The proper name Lycidas, repeated, has an agreeable effect, and the placing it in the fame part of the line twice, and changing its pofition the third time, gives it additional beauty. An ingenious foreign critick has well diftinguished between two modes of expreffion, very different in their nature, but in both of which there is a fuperfluity of words. The one he terms a pleonafm, the other a periffology. The firft is exemplified, when the fame idea, by recurring in different, but proper, language, is impreffed more strongly on the mind; the fecond, when a profufion of unmeaning verbiage renders thought indiftinct, and often unintelligible. The first is mostly the effect of defign, the fecond always of incapacity or negligence. The pleonasm feems properly inftanced, when Lycidas is faid to be dead before his prime, and immediately after is called young Lycidas; for the repetition is here advantageously emphatical.

V. 15. Begin then, fifters of the facred well,

That from beneath the feat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and fomewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excufe,
So may fome gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my deftin'd urn,
And as he paffes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my fable shroud,
For we were nurft upon the felf-fame hill,
Fed the fame flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, e're the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield, and oft together heard
What time the grey fly winds her fultry horn,*
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of
night,

Oft till the star that rose at evening bright,
Toward heav'n's defçent had flop'd his weft'-
ring wheel-

Milton's commentators have fuppofed the grey fly to be a scarabaeus, viz. the common grey cockchafer, frequent in moft places on fummer evenings. Perhaps the poet rather intended fome diurnal infect, and meant to point out the process of a whole day, from morning through noon, to evening and night; marking the firft by the appearance of the lawns, the second by the hum of the grey fly, expreffed by the bold epithet of Sultry Horn, and the third and fourth by the appearance and defcent of the evening ftar. Thomson mentions the hum of infects in the woods at noon,

The

The shepherd's wish, that in like manner as he purposes to lament his friend, he may be lamented by fome other, is truly pathetick. The picture is lively, and the sentiment interesting: we see a perfon paffing by a tomb, and suddenly turning to render his tribute of respect to the deceased, and our minds are foothed with the idea of this fuppofed inftance of repayment of funeral eulogy. Gray has beautifully touch'd this natural circumstance in his church-yard elegy:

For thee, who mindful of the unhonour'd dead,
Doft in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate :
Haply, fome hoary-headed fwain may fay, &c.

• When Cowley,' fays Dr. Johnson, tells of Hervey, that they ftudied to'gether, it is easy to fuppofe how much he must miss the companion of his • labours,

⚫ labours, and the partner of his difcoveries; but what image of tenderness

can be excited by thefe lines,' "We "drove afield," &c ? • We know that

they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the reprefentation may be allegorical, the true meaning is fo uncertain and remote, that it is never fought, because it cannot be ⚫ known when it is found.'

Cowley speaks of Hervey in propria perfona, Milton is pro tempore a rustick poet; one therefore muft naturally draw his images from the business of the study, and the other from the business of the field. It seems not very easy to discover what idea of tenderness is excited by Cowley, the collegian, in his mention of the literary occupations of his fellow-ftudent, which is not alfo excited by Milton, the fuppofed fhepherd, in his mention of the rural occupations of

his field companion. Whatever there is of pathos in either, results from the recollection of friendship terminated by death.* Milton meant only to give his paftoral scene a ftronger appearance of reality, by defcending to the particulars of "driving afield," &c. There

is no reason to believe that his literal fense in these respects had any allegorical one, analogous or parallel; confequently there is no occafion to guess what it could be.

V.

32. Mean while the rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough fatyrs danc'd, and fauns with cloven heel;

* The paffage of Cowley, above hinted at, is this:

Say, for ye faw us ye immortal lights,

How oft unwearied have we pafs'd the nights?
'Till the Ledean stars, so fam'd for love,

Wonder'd at us from above.

We spent them not in lufts, or toys, or wine,
But fearch of deep philofophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry;

Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.

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