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UPON

SEVERAL OCCASIONS,

ENGLISH, ITALIAN, AND LATIN,

WITH TRANSLATIONS,

B'Y

JOHN MILT O N.

Viz. LYCIDAS, L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, AR-
CADES, COMUS, ODES, SONNETS, MISCELLA-
NIES, ENGLISH PSALMS, ELEGIARUM LIBER,
EPIGRAMMATUM LIBER, SYLVARUM LIBER.

WITH NOTES CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY,
AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS,

BY THOMAS WARTON,

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE

AND LATE PROFESSOR OF POETRY AT OXFORD,

PRINTED

LONDON,

FOR JAMES DODSLEY IN PALL MALL.

M DCC LXXX V.

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TH

HE poems which compofe the present volume were published almost thirty years before the appearance of the PARADISE LOST. During that interval, they were so totally disregarded, at leaft by the general reader, as fcarcely to have conferred on their author the reputation of a writer of verses; much lefs the distinction and character of a true poet. After the publication of the PARADISE LOST, whofe acknowledged merit and increasing celebrity might have naturally contributed to call other pieces of the same author, and of a kindred excellence, into a more confpicuous point of view, they long continued to remain in their original state of neglect and obfcurity. At the infancy of their circulation, and for fome years afterwards, they were overwhelmed in the commotions of faction, the conflict of religious difputation, and the profeffional ignorance of fanaticism. In fucceeding years, when tumults and ufurpations were at an end, and leisure and literature returned, the times were still unpropitious, and the public taste was unprepared for their reception. It was late in the prefent century, before they attained their just measure of esteem and popularity. Wit and rhyme, fentiment and fatire, polished numbers, sparkling couplets, and pointed periods, having so long kept undisturbed poffeffion in our poetry, would not easily give way to fiction and fancy, to picturesque description, and romantic imagery.

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When fir Henry Wootton, in 1637, had received from Milton the compliment of a prefent of coмus, at first separately printed by the care of Henry Lawes, he returned a panegyric on the performance, in which real approbation undoubtedly concurred with the partiality of private friendship, and a grateful fenfe of this kind teftimony of Milton's regard. But Wootton, a scholar and a poet, did not perceive the genuine graces of this exquifite mafque, which yet he profeffes to have viewed with fingular delight. His conceptions did not reach to the higher poetry of COMUS. He was rather struck with the paftoral mellifluence of its lyric measures, which he ftyles a certain Doric delicacy in the fongs and odes, than with its graver and more majestic tones, with the folemnity and variety of its peculiar vein of original invention. This drama was not to be generally characterised by its fongs and odes: nor do I know that softness and sweetness, although they want neither, are particularly characteristical of those paffages, which are most commonly rough with ftrong and crouded images, and rich in personification. However, the Song to Echo, and the initial ftrains of Comus's invocation, are much in the ftyle which Wootton defcribés,

The first edition of thefe poems, comprehending COMUS already printed, and LYCIDAS, of which there was alfo a previous impreffion, is dated in 1645. But I do not recollect, that for

feventy

feventy years afterwards, they are once mentioned in the whole fucceffion of English literature. Perhaps the only inftance on record, in that period of time, of their having received any, even a flight, mark of attention or notice, is to be found in archbishop Sancroft's papers at Oxford. In thefe papers is contained a very confiderable collection of poetry, but chiefly religious, exactly and elegantly. tranfcribed with his own hand, while he was a fellow of Emanuel college, and about the year 1648, from Crafhaw, Cowley, Herbert, Alabaster, Wootton, and other poets then in fashion. And among these extracts is Milton's ODE ON THE NATIVITY, faid by Sancroft to be felected from "the first page of John Milton's poems." Also our author's verfion of the fifty-third Pfalm, noted by the transcriber, I fuppofe as an example of uncommon exertion of genius, to have been done in the fifteenth year of the tranflator's age. Sancroft, even to his maturer years, retained his ftrong early predilection to polite literature, which he ftill continued to cultivate; and from thefe and other remains of his ftudies in that pursuit, now preferved in the Bodleian library, it appears, that he was a diligent reader of the poetry of his times, both in English and Latin. In an old Mifcellany, quaintly called NAPS ON PARNASSUS, and printed in 1658, there is a recital of the most excellent English poets; who, according to this author's enumeration, are Chaucer, Lydgate, Hardyng,

MSS. Coll. TANN. Num. 465. See f. 34. 60.

Spenfer,

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