UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. YE flaming Powers, and winged Warriours bright, 5 Ver. 1. Ye flaming Powers, and winged Warriours bright,] Mr. Warton refers to Par. Lost, B. ix. 156. Again, to B. xi. 101. And to B. iv, 576, of the angel Gabriel. "To whom the winged warriour thus return'd." The winged warriours, I may add, are literally from Tasso, Gier. Lib. c. ix. st. 60. of the angel Michael: Ver. 7. Your fiery essence can distil no tear, Burn in your sighs,] Milton is puzzled how to reconcile the transcendent essence of angels with the infirmities of men. In Paradise Lost, having made the angel Gabriel share in a repast of fruit with Adam, he finds himself under a necessity of getting rid of an obvious objection, that material food does not belong to intellectual or ethereal substances: and to avoid certain circumstances, humiliating and disgraceful to the dignity of the angelick nature, the natural consequences of concoction and digestion, he forms a new theory of transpiration, suggested by the wonderful transmutations of chemistry. In the present instance, he wishes to make angels weep. But, being of the essence of fire, Burn in your sighs, and borrow Seas wept from our deep sorrow: He, who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere Enter'd the world, now bleeds to give us ease; 10 they cannot produce water. At length he recollects, that fire may produce burning sighs. It is debated in Thomas Aquinas whether Angels have not, or may not have, beards. T. WARTON. Ver. 8. Burn in your sighs, and borrow Seas wept from our deep sorrow:] Mr. Dunster here refers to Sylvester's Elegy on the Death of Mr. H. Parvis, Posthum. Poems, edit. 1636. "But where alas sad phrases shall I borrow "To shew his country's sighs for his decease; I think the following passage in Crashaw's Hymn on the Name of May it be no wrong, "Blest Heavens! to you, and your superiour song, "A while dare borrow "The name of your delights," &c. TODD. Ver. 10. He, who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere Enter'd the world,] Great pomps and processions are proclaimed or preceded by heralds. It is the same idea in Par. Lost, B. i. 752. "Meanwhile the winged heralds by command "Of sovran power with awful ceremony, "And trumpets' sound, throughout the host proclaim See also B. ii. 516, &c. Or heraldry may mean retinue, train, the procession itself. What he otherwise calls pomp. See Par. Lost, B. viii. 564. "While the bright pomp ascended jubilant." T. WARTON. By Heaven's heraldry the poet seems to allude to G. Markham's Gentleman's Academie, 1595, where, in the Book of Armorie, the Alas, how soon our sin Sore doth begin His infancy to seize ! O more exceeding love, or law more just ? Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above 15 20 Angels are thus noticed: "I will therefore with heauen beginne, where were in the beginning nine orders of Angels, and now are resident but nine in the knowledge of coat armors, crowned full high with pretious stones," &c. p. 43. Again, "This law of armes was grounded vppon the nine orders of Angels in heauen,” ibid. p. 44. Davies, in his Scourge of Folly, 1611, uses the phrase," heralds of heaven." p. 38. TODD. Ver. 15. O more exceeding love, or law more just? Ecl. viii. 49. Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!] Virgil, "Crudelis mater magis, an puer improbus ille ? 66 Improbus ille puer; crudelis tu quoque mater." Ver. 17. B. ix. 919. RICHARDSON. remediless,] So, in Par. Lost, Submitting to what seem'd remediless." T. WARTON. Again, in Sams. Agon. v. 648. "Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless." Again, in his Prose-W. vol. i. p. 349. "A remediless violation to matrimony;" and p. 411, a remediless thraldom." 66 TODD. Ver. 20. Emptied his glory,] An expression taken from Philipp. ii. 7, but not as in our translation, "He made himself of no reputation,” but, as it is in the original ἑαυτὸν ΕΚΕΝΩΣΕ, "He emptied himself." NEWTON. Compare Par. Lost, B. iii. 239, where Christ says to the Father, "I this glory next to thee freely put off." TODD. And that great covenant which we still transgress Entirely satisfied; And the full wrath beside Of vengeful justice bore for our excess; And seals obedience first, with wounding smart, Huge pangs and strong Will pierce more near his heart *. Ver. 24. for our excess ;] He has used the word in the same sense, Par. Lost, B. xi. 111. "Bewailing their excess." But I think with greater propriety there than here. NEWTON. *It is hard to say, why these three Odes, on the three grand incidents or events of the life of Christ, were not at first printed together. I believe they were all written about the year 1629. T. WARTON. ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT, DYING OF A COUGH*. I. O FAIREST flower, no sooner blown but blasted, Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst out-lasted That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss, 5 * Written in 1625, and first inserted in edition 1673. He was now seventeen. T. WARTON. Ver. 1. O fairest flower, &c.] Compare Shakspeare's Passionate Pilgrim : "Sweet Rose, fair flower, untimely pluckt, soon vaded, "Pluckt in the bud, and vaded in the spring! "Bright orient pearle, alack, too timely shaded! "Faire creature, kild too soone by Death's sharpe sting!" Sir John Beaumont, in verses on the death of his son, employs similar imagery, Poems 1629. p. 165. "Can I, who have for others oft compil'd "The songs of death, forget my sweetest child, "Which, like a flower crush'd with a blast, is dead, "And ere full time hangs down his smiling head?" TODD. Ver. 5. For he, being amorous on that lovely dye] In Romeo and Juliet, Affliction, and Death, turn paramours. T. WARTON. In a copy of verses on the death of Sir James Pemberton, who died in 1613,"Vertue, and Death, are both enamoured on worthy Pemberton." See Maitland's Hist of London, ii. 1112. TODD. Ver. 6. That did thy cheek envermeil,] "Cheeks vermilion," is a phrase in Sylvester, Du Bart. ed. 1621, p. 301. But Milton |