But calculating of a new Christian Grammar. saith the Historian Socrates, the providence of GOD provided better then the industry of Apollinarius and his Son, by taking away that illiterat law with the life of him who devis'd it. So great an injury they then held it to be depriv'd of Hellenick Learning; and thought it a persecution more undermining, and secretly decaying the Church, then the open cruelty of Decius or Dioclesian". And ανήκοος η ο δε νεωτερος απολλινάριος ην προς το λεγειν παρεσκευασμενος, τα ευαγγελία, και τα αποςολικα δογματα, εν τυπω διαλόγων εξέθετο, καθα και πλατων παρ' ελλησιν· 8τω μεν εν τω χρισιανισμο χριώδεις φανέντες, τ8 βασιλεως το σοφισμα δια των οικείων πόνων ενικησαν· αλλ' η προνοια το θες κρείσσων εγενετο, και της τετων σπεδης, και της τε βασιλεως ορμης. Socrat. Hist. Ecclesiast. Lib. III. cap. 16. Parisiis. 1668. One sense of calculate then was to model or frame. • So great an injury they then held it to be depriv'd of Hellenick Learning; and thought it a persecution more undermining, and secretly decaying the Church, then the open cruelty of Decius or Dioclesian.] The same observation had been made by Lord Bacon. "Many of the antient Bishops and Fathers of the "Church were excellently read and studied in all the Learning "of the Heathen, insomuch, that the Edict of the emperor Ju"lianus whereby it was interdicted unto Christians to be ad"mitted in Schools, Lectures, or exercises of Learning, was "esteemed and accounted a more pernicious engine and machi"nation against the Christian faith, than were all the san"guinary prosecutions of his predecessors." Works; I. 24. 4to. 1765. We can scarcely doubt that Bacon's Treatise of the Advancement of Learning was well known to MILTON.. These passages, like some other which I have brought together under view from the two Writers, bear an obvious similitude. perhaps it was the same politick drift that the Divell whipt St. Jerom" in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it was a fantasm bred by the feaver which had then seis'd him. For had an Angel bin his discipliner, unlesse it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastiz'd the reading, not the vanity, it had bin plainly partiall; first, to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurrill Plautus" whom he confesses to have bin "The Divell whipt St. Jerom, &c.] See ILLUSTRATION, C. * Scurrill Plautus-] Our Authour is not accustomed to curtail scurrilous. In the present instance there is a local propriety for it scurrilous Plautus would have been a monotonous termination of these final and consecutive syllables. A curious example this to show the attention he paid to niceties of composition in this piece ;-that he preserved the rhythmus of his sentences with the anxiety of an Athenian Rhetor. When vindicating blank Verse against the jingling sound of like endings, he remarks, that this was " a fault avoided by the "learned Antients both in Poetry, and all good Oratoury." To escape from the same close recurrence of corresponding sounds in Horace; Epist. I. 2, 17. "Rursus, quid Virtus, & quid Sapientia possit;" Bentley boldly advanced rursum into his text, which lection he would defend by observing "Suavius hic sonat rursum, et evitatur homoeteleuton rursus, virtus." Our Authour launched a sarcasm at Hall, the Satirist, for an offensive negligence of this kind. "The Remonstrant when he "was as young as I, (says MILTON) could "Teach each hollow grove to sound his love, reading not long before; next, to correct him only, and let so many more antient Fathers wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of "And so he well might, and all his auditory beside, with his "teach each."-Pr. W. I. 191. ed. Toland. We learn from himself that he possessed an ear cultivated to fastidiousness. His words well merit transcription. "This "good hap I had from a careful Education to be inur'd and sea"son'd betimes with the best and elegantest Authours of the "learned Tongues, and thereto brought an Eare that could "measure a just cadence and scan without articulating; rather "nice and humourous in what was tolerable than patient to read every drawling Versifier." ubi sup. I. 186. A Scholar of high qualifications has confirmed the Poet's representation of himself. "There is no kind or degree of Harmony "of which our Language is capable (observes Dr. Foster), which "may not be found in numberless instances thro' MILTON'S " writings; the excellency of whose Ear seems to have been "equal to that of his Imagination and Learning." Essay on the different Nature of Accents and Quantity; p. 67. sec. Edit. Strange! that any one so alive to musical and poetical numbers should have chosen to enumerate the preeminent accomplishments of Eve in a line to which it would not be easy to find a parallel for harshness throughout the ample range of English Poetry : "what she wills to do or say, "Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." P. L. VIII. 549. To this verse I could never reconcile myself. Surely the subject called for the most mellifluous modulation. It was not so that Homer described Penelope. To represent her resplendent Beauty, he combined the sweetest and most flowing sounds (Odyss. XVII. 36.), as a Critic of Antiquity has remarked. We are less offended with a succession of these Superlatives, when he is recounting the propensities of an evil Spirit : such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may be made of Margites a sportfull Poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and why not then of Morgante an Italian Romanze much to the same purpose?? But if it Did he think that by this he gave superiour effect through Emphasis? It is observed by some one, I think it is Hurd, that when Donne or Ben Jonson had anything better than ordinary to say, they were sure to use their roughest and hardest versification. How he could have admitted these, and other harsh combinations is stranger still to all who recollect his recorded fondness for the Italian Poets (Epist. Fam. Benedicto Bonmatthæo Florentino.), and his intimate knowlege of the softness and delicate fluency which reigns through the most harmonious of the living Languages in Europe. An attainment we should expect to have necessarily induced disgust at the dissonance we sometimes meet with in his Poetry. I am inclined to believe that he must in such instances have formed for himself some scheme of metrical modulation of which we are unaware; a peculiar system, but on what principle he constructed it, it is difficult to discover. If Dryden had not professed that in the Religio Laici he was imitating the looser and unpolished versification which Horace, numerosus Horatius, affected in his Epistles, we should have been at a loss to account for the flatness there so perceptible in many lines of a Poet, who retuned Chaucer in heroic Couplets of the finest tone that the English Language can boast. 9 Margites a sportfull Poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and why not then of Morgante an Italian Romanze much to the same purpose?] In this opinion as to the Writer of the Margites, MILTON fol be agreed we shall be try'd by visions, there is a vision recorded by Eusebius far ancienter then this lowed the Antients; but we ought (it seems) to look on it as a supposititious piece. A single word in the minute fragments which remain detects the error; as I learn from Mr. Payne Knight's Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet. "With confi"dence we may (says this Gentleman) pronounce the Margites "to have been a forgery, though there are only four lines of it "extant, and three of those are quoted by Plato and Aristotle : "but in these we have a compound verb with the augment on "the preposition (salo) which Homer's Grammar did not "admit." p. 30. 4to. 1791. Il Morgante Maggiore a burlesque and satirical poem by Luigi Pulci is the work our Authour here intends. Voltaire professed to have doubts of what was Pulci's purpose, when paraphrasing passages from Holy Writ,-whether they were a profane travesty? or whether his parodies, though they now appear Judicrous, were not with innocent intentions? see his Catalogue raisonné des Esprits Forts depuis le Curé Rabelais, jus-qu'au Curé Jean Meslier. Had MILTON suspected any irreligion to have lurked in this Poem, we may be assured he never would have spoken of it with complacency. The probability is, that this lively French Writer hazarded his remark á tâtons. It is incontestible that he had not seen Petrarch's Ode to the Fountain of Vaucluse in the original; of the first stanza of which he has nevertheless exhibited a poetical paraphrase. (Essai sur les Mœurs et l'Esprit des Nations: ch. 82.) Baretti, who taxed him with not having read the Morgante, which he had criticized, would have been delighted with this anecdote: "Vous dites quelque part dans vos Melanges "de Litterature, que le Poëme de l'Arioste est une Continuation du "Poeme de Bojardo. Celui qui vous a donné cette information ne "vous a point trompé: mais il vous a trompé quand il vous a dit, que Bojardo ne fit que continuer le Poëme bizarrement intitulé, "Il Morgante Maggiore de Luigi Pulci. Cela n'est pas vrai. "Quoi qu'on trouve plusieurs Héros de même nom dans les deux "Ouvrages, l'un n'est pas plus une Continuation de l'autre, que " |