Si sit hoc 16 exilium patrios adiisse penates Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi: 16 Our author seems in this place to be guilty of a false quantity, and to begin his hexameter very unwarrantably with a cretic, Terentianus Maurus accuses Virgil of the same inaccuracy in the line "Solus hic inflexit sensus," &c. affirming, with the old grammarians, that hic and hoc were formerly written with two c's, hicc, hocc, being contracted from hicce and hocce, and were always long. Vossius on the contrary asserts, that these pronouns were long only when they were written with the double c. "Ad quantitatem hujus pronominis quod attinet, producebant et hic et hoc veteres quando per duplex c scribebant hicc vel hocc, abjecto, e; corripiebant cum c simplex scripsere." Art Gram. 29. Of a short hic more than one instance may be produced: "Hic vir hic est, tibi quem promitti sæpius audis," but not one, as far as my recollection is accurate, of a short hoc. "Hōc illud, germana, fuit." "Hic labor hoc opus est." "Hōc erat, alma parens."-" Hōc erat experto frustra Varrone."-" Hōc erat in votis." My friend, Dr. Parr, however, has suggested that hoc is to be found short in the comic poets; and has referred me to two places, one in Plautus and one in Terence, where it certainly occurs with this quantity. If this authority, from poetry neither epic elegiac nor lyric, can save Milton in this instance, it will be well; and one sin against prosody will be struck from his account. Salmasius, in his abusive reply to " The Defense of the People of England," charges our author's Latin verse with many of these violations of quantity, and the accusation is repeated, as I shall remark in the proper place, by N. Heinsius. Though Milton's Latin metre be not proof against rigorous inquisition, yet are its offenses against quantity very few-not more, perhaps, (if the scazons, addressed to Salsilli, which seem to be constructed on a false principle, and some of the lines in the ode to Rouse, which appear to have been formed in defiance of every principle, be thrown out of the question) than four or, at the most, five, of a nature not to be disputed. Of these I shall notice two in the Damon, one of them evidently a slip of the pen, as in a former instance he had observed the right quantity, and the other an unwarrantable licence rather than a fault of this specific description. In the Ideá Platonicâ, he is guilty of shortening the second syllable of, sempiternus, which beyond all controversy is long; and in his poem to his Father he makes the last syllable of ego long, when it is unquestionably short; though here perhaps he might be justified in lengthening it, as the ictus of the verse falls on it. Of Academia, in the second Elegy, he shortens the penult in opposition to the uniform practice of the Greeks, and not sanctioned by any authorities, though countenanced, as Dr. Parr has acutely discriminated, by some examples among the Latins; and lastly, in the Alcaic ode on the death of Dr. Goslyn, he has left the interjective O open, in a situation in which it is never found open in the Roman classics. When, contrary to the usage of Virgil, Horace, &c. he lengthens the first syllable of Britonicum, in the Damon, he is supported by the authority of Lucretius, vi. 1104. "Nam quid Britannis cœlum differre putamus;" and when he makes the final syllable of temere short in-" Quid temere violas non nocenda numina," he is justified not only by analogy but by the sole authority which can be produced on the occasion (and as such to be admitted), the authority of Seneca, who in two places uses it as short-" Sic temere jacta colla perfundant comæ." Hippo. 392. Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemque recuso; Lætus et exilii conditione fruor. "Pondusque et artus temere congestos date." Id.—1244. For these instances I am indebted to Dr. Parr. By Gray this syllable of temere is improperly made long-Hospiti ramis temere jacentem. I have omitted to state that in the iambics on the death of Felton, Bishop of Ely, Neobŏlen is substituted without authority for Neobulen. This I believe to be an accurate and full statement of Milton's real and imputed transgressions of Latin prosody in all its just severity; and this will vindicate me for saying that his offenses of this description are few, and not sufficient to support in its full extent the charge which has been brought against him. I am aware however, though the circumstance was not in the contemplation either of Salmasius or of Heinsius, that Milton has frequently sinned against the celebrated metrical canon (advanced by Dawes, and acknowledged by the chief scholars of the present age), which determines that in Latin prosody a short vowel is necessarily lengthened by the immediate sequence, though in a distinct: word, of sc, sp, and st. But, though I must thus dissent from the opinion of Dr. Parr, from which it is impossible to dissent without a feeling of trembling diffidence, I cannot profess myself to be certain of the authenticity of a law which has not been invariably observed by the greatest masters of Roman numbers in the purest age of Roman taste-of a law, in short, which has been broken by Catullus, by Horace, by Virgil, by Ovid, and by Propertius. To get rid of an infraction of this rule by Virgil, its supporters are reduced to the violent expedient of erasing the offending line without the authority of a single MS. and when Horace, with his fine judgment and nice ear, is guilty, as he frequently is, of this imputed crime, the circumstance is attributed to the laxity of the numbers, the "carmina sermoni propriora,” which he professes to employ. Well-be it so: but what is to be said of the following instances, which have not been hitherto produced, of a neglect of this rule by other writers of the golden age of Roman poetry, and particularly by the learned Propertius; in whom more instances of a similar nature are to be found? "Testis erit magnis virtutibus unda Scamandri." CATUL. "Consuluitque stryges nostro de sanguine, et in me." Id. Tuque O Minoâ venundata Scylla figurâ." GALLI Eleg. If this last instance, as brought from a work the authenticity of which has been suspected by Broukhusius and others, should be thrown out of the question, examples enough have been adduced (and their number might easily be increased), to vindicate Milton when, with many of the first-rate scholars of the age just past, he disregards a rule of prosody which, whatever may be advanced in its support by the great scholars of our own times, must be considered as possessing at the most only doubtful authority. Though Homer (if he may be allowed to have written his Ilias or to have known the orthography of one of the rivers of the Troad) has frequently transgressed this rule, it was very generally observed by the Greek poets: and by the poets of what has been called the silver age of Roman composition, it has not, as far I can discover, been ever violated. It would seem that to a Grecian or a Roman ear the immediate sequence of the strong consonants in question suspended the voice on the preceding short vowel; but Extinct my love of mansions late denied, On 17 this passage, which, probably, would not have been published if it had referred to any not in that degree as to make inattention to its effect an unpardonable offense against the harmony of the verse. I have occasionally hinted that Milton's Latin prose composition is not altogether faultless: but its faults are few and trivial; and to dwell on them would expend time for an insufficient object. On his Greek composition, of which the errors are more numerous and perhaps of greater magnitude, I have purposely forborne to offer any remarks, as that accomplished scholar and very acnte critic, the late Reverend Doctor Charles Burney, has completely exhausted the subject. When the almost infinite niceties of the Greek language are considered, and it is recollected that the great Sir William Jones, and even Dawes (the most accurate Grecian perhaps whom this island, till the present day, has ever produced) have not in every instance been able to observe them, the lapses in Milton's Greek composition will possibly be regarded as venial, and not to be admitted in diminution of the fame of his Greek erudition. 17 It may be proper to give a literal translation of these lines, that the English reader may form his own judgment on the extent of their testimony. "Now neither am I anxious to revisit reedy Cam, nor does the love of my lately forbidden college give me uneasiness. Fields naked and destitute of soft shades do not please me. How ill suited to the worshippers of Phoebus is such a place! Neither do I like always to bear the threats of a hard master, and other things which are not to be submitted to by a mind and temper like mine. If it be banishment to return to a father's house, and there, exempt from cares, to possess delightful leisure, I will not refuse even the name and the lot of a fugitive, but exultingly enjoy the condition of an exile." As it may amuse some of my readers to see the entire elegy, I will transcribe it in its complete state, with a translation very inferior to the merits of the original. ELEG. I. AD CAROLUM DEODATUM. transactions dishonorable to the writer, is rested the whole support of the accusation preferred Quodque mihi lepidum tellus longinqua sodalem O, utinam vates nunquam graviora tulisset, Non tunc Ionio quicquam cessisset Homero; Detonat inculto barbara verba foro. Sæpe novos illic virgo mirata calores Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit, amat. Et dolet, et specto, juvat et spectâsse dolendo, Gaudia, et abrupto flendus amore cadit: Seu moret Pelopeia domus, seu nobilis Ilî, Sed neque sub tecto semper, nec in urbe latemus; Nos quoque lucus habet vicinâ consitus ulmo, against our author's college life, from his own to the present times. The author of the "Modest Collaque bis vivi Pelopis quæ brachia vincant, Et quæcunque vagum cepit amica Jovem. Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniamque Ninon. Tu nimium felix intra tua moenia claudis Quot tibi, conspicuæ formâque auroque, puellæ Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes; Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos. ELEGY I. TO CHARLES DEODATI. Ar length, my friend, the missive paper came, My heart exults that lands remote, in you, |