author of the "Modest Confutation,” (whom Milton believed to have been the son of
Tu nimium felix intra tua moenia claudis
Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet.
Non tibi tot cœlo scintillant astra sereno,
Endymioneæ turba ministra deæ,
Quot tibi, conspicua formâque auróque, puellæ
Per medias radiant turba videnda vias.
Creditur huc geminis venisse invecta columbis
Alma pharetrigero milite cincta Venus;
Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis flumine valles,
Huic Paphon, et roseam posthabitura Cypron.
Ast ego, dum pueri sinit indulgentia cæci,
Monia quàm subitò linquere fausta paro;
Et vitare procul malefidæ infamia Circes
Atria, divini molyos usus ope.
Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes,
Atque iterum raucæ murmur adire schola.
Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici,
Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos,
ELEGY I. TO CHARLES DEODATI.
Ar length, my friend, the missive paper came,
Warm with your words, and living with your name;
Came from those fields, which Cestrian Deva laves,
As prone he hurries to Iërne's waves.
I joy to find my friendship thus confest,
Though regions part us, thriving in your breast:
I joy, believe me, that a distant shore
Owes me a comrade-and must soon restore.
Pleased with my native city, still I dwell
Where Thames's restless waters sink and swell.
No love of late forbidden scenes now pains,
Cam's sedgy banks, and Granta's cloister'd fanes.
I like not fields that gasp in vain for shades,-
Fields most unfriendly to the Aönian maids.
bishop Hall,) confesses that he had no certain notice of his opponent, further than what he
Ill too my soul a master's threats can bear,
And all the fretting of the pedant's war.
If this be banishment,-all cares aloof,
To live my own beneath a father's roof,
Still, let an idle world condemn or not,—
Mine be a truant's name, an exile's lot.
O had no weightier ills oppress'd the doom
Of the sad bard in Tomi's wintry gloom;
Great Homer's self had seen a rival lay,
And Maro had resign'd his victor bay:
For here the Muses lead my hours along,
And all my day is study or is song.
Then, tired, I hasten where the scene commands
The crowded theatre's applauding hands:
Whether it's fictions show, with mimic truth,
A cautious parent, or a spendthrift youth:
A lover, or a peaceful son of war;-
Or, bawling the base jargon of the bar,
Pompous, and pregnant with a ten-years' cause,-
The prating, puzzled pleader of the laws.
There oft a servant aids the doating boy
To elude his sire, and gain his promised joy:
There a new feeling oft the maiden proves;
Knows not 'tis love, but while she knows not, loves.
Or there high tragedy, in wild despair,
Lifts her red hand, and rends her streaming hair.
I look and weep:-I weep-yet look again,
And snatch from sorrow a delicious pain:
Whether the hapless youth, from love and life
Torn by strong fate, resign his virgin wife:
Or, hot from hell, the dire avenger stand,
Exerting o'er the wretch her Stygian brand:
Or heaven's dread wrath o'ertake, with tardy pace,
The crimes of Atreus in his bleeding race;
Or Creon's court atone the incestuous sire's embrace.
had gathered from the " Animadversions;" "He blunders at me for the
Nor always do I lose, 'mid walls and streets,
Spring's painted blossoms, and refreshing sweets.
Sometimes beneath my suburb grove I stray,
Where blending elms dispense a chequer'd day:
Where passing beauties often strike my sight,
Diurnal stars, that shoot a genial light.
With raptured gaze, ah! often have I hung
On forms of power to make old Saturn young:
Ah! often have I seen the radiant eye
Outblaze the gem, or Zembla's nightly sky;
The neck, more white than Pelops' ivory arm;
The nectar'd lip, with dewy rapture warm;
The front's resplendent grace; the playful hairs,
Compell'd by Love to weave his golden snares;
And the sweet power of cheek, where dimples wreath,
And tints, beyond the blush of Flora breathe.
Yield, famed Heroides! yield nymphs, who strove
With heaven's great empress for the heart of Jove!
Stoop, Persian dames! your structured foreheads low!
Ye Grecian, Dardan, Roman damsels, bow!
And thou, Tarpeian poet,* cease to boast
Thy Pompey's porch, and theatre's bright host.
Let foreign nymphs the fruitless strife forbear:
Beauty's first prize belongs to Britain's fair.
Imperial London! built by Trojan hands,
With towery head illustrious o'er the lands,
Happy-thrice happy!-what the sun beholds
Of female charms, thy favour'd wall infolds.
Not more the stars, whose beams illume thy night,
(Gay homagers of Luna's regent light,)
Than lovely maids, of faultless form and face,
Who o'er thy crowded paths diffuse a golden grace,
Apol. for Smectymnuus, P.W. v. i. 213.
rest, and flings out stray 'crimes at a venture, which he could never, though he be a serpent, suck from any thing that I have written."
Notwithstanding this strong assertion, the hostility of the present generation has again brought the evidence of Milton to convict Milton, and to establish the charges of his calumniator. In opposition to this pretended evidence stand the register of our author's college, and his own positive assertions. By the first of these we are satisfied that Milton lost no term, having been entered in 1624-5, and having taken his bachelor's degree in 1628; and by the latter we are assured, that he was not only exempted from punishment at the University,
Hither, 'tis thought, came wafted by her doves,
With all her smiles and war, the Queen of loves:
For this her Gnidos, Paphos, Ida scorn'd,
And Cyprus, with her rosy blush adorn'd.
But I, ere yet her sovereign power enthralls,
Prepare to fly these fascinating walls:
To shun with moly's aid, divine and chaste,
The courts hy Circe's faithless sway disgraced;
And, (fix'd my visit to Cam's rushy pools,)
To bear once more the murmur of the schools.
But thou accept, to cheat the present time,
My pledge of love, these lines constrain'd to rhyme.
From the "Animadversions" no suspicion of a charge against
their writer could by any process be extracted.
but, in that seat of learning, was an object of affection and respect. The passage, which I shall cite as worthy of the reader's attention, is in the "Apology for Smectymnuus." After mentioning the charge which we have already noticed, our author proceeds:— "For which commodious lie, that he may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him; for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect, which I found above any of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent some years: who at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay: as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me. Which, being likewise propense to all such as were for their studious and civil life worthy of esteem, I could not wrong their judgments and upright intentions so much as to think I had that regard from them, for other cause than that I might be still encouraged to proceed in
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