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Compels me to disturb your season due :
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme ".
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear".

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy' excuse:
So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud".

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill;
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both ", ere the high lawns appear'd

And build the lofty rhyme.

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A beautiful Latinism. Hor. Ep. 1. iii. 24:-"Seu condis amabile carmen." And "De Arte. Poet." v. 436:-"Si carmina condes."-NEWTON.

Todd here cites a passage from Spenser's "Ruines of Rome," st. 25. I see little similitude.

e Melodious tear.

For song, or plaintive elegiac strain, the cause of tears.-HURD.

t Coy.

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The epithet "coy" is at present restrained to person: anciently it was more generally combined. Our author has the same use and sense of "coy" in the Apology for Smectymnuus:'-"Thus lie at the mercy of a coy flurting style, to be girded with frumps and curtall gibes," &c.-T. WARTON.

My sable shroud.

Mr. Dunster has little doubt that Milton here means the "dark grave;" shroud being the Miltonic word for recess, harbour, hiding-place; yet he has overlooked the passages in Sylvester. hich occasioned, in my opinion, the introduction of "sable shroud" into Milton's Vonody. And first, Sylvester, uses the precise expression, though with a different mea g, in his "Bethulian's Rescue," lib. iv. p. 991, edit. 1621 :-—

Still therefore, cover'd with a sable shroud,
Hath she kept home, as to all sorrow vow'd.

But in Sylvester's nslation of "Du Bartas," ed. supr. p. 114, we find:

O happy pair! upon your sable toomb

May mel and manna ever showering come.

And what farter confirms me in the application of tomb or grave to Milton's text is a passage from a funeral Elegy of Sylvester, edit. supr. p. 1171:—

From my sad cradle to my sable chest,

Poore pilgrim I did finde few months of rest.-TODD.

I cannot think that, applied to Lycidas, "shroud" means tomb, as Todd supposes, because Sylvester so used it in reference to a different case.

h Together both, &c.

From the regularity of his pursuits, the purity of his pleasures, his temperance, and general simplicity of life, Milton habitually became an early riser hence he gained an acquaintance with the beauties of the morning, which he so frequently contemplated with delight, and has therefore so repeatedly described in all their various appearances:

Under the opening eyelids of the morn',

We drove afield; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn*,

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star, that rose at evening bright,

Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel TM.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damotas loved to hear our song.

But, O, the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!

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and this is a subject which he delineates with the lively pencil of a lover. In the 'Apology for Smectymnuus,' he declares, "Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring in winter often before the sound of any bell awakens men to labour or devotion; in summer, as oft as the bird that first rouses, or not much tardyer, to read good authors," &c. Prose Works,' i. 109. In 'L'Allegro,' one of the first delights of his cheerful man is to hear the "lark begin his flight." His lovely landscape of Eden always wears its most attractive charms at sun-rising, and seems most delicious to our first parents "at that season prime for sweetest scents and airs." In the present instance, he more particularly alludes to the stated early hours of a collegiate life, which he shared "on the self-same hill," with his friend Lycidas at Cambridge.-T. WARTON. This is a beautiful note of T. Warton, characteristic of that amiable critic and poet, and such as few others, if any, could have written.

Under the opening eyelids of the morn.

Perhaps from Thomas Middleton's "Game at Chesse," an old forgotten play, published about the end of the reign of James I., 1625:

Like a pearl

Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn

Upon the bashful rose.-T. WARTON.

The "eyelids of the morning" is a phrase of sublime origin. See Job iii. 9:"Neither let it see the dawning of the day," or, as in the margin, "the eyelids of the morning." See also chap. xli. 18. And Sophocles, "Antigone," v. 103.-Todd.

We drove afield.

That is, "we drove our flocks afield.” I mention this, that Gray's echo of the passage in the "Church-yard Elegy," yet with another meaning, may not mislead many careless readers:-"How jocund did they drive their team afield!"-T. WARTON, Gray seems to have had every expression of Milton by heart.

Her sultry horn.

"We continued together till noon," &c. The gray-fly is called by the naturalists the gray-fly, or trumpet-fly; and "sultry horn" is the sharp hum of this insect at noon, or the hottest part of the day. But by some this has been thought the chaffer, which begins its flight in the evening.-T. WARTON.

1 Battening our flocks.

To "batten" is both neutral and active, to grow or to make fat. The neutral is most common. Shakspeare's "Hamlet," a. iii. s. 4:—

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this moor?-T. WARTON.

His westering wheel.

Drawing toward the west. So in Chaucer's "Troil and Creseide," b. ii. 905

The sonne

Gan westring fast and dounward for to wrie.-NEWTON.

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Thee, shepherd, thee, the woods, and desert caves",
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn:

The willows, and the hazel copses green,

Shall now no more be seen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose",

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, .
When first the white-thorn blows;-

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous druids, lie;
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high ';

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream *.
Ay me! I fondly dream!

"Thee, shepherd, thee, the woods, and desert caves, &c.

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The passage most similar, in all its circumstances, to the present, is, in the opinion of Mr. Dunster, the lamentation for Orpheus in Ovid, Met. xi. 43:

Te mostæ volucres, Orpheu; te turba ferarum,

Te rigidi silices, tua carmina sæpe secutæ

Fleverunt sylvæ; positis te frondibus arbos.-TODD.
The gadding vine.

Dr. Warburton supposes, that the vine is here called "gadding," because, being married to the elm, like other wives she is fond of gadding abroad, and seeking a new associate. Tully, in a beautiful description of the growth of the vine, says, that it spreads itself abroad, "multiplici lapsu et erratico." "De Senectute."-T. WARTON.

PAs killing as the canker to the rose.

The whole context of words in this and the four following lines is melodious and enchanting. a Where were ye, &c.

This burst is as magnificent as it is affecting.

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high.

In Drayton's "Polyolbion," Mona is introduced reciting her own history; where she mentions her thick and dark groves as the favourite residence of the Druids. For the Druid-sepulchres, in the preceding line, at Kerig y Druidion, in the mountains of Denbighshire, he consulted Camden's “Britannia."-T. WARTON,

* Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream.

In Spenser, the river Dee is the haunt of magicians. Merlin used to visit old Timon, in a green valley under the foot of the mountain Rauranvaur in Merionethshire, from which this river springs. "Faerie Queene," 1. ix. 4. The Dee has been made the scene of a variety of ancient British traditions. The city of Chester was called by the Britons the "fortress upon Dee;" which was feigned to have been founded by the giant Leon, and to have been the place of King Arthur's magnificent coronation: but there is another and perhaps a better reason, why Deva's is a "wisard" stream. In Drayton, this river is styled the "hallowed," and the "holy," and the "ominous flood.' In our author's Vacation Exercise,' Dee is characterised "ancient hallow'd Dee," v. 91. Much superstition was founded on the circumstance of its being the ancient boundary between England and Wales: and Drayton, in his Tenth Song, having recited this part of its history, adds, that by changing its fords, it foretold good or evil, war or peace, dearth or plenty, to either country. He then introduces the Dee, over which King Edgar had been rowed by eight kings, relating the story of Brutus. Milton appears to have taken a particular pleasure in mentioning this venerable river. In the beginning of his first Elegy, he almost goes out of his way to specify his friend's

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