preparatory to a stroke of tenderness. He calls for a variety of flowers to decorate his friend's hearse, supposing that his body was present, and forgetting for a while that it was floating far off in the ocean. If he was drowned, it was some consolation that he was to receive the decencies of burial. This is a pleasing deception: it is natural and pathetick. But the real catastrophe recurs. And this circumstance again opens a new vein of imagination. Dr. Johnson censures Milton for his allegorical mode of telling that he and Lycidas studied together, under the fictitious images of rural employments, in which, he says, there can be no tenderness; and prefers Cowley's lamentation of the loss of Harvey, the companion of his labours, and the partner of his discoveries. I know not if, in this similarity of subject, Cowley has more tenderness; I am sure he has less poetry. I will allow that he has more wit, and more smart similies. The sense of our author's allegory on this occasion is obvious, and is just as intelligible as if he had used plain terms. It is a fiction, that, when Lycidas died, the woods and caves were deserted and overgrown with wild thyme and luxuriant vines, and that all their echoes mourned; and that the green copses no longer waved their joyous leaves to his soft strains but we cannot here be at a loss for a meaning, a meaning which is as clearly perceived, as it is elegantly represented. This is the sympathy of a true poet. We know that Milton and King were not nursed on the same hill; that they did not feed the same flock, by fountain, shade, or rill: and that rough Satyrs and Fauns with cloven heel never danced to their rural ditties. But who hesitates a moment for the application? Nor are such ideas more untrue, certainly not less far-fetched and unnatural, than when Cowley says, that he and Harvey studied together every night with such unremitted diligence, that the twin-stars of Leda, so famed for love, looked down upon the twin-students with wonder from above. And where is the tenderness, when he wishes, that, on the melancholy event, the branches of the trees at Cambridge, under which they walked, would combine themselves into a darker umbrage, dark as the grave in which his departed friend was newly laid? Our author has also been censured for mixing religious disputes with pagan and pastoral ideas. But he had the authority of Mantuan and Spenser, now considered as models in this way of writing. Let me add, that our poetry was not yet purged from its Gothick combinations; nor had legitimate notions of discrimination and propriety so far prevailed, as sufficiently to influence the growing improvements of English composition. These irregularities and incongruities must not be tried by modern criticism. T. WARTON. I wish indeed that the fictions of heathenism had not here been mingled with what is sacred; particularly that, after the sublime intimation from Scripture of Angels wiping the tears for ever from the eyes of Lycidas, Lycidas thus beatified, had not been converted into the classical Genius of the shore. My wish has been pronounced a "little rash" by a lady, whose taste and judgement are well known to the publick, and who has thus pleaded in defence of the poet. "Remember," says Mrs. Anna Seward in her obliging letter to me, "how exquisitely the bard excuses the intermixture in the course of the composition. Thus O fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood, And again: Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian muse! In Mr. T. Warton's note on the first of these apologies, I wonder he was not aware that, by 'That strain I heard was of a higher mood,' Milton meant more than the superiority of Phœbus to the pastoral Muses, since he and they held the same doctrine; and since judgement and retribution, alluded to in the lines which precede it, are of an higher school than that of his temple. Milton, after asserting the more serious origin of that strain, proceeds to beguile his sorrow for the loss of his friend yet further, by dallying with false surmise;' and sweetly does he play with it, smiling through his tears, while he interrogates the sea-nymphs, and replies for them. Then again, after having left the Heathen, once more, for the Christian allusions, he re-invokes the fabulous train, and calls it Alpheus; asserting that the dread voice is past that shrunk his streams, evidently meaning by the dread voice those Christian allusions. Invocations of such spirited beauty had been lost but for the mixture of mythology; and had the wish you express prevailed, the classick fables been banished from this monody, its most poetical parts had also been lost. Fiction was invoked by the poet. She came in all her ingenuity, her graces, her charms; and it is entirely sufficient that her repeated introduction has been so finely apologised by her introducer. If I could consider the Genius of the shore, into which Milton transforms his drowned friend, as an entirely Pagan idea, I should join you in condemning it as a superfluous dereliction from the final and sublime resumption of scriptural hopes and dependencies; but I cannot see any thing repugnant to them in supposing the beatified souls of men employed by their Creator as ministrant spirits, averting from shores, countries, and their inhabitants, many an impending peril." It has been observed, that, " as Dante has made Cato of Utica keeper of the gates of Purgatory, Milton has here, in return, placed St. Peter in company with Apollo, Triton, Eolus, &c. For the intrusion of what follows, respecting the clergy of his time, the earliest Italians have, in pieces of every sort, set plentiful example. Perhaps no better reason can be given for Milton's conduct here, than what some commentator gives for Dante's above mentioned: Per verità è un gran capriccio, mai in ciò segue suo stile." See Cursory Remarks on some of the ancient English poets, particularly Milton, 1789, p. 112. The first part of the Italian commentator's remark, says Mr. Dunster, I readily admit to be applicable in this instance to Milton; but though he sometimes gives into these capriccie, it certainly cannot be said of him that in ciò segue suo stile. The rhymes and numbers, which doctor Johnson condemns, appear to me as eminent proofs of the poet's judgement; exhibiting, in their varied and arbitrary disposition, an ease and gracefulness, which infinitely exceed the formal couplets, or alternate rhymes, of modern Elegy. Lamenting also the prejudice which has pronounced Lycidas to be vulgar and disgusting, I shall never cease to consider this monody as the sweet effusion of a most poetick and tender mind; entitled, as well by its beautiful melody, as by the frequent grandeur of its sentiments and language, to the utmost enthusiasm of admiration. TODD. Original Various Readings of Lycidas, From Milton's MS. in his own hand. Examined by the editor of these volumes. Ver. 10. Who would not sing for Lycidas, he well knew. Ver. 26. Under the glimmering eye-lids &c. Ver. 30. Oft till the even-starre bright Towards heaven's descent hath sloapt his *burnisht wheel. Ver. 47. Or frost to flowres that their gay + buttons wear. Here bear had been written, and erased, before wear. Ver. 58. What could the golden-hayr'd Calliope For her inchaunting son, When she beheld (the gods far-sighted bee) His goarie scalpe rowle downe the Thracian lee. Here, after inchaunting son, occurs in the margin * Burnish'd is an epithet, in our elder poetry, often applied to the sun's equipage or residence. Thus, in The famous history of Tho. Stukeley, as it hath been acted, 4to. 1605, bl. 1. "the sonne of Phoebus, 66 Vpon his father's fiery BURNISH'd carr, See Beaumont and Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, A. iii. S. i. "O queen Emilia, "Fresher than May, sweeter "Than her gold buttons on the boughs." And Shakspeare, Hamlet, A. i. S. iii. "The canker galls the infants of the spring And Browne, Brit. Past. B. ii. S. iii. p. 61. edit. 1616. "Flora's choise buttons of a russet dye." T. WARTON. Whome universal Nature might lament, And heaven and Hel deplore, When his divine head downe the streame was sent. The line And heaven &c. is erased; divine head is also altered to divine visage, and afterwards to goary visage. Ver. 69. Hid in the tangles &c. Ver. 85. Oh fountain Arethuse, and, thou smooth flood, *Soft sliding Mincius. Smooth is then altered to fam'd, and next to honour'd: And soft sliding to smooth-sliding. Ver. 105. Scraul'd ore with figures dim. Inwrought is in the margin. Ver. 129. Daily devours apace, and little sed. Nothing is erased. Ver. 138. On whose fresh lap the swart star stintly looks. At first sparely, as at present. Ver. 139. Bring hither &c. Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies, To write his own woes on the vermeil graine : The cowslip.wan that hangs his pensive head, * In Sandy's Psalms, published in the same year with Lycidas, is the following phrase, Ps. xxiii. "He fosters me in fragrant meads, "By softly-sliding waters leads," And in Sylvester's Du Bart. there is the other altered compound, "smoothsliding waters,” edit. 1621, p. 171. Compare also ibid, p. 1177. "You silver brooks, cleer rivers, crystall fountains, "Whose smooth swift-sliding pase "Still, still roules down apace." So, in the second page of The Tears of Love, or Cupid's Progresse, by Thomas Collins, 4to. 1615. "For Nayis, Lady of that louely Lake, "Did so much pity on the shepherds take, |