Tow'ard heav'n's descent had slop'd his west'ring wheel. Mean while the rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to th' oaten flute, Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with cloven heel 35 But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 40 script before Milton altered Oft till the ev'n-star bright 31. his west'ring wheel] Drawing toward the west. Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide, b. ii. ver. 905. -the sonne Gan westrin fast, and dounward for to wrie. 31.] And Spenser has to west. F. Q. v. Introd. S. And twice hath risen where he now doth west And wested twice where he ought rise aright. T. Warton. Mr. Thyer adds another instance. Ye sylvans, Fauns, and Satyrs, that emong These thickets oft have daunc'd after Past. Ecl. on the death of Sir P. 36. And old Damætas lov'd to hear our song.] He means pro33. Temper'd to th' oaten flute, bably Dr. William Chappel, who Boethius III. Metr. 12. Illic blanda sonantibus Richardson. Tempering their sweetest notes unto thy lay. And again, Poeticall Miscel. Camb. 1638. p. 55. Spenser also has, of birds. had been tutor to them both at Cambridge, and was afterwards Bishop of Cork and Ross in Ireland. 39. Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, &c.] This line was thus given in the edition of 1638. Thee shepherds, thee the woods, and desert caves. T. Warton. 40. With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,] Tully, And all their echoes mourn. The willows, and the hazel copses green, Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flow'rs, that their gay wardrobe wear, Such Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear. 45 Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas? For neither were ye playing on the steep, in a beautiful description of the growth of the vine, says, that it spreads itself abroad "multiplici lapsu et erratico." De Senect. S. XV. T. Warton. 45. As killing as the canker to the rose,] Shakespeare is fond of this image, and, from his very frequent repetitions of it, seems to have suggested it to Milton. T. Warton. 47. Or frost to flow'rs, that their gay wardrobe wear,] Milton had first written, their gay buttons wear; but corrected it in the Manuscript. 50. Where were ye, Nymphs, &c.] He imitates Virgil, Ecl. x. 9. Quæ nemora, aut qui vos saltus habuere puellæ Naiades, indigno cum Gallus amore periret ? Nam neque Parnassi vobis juga, nam neque Pindi Ulla moram fecere, neque Aonia as Virgil had before imitated Theocritus, Idyl. i. 66. Πα ποκ' αρ' ησθ ̓ ὁκα Δαφνις ετακετο; τα πόκα νυμφαι; .51 Where your old Bards, the Mr. Richardson's conjecture upon famous Druids, lie, &c.] this passage, I think, is the best I have seen, that this steep, where the Druids lie, is a place called Kerig y Druidion in the mountains of Denbighshire, or Druids' stones, because of the stonechests or coffins, and other monuments there in abundance, supposed to have been of the Druids. See Camden. Mona is the isle of Anglesey, or the shady island as it was called by the ancient Britons. And Deva is the river Dee, the meaning of which word Deva is by some supposed to be divine water. Where your old Bards, the famous Druids, lie, See Camden's Cheshire. And -And Dee, which Britons long ygone Did call divine, that doth by Chester tend. And Drayton in his Polyolbion, A brooke it was, suppos'd much Which had an ancient bound 'twixt Of either country told, of either's war or peace, The sickness or the health, the dearth or the increase &c. These places all look toward Ireland, and were famous for the residence of the Bards and Druids, who are distinguished by most authors, but Milton speaks of them as the same, and probably as priests they were Druids, and as poets they were Bards. For Cæsar, who has given us the best and most authentic account of the ancient Druids, says, that among other things they learn a great number of verses. Magnum ibi numerum versuum ediscere dicuntur. De Bel. Gall. lib. vi. c. 13. 54. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,] In Drayton's Polyolbion, Mona is introduced re 55 citing her own history; where Sometimes within my shades, in The fearlesse British priests, under Where, says Selden, "the British "Druids tooke this isle of An 55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:] In Spenser, the river Dee is the haunt of magicians. Faery Queen, i. ix. 4. The Dee has been made the scene of a variety of ancient British traditions. The city of Chester was called by the Britons the Fortress upon Dee; which was feigned to have been founded by the giant Leon, and to have been the place of King Arthur's magnificent coronation. But there is another and perhaps a better reason, why Deva's is a wizard stream. In Drayton, this river is styled the hallowed, Aye me! I fondly dream Had ye been there, for what could that have done? and the holy, and the ominous flood. Polyolb. s. x. vol. iii. p. 848. s. ix. vol. iii. p. 287. s. iv. vol. ii. p. 731. Again, "holy "Dee," Heroicall Epist. vol. i. p. 293. And in his Ideas, vol. iv. p. 1271. And Browne, in his Britannia's Pastorals, b. ii. s. v. p. 117. edit. 1616. Never more let holy Dee Ore other rivers brave, &c. Much superstition was founded on the circumstance of its being the ancient boundary between England and Wales: see Drayton, s. x. See also s. iii. vol. ii. p. 711. s. xii. vol. iii. p. 901. But in the Eleventh Song, Drayton calls the Weever, a river of Cheshire," The wizard river," Cheshire," The wizard river," and immediately subjoins, that in prophetick Skill it vies with the Dee, s. xi. vol. iii. p. 861. Here we seem to have the origin and the precise meaning of Milton's appellation. In Comus, Wizard also signifies a Diviner where it is applied to Proteus, v. 872. By the Carpathian wizard's hook. Milton appears to have taken a particular pleasure in mentioning this venerable river. In the beginning of his first Elegy, he almost goes out of his way to specify his friend's residence on the banks of the Dee; which he describes with the picturesque and real circumstance of its tumbling headlong over rocks and precipices into the Irish sea. El. i. 1. -Occidua Deva Cestrensis ab ora, Vergivium prono qua petit amne salum. But to return to the text immediately before us. In the midst of this wild imagery, the tombs of the Druids, dispersed over the solitary mountains of Denbighshire, the shaggy summits of Mona, and the wizard waters of Deva, Milton was in his favourite track of poetry. He delighted in the old British traditions and fabulous histories. have been But his imagination seems to in some measure warmed, and perhaps directed to these objects, by reading Drayton; who in the Ninth and Tenth Songs of his Polyolbion has very copiously enlarged, and almost at one view, on this scenery. It is, however, with great force and felicity of fancy, that Milton, in transferring the classical seats of the Muses to Britain, has substituted places of the most romantic kind, inhabited by Druids, and consecrated by the visions of British bards. And it has been justly remarked, how coldly and unpoetically Pope, in his very correct pastorals, has on the same occasion selected only the fair fields of Isis, and the winding vales of Cam. But at the same time there is an immediate propriety in the substitution of these places. They are in the vicinity of the Irish seas, where Lycidas was shipwrecked. It is thus Theocritus asks the Nymphs, how it came to pass, that when Daphnis died, they were not in the delicious vales of Peneus, or on the banks of the great torrent Anapus, the sacred water of Acis, or on the summits of mount Etna: because What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, all these were the haunts or the habitation of the shepherd Daphnis. These rivers and rocks have a real connection with the poet's subject. T. Warton. 56. Aye me! I fondly dream Had ye been there, for what could that have done?] We have here followed the pointing of Milton's manuscript in preference to all the editions: and the meaning plainly is, I fondly dream of your having been there, for what would that have signified? Mr. Thyer conjectured that the passage should be so pointed, and Milton has so pointed it, though he does not often observe the stops in his Manuscript. Mr. Jortin likewise perceived this to be the sense, and asks whether this transposition would not be better than the common reading. Had ye been there-Aye me, I fondly For what could that have done? 56. Perhaps the passage may be understood thus, "I fondly "dream of your assistance if ye "had been there, for what could your presence have availed? "What could the Muse herself, " &c." cr 60 And his murderers are called "that wild rout," v. 34. Calliope was the mother of Orpheus. Lycidas, as a poet, is here tacitly The printed copies of 1638, compared with Orpheus. T. 1645, and 1673, have it, Warton. 60. —Universal nature.] So "universal Pan," P. L. iv. 266. T. Warton. L |