ページの画像
PDF
ePub

the influence of his stern morality, and render homage to the broad and unwavering light of his constant integrity. In our studies, the grandeur and state of his imagination lift us from the poverty of earth to the colossal regions where all, even passion, is sublime; and we gaze on him, like a traveller on those huge piles of antiquity that rise from the desert, old, majestic, and eternal, and point their unshaken summits to that heaven which has looked upon them for ages. Such indeed was Milton-he needs no panegyric, his fame is still fresh in our memories; and it is a proud pleasure, amidst the stormy and violent times when the elements were in convulsion and society rocked around him, to trace him still intrepid, faithful and uncompromising, directing with steady and unreluctant hand his sure and straightforward course, and leaving the measureless results of his upright zeal and boundless intelligence as a heritage to mankind.

NOTES.

NOTES.

NOTE I.-PAGE 12.

"In the year 938 Anlaff, a pagan king of the Hybernians and the adjacent isles, invited by Constantine king of the Scots, entered the river Abi or Humber with a strong fleet. Our Saxon king Athelstan, and his brother Eadmund Clito [Ætheling], met them with a numerous army, near a place called Brunenburgh; and after a most obstinate and bloody resistance, drove them back to their ships. The battle lasted from day-break till the evening. On the side of Anlaff were slain five petty kings, and seven chiefs or generals." Warton's Dissertation on the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe.

It is worthy of remark that on the evening previous to this batttle Anlaff, after the example of King Alfred, obtained admittance into the camp of the Saxons, and into the presence of Athelstan, disguised as a minstrel. He was however recognised, previously to his departure, by a soldier who had once fought beneath his banners, but the man had too much magnanimity to betray his former general.

The following version of the ode is from the Saxon, and not from the Latin of Gibson, from which Warton appears to have followed in his prose translation. The poem has frequently been rendered into English, and the author should apologize to his readers for laying before them his own imperfect paraphrase.

King Athelstan, the glory

Of his leaders brave and bold,

[ocr errors]
« 前へ次へ »