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Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, 10 Must now be nam'd and printed Heretics By shallow, Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call: But we do hope to find out all your tricks,

Your plots and packing worse than those of Trent,

appeared at Glasgow so late as in 1765. T. Warton.

12. By shallow Edwards &c.] In the Manuscript it was at first harebrain'd Edwards. He wrote the Gangræna, a book in which the errors, heresies, blasphemies, and lewd practice, which broke out in the last four years (1642, 1643, 1644, 1645,) are recited: see Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 855. Mr. Thyer gives this account of it, that it was published in 1646, and dedicated to the Parliament by Thomas Edwards, minister of the Gospel, and was intitled Gangræna, or a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the errors, heresies, blasphemies, and pernicious practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in these four last years. Scotch what d'ye call might be perhaps the famous Alexander Henderson, or as that expression implies some hard name, George Gillespie, a Scotch minister and commissioner at Westminster, called Galaspe in Whitlock, and Galasp in one of our author's Sonnets: and nothing could be expressed with greater contempt.

12. It is not the Gangrena of Thomas Edwards that is here the object of Milton's resentment. Edwards had attacked Milton's favourite plan of independency, in a pamphlet full of miserable. invectives, immediately and pro

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alledged for a toleration. Pre"sented in all humility to the "honourable House of Com

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mons, &c. &c. By Thomas "Edwards, &c. Lond. 1641." In quarto. However, in the Gangrena, not less than in these two tracts, it had been his business to blacken the opponents of presbyterian uniformity, that the Parliament might check their growth by penal statutes. Against such enemies, Milton's chief hope of enjoying a liberty of conscience, and a permission to be of any religion but popery, was in Cromwell, who for political reasons allowed all professions. See Sonn. xvi. 11. T. Warton.

14. Your plots and packing

May with their wholesome and preventive shears 16 Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears,

And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge, New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.

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He means Prynne, who had been sentenced to lose his ears, and afterwards was sentenced to lose the remainder of them, so that he was cropt close indeed: and the reason of his calling him marginal is expressed in his treatise of The likeliest Means to remove hirelings out of the Church. "And yet a late hot querist for "tithes, whom ye may know by "his wit's lying ever beside him "in the margin, to be ever be"side his wits in the text; a "fierce reformer once, now "rankled with a contrary heat, " &c." Vol. i. p. 569. edit. 1738.

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17. Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears,] That is, although your ears cry out that they need clipping, yet the mild and gentle Parliament will content itself with only clipping away your Jewish and persecuting principles. Warburton.

The meaning is, "check your "insolence, without proceeding "to cruel punishments." To balk is to spare. T. Warton.

20. New Presbyter is but Old Priest] He expresses the same sentiment in other parts of his works. Bishops and presbyters are the same to us both name and thing, &c. See his Speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, vol. i. p. 153. and the conclusion of his treatise, entitled, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.

20. writ large.] That is, more domineering and tyrannical. Warburton.

This is the sense implied, but certainly with the allusion, intimated by Dr. Newton, to the derivation of the word Priest by contraction from Presbyter. E.

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SONNETS.

I.

To the Nightingale.

O NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,

The Sonnet is a species of poetry of Italian extraction, and the famous Petrarch hath gained the reputation of being the first author and inventor of it. He wrote a great number in commendation of his mistress Laura, with whom he was in love for twenty years together, and whose death he lamented with the same zeal for ten years afterwards: and for the tenderness and delicacy of his passion, as well as for the beauty and elegance of his sentiments and language, he is esteemed the great master of love-poetry among the moderns, and his Sonnets are universally allowed to be the standard and perfection of that kind of writing. The Sonnet, I think, consists generally of one thought, and that always turned in fourteen verses of the length of our heroics, two stanzas or measures of four verses each, and two of three, the first eight verses having no more than two rhymes: and herein it differs from the Canzone, which is not confined

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to any number of stanzas or verses. [See note p. 182. Canzone.] It is certainly one of the most difficult of all the lesser kinds of poetry, such simplicity and such correctness being required in the composition: and I have often wondered that the quaintness and exactness of the rhymes alone did not deter Milton from attempting it, but he was carried on by his love of the Italians and Italian poetry: and other celebrated writers have been equally fond of copying Petrarch, as Bellay, Ronsard, Malherb, &c. among the French; Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, &c. among the English; but none of them have conformed so exactly to the Italian model as Milton: and he is the last who excelled in this species of poetry, which was almost extinct among us, till it was revived of late with good success by an ingenious gentleman in Dodsley's Miscellanies.

1. Guitone d'Arezzo, who flourished about the year 1250,

While the jolly hours lead on propitious May. Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,

First heard before the shallow cuckow's bill,
Portend success in love; O if Jove's will
Have link'd that amorous pow'r to thy soft lay,

many years before Petrarch was born, first used the measure observed in the Sonnet; a measure, which the great number of similar terminations renders easy in the Italian, but difficult in our language. Dr. J. Warton.

Dr. Johnson remarks, that, for this reason, the fabric of the regular Sonnet has never succeeded in English. But surely Milton and others have shewn that this inconvenience may be surmounted, and excellence results from difficulty. T. Warton.

Of the two stanzas, into which the first eight lines of the Sonnet are to be distributed, the first verse chimes with the last, and the two intermediate ones with each other. The six concluding lines may either be confined within terminations of two similar sounds alternately arranged, or may be disposed, with two additional rhymes, into a quatrain and a couplet.

Milton has not always observed this arrangement of the terminations in the six concluding lines. See the Sonnets to Fairfax and to Cromwell. He seems to have regarded the order of this part of the sonnet as submitted in a great degree to his discretion. In the construction of the Sonnet Drummond seems to have been the peculiar object of Milton's applause and imitation. Symmons.

1. We have observed, P. L.

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vii. 435. how fond our poet was of the nightingale, and this address to her is founded upon the same notion or tradition as Chaucer's verses of the cuckow and the nightingale.

But as I lay this other night waking,
I thought howe lovirs had a tokining,
And amonge 'hem it was a com-
mune tale,

That it were gode to here the
nightingale,

Moche rathir than the leudè cuccoo sing &c.

4. While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.] Because the nightingale is supposed to begin singing in April. So Sydney, in England's Helicon, Signat. O. edit. 1614.

The nightingale, so soone as Aprill bringeth

Unto her rested sense a perfect wak-
ing,

While late bare earth proud of new
clothing springeth,
Singes out her woes, &c.

T. Warton. 6. First heard before] Virgil, Æn. iv. 24.

Sed mihi vel tellus obtem prius ima dehiscat,

Ante pudor quam te violo, aut fua jura resolvo.

See Cerda. Richardson.

6. First heard before the shallow cuckow's bill, &c.] That is, if they happen to be heard before the cuckow, it is lucky for the lover. But Spenser calls the cuckow the messenger of spring, and supposes that his trumpet

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