YE Upon the CIRCUMCISION. E flaming Pow'rs, and winged Warriors bright That erft with mufic, and triumphant song, First heard by happy watchful shepherds ear, So fweetly fung your joy the clouds along Through the foft filence of the lift'ning night; 5 Now mourn, and if sad share with us to bear Your fiery effence can diftil no tear, Burn in your fighs, and borrow Seas wept from our deep forrow: He who with all Heav'n's heraldry whilere 7. Your fiery effence can diftil no tear, ΙΟ Burn in your fighs. -] Milton is puzzled how to reconcile the tranfcendent effence of angels with the infirmities of men. In PARADISE LOST, having made the angel Gabriel fhare in a repaft of fruit with Adam, he finds himself under a neceffity of getting rid of an obvious objection, that material food does not belong to intellectual or ethereal fubftances: and to avoid certain circumstances humiliating and difgraceful to the dignity of the angelic nature, the natural confequences of concoction and digeftion, he forms a new theory of tranfpiration, fuggefted by the wonderful tranfmutations of chemistry. In the prefent instance, he wishes to make angels weep. But being of the effence of fire, they cannot produce water. At length he recollects, that fire may produce burning fighs. 10. He who with all Heav'n's heraldry whilere Enter'd the world. --] Great pomps and proceffions are proclaimed or preceded by heralds. It is the fame idea in PARAD. L. B. i. 752. Meanwhile the WINGED HERALDS by command Of fovran power, with aweful ceremony, And trumpets found, throughout the hoft proclaim Again, Alas, how foon our fin Sore doth begin His infancy to feife! O more exceeding love, or law more juft? Were loft in death, till he that dwelt above 15 20 And that great covenant which we still tranfgrefs Entirely fatisfied, And the full wrath befide Of vengeful juftice bore for our excefs, Again, B. ii. 516. Towards the four winds five fpeedy cherubims Put to their mouths the founding alchemy By HERALDS Voice proclaim'd. Or HERALDRY may mean retinue, train, the proceffion itself. What he otherwife calls pomp. PARAD. L. B. viii. 564. While the bright pomp afcended jubilant. Again, B. v. 353. More folemn than the tedious POMP which waits On princes, &c. So again, Eve goes forth, B. viii. 60. Not unattended, for on her as queen A POMP of winning graces waited ftill. Her train of regal attendants were winning graces. It is the fame, and it is the true, fenfe of POMP, in L'ALLEGR. V. 127. With POMP, and feaft, and revelry. But I believe Jonion, affecting claffical phrafeology, made the word technical in Mafques. And And feals obedience first with wounding smart This day, but O ere long Huge pangs and strong 26 Will pierce more near his heart *. On the DEATH of a FAIR INFANT, dying of a Cough. I. Fairest flow'r no fooner blown but blasted, Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst out-lasted 5 That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kifs, But kill'd, alas, and then bewail'd his fatal blifs. II. For fince grim Aquilo his charioteer By boistrous rape th' Athenian damfel got, He thought it touch'd his deity full near, If likewise he some fair one wedded not, 10 *It is hard to fay, why these three odes on the three grand incidents or events of the life or history of Christ, were not at first printed together. I believe they were all written about the year 1629. 5. For he being amorous on that lovely dye, &c.] In ROMEO AND JULIET, Affliction, and Death, turn paramours. V. 8. Boreas ravifhed Qrithyia, Ovid. METAM. vi, 677. Thereby Thereby to wipe away th' infamous blot Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld, Which 'mongst the wanton Gods a foul reproach was held. III. So mounting up in icy-pearled car, 15 Through middle empire of the freezing air But all unwares with his cold-kind embrace 20 Unhous'd thy virgin foul from her fair biding place. IV. Yet art thou not inglorious in thy fate; 15. So mounting up in icy-pearled car.] We fhould rather read ice spearled. And fo in the Mak, rub-yfringed for ruby fringed, v. 890. Otherwife, we have two epithets inftead of one, with a weaker sense. Milton himself affords an inftance in the Ode on the NATIVITY, V. 155. Yet first to thofe YCHAIN'D in fleep. Of the prefixure of the augment y, in a concatenated epithet, there is an example in the Epitaph on Shakespeare, v. 4. Under a STAR-YPOINTING pyramid. 23. For fo Apollo, with unweeting band, Whilome did flay his dearly-loved mate, Young Hyacinth.-] From thefe lines one would fufpect, although it does not immediately follow, that a boy was the fubject of the Ode. The child is only called a fair infant in the edition 1673, where Young Hyacinth born on Eurotas' strand, Young Hyacinth the pride of Spartan land; 25 But then transform'd him to a purple flower : Alack that so to change thee Winter had no power. V. Yet can I not perfuade me thou art dead, Hid from the world in a low-delved tomb; VI. Refolve me then, oh Soul most surely bleft, 31 35 where this piece first appeared, although it was written in 1625. So alfo in Tonfon, 1705. Tickell's title is, A fair Infant, a NEPHEW of bis, &c. This is adopted by Fenton. But in the laft ftanza the poet fays expressly; But thou, the mother of fo fweet a child, HER falfe imagin'd lofs cease to lament. Yet in the eighth stanza, the perfon lamented is alternately supposed to have been fent down to earth in the shape of two divinities, one of whom is ftyled a juft maid, and the other a sweet-fmiling youth. But the child was certainly a niece, a daughter of Milton's fifter Philips. 31. Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed.] This fine periphrafis for grave, is from Shakespeare, MIDS. N. DR. A. iii. S. ult. Already to their WORMY BEDS are gone. Tell |