need of such trash to spend his time on? But that he knew this Licencing of Poems had reference and dependance to many other proviso's there set down in his fancied Republic, which in this world could have no place: and so neither he himself, nor any Magistrat or City ever imitated that cours, which tak'n apart from those other collaterall injunctions must needs be vain and fruitlesse. For if they fell upon one kind of strictnesse, unlesse their care were equall to regulat all other things of like. aptnes to corrupt the mind, that single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour; to shut and fortifie one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about, wide open. If we think to regulat Printing, thereby to rectifie manners, we must regulat all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightfull to Man. No musiek must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Dorick. There must be licencing

9 No song be set or sung, but what is grave and Dorick.] i. e solemn. MILTON remembered that Plato in his ideal Republic interdicted the Ionic and Lydian Music, as effeminate, and permitted the Doric and Phrygian: « Αλλα κινδυνεύει σοι ΔΩΡΙΣΤΙ XEITEσ Dai nai Spuyiori." De Repub. I. 195. Massey's Edit.-Lycidas (v. 189.) warbles a "Doric lay;" more probably, I think, in the sense of sad or mournful than, as Mr. Warton suggests, "because Theocritus and Moschus had respectively written a "Bucolic on the Deaths of Daphnis and Bion."

G

dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be thought honest'; for such Plato was provided of: It will ask more then the work of twenty Licencers to examin all the Lutes, the Violins, and the Ghittarrs in every house, they must not be suffer'd to prattle as they doe, but must be licenc'd what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigalls that whisper softnes in chambers? The Windows also and the Balcone's must be thought on; there are shrewd books with dangerous Frontispices set to sale; who shall prohibit them, shall twenty Licencers? The villages also must have their Visitors to enquire what Lectures the bagpipe and

What by their allowance shall be thought honest.] i. e. by their estimation; for such I take to be its sense in this place, rather than approbation; which stands in the Variorum Edition of Shakspeare as the gloss on this word in Hamlet's lecture to the Players: "the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, "o'er-weigh a whole theatre of others." XV. 175. ed. 1793. And again in Coriolanus,

Where I cannot but think that Johnson, Steevens, and Malone, rove wide of the Poet's meaning. While to explain allowance by estimation will solve the difficulty of construction in each of these instances.

2 To examin all the Lutes, the Violins, and Ghittarrs in every house-] Compare Plato, de Repub. I. 197. Massey's edit.-Ghittar, Ghitarra. Ital.

the rebbeck reads ev'n to the ballatry, and the gammuth of every municipal fidler, for these are the Countrymans Arcadia's and his Monte Mayors3. Next, what more nationall corruption, for which

The villages also must have their Visitors to enquire what Lectures the bagpipe and the rebbeck reads ev'n to the ballatry, and the gammuth of every municipal fidler, for these are the Countrymans Arcadia's and his Monte Mayors.] A Visitor was a presiding inspector.

Thus Ben Jonson:

-"the superintendent

"To all the quainter Traffickers in Town,
"He is their Visitor, and does appoint,

"Who lies with whom."

The Alchemist; A. 2. S. 3.

But MILTON employs it here with a contemporaneous allusion which was not then lost on his readers. According to Sir Edward Walker, "some of the Bishops were faulty in permitting "to the bane of all Government, Lectures and weekly Sermons "in populous Cities and Towns, where the Lecturers to please "the silly Women, and to lead them after them, laden with "divers Lusts, introduced new Forms, or rather no Forms, of Worship and Doctrine. Historical Discourses; p. 326. fol. 1705.

Laud, on the other hand, had annual Visitations to examine narrowly how these Preachers carried themselves in the pulpit. See Heylyn's Life of Laud; p. 270, 271, and 345. fol. 1671.

It is to this circumstance that also bears relation—"the villages " also must have their Visitors to enquire what Lectures, &c.” but this is too elleiptical for posterity, though sufficiently intelligible when it was written.

Balladry occurs several times in Marston: see the Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and certain Satyres; p. 198, 199, and 228. Bowles's edit. 1764. 800. and in all these places it

England hears ill abroad, then household gluttony; who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting'? and what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that

denotes Poetry of the lighter kind; as it likewise does, I recollect, somewhere in Ben Jonson,

"To tax me with their senseless Balladry."

But the peculiar spelling" Ballatry," may lead us to another interpretation. Unless it was in conformity to the scheme of regulating Orthography by the Pronunciation, I will not say, that MILTON, as his manner sometimes is to give words a capricious sense, did not by " Ballatry" intend dancing: from the Italian, ballare to dance, balluto and ballata; whence our word Ball. So he wrote

"Or Serenate”

"midnight ball

(Par. Lost. IV. 767.)

after Serenata, not Serenade, like the French. Bacon mentions "Tumblers, Funambuloes, Baladynes," &c.-in the Advancement of Learning: p. 208. 4to ed. 1633.

This construction accords aptly with the context, which is then descriptive of the same rustic revelry as in L'Allegro : "When the merry Bells ring round,

“And the jocund Rebecks sound
"To many a youth and many a maid,
"Dancing in the chequer'd shade."

v. 93.

The Rebeck seems (as Warton there remarked) to have been almost a common name for a fiddle; and municipal meant town. For additional remarks on this passage, on the Arcadia, and on the Diana of George of Montemayor, see ILLUSTRATION, F.

What more nationall corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, then household gluttony; who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting?] Hears ill, meaning as in this place, to be ill

frequent those houses where drunk'nes is sold and harbour'd? Our garments also should be referr❜d to the Licencing of some more sober work-masters, to see them cut into a lesse wanton garb. Who shall regulat all the mixt conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this country? who shall still appoint what shall be discours'd, what presum'd, and no furder? Lastly, who shall forbid and separat all idle resort, all evill company? These things will be, and must be; but how they shall be lest hurtfull, how lest enticing, herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a State. To sequester out of the world into Atlantick and Eutopian Polities, which never can spoken of, is an idiom drawn from a classical source, and once in use among us, as I have shown in a Review of Johnson's Criticism on the Style of MILTON's English Prose, p. 33. (n.) Whère I have remarked the same of Rector in this Latin sense.-See some historical notices in corroboration of the charge brought here against our Ancestors for "household gluttony," in ILLUSTRATION, G.

5 To sequester out of the world into Atlantick and Eutopian Polities, &c.] By " Atlantick Polities" he refers to a work left incomplete by Lord Bacon, entitled the new Atlantis, after the name of the sunken Continent of which Plato's continuation of Solon's unfinished story has preserved the memory. MILTON now treats such imaginary Commonwealths as little better than romances. He spoke both of this, and of Plato's political institute, as well as of Sir T. More's, with greater respect in an Apology for Smectymnuus: "That grave and noble invention which "the greatest and sublimest wits in sundry ages, Plato in Cri"tias, and our two famous countrymen, the one in his Vtopia, "the other in his new Atlantis chose, I may not say as a field, "but as a mighty Continent wherein to display the largenesse