Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

"The cheerful lark, mounting from early bed,
With sweet salutes awakes the drowsie light.
The earth she left, and up to Heaven is fled,
There chants her Maker's praises out of sight."
Stan 2.

Browne had been beforehand with them both in one of his Pastorals:

"Here danc'd no nymph, no early-rising larke Sung up the ploughman and his drowsie mate." Vol. II. Book II. Song 1. p. 28.

Compare Drayton's Description of Elysium from p. 1445 to 1448, Oldys's edit. vol. IV. with Milton, from 240 to 268, Par. Lost. book IV.

Dr. J. Warton has observed on Mr. T. Warton's edition of Milton's Minor Poems, p. 159, that our great Bard has coined many beautiful compound epithets. Among many that he instances, he mentions love-darting eyes: Milton no doubt, has enriched our language with some epithets of the kind of his own coinage; but in general he had recourse to Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas, a very fertile storehouse for materials of this kind, and he might there probably. have found love-darting, as it there occurs:

"Whoso beholds her sweet love-darting eyn."

P. 186, ed. 1641.

I will lay before the reader many epithets of much merit extracted from the before-mentioned Translator. "Honeysteeped, style," 64; "figure-flowing pen," 124; "soulecharm image," 124; "Heaven-tuned harp," 124; "rosecrowned Zephyrus," 123; "forest-haunting heards," 123; "opal-coloured morn," 121; " ghastly-grim," applied to Death, 50; "bright-brown clouds," 127; "milde-eyd Mercy," 141; "bane-breath'd serpent," 133; "manytowred crest,' ," 128: but I have already enumerated more than perhaps are necessary. Peck also had been beforehand with Dr. W. on this particular in Milton; see pp. 117, 18, 19, of his Memoirs. But I think our divine Bard is under higher obligations to Sylvester than for an occasional epithet. From a very exuberant description of Sleep, his cell, attendants, &c. the following is transcribed:

"In midst of all this cave so dark and deep,
On a still-rocking couch lies blear-ey'd Sleep."

Oblivion lies hard by her drowsie brother,
Who readily knowes not her selfe nor other:
Then solitary Morpheus gently rockt:

Confusedly about the silent bed

Fantastick swarms of Dreams there hovered.
Green, red, and yellow, tawny, black, and blue:
Some sacred, some profane; some false, some true;

They made no noyse, but right resemble may
Th' unnumber'd moats which in the sun do play,
When (at some cranny) with his piercing eye
He peepeth in some darker place to spy.
Thither th' Almighty (with a just intent
To plague those tyrants pride) his angels sent,
No sooner entred, but the radiant shine
Of's glistring wings, and of his glorious eyn,
As light as noon makes the darke house of night,
The gawdy swarm of dreams is put to flight, &c."
of Du Bartas was before Milton when he wrote

This page

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

Il. Pens.

Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gate,
Tempest the ocean: there Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

Stretch'd like a promontory, sleeps or swims,

And seems a moving land.

P. Lost, b. VII. 410.

he had the following lines of Sylvester before him:

"When on the surges I perceive from far,
Th' ork, whirl-poole whale, or huffing physeter,
Methinks I see the wand'ring isle again
(Ortygian Delos) floating on the main.

And when in combat these fell monsters cross
Me seems some tempest all the seas doth toss.'

[ocr errors]

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 7.

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
The silent hours; and th' other, whose gay train
Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry-eyes.

MILTON.

"There the fair peacock, beautifully brave,
Proud, portly-strouting, stalking, stately-grave,
Wheeling his starry-trayn, in pomp displayes
His glorious eyes to Phoebus' golden rayes.
Close by his side stands the couragious cock,
Crest-peoples king, the peasant's trusty clock,
True morning watch, Aurora's trumpeter, &c."
SYLVESTER, p. 46. ed. 1641.

Milton had just before mentioned the crane.

1786, May and June. 1787, Dec.

T. C. 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 Shakspeare in his eye in the following stanza:

"Nor let the pride of great ones scorn
This charmer of the plains;

That sun which bids their diamond blaze
To deck our lily deigns.”

See Shakspeare's Winter's Tale, scenë 7.

[ocr errors]

Ed. and Em.

"The self-same sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike

[ocr errors]

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 Shak speare. See King Lear, scene.5.

1

"Thou sitt'st at home, safe by thy quiet fire,
And hear'st of others harms, but feelest none;
And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire,
Who fall, who rise, who triumphs, who do moan→→→
Perhaps thou talk'st of me."

See Shakspeare,→→

LXVI. Book iii. Civil Wars.

"let's away to prison:

We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage;
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news, and we'll talk with them too,

Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out, &c. &c."

M. Drayton, in the following passage, reminds us of a most spirited description in Shakspeare'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
Baiting like eagles having lately bath'd:
Glittering in golden coates like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at Midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry, with his beaver up,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury.

Shakspeare.

Drayton, in a passage where he personifies the Peak of Derbyshire, has the following idea, which reminds us of a very sublime passage in Shakspeare 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
Horror assumes her seat, from whose abiding flies
Thick vapours, that like rugs still hang the troubled air.
Polyolb. song 26.

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;
My lady sweet arise—

without the hyperbole of heaven's gate

Wake now my love, awake; for it is time;
The rosy morn long since left Tithon's bed,
All ready to her silver coach to clime,

And Phoebus' gins to shew his glorious head;
Hark, how the chearful birds do chaunt their lajes,
And carol of Love's praise;

The merry lark her mattins sings aloft,

[blocks in formation]
« FöregåendeFortsätt »