SYLVARUM LIBER. In obitum Procancellarii, medici. Anno Etatis 17. PARERE fati discite legibus, Manusque Parcæ jam date supplices, Qui pendulum telluris orbem Täpeti colitis nepotes. Vos si relicto mors vaga Tænaro Per tenebras Stygis ire certum est. Si destinatam pellere dextera Nessi venenatus cruore, * This Ode is on the death of Doctor John Goslyn, Master of Caius College, and King's Professor of Medicine at Cambridge; who died while a second time Vice-Chancellor of that University, in October, 1626. See Fuller's Hist. Cambr. p. 164. Milton was now seventeen. But he is here called sixteen in the editions of 1645 and 1673. I am favoured in a letter from Doctor Farmer with these informations. "I find in Baker's "MSS. vol. xxviii. Chargis of "buryall and funeral of my bro 5 10 "parted this life the 21 of Oct. -Atro delibutus Hercules "ther Doctor Gostlin, who de- On this fable of Hercules, our Emathia jacuisset Oeta. Nec fraude turpi Palladis invidæ Quem larva Pelidis peremit Ense Locro, Jove lacrymante. author grounds a comparison, Par. Lost, ii. 543. "Felt th' "envenom'd robe, &c." 15. Quem larva Pelidis peremit, &c.] Sarpedon, who was slain by Patroclus, disguised in, the armour of Achilles. At his death his father wept a shower of blood. See the sixteenth Iliad. 17. Si triste fatum, &c.] “Ifin"chantments could have stopped "death, Circe, the mother of "Telegonus by Ulysses, would "have still lived; and Medea, "the sister of Ægialus or Ab 66 syrtus, with her magical rod." Telegonus killed his father Ulysses, and is the same who is called parricida by Horace. Milton denominates Circe Telegoni parens, from Ovid, Epist. Pont. iii. i. 123. Telegonique parens vertendis nota figuris. 17. verba Hecateïa] Ovid, Metam. xiv. 44. -Hecateia carmina miscet. 15 20 25 22. Artes medentum, ignotaque gramina,] Not so much the power, as the skill, of medicine. This appears from the names which follow. 23.Machaon, &c.] Machaon, the son of Esculapius, one of the Grecian leaders at the siege of Troy, and a physician, was killed by Eurypylus. See the Iliad. But the death of Machaon, by the spear of Eurypylus, is not in the Iliad, but in Quintus Calaber, where it is circumstantially related, as Mr. Steevens remarks, Paralip. vi. 406. I must add, that Quintus Calaber is not an author at present very familiar to boys of seventeen. According to Philips, he was one of the classics whom Milton taught in his school. "Quintus Calaber his poem of "the Trojan War continued from "Homer.' Life, p. xvii. 25.-Philyreie, &c.] Chiron, Sagitta Echidnæ perlita sanguine, Frondosa quem nunc Cirrha luget, the son of Philyra, a precep- 27. Nec tela te, &c.] Escula pius, who was cut out of his mother's womb by his father Apollo. Jupiter struck him dead with lightning, for restoring Hippolytus to life. 29. Tuque O] O is here open in a situation in which it is never found open in the Roman classics. Symmons. 29. Tuque O alumno major Apolline,] Certainly we should read Apollinis. But who was this pupil of Apollo in medicine? Had it been Esculapius, the transition would have been more easy. But Esculapius was sent by Apollo to Chiron, to be educated in that 30 35 It should be remembered, that the word alumnus is more extensively, favourite, votary, &c. In Milton's Latin poems, it is often difficult to ascertain the names of persons and places. To shew his learning, he frequently clouds his meaning by obscure or obsolete patronymics, and by the substitution of appellations formed from remote genealogical, historical, and even geographical allusions. But this was one of Ovid's affectations. Milton's habitual propensity to classical illustration, more particularly from the Grecian story, appears even in his State Letters written for Cromwell. In one of them, Cromwell congratulates King Charles Gustavus on the birth of a son in the midst of other good news, 1655. In this, says he, you resemble Philip of Macedon, who at one and the same time received the tidings of Alexander's birth and the conquest of the Illyrians. Prose W. ii. 445. 29. Admitting Warton's sense of alumnus, it is evident that Esculapius is here intended. E. At fila rupit Persephone tua, Faucibus eripuisse mortis. 40 45 JAM pius extrema veniens Iacobus ab arcto, 10 43. The thought is in Juvenal expedition of Satan, may be conand Persius. * This little poem, as containing a council, conspiracy, and sidered as an early and promising prolusion of Milton's genius to the Paradise Lost. 15 Regnaque olivifera vertit florentia pace: Et quoscunque videt puræ virtutis amantes, Cui nomen dederat quondam Neptunia proles; Ante expugnatæ crudelia sæcula Troja. At simul hanc, opibusque et festa pace beatam, And in the Ibis, " Olivifera Sicyone," v. 317. A great fault of the versification of this poem is, that it is too monotonous, and that there is no intermixture of a variety of pauses. But it should be remembered, that young writers are misled by specious beauties. 23. populos Summanus et urbes,] Summanus is an obsolete and uncommon name for Pluto, or the god of ghosts and night, summus manium, which Milton most probably had from Ovid, Fast. vi. 731. The name 20 25 30 passing over into Gaul, in aid "of his brother Lestrygon, against whom Hercules was "hasting out of Spain into Italy, "he was there slain in fight, "&c." Milton's Hist. Engl. b. i. Prose Works, ii. 2. Drayton has the same fable, Polyolb. s. xviii. 31. At simul hanc, opibusque et festa pace beatam, &c.] The whole context is from Ovid's Envy, Metam. ii. 794. |