PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON THE LATIN VERSES. MILTON is said to be the first Englishman, who after the restoration of letters wrote Latin verses with classick elegance. But we must at least except some of the hendecasyllables and epigrams of Leland, one of our first literary reformers, from this hasty determination. In the Elegies, Ovid was professedly Milton's model for language and versification. They are not, however, a perpetual and uniform tissue of Ovidian phraseology. With Ovid in view, he has an original manner and character of his own, which exhibit a remarkable perspicuity of contexture, a native facility and fluency. Nor does his observation of Roman models oppress or destroy our great poet's inherent powers of invention and sentiment. I value these pieces as much for their fancy and genius, as for their style and expression. That Ovid among the Latin poets was Milton's favourite, appears not only from his elegiack but his hexametrick poetry. The versification of our author's hexameters has yet a different structure from that of the Metamorphoses: Milton's is more clear, intelligible, and flowing; less desultory, less familiar, and less embarrassed with a frequent recurrence of periods. Ovid is at once rapid and abrupt. He wants dignity: he has too much conversation in his manner of telling a story. Prolixity of paragraph, and length of sentence, are peculiar to Milton. This is seen, not only in some of his exordial invocations in the Paradise Lost, and in many of the religious addresses of a like cast in the prose works, but in his long verse. It is to be wished that, in his Latin compositions of all sorts, he had been more attentive to the simplicity of Lucretius, Virgil, and Tibullus. Dr. Johnson, unjustly I think, prefers the Latin poetry of May and Cowley to that of Milton, and thinks May to be the first of the three. May is certainly a sonorous versifier, and was sufficiently accomplished in poetical declamation for the continuation of Lucan's Pharsalia. But May is scarcely an author in point. His skill is in parody; and he was confined to the peculiarities of an archetype, which, it may be presumed, he thought excellent. As to Cowley when compared with Milton, the same critick observes, "Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the ancients in their language: Cowley, without much loss of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions. The advantage seems to lie on the side of Cowley."But what are these conceptions? Metaphysical conceits, all the unnatural extravagancies of his English poetry; such as will not bear to be clothed in the Latin language, much less are capable of admitting any degree of pure Latinity. I will give a few instances, out of a great multitude, from the Davideis. Again, ، Hic sociatorum sacra constellatio vatum, "Temporis ingreditur penetralia celsa futuri, And, to be short, we have the Plusquam visus aquilinus of lovers, Natio verborum, Exuit vitam aeriam, Menti auditur symphonia dulcis, Naturæ archiva, Omnes symmetria sensus congerit, Condit aromatica prohibetque putescere laude. Again, where Aliquid is personified, Monogramma exordia mundi. It may be said, that Cowley is here translating from his own English Davideis. But I will bring examples from his original Latin poems. In praise of the spring. 66 ،، Et resonet toto musica verna libro ; Undique laudis odor dulcissmus halet," &c". And in the same poem in a party worthy of the pastoral pencil of Watteau. a See Cowley's Poemata latina, Lond. 1668.8vo.p.398. c Ibid. p. 386. 397. 399. 400. b Ibid. p. 399. d Plantar. Lib. iii. p. 137. "Hauserunt avide Chocolatam Flora Venusquee." Of the Fraxinella. "Tu tres metropoles humani corporis armis "Propugnas, uterum, cor, cerebrumque, tuis." He calls the Lychnis, Candelabrum ingens. Cupid is Arbiter formæ criticus. Ovid is Antiquarius ingens. An ill smell is shunned Olfactus tetricitate sui. And in the same page, is nugatoria pestis". But all his faults are conspicuously and collectively exemplified in these stanzas, among others, of his Hymn on Light". "Pulchra de nigro soboles parente, "Quam Chaos fertur peperisse primam, 66 "Massa severa ! “Risus O terræ sacer et polorum, 66 Quæque de cœlo fluis inquieto "Te bibens arcus Jovis ebriosus “Pavo cœlestis, variamque pascit And afterwards, of the waves of the sea, perpetually in motion. "Lucidum trudis properanter agmen : "Sed resistentum' super ora rerum "At mare immensum oceanusque Lucis Milton's Latin poems may be justly considered as legitimate classical compositions, and are never disgraced with such language and such imagery. Cowley's Latinity, dictated by an irre e L. iv. p. 254. f L. iv. p. 207. i Standing still. See L. iv. p. 210. L. iii. p. 186. 170. L. ii. p. 126. h See p. 407. seq. gular and unrestrained imagination, presents a mode of diction half Latin and half English. It is not so much that Cowley wanted a knowledge of the Latin style, but that he suffered that knowledge to be perverted and corrupted by false and extravagant thoughts. Milton was a more perfect scholar than Cowley, and his mind was more deeply tinctured with the excellencies of ancient literature. He was a more just thinker, and therefore a more just writer. In a word, he had more taste, and more poetry, and consequently more propriety. If a fondness for the Italian writers has sometimes infected his English poetry with false ornaments, his Latin verses, both in diction and sentiment, are at least free from those depravations. Some of Milton's Latin poems were written in his first year at Cambridge, when he was only seventeen: they must be allowed to be very correct and manly performances for a youth of that age. And, considered in that view, they discover an extraordinary copiousness and command of ancient fable and history. I cannot but add, that Gray resembles Milton in many instances. Among others, in their youth they were both strongly attached to the cultivation of Latin poetry. T. WARTON. ELEGIARUM LIBER. ELEG. I. AD CAROLUM DEODATUM *. TANDEM, chare, tuæ mihi pervenere tabellæ, * Charles Deodate was one of Milton's most intimate friends. He was an excellent scholar, and practised physick in Cheshire. He was educated with our author at St. Paul's school in London; and from thence was sent to Trinity college, Oxford, where he was entered Feb. 7, in the year 1621, at thirteen years of age. Lib. Matric. Univ. Oxon. sub ann. He was born in London, and the name of his father, "in Medicina Doctoris," was Theodore. Ibid. He was a fellow-collegian there with Alexander Gill, another of Milton's intimate friends, who was successively Usher and Master of Saint Paul's school. Deodate has a copy of Alcaicks extant in an Oxford-collection on the death of Camden, called Camdeni Insignia, Oxon. 1624. He left the college, when he was a Gentleman commoner in 1628, having taken the degree of Master of Arts. Lib. Caution. Coll. Trin. Toland says, that he had in his possession two Greek Letters, very well written, from Deodate to Milton. Two of Milton's familiar Latin letters, in the utmost freedom of friendship, are to Deodate. Epist. Fam. Prose-Works, vol. ii. 567, 568. Both dated from London, 1637. But the best, certainly the most pleasing, evidences of their intimacy, and of Deodate's admirable character, are our author's first and sixth Elegies, the fourth Sonnet, and the Epitaphium Damonis. And it is highly probable, that Deodate is the simple shepherd lad, in Comus, who is skilled in plants, and loved to hear Thyrsis sing, |