MISCELLANIES.

F 2

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 finews weak

Didft move my firft endeavouring tongue

to speak,

And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,
Half unpronounc'd, flide through my infant-lips,
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door, 5
Where he had mutely fat two years before:
Here I falute thee, and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small lofs it is that thence can come unto thee,
I know my tongue but little grace can do thee:

* Written 1627. It is hard to fay why they did not first appear in edition 1645. They were firft added, but misplaced, in edit. 1673. See table of Errata to that edition. WARTON. dumb Silence] So, in Il Penf. v. 55. Sylvefter has "dumb filence," Du Bart. edit.

Ver. 5.

mute Silence." 1621. p. 13.

"The

Thou need'ft not be ambitious to be firft,

Believe me I have thither pack'd the worst :
And, if it happen as I did forecast,
The daintieft dishes fhall be ferv'd up laft.
I pray thee then deny me not thy aid

For this fame fmall neglect that I have made : But hafte thee ftraight to do me once a pleafure, And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefeft treafure,

Ver. 18. And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure, Not thofe new-fangled toys, and trimming slight

Which takes our late fantasticks with delight;] This is an addrefs to his native language. And perhaps he here alludes to Lilly's Euphues, a book full of affected phrafeology, which pretended to reform or refine the English language; and whose effects, although it was published fome years before, still remained. The ladies and the courtiers were all inftructed in this new ftyle; and it was esteemed a mark of ignorance or unpolitemcfs not to understand Euphuifm. He proceeds,

"But cull thofe richest robes and gay'ft attire,

"Which decpeft fpirits, and choiceft wits defire."

From a youth of nineteen, thefe are ftriking expreffions of a confciousness of fuperiour genius, and of an ambition to rise above the level of the fashionable rhymers. At fo early an age, Milton began to conceive a contempt for the poetry in vogue; and this he feems to have retained to the laft. In the Tractate on Education, recommending to his pupils the study of good criticks, he adds, "This would make them foon perceive what defpicable creatures our common rimers and play-writers be: and fhew what religious, what glorious and magnificent ufe might be made of poetry." p. 110. edit. 1673. Milton's own writings are the moft illuftrious proof of this. For he was, as Dante fays of Homer, Infern. c. iv. 93.

"E la bella fchola

"Di quel fignor dell' altiffimo Canto." WARTON.

Not thofe new-fangled toys, and trimming flight Which takes our late fantasticks with delight;

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Nafhe, in his Strange Newes, of the intercepting certaine Letters, and a conuoy of Verfes, as they were going priuilie to victuall the Low Countries," 1592, gives us feveral fpecimens of new-fangled toys, and feems to include Gabriel Harvey, Greene, and Tarlton, as well as Lily, under the defcription of late fantafticks. Some of these toys are not a little curious; fuch as "firenized furies, Dauids fweetnes olimpique, energeticall perfuafions, &c." which laft phrafe, by the way, I recommend to the philofophers of the new fchool!-Nafhe adds, " Nor do I altogether scum off all these as the new-ingendered fome of the English &c." Again, "Euphues I readd when I was a little ape in Cambridge, and then I thought it was Ipfe ille; it may be excellent good still for ought I know, for I lookt not on it this ten yeare."

Habington, who published his Caftara in 1634, has the following phrafe :

"New toyes for a fantastique mind.”

Ver. 19. Not thofe new-fangled toys,] Dreffed anew, fantaftically decorated, newly invented. Shakspeare, Love's Lab. Loft, A. i. S. i.

"At Chriftmas I no more defire a rofe,

"Than wish a fnow in May's new-fangled fhows."

Where Theobald, instead of shows proposes abfurdly to read earth, because, says he," the flowers are not new-fangled, but the earth by their profufion and variety." By thefe shows the poet means May-games, at which a fnow would be very unwel. come, and unexpected. Somewhere in B. and Fletcher, "newfangled work" occurs where the commentators, not understand. ing what they reject, would read "new-Spangled." In our church-canons, dated 1603, Newfanglenesse is used for innovation in dress and doctrine, §. 74. See Spenfer, who explains the word. Faer. Qu. i. iv. 25.

"Full of vaine follies and new-fangleneffe."