"And melancholy, silent maid,
With leaden eye that loves the ground.”

Gray's Ode to Adversity,

At best the expression is a very unpoetical one, and hardly worth borrowing. In Milton it is still worse, from its contrast with the foregoing image of forgetting herself to marble.

Milton describes Sabrina with amber-dropping hair, Comus, 863. We find the same attribute given to the daughters of Sabrina in Withers's Epithalamia, edit. 1622. Locks of amber are given to the Sun in Sylvester's Du Bartas, p. 140.

"Where's Sabrina with her daughters
That do sport about her waters;

Those that with their locks of amber
Haunt the fruitful hills of Camber?"

Milton a little further on talks of diamond rocks, 881. G. Fletcher, in his Christ's Victorie, part I. st. 61, edit. 1610. has "maine rocks of diamound." To Mr. Warton's note on Comus 837, I beg leave to add the following similar passage from Bion as 'Taxibor. Idyll. ix. 3.

66

Xeser d'aubgoon και νεκταξί, χριεν άπασαν

Ωτειλαν. Μοίραισι δ' αναλθέα φαρμακα παντα.”

"Ungebat etiam ambrosia et nectare, ungebat totum Vulnus: sed Parcis omnia remedia vana sunt."

To the note, 5 Eleg. p. 462, in which Mr. Warton observes the circumstance of Milton's composing early in the morning, I beg leave to add the following passage from Horace, B. II. Ep. 1, 1. 112.

"prius orto

Sole, vigil calamum, et chartas, et scrinia posco."

These intimations, which we discover in great writers themselves relative to their lives or their works, are always acceptable to well-directed curiosity. Milton uses a compound epithet that might have been suggested to him by Spenser.

The sun-clad power of chastity.

Comus 782,

"Sun bright honour."

Shep. Calen. October.

To Mr. Warton's excellent note on "the great vision of

the guarded mount," Lycid. 161, let me add, that Spenser had introduced this, probably for the first time, into our poetry. See Shep. Calend. July, where Morrel says,

"In evil hour thou henst in hond
Thus holy hills to blame;
For sacred unto Saints they stond,
And of them han their name.

St. Michel's Mount who does not know,
That wards the Western coast?" &c.

Compare this with the old rhymes quoted by Mr. Warton from Carew.

Milton calls the song of the nightingale love-labour'd, Par. Lost, book V. 41. Spenser has something like this when he talks of "the birds love-learned song," vol. V. p. 95, Hughes's edit. Milton says of the birds,

but feather'd soon and fledg'd

They summ'd their pens.

Drayton has this phrase:

Par. Lost, b. VII. 420.

The Muse from Cambria comes, with pinions summ'd and sound."

Poly-Olb. Song 11.

It is evident from what has been adduced by his several commentators, that Milton was not averse to borrowing hints from the popular poets of his day; and it is more than probable that many of his finest images were originally suggested by passages so much inferior from his improvement on them as to be now scarcely discernible. He must have been an attentive reader of "The Purple Island." I mention it, therefore, in order to observe, that the earliest personification of Contemplation, I know of in our poetry, is to be found there, where it is stiled,

still-musing Contemplation.

Cant. 9. st. 12.

Pope has his "ever-musing Melancholy." Milton's "cherub Contemplation" is, I believe, the next that we find. Milton describes the lark as "startling the dull night," Alleg. 42. He might, previously to his writing the passage, have been struck with a very lively description of the same subject in the above-mentioned Canto of Fletcher:

"The cheerful lark, mounting from early bed,.
With sweet salutes awakes the drowsie light.
The earth she left, and up to heaven is fled,
There chants her Maker's praises out of sight."
Stan

Browne had been beforehand with them both in one of his Pastorals:

"Here danc'd no nymph, no early-rising larke
Sung up the ploughman and his drowsie mate.'
Vol. II. Book II. Song 1. p. 28.

Compare Drayton's Description of Elysium from p. 1445 to 1448, Oldys's edit. vol. IV. with Milton, from 240 to 268, Par. Lost, book IV.

Dr. J. Warton has observed on Mr. T. Warton's edition of Milton's Minor Poems, p. 159, that our great Bard has coined many beautiful compound epithets. Among many that he instances, he mentions love-darting eyes. Milton no doubt, has enriched our language with some epithets of the kind of his own coinage; but in general he had recourse. to Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas, a very fertile storehouse for materials of this kind, and he might there probably have found love-darting, as it there occurs:

"Whoso beholds her sweet love-darting eyn."

P. 186, ed. 1641,

I will lay before the reader many epithets of much merit extracted from the before-mentioned Translator. Honeysteeped style," 64; "figure-flowing pen," 124; "soulecharm image," 124; "Heaven-tuned harp," 124; "rosecrowned Zephyrus," 123; "forest-haunting heards," 123; "opal-coloured morn," 121; ghastly-grim," applied to Death, 50; "bright-brown clouds," 127; "milde-eyd. Mercy," 141; "bane-breath'd serpent," 133; "manytowred crest," 128: but I have already enumerated more than perhaps are necessary. Peck also had been beforehand with Dr. W. on this particular in Milton; see pp. 117, 18, 19, of his Memoirs. But I think our divine Bard is under higher obligations to Sylvester than for an occasional epithet. From a very exuberant description of Sleep, his cell, attendants, &c. the following is transcribed:

"In midst of all this cave so dark and deep,
On a still-rocking couch lies blear-cy's Sleep,

Oblivion lies hard by her drowsie brother,
Who readily knowes not her selfe nor other:
Then solitary Morpheus gently rockt:

Confusedly about the silent bed

Fantastick swarms of Dreams there hovered.
Green, red, and yellow, tawny, black, and blue:
Some sacred, some profane; some false, some true;

They made no noyse, but right resemble may
Th' unnumber'd moats which in the sun do play,
When (at some cranny) with his piercing eye
He peepeth in some darker place to spy.
Thither th' Almighty (with a just intent
To plague those tyrants pride) his angels sent,
No sooner entred, but the radiant shine
Of's glistring wings, and of his glorious eyn,
As light as noon makes the darke house of night,
The gawdy swarm of dreams is put to flight, &c."

This page of Du Bartas was before Milton when he wrote as follows:

Hence vain deluding joys

Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,

As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,

Or likest hovering dreams

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

When Milton wrote,

part huge of bulk

Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gate,
Tempest the ocean: there Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

Stretch'd like a promontory, sleeps or swims,

And seems a moving land.

Il. Pens.

P. Lost, b. VII. 410.

he had the following lines of Sylvester before him:

"When on the surges I perceive from far,
Th' ork, whirl-poole whale, or huffing physeter,
Methinks I see the wand'ring isle again
(Ortygian Delos) floating on the main.

And when in combat these fell monsters cross
Me seems some tempest all the seas doth toss."

P. 40

Dr. Young has borrowed Milton's term "to tempest" (which was suggested by Du Bartas)”

"those too strong

Tumultuous rise and tempest human life."

Night 7.

Mr. Warton, in a note p. 186, vol. II. "History of English, Poetry," says, that Milton, when he mentions the swan, the cock, and the peacock, together, Par. Lost, b. VII. 438, had his eye upon a passage in Douglas, a fine old Scotch poet: but I am inclined to believe him mistaken, and rather to have had his eye on a passage in Du Bartas, who mentions, the crane, peacock, and cock, together:

the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours; and th' other, whose gay train
Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry-eyes.

MILTON.

"There the fair peacock, beautifully brave,
Proud, portly-strouting, stalking, stately-grave,
Wheeling his starry-trayn, in pomp displayes
His glorious eyes to Phoebus' golden rayes.
Close by his side stands the courageous cock,
Crest-peoples king, the peasant's trusty clock,
True morning watch, Aurora's trumpeter, &c."

SYLVESTER, p. 46. ed. 1641.

Milton had just before mentioned the crane.

1786, May and June. 1787, Dec.

C. T. O.