till we reach the pause after woods; this (as spoken) is preceded by five syllables and followed by six, so that we seem * New Memoirs of Milton' (4to, 1740), p. 113. † Op. cit., pp. 113, 116. Op. cit., p. 107. & Mr. C. W. Brodribb. Milton's Prosody' (1921), p. 44. |