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VI.

Giovane piano, e simplicette amante

Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,
Madonna a voi del mio cuor l'humil dono
Faro divoto; io certo a prove tante,
L'hebbi, fedele, intrepido, costante,

De pensieri leggïadro, accorto, e buono ;

Quando rugge il gran mondo,e scocca il tuono,
S'arma di se, e d'intero diamante:

Tanto del forse, e d'invidia securo,

Di timori, e speranza, al popol use,
Quanto d'ingegno, e d'alto valor vago,
E di cetra sonora, e delle muse:
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro,
Ove amor mise l'insanabil ago.

Lady, to you a youth unknown to art,

(Who fondly from himself in thought would fly,)
Devotes the faith, truth, spirit, constancy,

And firm yet feeling temper of his heart;

Proved strong by trials for life's arduous part:

When shakes the world, and thunders roll on high,
All adamant, it dares the storm defy,

Erect, unconscious of the guilty start:

Not more above fear, envy, low desire,

And all the tyrants of the vulgar breast,

Than prone to hail the heaven-resounding lyre, High worth, and Genius of the Muse possest: Unshaken and entire,-and only found

Not proof against the shaft when love directs the wound.

An eye, like Milton's, created for the enjoyment of beauty in all her shapes, and an imagination, which was ever solicitously vagrant for gratification, even in the regions of Arabian fiction and of Gothic romance,

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wealth, high rank and eminent character,
deriving his principal renown from the friend-
ship of the illustrious Tasso; of whom he had
been the cherisher when living, and the bio-
grapher when dead. He now opened his
arms to Milton, and received, with kindness,
a poet yet superior to his immortal friend.
The attentions, which he paid to the English
traveller were of the most flattering nature,
not only conducting him through the vice-
roy's palace, and to a sight of all that was
worthy to be shown in the city, but honour-
ing him also with some familiar and friendly
visits. The imprudent freedom, with which
our zealous protestant, unmindful of his
friend Wotton's counsel, had discovered his
sentiments on the subject of religion, was
the only circumstance, which deprived him
of a still more free and intimate communi-
cation with this elegant Mæcenas of modern
Italy. This was intimated to Milton, on his
departure from Naples, by Manso himself,
who with all his kindnesses on this occasion
had not satisfied the liberality of his own
mind, and who was desirous of explaining
the cause of the imaginary deficiency. He
had, indeed, pointed to this offence of reli-
gion in a latin distich, with which he had
presented his new guest, and which is cer-

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tainly more remarkable for the height of its praise, than for the goodness of its verse, or the justness and the originality of its thought. Generally known as it is, it shall be given to our readers, with an apology for the attempted translation of a pun.

Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic,
Non Anglus verùm herclè Angelus ipse fores.

With mind, mien, temper, face did faith agree,
No ANGLE but an ANGEL wouldst thou be.

It has been remarked, and not without malignity, that the complimentary offerings of the Italian wits to our illustrious traveller, are not distinguishable for their merit as compositions. We will not dispute the truth of this observation; or affect to discover much beauty in the latin prose of Dati; or, though this be rather of a higher order, in the Italian verse of Francini. We will even allow that as the praise grows, the poetry dwindles; and that in this last distich, in which the climax of compliment is complete, the Manso of Naples is inferior to the Salsilli, and the Selvaggi of Rome. But the intrinsic or the

The conceit, such as it is, is borrowed from Gregory the Archdeacon, and afterwards Pope, in the sixth century.

Quà potes, atque avidas Parcarum eludere leges.
Amborum genus, et variâ sub sorte peractam
Describis vitam, moresque, et dona Minervæ ;*
Emulus illius, Mycalen qui natus ad altam
Rettulit Æolii vitam facundus Homeri.
Ergo ego te, Cliûs et magni nomine Phœbi,
Manse pater, jubeo longum salvere per ævum,
Missus Hyperboreo juvenis peregrinus ab axe.
Nec tu longinquam bonus aspernabere Musam,
Quæ, nuper gelidâ vix enutrita sub arcto,
Imprudens Italas ausa est volitare per urbes.
Nos etiam in nostro modulantes flumine cygnos
Credimus obscuras noctis sensisse per umbras,
Quà Thamesis late puris argenteus urnis
Oceani glaucos perfundit gurgite crines:
Quin et in has quondam pervenit Tityrus oras.z

Sed neque nos genus incultum, nec inutile Phobo,
Quà plaga septeno mundi sulcata Trione

* Manso became the biographer of his two friends Tasso and Marino.

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▾ Mr. Warton is peculiarly unfortunate in his note on this passage. Not a word in the two lines of Milton is applicable to Plutarch, and every word is applicable to Herodotus. For the former no epithet can be conceived as more unhappily selected than facundus:' to the latter it is admirably appropriate. Of the two lives of Homer, which are extant, it is more probable that the Ionic was written by Herodotus, than that the Attic was the production of Plutarch. Mycale is a mountain not in Boeotia, as Mr.W. affirms, but in Ionia near the borders of Caria, the native country of Herodotus. Ovid, whom Mr. Warton quotes on this occasion, is no evidence respecting the situation of Mycale. In the cited passage his mountains are thrown together without any other reference than to that of metre ; and Mycale succeeds to the Phrygian Dindymus :

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Dindymaque et Mycale, natusque ad sacra Citharon.

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Chaucer, who travelled into Italy, is distinguished in Spencer's pastorals by the name of Tityrus.

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2

Brumalem patitur longâ sub nocte Boöten.
Nos etiam colimus Phoebum, nos munera Phoebo
Flaventes spicas, et lutea mala canistris,

Halantémque crocum, perhibet nisi vana vetustas,
Misimus, et lectas Druidum de gente choreas.
Gens Druides antiqua, sacris operata deorum,
Heroum laudes, imitandaque gesta, canebant.
Hinc quoties festo cingunt altaria cantu,
Delo in herbosâ, Graia de more puellæ,
Carminibus lætis memorant Corinëida Loxo,a
Fatidicamque Upin, cum flavicomâ Hecaërge,
Nuda Caledonio variatas pectora fuco.

Fortunate senex, ergo, quacunque per orbem
Torquati decus, et nomen celebrabitur ingens,
Claraque perpetui succrescet fama Marini;

Tu quoque in ora frequens venies plausumque virorum,
Et parili carpes iter immortale volatu.

Dicetur tum sponte tuos habitâsse penates

Cynthius, et famulas venisse ad limina Musas.

At non sponte domum tamen idem, et regis adivit

Rura Pheretiadæ, cœlo fugitivus Apollo;

Upis, Loxo, and Hecaërge are the names of the daughters of Boreas, who offer presents to Apollo in Callimachus's hymn to Delos.

ἀπὸ ξανθων αριμασπών

Ουπις τε λοξώ τε και ευαίων εκαεξγη
Θυγατέρες βορέαο,

Υμν' εις Δηλον.

b The fable of Apollo, driven by Jupiter from heaven, and compelled to tend the flocks of Admetus king of Thessaly, is too well known to require a repetition of it. Mr. Warton has observed, before me, that Milton in this passage has imitated a beautiful chorus in the Alcestis. I wish, however, that Milton on this occasion had preserved the moderation of Euripides, and restricted to the animal creation the effects of Apollo's melodies: but perhaps no limitation of power need necessarily be prescribed to the lyre of a god.

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