Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight! He, sovran Priest, stooping his regal head, His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies: O, what a mask was there, what a disguise! Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide ; These latest scenes confine my roving verse; Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things. Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief; That heaven and earth are colour'd with my woe; The leaves should all be black whereon I write ; And letters', where my tears have wash'd, a wannish white. See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels, In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit. From Heb. i. 10. "The Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”—TODD. e Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump. Our poet seems here to be of opinion, that Vida's "Christiad was the finest Latin poem on a religious subject.-Jos. WARTON. f The leaves should all be black whereon I write, And letters, &c. Conceits were now confined not to words only. Mr. Steevens has a volume of Elegies, in which the paper is black, and the letters white; that is, in all the title-pages: every intermediate leaf is also black. What a sudden change from this childish idea, to the noble apostrophe, the sublime rapture and imagination, of the next stanza !-T. WARTON. Fir sure a veil nstricted tre my tears. Or should I thence, ined on viewless wing, Went think ne infection of my screws load Eai get a race of mourners in some pregnant cloud. Ca er et de unor inding to be abom the years he had, when he wrote it, and MK Sistica Will Vili vis jegin, af 1 aalastet. 33 3. sweetie wautri umpiet, vici, v ne two preceding Ines, spened the stanza so winiarni greve u ini terminate feebly in a most miserably disgusting ODES. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. Tra Winer Fems which flow are not of sufficient length or importance to jemaad or fustry a separate increduction to each. The Creumcision is better than the Fassion," and has two or three Mil The Elegy on the Death of a fair Infant” is praised by Warton, and well characterised in his ast tote uren in ; but in has more of research and laboured acy thaa of Seling, and is not a general favourite. The Cde, or ramler fragment, Cu Time," doses with three noble and sonorous Ines The Ode at a Solemn Musick" is a short preiz le to the strain of Genius which produced → Paradise Lost. Warton says, that perhaps there are no finer lines in Mton than one long passage which he eites. I must say that this is going a littse seo far. That they are very fine, I admit : but the sublime philosophy, to which he aludes as their prototype, must not be put in comparison with the fountains of Paradise Lost. So far they are exceedingly curious, that they show how early the poet and constructed in his own mind the language of his divine imagery, and how rich and vigerous his style was almost in his boyhood; as this : Where the bright seraphim, in burning row, The Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester" does not much please me ; I do not like its quaint conceits, nor its want of pathos. The third line,— A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir, is equivocally expressed. It means the daughter of a viscount, which viscount was heir to an earl. See T. Warton's note on ver. 59. Thomas, Lord Darcie, of Chiche, in Essex, was created Viscount Colchester, 19 James I., with a collateral remainder to Sir Thomas Savage, of Rock-savage, in Cheshire, who had married Elizabeth Laughton; and at length coheir of the said Thomas Lord Darcie; and in the second Charles I. he was created Earl Rivers, with the same remainder. Thus this Sir Thomas Savage was called Viscount Colchester, and was heir to an earldom; but he did not succeed to it, for he died in 1635, before his father-inlaw, who survived till 1639, when his son, Sir John Savage, second baronet, (the brother of the marchioness) became second Earl Rivers, and died 1654. He had three sons, and five daughters: Jane, the second daughter, married, first, George Brydges, sixth Lord Chandos; secondly, Sir William Sedley; thirdly, George Pitt, of Strathfield-say, in Hampshire; and having obtained Sudely castle from her first husband, left it to this third husband, Mr. Pitt. The Marchioness of Winchester was mother of Charles Powlett, first Duke of Bolton, whose daughter Lady Jane married John Egerton, third Earl of Bridgewater, from whom all the subsequent peers of that title descended. Thomas Savage, third Earl Rivers, dying 1694, was succeeded by his son Richard, fourth earl, who died without issue-male, 1712.* He was succeeded by his cousin, John, son of Richard Savage, third son of the second earl. The title became extinct in 1728. I take the date of this Epitaph to have been 1631, for a reason given by me in "The Topographer," 1789, vol. i. which Todd has referred to. The "Song on May Morning" is in the tone of the beautifully descriptive passages in "Comus." The "Verses at a Vacation Exercise in the College," are full of ingenuity and imagery, and have several fine passages; but, though they blame "new-fangled toys" with a noble disdain, they are themselves in many parts too fantastic. As to the "Epitaph on Shakspeare," Hurd despises it too much. It is true, that it is neither equal to the grand cast of Milton's poems, nor worthy of the subject; but still it would honour most poets, except the last four lines, which are a poor conceit. The two strange" Epitaphs on Hobson the Carrier," are unworthy of the author. The rough lines on the "New Forcers of Conscience" are interesting on account of the historical notes of Warton, to which they have given occasion. The "Translations" are scarcely worth notice, except the Ode of Horace, which has a plain and native vigour. Of the "Psalms" I have said all that is necessary in the poet's Life. UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. YE flaming powers, and winged warriours bright, Seas wept from our deep sorrow: * Richard Savage, the poet, was, or claimed to be, his natural son, by the Countess of Macclesfield. Your fiery essence can distil no tear, 5 Milton is puzzled how to reconcile the transcendent essence of angels with the infirmities of men. In Paradise Lost," having made the angel Gabriel share in a repast of fruit with Adam, he finds himself under a necessity of getting rid of an obvious objection, that material food does not belong to intellectual or ethereal substances: and to avoid certain circumstances, humiliating and disgraceful to the dignity of the angelic nature, the natural consequences of concoction and digestion, he forms a new theory of transpiration, suggested by SE JE PA FAR INFANTS, DYING OF A COUGH Vika esmusons ď nemsy. I de present instance, he wishes to make SN, MI È the see if fr, där a sore water: at length, be TELOITS INI ÎN DA PAUS Hưng Sets It a debated in Thomas Aquinas whether Of long-uncoupled bed and childless eld, Which, 'mongst the wanton gods, a foul reproach was held. So, mounting up in icy-pearled car, But, all unwares, with his cold-kind embrace Yet art thou not inglorious in thy fate; But then transform'd him to a purple flower: Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead, O, no! for something in thy face did shine Resolve me then, O soul most surely blest, Wert thou some star, which from the ruin'd roof f For so Apollo, with unweeting hand, Whilom did slay his dearly-loved mate, From these lines one would suspect, although it does not immediately follow, that a boy was the subject of the Ode: but in the last stanza the poet says expressly :— Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child, Her false-imagined loss cease to lament. Yet, in the eighth stanza the person lamented is alternately supposed to have been sent down to earth in the shape of two divinities, one of whom is styled a "just maid," and the other a "sweet-smiling youth." But the child was certainly a niece, a daughter of Milton's sister Philips, and probably her first child.-T. WARTON. If such there were. He should have said "are," if the rhyme had permitted.-HURD. |