SONG ON MAY MORNING.

Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing!
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

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This beautiful little song presents an eminent proof of Milton's attention to the effect of metre, in that admirable change of numbers, with which he describes the appearance of the May Morning, and salutes her after she has appeared; as different as the subject is, and produced by the transition from iambics to trochaics. So in "L'Allegro," he banishes Melancholy in iambics, but invites Euphrosyne and her attendants in trochaics.—TODD.

MISCELLANIES.

ANNO ETATIS XIX.

At a vacation Exercise in the College, part Latin, part English. The Latin
speeches ended, the English thus began:-

HAIL, native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak;
And madest imperfect words with childish trips,
Half unpronounced, slide through my infant lips;
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before!
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:

Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee;

I know my tongue but little grace can do thee:
Thou need'st not be ambitious to be first;
Believe me, I have thither pack'd the worst:
And if it happen as I did forecast,

The daintiest dishes shall be served up last.

I pray thee, then, deny me not thy aid

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For this same small neglect that I have made :

But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure,

And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure;

Written in 1627: it is hard to say why these poems did not first appear in edition 1645. They were first added, but misplaced, in edition 1673.-T. WARTON.

ninisters and four areas a must ám a 1 pervical swembly, which received appeals from ne prema mi dasa Isirans, kit. These criances, which asceran the age of the hers before 18. k piace in 1641 and 1647. See Scobell, “* Col.” P. i. p. 34, 15) —I. Tatus.

The independenta were now makening the stuerasie. In 1643 their principal leaders präiset a jamones via de me, “An Ayi gera Naratie of some Ministers formerly exles a the Netherlands, Dow members of the Assembly of Divines. Humbly ea basitted to the benuarasie Houses of Parlament" This piece was answered by one A. S. the person intended by Mis—I. Wares.

Samuel Rutherford, or Rutherford, was toe of the chief commissioners of the church of Scotland, who sat with the Assembly at Westminster, and who concurred in settling the grand points of presbyterian discipline. He was professor of divinity in the university of St. Andrew's, and has left a great variety of Calvinistie tracts. He was an avowed enemy to the independents, as appears from his “ Disputation on pretended Liberty of Conscience, 1649." It is hence easy to see, why Rotherford was an obnoxious character to Milton. -T. WARTON.

↳ By shallow Edwards

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It is not the "Gangrena" of Thomas Edwards that is here the object of Milton's resentment, as Dr. Newton and Mr. Thyer have supposed. Edwards had attacked Milton's favourite plan of independency, in two pamphlets full of miserable invectives, immediately and professedly levelled against the “ Apologeticall Narration” above-mentioned, “ Antapologia, or a full Answer to the Apologeticall Narration, &c., wherein is handled many of the Controversies of these Times. By T. Edwards, minister of the gospel. Lond. 1644.” 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.-T. WARTON.

1 And Scotch what dye call.

Perhaps Henderson, or George Gillespie, another Scotch minister with a harder name, and one of the ecclesiastical commissioners at Westminster.-T. WARTON.

Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent.

The famous council of Trent.-T. WARTON.

k Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears.

That is, although your cars 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 of the present context is, "Check your insolence, without proceeding to cruel punishments." To "balk," is to spare.-T. WARTON.

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TRANSLATIONS.

THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, LIB. I.

WHAT slender youth bedew'd with liquid odours,
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness? O, how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain, and seas
Rough with black winds, and storms

Unwonted shall admire!

Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,

Who always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee, of flattering gales

Unmindful. Hapless they,

To whom thou untried seem'st fair! Me, in my vow'd

Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung

My dank and dropping weeds

To the stern god of sea.

FROM GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH.

BRUTUS thus addresses DIANA in the country of Leogecia:

GODDESS of shades, and huntress, who at will

Walk'st on the rowling spheres, and through the deep:

On thy third reign, the earth, look now and tell

What land, what seat of rest, thou bidd'st me seek,

What certain seat, where I may worship thee

For aye, with temples vow'd and virgin quires.

To whom, sleeping before the altar, DIANA answers in a vision the same night:

Brutus, far to the west, in the ocean wide,
Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies,
Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old;
Now void, it fits thy people: thither bend
Thy course; there shalt thou find a lasting seat;
There to thy sons another Troy shall rise,
And kings be born of thee, whose dreadful might
Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold.

FROM DANTE.

Ан, Constantine! of how much ill was cause,
Not thy conversion, but those rich domains
That the first wealthy pope received of thee!

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FROM DANTE

FOUNDED in chaste and humble poverty,

'Gainst them that raised thee dost thou lift thy horn,
Impudent whore? where hast thou placed thy hope?
In thy adulterers, or thy ill-got wealth?]
Another Constantine comes not in haste.

FROM ARIOSTO.

THEN pass'd he to a flowery mountain green,
Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously:
This was the gift, if you the truth will have,
That Constantine to good Sylvester gave.

FROM HORACE.

WHOм do we count a good man? Whom but he
Who keeps the laws and statutes of the senate,
Who judges in great suits and controversies,
Whose witness and opinion wins the cause?
But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood,
Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.

FROM EURIPIDES.

THIS is true liberty when freeborn men,
Having to advise the publick, may speak free;"
Which he who can and will deserves high praise:
Who neither can, nor will, may hold hispeace :
What can be juster in a state than this?

FROM HORACE.

LAUGHING, to teach the truth,

What hinders? as some teachers give to boys
Junkets and knacks that they may learn apace.

FROM HORACE.

JOKING decides great things,

Stronger and better oft than earnest can.

FROM SOPHOCLES.

'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds, And your ungodly deeds find me the words.

FROM SENECA.

THERE can be slain

No sacrifice to God more acceptable,
Than an unjust and wicked king.

BLESS'D is the man who hath not walk'd astray
In counsel of the wicked, and in the way
Of sinners hath not stood and in the seat
Of scorners hath not sat. But in the great
Jehovah's law is ever his delight,

And in his law he studies day and night.
He shall be as a tree, which planted grows
By watery streams, and in his season knows

To yield his fruit, and his leaf shall not fall;
And what he takes in hand shall prosper all.
Not so the wicked; but as chaff which fann'd
The wind drives, so the wicked shall not stand
In judgement, or abide their trial then,
Nor sinners in the assembly of just men.
For the Lord knows the upright way of the just,
And the way of bad men to ruin must.

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WHY do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations
Muse a vain thing, the kings of the earth upstand
With power, and princes in their congregations
Lay deep their plots together through each land
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear?

Let us break off, say they, by strength of hand
Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,

Their twisted cords: He, who in heaven doth dwell,
Shall laugh; the Lord shall scoff them; then, severe,
Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell

And fierce ire trouble them; but I, saith he,
Anointed have my king (though ye rebel)

On Sion, my holy hill. A firm decree

I will declare the Lord to me hath said,
Thou art my son, I have begotten thee
This day: ask of me, and the grant is made;
As Thy possession I on thee bestow

The heathen; and as thy conquest to be sway'd,
Earth's utmost bounds, them shalt thou bring full low

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Milton's father is a

■ Metrical psalmody was much cultivated in this age of fanaticism. composer of some of the tunes in Ravenscroft's Psalms.-T. WARTON. "A literal version of the Psalms may boldly be asserted impracticable; for, if it were not, a poet so great as Milton would not, even in his earliest youth, have proved himself so very little of a formidable rival, as he has done, to Thomas Sternhold." Mason's "Essays on English Church Music," 1795, p. 177. In the last of these translations, however, as Mr. Warton observes, are some very poetical expressions.-TODD.