Or rocky Avon, or of fedgy Lee,

Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallow'd Dee,

Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythian's name, Or Medway smooth, or towred Thame.

[The rest was profe.]

100

96. Or Severn fwift, guilty of maiden's death.] The maiden is Sabrina. See COM US, V. 827.

98. Antient hallow'd Dee.] In Apollonius Rhodius we have σε Φάσιδι συμφέρεται ἹΕΡΟΝ ῥέον.” iv. 134. And in Theocritus, "Axidos IEPON dwg." IDYLL. i. 69. See alfo " DIVINE Alpheus," in ARCADES, V. 30. Other proofs might be added. But Milton is not claffical here. Dee's divinity was Druidical. From the fame fuperftition, fome rivers in Wales are still held to have the gift or virtue of prophecy. Gyraldus Cambrenfis, who writes in 1188, is the first who mentions Dee's fanctity, and from the popular traditions. See Note on LYCIDAS, V.55.

99. Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythian's name.] Humber, a Scythian king, landed in Britain three hundred years before the Roman invafion, and was drowned in this river by Locrine, after conquering king Albanact. See Drayton, POLYOL B. S. viii. vol. ii. p.796. Drayton has made a most beautiful use of this tradition in his Elegy, Upon three fons of the Lord Sheffield drowned in "Humber." ELEGIES, vol. iv. p. 1244.

O cruell Humber, guiltie of their gore!
I now believe, more than I did before,
The British story whence thy name begun,
Of kingly Humber, an inuading Hun,
By thee deuoured: for 'tis likely thou

With bloud wert chriften'd, bloud-thirfty, till now

The Oufe and Done.

100. Or Medway fmooth, or royal toured Thame.] The smoothnefs of the Medway is characterised in Spenfer's MOURNING MUSE OF THESTYLIS.

The Medwaies filuer ftreames,

That wont fo STILL TO GLIDE,

Were troubled now and wroth.

The royal towers of Thames imply Windfor caftle, familiar to Milton's view, and to which I have already remarked his allufions.

AN

A NE PITA PH

W.

on the admirable dramaticke Poet

SHAKESPEAR E.*

HAT needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd

WR bones,

The labour of an age in piled ftones?

Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear fon of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou fuch weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Haft built thyself a live-long monument.

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*This is but an ordinary poem to come from Milton, on fuch a fubject. But he did not yet know his own ftrength, or was content to diffemble it, out of deference to the falfe tafte of his time. The conceit, of Shakespeare's lying fepulcher'd in a tomb of his own making, is in Waller's manner, not his own. But he made Shakespeare amends in his L'ALLEGRO, V. 133. H.

Birch, and from him doctor Newton, afferts, that this copy of verses was written in the twenty fecond year of Milton's age, and printed with the Poems of Shakespeare at London in 1640. It first appeared among other recommendatory verfes, prefixed to the folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. But without Milton's name or initials. This therefore is the first of Milton's pieces that was published.

It was with great difficulty and reluctance, that Milton first appeared as an author. He could not be prevailed upon to put his name to Coмus, his first performance of any length that was printed, notwithstanding the fingular approbation with which it had been previously received in a long and extenfive courfe of private circulation. LYCIDAS in the Cambridge collection is only fubfcribed with his initial. Most of the other contributors have left their names at full length.

We have here reftored the title from the fecond folio of Shakespeare.

8.

A live-long monument.] It is lafting in the folio ShakeSpeare, and the edition of thefe Poems, 1645. So in Tonfon, 1695,

and

For whilst to th' fhame of flow-endevoring art
Thy eafy numbers flow, and that each heart.
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impreffion took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,

Doft make us marble with too much conceiving;

And fo fepulcher'd in fuch pomp doft lie,

That kings for fuch a tomb would wish to die.

IO

15

On the UNIVERSITY CARRIER, who fickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to London, by reafon of the plague.*

HE

TERE lies old Hobfon; Death hath broke his girt,

5

And here, alas, hath' laid him in the dirt;
Or elfe the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a flough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had any time this ten years full,
Dodg'd with him betwixt Cambridge and the Bull,
And fure Death could never have prevail'd,
Had not his weekly courfe of carriage fail'd; 1Ο
But lately finding him fo long at home,

And thinking now his journey's end was come,

and 1765. And in Tickell, and Fenton. Milton I fuppofe, altered it to livelong, edit. 1673..

* I wonder Milton fhould fuffer these two things on Hobson to appear in his edition of 1645. He, who at the age of nineteen, had fo juft a contempt for,

Thofe new-fangled toys, and trimming flight,
Which take our new fantastics with delight.

H.

And

And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,

In the kind office of a chamberlin

14

Show'd him his room where he muft lodge that night, Pull'd off his boots, and took away the light:

If any ask for him, it fhall be fed,

Hobfon has fupt, and's newly gone to bed.

H

ANOTHER on the fame.*

ERE lieth one, who did moft truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;

So hung his destiny, never to rot

While he might ftill jog on and keep his trot,
Made of fphere-metal, never to decay

Until his revolution was at stay.

14. In the kind office of a Chamberlin, &c.] I believe the Chamberlain is an officer not yet difcontinued in some of the old inns in the city. But Chytraeus a German, who vifited England about 1580, and put his travels into Latin verfe, mentions it as an extraordinary circumftance, that it was the custom of our inns to be waited upon by women. In Peele's OLD WIVES TALE, of which before, Fantastique fays, "I had euen as liue the chamberlaine of "the White Horfe had called me vp to bed." A. i. S. i. Hobfon's inn at London was the Bull in Bishops-gate-street, where his figure in fresco with an infcription, was lately to be feen. Peck, at the end of his MEMOIRS of CROMWELL, has printed Hobfon's Will, which is dated at the close of the year 1630. He died Jan. 1, 1630, while the plague was in London. This piece was written that year. The proverb, to which Hobfon's caprice, founded perhaps on good fenfe, gave rife, needs not to be repeated. Milton was now a student at Cambridge.

* Among archbishop Sancroft's tranfcripts of poetry made by him at Cambridge, now in the Bodleian library, is an anonymous poem on the death of Hobfon. It was perhaps a common subject for the wits of Cambridge. I take this opportunity of observing, that in the fame bundle is a poem on Milton's friend LYCIDAS, Mr. King, by Mr. Booth, of Corpus Chrifti, not in the published collection. Coll. MSS. TANN. 465. See pp. 235. 237.

Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time:
And like an engin mov'd with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceas'd, he ended strait.
Reft that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm

Too long vacation haften'd on his term.

Merely to drive the time away he ficken'd,

10

15

Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quicken'd;
Nay, quoth he, on his fwooning bed out-ftretch'd,
If I mayn't carry, fure I'll ne'er be fetch'd,
But vow, though the crofs doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make fix bearers.
Eafe was his chief disease, and to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leifure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdenfome,

20

That even to his last breath (there be that say't) 25
As he were prefs'd to death, he cry'd more weight;
But had his doings lafted as they were,

He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In courfe reciprocal, and had his fate
Link'd to the mutual flowing of the feas,

Yet (ftrange to think) his wain was his increase:
His letters are deliver'd all and gone,

Only remains this fuperfcription.

30

On