Southey. I suspect you will be less an admirer of the next, on Obitum Præulis Elienses, Qui rex sacrorum illâ fuisti in insulâ Quæ nomen Anguillæ tenet, Et imprecor neci necem. Landor. I wish however that in the sixth line he had substituted illâ for eâdem; and not on account of the metre; for eadem becomes a spondee, as eodem in Virgil's "uno eodemque igni." And sibi, which ends the poem, is superfluous; where he wishes Death were dead. if there must be any word it should be ei, which the metre rejects. The Scazons against Salmasius are a miserable copy of Persius's heavy prologue to his satires; and moreover a copy at second-hand for Ménage had imitated it in his invective against Mommor, whom he calls Gargilius. He begins, Quis expedivit psittaco suo χαιρό. But Persius's and Ménage's at least are metrical, which Milton's in one instance are not. The fifth foot should be an iambic. In primatum we have a spondee. The iambics which follow, on Salmasius again, are just as faulty. They start with a false quantity, and go on stumbling with the same infirmity. The epigram on More, the defender of Salmasius, is without wit; the pun is very poor. The next piece, a fable of the Farmer and Master, is equally vapid. But now comes the "Bellipotens Virgo," of which we often have spoken, but of which no one ever spoke too highly. Christina was flighty and insane; but it suited the policy of Cromwell to flatter a queen almost as vain as Elizabeth, who could still command the veterans of Gustavus Adolphus. We will pass over the Greek verses. They are such as no boy of the sixth form would venture to show up in any of our public schools. We have only one alcaic ode in the volume, and a very bad one it is. The canons of this metre were unknown in Milton's time. But, versed as he was in mythology, he never should have written Nec puppe lustrâsses Charontis The good Doctor Goslyn was not rowed in that direction, nor could any such place be discovered from the bark of Charon, from whom Dr. Goslyn had every right, as Vice-Chancellor of the University, to expect civility and attention. Southey. We come now to a longer poem, and in heroic verse, on the Gunpowder Plot. It appears to me to be even more Ovidian than the elegies. Monstrosus Typhoeus, Mavortigena Quirinus, the Pope, and the mendicant friars, meet strangely. However, here they are, and now come Saint Peter and Bromius. Landor. Hic Dolus insortis semper sedet ater ocellis. Though ocellus is often used for oculus, being a diminutive, it is, if not always a word of endearment, yet never applicable to what is terrific or heroic. In the one hundredth and sixty-third verse the Pope is represented as declaring the Protestant religion to be the true one. Again, Sub regna furvi luctuosa Tartari Landor. He never has descended before to such a bathos as this, where he runs against the coming blackamoor in the dark. However, he recovers from the momentary stupefaction, and there follow twenty magnificent verses, such as Horace himself, who excells in this metre, never wrote in it. But the next, Naturam non pati senium, is still more admirable. I wish only he had omitted the third verse. Heu quàm perpetuis erroribus acta fatiscit Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa profundis Edipodioniam volvit sub pectore noctem. Sublime as volvit sub pectore noctem is, the lumbering and ill-composed word, Edipodioniam, spoils it. Beside, the sentence would go on very well, omitting the whole line. Gray has much less vigour and animation in the fragment of his philosophical poem. Robert Smith alone has more: how much more! Enough to rival Lucretius in his noblest passages, and to deter the most aspiring from an attempt at Latin poetry. The next is also on a philosophical subject, and entitled De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit. This is obscure. Aristoteles knew, as others do, that Plato entertained the whimsy of God working from an archetype; but he himself was too sound and solid for the admis sion of such a notion. The first five verses are highly poetical: the sixth is Cowleian. At the close he scourges Plato for playing the fool so extravagantly, and tells him either to recall the poets he has turned out of doors, or to go out himself. There are people who look up in astonishment at this archetypus gigas, frightening God while he works at him. Milton has invested him with great dignity, and slips only once into the poetical corruptions of the age. Southey. Lover as you are of Milton, how highly must you be gratified by the poem he addresses to his father! Landor. I am happy, remote as we are, to think of the pleasure so good a father must have felt on this occasion, and how clearly he must have seen in prospective the glory of his son. In the verses after the forty-second, Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant, Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant, Et quotquot fidei caluere cupidine veræ. This poem, which ends poorly, is a wonderful work for a boy of seventeen, although much less The four toward the conclusion, so than Chatterton's Bristowe Tragedy and Ella. At tibi, chare pater, &c. must have gratified the father as much almost by the harmony as the sentiment. Southey. The scazons to Salsilli are a just and equitable return for his quatrain; for they are full of false quantities, without an iota of poetry. Landor. But how gloriously he burst forth again in all his splendour for Manso; for Manso, who before had enjoyed the immortal honour of being the friend of Tasso. Diis dilecte senex! te Jupiter æquus oportet Landor. I find traces in Milton of nearly all the best Latin poets, excepting Lucretius. This is singular; for there is in both of them a generous warmth and a contemptuous severity. I admire and love Lucretius. There is about him a simple majesty, a calm and lofty scorn of everything pusillanimous and abject: and consistently with this character, his poetry is masculine, plain, concentrated, and energetic. But since invention was precluded by the subject, and glimpses of imagination could be admitted through but few and narrow apertures, it is the insanity of enthusiasm to prefer his poetical powers to those of And the remainder of the poem is highly enthu- Virgil, of Catullus, and of Ovid; in all of whom siastic. What a glorious verse is, Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub marte phalanges. Southey. I have often wondered that our poets, and Milton more especially, should be the partisans of the Britons rather than of the Saxons. I do not add the Normans; for very few of our poets are Norman by descent. The Britons seem to have been a barbarous and treacherous race, inclined to drunkenness and quarrels. Was the whole nation ever worth this noble verse of Milton? It seems to come sounding over the Ægean Sea, and not to have been modulated on the low country of the Tiber. Landor. In his pastoral on the loss of Diodati, entitled Epitaphium Damonis, there are many beautiful verses: for instance, Ovium quoque tædet, at illæ every part of what constitutes the true poet is much more largely displayed. The excellence of Lucretius is, that his ornaments are never out of place, and are always to be found wherever there is a place for them. Ovid knows not what the frequenter of auction-rooms. He is playful to do with his, and is as fond of accumulation as so out of season, that he reminds me of a young lady I saw at Sta. Maria Novella, who at one moment crossed herself, and at the next tickled her companion, by which process they were both put upon their speed at their prayers, and made very good and happy. Small as is the portion of glory which accrues to Milton from his Latin images, worth all that our island had produced poetry, there are single sentences in it, ay, single before. In all the volume of Buchanan I doubt whether you can discover a glimpse of poetry; and few sparks fly off the anvil of May. There is a confidence of better days expressed in this closing poem. Enough is to be found in his Latin to insure him a high rank and a lasting name. It is however to be regretted that late in life he ran back to the treasures of his Mærent, inque suum convertunt ora magistrum. The pause at mærent, and the word also, show the great master. In Virgil himself it is impossible to find anything more scientific. Here, as in Lycidas, mythologies are intermixed, and the heroic bursts forth from the pastoral. Apollo could not for ever be disguised as the shepherd-youth, and estimated them with the fondness of boy of Admetus. Supra caput imber et Eurus Triste sonant, fractaque agitata crepuscula sylvæ. Southey. This is finely expressed : but he found the idea not untouched before. Gray, and others have worked upon it since. It may be well to say little on the Presentation of the poems to the Bodleian Library. Strophes and antistrophes are here quite out of place; and on no occasion has any Latin poet so jumbled together the old metres. Many of these are irregular and imperfect. Ion Acteâ genitus Creusâ is not a verse: authorum is not Latin. Et tutela dabit solers Rousi is defective in metre. This Pindaric ode to Rouse the librarian, is indeed fuller of faults than any other of his Latin compositions. He tells us himself that he has admitted a spondee for the third foot in the phaleucian verse, because Catullas had done so in the second. He never wrote such bad verses, or gave such bad reasons, all his life before. But beautifully and justly has he zaid, Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet. that undiscerning age. No poet ever was sorry that he abstained from early publication. But Milton seems to have cherished his first effusions with undue partiality. Many things written later by him are unworthy of preservation, especially those which exhibit men who provoked him into bitterness. Hatred, the most vulgar of vulgarisms, could never have belonged to his natural character. He must have contracted the distemper from theologians and critics. The scholar in his days was half clown and half trooper. College-life could leave but few of its stains and incrustations on a man who had stept forward so soon into the amenities of Italy, and had conversed so familiarly with the most polished gentlemen of the most polished nation. Southey. In his attacks on Salmasius, and others more obscure, he appears to have mistaken his talent in supposing he was witty. Landor. Is there a man in the world wise enough to know whether he himself is witty or not, to the extent he aims at? I doubt whether any question needs more self-examination. It is only the fool's heart that is at rest upon it. He never asks how the matter stands, and feels con fident he has only to stoop for it. Milton's dough, to the worst, even there. Unless you sign a cerit must be acknowledged, is never the lighter tificate of their health and vigour, your windows for the bitter barm he kneads up with it. and lamps may be broken by the mischievous rabble below. Southey. The sabbath of his mind required no levities, no excursions or amusements. But he was not ill-tempered. The worst-tempered men have often the greatest and readiest store of pleasantries. Milton, on all occasions indignant and wrathful at injustice, was unwilling to repress the signification of it when it was directed against himself. However, I can hardly think he felt so much as he expresses; but he seized on bad models in his resolution to show his scholarship. Disputants, and critics in particular, followed one another with invectives; and he was thought to have given the most manifest proof of original genius who had invented a new form of reproach. I doubt if Milton was so contented with his discomfiture of Satan, or even with his creation of Eve, as with the overthrow of Salmasius under the loads of fetid brimstone he fulminated against him. It is fortunate we have been sitting quite alone while we detected the blemishes of a poet we both venerate. The malicious are always the most ready to bring forward an accusation of malice: and we should certainly have been served, before long, with a writ pushed under the door. Landor. Marauders will cook their greens and bacon, though they tear down cedar pannels for the purpose. Southey. There is an incessant chatterer, who has risen to the first dignities of state, by the same means as nearly all men rise now by; namely, opposition to whatever is done or projected by those invested with authority. He will never allow us to contemplate greatness at our leisure: he will not allow us indeed to look at it for a moment. Cæsar must be stript of his laurels and left bald; or some reeling soldier, some insolent swaggerer, some stilted ruffian, thrust before his triumph. If he fights, he does not know how to use his sword; if he speaks, he speaks vile Latin. I wonder that Cromwell fares no better; for he lived a hypocrite and he died a traitor. I should not recall to you this ridiculous man, to whom the Lords have given the run of the House.. a man pushed off his chair by every party he joins, and enjoying all the disgraces he incurs. . were it not that he has also, in the fulness of his impudence, raised his cracked voice and incondite language against Milton. Landor. Are we not somewhat like two little Landor. I hope his dapple fellow-creatures in beggar-boys, who, forgetting that they are in tat-the lanes will be less noisy and more modest as ters, sit noticing a few stains and rents in their father's raiment? Southey. But they love him. we pass along them homeward. Southey. Wretched as he is in composition, superficial as he is in all things, without a glimLet us now walk homeward. We leave behind mer of genius, or a grain of judgment, yet his us the Severn and the sea and the mountains; abilities and acquirements raise him somewhat and, if smaller things may be mentioned so sud-high above those more quiescent and unaspiring denly after greater, we leave behind us the sundial, which marks, as we have been doing in regard to Milton, the course of the great luminary by a slender line of shadow. Landor. After witnessing his glorious ascension, we are destined to lower our foreheads over the dreary hydropathy and flanelly voices of the swathed and sinewless. ones, you call his fellow-creatures. Landor. The main difference is, that they are subject to have their usual burdens laid upon them all their lives, while his of the woolsack is taken off for ever. The allusion struck me from the loudness and dissonance of his voice, the wilfulness and perverseness of his disposition, and his habitude of turning round on a sudden and Southey. Do not be over-sure that you are come | kicking up behind. QUEEN ELIZABETH, CECIL, DUKE OF ANJOU, AND DE LA MOTTE FÉNELON. Elizabeth. You are only nineteen, M. D'Anjou : I, as all the world knows, am bordering on thirty. La Motte (aside.) Thirty-nine, that is. (Pretty bordering). Elizabeth (continuing.) If in fifteen or twenty years, sooner or later, I should haply lose a part of those personal charms which, for the benefit of my people, God's providence hath so bountifully bestowed on me, and which your partial eye hath multiplied; if they should wane, and their power over your gentle heart become fainter.. die I must; die of grief; the grievousest of grief; the loss of your affection. La Motte (aside.) They have all been gone the best part of the time. Anjou. Angelic vision! I am unworthy of them; Earth may be so too. Death alone can deprive her of their radiance; but the angels can be happy without them; and mankind hath not so sinned a second time as to deserve a deluge, a universal deluge of tears for which no ark hath been provided. Elizabeth (to Cecil.) He speaks well, rationally, religiously: but, Cecil! the inches are wanting. Anjou. A few years are as unlikely to produce a change on that countenance of a seraph, as Anjou. Impossible! Such charms perish! wane! eternity is to produce it in my passion. decline in fifteen or twenty years! Elizabeth. I can not but smile at you, my sweet cousin! But surely you mock me. Do my features (which, alas! like my heart, were ever too flexible) seem to you so settled? Anjou. Not otherwise than as the stars above are settled in the firmament. Elizabeth. Believe it or not believe it, I have been more beautiful. Elizabeth. But the inches! Cecil! the inches! Anjou. I perceive your Majesty has been comparing my stature with my lord Burleigh's. I wish indeed I resembled his lordship in figure and dignity. I would gladly be half an inch taller. Elizabeth. Men never are contented. You are La Mothe (aside.) No heretic will ever be burnt between five and six feet high. for disputing the verity of that article. Anjou. More beautiful still? Elizabeth. Ay truly, two years ago. Anjou. Truth is powerful; but modesty is powerfuller. Here indeed Truth flies before her. For this uncourteous speech, thus extorted from me, on my knees do I crave your pardon, O gracious queen! O empress of my heart! Elizabeth. I increase in glory by that application. Anjou. I have always heard that the lofty of both sexes love the less in stature, and that the beautiful are partial to the plain. Elizabeth. Am I plain? false traitor! I could almost find it in my heart to beat you, for changing your tone so suddenly. Anjou. That gracious glance could heal even wounds inflicted by the rack, and turn agonies into ecstacies. I spake (alas too truly!) of myself. Whatever are the graces which the world sees in my person, I am shorter than several in the courts of France and England. Indeed I never saw so many personable men before, as I have seen about your Majesty. Elizabeth (aside.) He has caught some of his brother Henry's jealousy: maybe he hath spied at Dudley: maybe he hath heard of the admiral and the rest. Sir! my cousin! they are well enough: that is, they are well enough for grooms, and servitors about the house. Anjou. Your Majesty is now looking at those unfortunate holes and seams left all over my face by the small-pox. Elizabeth. Dimples! dimples! hiding-places of Love. La Motte! did you not assure me that there is surgeon in London who can remove them all? La Motte. And most truly. I have conversed with him myself, and have seen many whose faces he hath put into repair. You would believe that the greater part had never had a speck upon them. Elizabeth. Touch your face? would you let him? would you suffer him to alter one feature, one component of feature, in that countenance? Anjou. My mother has insisted that it might be improved. Elizabeth. My dear sister the Queen Catarina is the wisest of queens and of women. A mother 80 perspicacious might espy a defect, when another of equal perspicacity (if any such existed) could find none. (To Cecil.) What a monkey! How hideous! and how vain! worst of all! Cecil. His Highness hath much penetration. (Aside.) Eleven inches from six though. Anjou. If my highth is unobjectionable, my heart is quite at ease: for it has been certified to me that the surgeon can render my face as smooth as .. Elizabeth (aside.) The outside of an oystershell. Anjou. And should he fail, should he peradventure, my beard in another year will overgrow the marks. Elizabeth (to Cecil.) Such creatures are usually born with beards from chin to eyebrow, and from eyebrow to nose. (To Anjou.) Beards so comprehensive add more to majesty than to comeliness. (To Cecil.) 'Fore Gad! Cecil, I would not have him for a husband, were he ten inches taller, and ten wider across the shoulders. To gratify my beloved people, on whom all my thoughts are bent, I must look narrowly to the succession, seeing that from my body must descend the issue of their future kings. We want the inches, Cecil! we verily do want the inches. My father was a portly man, Cecil! and my grandfather, albeit spare, was wirily elastic. For reasons of state, I would never have my sister Mary's widower. The nation might possibly have been disappointed in the succession, and I should have wasted away among the bleeding hearts of my people. Say something to the man, and let him go. Were there the inches. . but we must not press upon that point. Cecil. May it please your Majesty, ten or a dozen in highth and breadth would cover a multitude of sins, and almost atone for the mass. Elizabeth. At him upon that! Anjou. I do perceive there are difficulties; but I humbly trust that none of them are insurmountable. Elizabeth. Excuse my maidenly sighs, sweet cousin! La Motte (aside.) No sighs of that description have escaped her since she was fourteen. The first and last of them caught the sails of the High Admiral, and cast him on the breakers. Anjou. Those tender breathings, most gracious lady, seem to arise from my breast, and to murmur on your lips; those beauteous lips which may soften or shorten the thread of my destiny. Elizabeth. Faith and troth, Cecil, this rogue duke possesses a vast treasury of jewelled language. The boy is well educated and hath much discernment. It would cost no ordinary poet half a day's labour, and the better part of his ten nails, to have devised what our cousin hath spoken off-hand. (To Anjou). Sir, my cousin! of all the princes who have wooed me, none so well knows the avenues to my heart as you do. I beseech you, urge me no further in this moment of my weakness. The woman who avoweth her love loseth her lover. Forbear! O forbear! have patience! leave my wits to settle! Time, too clearly I perceive it, will only rivet my chains. La Motte (to Anjou). He hath taken his leisure in forging them, and hath left them brittle at last. Anjou (to La Motte). Forty-nine years! Women of that age have bent down their spectacles over the cradles of their great-grandchildren. In God's name, La Motte! how much older do they ever grow? Elizabeth. What did I overhear of children? The Lord vouchsafe us whatever number of girls it may please his Divine Providence! I would implore of it, in addition, only just two boys; one for France, and one for England. La Motte. We can not be quite happy with fewer than four girls, may it please your majesty. Elizabeth. It pleaseth me well: and I see no difficulty in inserting so discreet a prayer in our Litany. But why four? why four precisely? La Motte. May it please your majesty! in order to represent their mother and the Graces. In the first I have presumed to mention, the cardinal virtues have already their representative. Cecil. M. De La Motte Fénelon! her majesty has been graciously pleased to impose on me her royal command, that I should express her majesty's deep sorrow (since she herself is incapable in this presence of expressing any such sentiment) at the strange misadventure, the sad untoward demise, of so many Protestant lords and gentlemen, in his most Christian majesty's good city of Paris, on the feast of St. Bartholomew last past. And her most gracious majesty, in the tenderness of her royal heart, urged by the cries and clamours of her loving subjects, would remonstrate, however blandly, thereupon. In order to pacify her people, who are dearer to her than life, and in order that no delay whatever may be interposed to your forthcoming nuptials, her majesty would fain insure your highness's compliance with the established religion of the realm; and is ready to accept any valid security, that your and her royal progeny (the first-born and second-born son especially) be educated in the same. The daughters, in course, follow the footsteps of the mother. Anjou. My children can receive no better instruction than from their most religious and accomplished mother. I am tolerant of all religions; and to give a proof of it, I am going to fight for the Protestants in the Low-Countries. Elizabeth (to Cecil). Do not let him go: he will obtain great influence over them, and curtail our traffic and taxes. (To Anjou). O Anjou! Anjou! O my beloved Francis! do you, must you, can you, leave us? My sobs choke me. Is war, is even glory, preferable to love? Alas! alas! you can not answer me: yon know not what love is. O imperfection of speech! In the presence of Anjou to separate war and glory! But when will you return? Anjou. Before the end of next month at farthest. Elizabeth. What years, what ages, roll within that period! My heart is already on the ocean with you, swelling more tumultuously. The danger I most dread is from the elements; no other enemy is great enough to hurt you. Only look from the window! The waves are beating and roaring against our town of Sandwich, ready to engulf it. Anjou. Sweet lady! the sun is shining on the eighth of February as brightly as it ever shone on May before. But shines it not at this moment on May? Elizabeth. Flatterer! deceiver! I am shipwrecked and lost already. Adieu! adieu! ... must I only say. my cousin! Anjou. She is gone. . God be praised! why did not you tell me, Fénelon! what a hyæna the creature is? Her smile cured me at once of lovequalms. La Motte. She is not so amiss. Really she was well-looking no longer than some twenty years ago. But every woman has been several women if she has lived long. The English at this hour call her handsome. Anjou. The English may be good historians; they are bad grammarians; they confound the preterite and the present. Beside, to call her otherwise, would cost the best among them his head. How many days ago is it that she chopped off the hand of the most eloquent and honest man in her universities, for disapproving of her intended marriage with me? and yet he praised her and spoke affectionately. What prince, whether in modern times or ancient, ever inflicted so many and such atrocious pains and penalties, or ever expected such enormous sums in proportion to the ability of the people? But in England the pack is well whipt in, and always follows the first hound at full cry, muzzle to hoof. The English have belief for everything but religion: there they would run wild; only a few good Catholics whimper and sit quiet. Englishmen verily believe the queen loves them tenderly, while they see one after another led with the halter round their necks up the ladder, some wanting their ears, some their noses, and some their hands. Talk to me of St. Bartholomew's day! The dead upon that day died whole. What stomachs have these islanders! The Lord High Admiral well deserved his commission; but he was braver on land than at sea. La Motte. The English drink valiantly, and do not see clearly small defects in beauty by bedtime. They are hale, and deem it unmeet and unmanly to be squeamish. Anjou. So it appears, by what my brother told me, and by what (as we know) went against the grain with him. But he was heir-apparent. If Dudley had been a gentleman by descent, Charles |