"But harke, I heare the Cynicke Satyre crie, “A man, a man, a kingdome for a man. "Why; was there not a man to ferue his eye? "No; all were turn'd to beafts that headlong ran." To return to L' Allegro and Penferofo: The date of these poems has not been ascertained, But Mr. Hayley has obferved," It feems probable, that these two enchanting pictures of rural life, and of the diverfified delights arifing from a contemplative mind, were compofed at Horton;" to which place Milton went to refide with his father in 1632, and where he continued at least five years. TeрD, Topp, L'ALLEGRO *. HENCE, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, These are Airs," that take the prison'd soul, and lap it in Elyfium." HURD. Ver. 1. Hence, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,] Erebus, not Cerberus, was the legitimate husband of Night. Milton was too univerfal a fcholar to be unacquainted with this mythology. In his Prolufions, or declamatory Preambles to philosophical questions discussed in the schools at Cambridge, he says, “ Cæte- ▸ rum nec defunt qui Æthera et Diem itidem Erebo Noctem peperiffe tradunt." Profe-Works, vol. ii. 585. Again, in the Latin Ode on the Death of Felton bishop of Ely, v. 31. "Non eft, ut arbitraris elufus mifer, "Mors atra Noctis filia, "Erebove patre creta See alfo In Quintum Novembris, v. 69. But as Melancholy is here the creature of Milton's imagination, he had a right to give her what parentage he pleafed, and to marry Night, the natural mother of Melancholy, to any ideal husband that would beft ferve to heighten the allegory. See Obfervat. on Spenser's Faer. Qu. i. 73. I have formerly remarked, that in this exordium Milton had an eye on fome elegant lines of Marston, Scourge of Villanie, B. iii. S. 10. edit. 1598. "Sleepe, grim Reproof! My iocund Mufe doth fing In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongft horrid shapes, and shrieks, and fights unholy! Find out fome uncouth cell, 5 Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven fings; There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian defart ever dwell. Ver. 4. 10 unholy!] Abominable, execrable. Thus, in the epitaph fubjoined to an ancient poem, entitled The Earle of Devonshire deceased: "But euermore he tam'd the pride of folly, "And caftigated drifts of flaues unholy." TODD. Ver. 5. uncouth cell,] Such is the magician's refidence in The Valiunt Welshman, 1615, A. iv. S. vi. "thus farre haue my weary steps "Search❜t out the uncouth cell of thy abode." TODD. Ver. 6. -jealous] Alluding to the watch WARBURTON. which fowl keep when they are fitting. Ver. 8. ebon Shades,] Pistol fays, at the conclufion of K. Hen. IV. P. ii. “Rouze up revenge from ebon den." Sandys, in his Christ's Paffion, adopts Milton's whole expreffion: "From th' Ifthmos, crown'd with ebon fhade," edit. 1640. p. 23. TODD. "The ragged] In Titus Andron. A. ii. S. iv. Ver. 9. ragged entrails of this pit." old writers, applied to rock. So, in the Tragedy of Locrine, Shakspeare's Works, 4th edit. 1685, p. 288. "A country full of hills and ragged rocks." And the phrafe is alfo in our translation of the Bible, Isaiah ii. 19. "The tops of the ragged rocks." TODD. Ver. 10. In dark Cimmerian defart ever dwell.] It should But come, thou Goddess fair and free, be remembered, that Cimmeria tenebræ were anciently proverbial. "O gyant-like Ambition, married to In Spenfer's Teares of the Mufes, we have " Darknesse more than Cymmerians' daily night." And in his Virgil's Gnat, a Cimmerian defart is described, ver. 369, &c. But our author might perhaps have had an immediate allufion to the cave of sleep in Ovid, Met. xi. 592. "Eft prope Cimmerios longo fpelunca receffu, And, in Or from Homer, whom Ovid copies, Ody. xi. 14. Ovid's uncouth cell, there is perpetual darkness; and, Sleep reposes on an ebon couch, here turned to ebon fhades. Dreams inhabit Ovid's cave, "Somnia vana," who in L'Allegro are of the fickle train of Morpheus, or Sleep. See alfo Statius, Theb. x. 84. And Chaucer, H. Fame, v. 70, p. 458. Urr. And to all or most of thefe authors Sylvefter has been indebted in his prolix defcription of the cave of Sleep. Du Bart. p. 316. edit. fol. 1621. And in that description we trace Milton, both here, and in the opening of Il Penjerofo, where fee the Note at v. 5. Mr. Bowle remarks, that this line of the text bears a near refemblance to a paffage in Sydney's Arcadia, B. iii. p. 407. edit. 1725. "Let Cimmerian darkness be my only habitation." The execration in the text is a tranflation of a paffage in one of his own academick Prolufions, Dignus qui Cimmeriis occlufus tenebris longam et perofam vitam tranfigat." Pr. W. vol. ii. 587. T. WARTON. 66 Ver. 11. But come, thou Goddefs fair and free,] Compare Drayton, Ecl. iv. vol. iv. p. 1401. "A daughter cleped Dowfabell, |