Ah! miser ille tuo quantò feliciùs ævo Aurea maternæ fila movere lyræ! Whatsoever grounds there were for censure in regard to this amour, says an ingenious biographer of Tasso; "the Princess Leonora's case in this conjuncture," he adds, "was highly to be pitied. "Twere barbarous not to employ her interest in his favour and to find him always used the worse for it, was a wretched dilemma to which unfortunate lovers are often reduced." Then he relates, (what may serve as an illustration of the context before us,) that "Tasso had from a child a spice of madness in his constitution; as those of excessive, or, as they have been called, of immoderate parts usually have.—The loss of the duke's favour, a gloomy apartment in the prigione di santa Anna, and a tedious solitude coinciding with his temperament, got the better of that understanding which had been the admiration of mankind," &c. Layng's Life of Tasso, 4to. 1748. pp. 71-74, Prefixed also to Doyne's Translation of Tasso's Gier. Lib. 1761. TODD. Ver. 6. Aurea maternæ fila movere lyræ !] Compare Buchanan, Eleg. vii. edit. supr. p. 44. "Aureáque Orphex fila fuisse lyra." TODD. Ver. 7. For the story of Pentheus, a king of Thebes, see Euripides's Baccha, where he sees two suns, &c. v. 916. Theocritus, Idyll. xxi. Virgil, Æn. iv. 469. But Milton, in torsisset lumina, alludes to the rage of Pentheus in Ovid, Metam. iii. 557. Aspicit hunc oculis Pentheus, quos ira tremendos "Fecerat." T. WARTON. 66 VIII. Ad eandem. ? CREDULA quid liquidam Sirena, Neapoli, jactas, 5 Ver. 1, 2. Parthenope's tomb was at Naples: she was one of the Syrens. See Comus, v. 878. She is called Parthenope Acheloias, in Silius Italicus, xii. 35. Chalcidicus is elsewhere explained. See Epitaph Damon. v. 182. T. WArton. Compare also Apollonius Rhodius, one of Milton's favourite poets, Argon. iv. 892. ἔνθα λίγειαι Σειρῆνες σίνοντ' ΑΧΕΛΩΙΔΕΣ ἡδείῃσι Ver. 6. Pausilipi.] The grotto of Pausilipo Milton no doubt had visited with delight; of which Sandys had written, that it " passes vnder the mountaine for the space of sixe hundred paces, some say a mile; affoording a delightfull passage to such as passe betweene Naples and Putzol, or that part of Italy; receiuing so much light from the ends and tunnell in the middle, which letteth in day from the toppe of the high mountaine, as is sufficient for direction. Throughout hewne out of the living rocke: paued under foote, and being so broad that three carts with ease may passe each by other." Travels, edit. 1615, p. 263. TODD. IX. In SALMASII HUNDREDAM*. QUIS expedivit Salmasio suam Hundredam, * This Epigram is in Milton's Defensio against Salmasius; in the translation of which by Richard Washington, published in 1692, the Epigram is thus anglicised, p. 187. "Who taught Salmasius, that French chattering pye, "To aim at English, and Hundreda cry? "The starving rascal, flush'd with just a hundred "English Jacobusses, Hundreda blunder'd: "An outlaw'd king's last stock.—A hundred more "Would make him pimp for the Antichristian whore ; "And in Rome's praise employ his poison'd breath, "Who threatened once to stink the pope to death." Washington's translation of the Defensio was published after his death, as we learn from the Preface: He had translated it, "partly for his own private entertainment, and partly to gratifie one or two of his friends, without any design of making it publick, and is since deceased." Toland admitted it into his edition of Milton's Prose-Works, in 1698. Dr. Birch has also reprinted it. Toland describes Mr. Washington, "of the Temple," Life of Milton, fol. ed. p. 31, where he cites both Milton's Epigram and the English version. Salmasius is here ridiculed by Milton for attempting, not very happily indeed, to turn into Latin some of our forensick phrases, as the County-Court, Hundred," &c. "Iam Anglicismis tuis magnoperè delectamur, COUNTIE COURT, THE TURN, HUNDREDA; mirâ nempè docilitate centenos Iacobæos tuos Anglicè numerare didicisti." Defens. cap. viii. The publisher of Washington's translation adds, at the end of this book, his advice to "such readers, as may perhaps receive impressions from what they may read here, [in the Defensio,] injurious to the memory of king Charles the first, to consult" those books of which he gives a list: in which " they will find vindications of his sacred majesty from such-like aspersions." Magister artis venter, et Jacobæi Centum, exulantis viscera marsupii regis. Ipse, Antichristi qui modò primatum Papæ Cantabit ultrò Cardinalitium melos. 5 Ver. 4. King Charles the Second, now in exile, and sheltered in Holland, gave Salmasius, who was a professor at Leyden, one hundred Jacobuses to write his Defence, 1649. Wood asserts that Salmasius had no reward for his book. He says, that at Leyden, the King sent doctor Morley, afterwards bishop, to the apologist, with his thanks, "but not with a purse of gold, as John Milton the impudent lyer reported," Athen. Oxon. ii. 770. T. WARTON. 66 Ver. 6. This topick of ridicule, drawn from the poverty of the exiled king, is severely reprobated by doctor Johnson, as what might be expected from the savageness of Milton." Life of Addison. Oldmixon, he adds, had meanness enough to delight in bilking an alderman of London, who had more money than the Pretender. T. WARTON. Ver. 8. This Epigram, as Mr. Warton observes, is an imitation of part of the Prologue to Persius's Satires. "Quis expedivit psittaco suum xaïpɛ, 66 66 Picásque docuit nostra verba conari? Magister artis, ingenîque largitor "Venter, negatas artifex sequi voces. "Cantare credas Pegaseium melos." There is an imitation of this Prologue, I may add, in the Utopia, seu Sales Musici Jac. Bidermani, &c. 12mo. 1640. lib. i. pp. 28, 29. TODD. X. In SALMASIUM *. GAUDETE Scombri, et quicquid est piscium salo, 5 * This is in the Defensio secunda. It is introduced with the following ridicule on Morus, the subject of the next Epigram, for having predicted the wonders to be worked by Salmasius's new edition, or rather reply. "Tu igitur, ut pisciculus ille anteambulo, præcurris Balænam Salmasium." Mr. Steevens observes, that this is an idea analogous to Falstaff's "Here do I walk before thee," &c. although reversed as to the imagery. T. WARTON. Ver. 7. Mr. Warton observes, that Milton here sneers at a circumstance which was true: Salmasius was really of an ancient and noble family.—I may add, that Milton seems fond of sneering at Salmasius's rank, as an 66 eques:" He was presented with the order of St. Michael, by Louis XIII. Thus Milton calls him "mancipium equestre," Defens. cap. v. Again, "O equitem ergastularium et mangonem," &c. Ib. cap. vi. TODD. Ver. 9. Cubito mungentium, a cant appellation among the Romans for Fishmongers. It was said to Horace, of his father, by way of laughing at his low birth, "Quoties ego vidi patrem tuum cubito emungentem?" Sueton. Vit. Horat. p. 525. Lips. 1748. Horace's father was a seller of fish. The joke is, that the sheets of Salmasius's new book would be fit for nothing |