Lives of the Poets Part 17

[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his residence at Ludlow castle, in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, pa.s.sing through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire, were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night: the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the representation.

The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury, who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr.

Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.

Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's a.s.sertion, that the fiction is derived from Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the Comus of Erycius Putea.n.u.s, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R.]

[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton, after him, say a garden-house, i.e. a house situated in a garden, and of which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many, if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of his dwellings after his settlement in London. H.]

[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum, as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone, to another work by the same author, ent.i.tled, Tractatulus de carmine dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B.]

[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, William Spurstow. R.]

[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case 2. J.B.]

[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus refers to it in his index: "Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving."

J.B.]

[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr.

Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED.]

[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes, that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J.B.]

[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether _gloriosissimus_ be here used with Milton's boasted purity. _Res gloriosa_ is an _ill.u.s.trious thing_; but _vir gloriosus_ is _commonly_ a _braggart_, as in _miles gloriosus_.

Dr. J.]

[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew, Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i.

p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is a.s.serted in the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large folios in ma.n.u.script, collected and digested into alphabetical order by Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the t.i.tle of the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid.

Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's ma.n.u.scripts. H.]

[Footnote 40: _Id est_, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by sir Richard Blackmore. H.]

[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R.]

[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were introduced, were moralities, not mysteries. MALONE.]

[Footnote 43: Philips says expressly, that Milton was excepted and disqualified from bearing any office; but Toland says he was not excepted at all, and consequently included in the general pardon, or act of indemnity, pa.s.sed the 29th of August, 1660. Toland is right, for I find Goodwin and Ph. Nye, the minister, excepted in the act, but Milton not named. However, he obtained a special pardon in December, 1660, which pa.s.sed the privy seal, but not the great seal. MALONE.]

[Footnote 44: It was told before by A. Wood in Ath. Oxon. vol. ii. p.

412. second edition.]

[Footnote 45: That Milton saved Davenant, is attested by Aubrey, and by Wood, from him; but none of them say that Davenant saved Milton: this is Richardson's a.s.sertion merely. MALONE.]

[Footnote 46: A different account of the means by which Milton secured himself, is given by an historian lately brought to light: "Milton, Latin secretary to Cromwell, distinguished by his writings in favour of the rights and liberties of the people, pretended to be dead, and had a publick funeral procession. The king applauded his policy in escaping the punishment of death, by a seasonable show of dying." Cunningham's History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 14. R.]

[Footnote 47: Gildon, in his continuation of Langbaine's account of the dramatick poets, 8vo. 1693, says, that he had been told that Milton, after the restoration, kept a school at or near Greenwich. The publication of an Accidence at that period gives some countenance to this tradition. MALONE]

[Footnote 48: It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, that this relation of Voltaire's was perfectly true, as far as relates to the existence of the play which he speaks of, namely, the Adamo of Andreini; but it is still a question whether Milton ever saw it. J.B.]

[Footnote 49: This opinion is, with great learning and ingenuity, refuted in a book now very little known, an Apology or Declaration of the Power and Providence of G.o.d in the Government of the World, by Dr.

George Hakewill, London, folio, 1635. The first who ventured to propagate it in this country was Dr. Gabriel Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, a man of a versatile temper, and the author of a book ent.i.tled, the Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature proved by Natural Reason. Lond. 1616, and 1624. quarto. He was plundered in the usurpation, turned Roman catholick, and died in obscurity. See Athen, Oxon. vol. i. p. 727. H.]

[Footnote 50: --Unless _an age too late_, or cold Climate, or years damp my intended wing.

Par. Lost. b. ix. l. 44.]

[Footnote 51: Johnson has, in many places of his Rambler and Idler, ridiculed the notion of a dependance of our mental powers on the variations of atmosphere. In Boswell's life, however, there are some recorded instances of his own subjection to this common infirmity. We cannot refrain from denouncing, as unfeeling and ungenerous, Johnson's sarcasms at Milton's distempered imagination, when old age, disease, and darkness had come upon him. Dr. Symons runs into the diametrically opposite extreme. ED.]

[Footnote 52: "Statura fateor non sum procera: seel quae mediocri tamen quam parvae propior sit: sed quid si parva, qua et summi saepe tum pace tum bello viri fuere, quanquam parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis magna est." Defensio Secunda. ED.]

[Footnote 53: Both these persons were living at Holloway, about the year 1734, and, at that time, possessed such a degree of health and strength, as enabled them, on Sundays and prayer-days, to walk a mile up a steep hill to Highgate chapel. One of them was ninety-two at the time of her death. Their parentage was known to few, and their names were corrupted into Melton. By the crown-office, mentioned in the two last paragraphs, we are to understand the crown-office of the court of Chancery. H.]

[Footnote 54: Printed in the first volume of this collection.]

[Footnote 55: With the exception of Comus, in which, Dr. J. afterwards says, may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost. C.]

[Footnote 56: Here, as Warton justly observes, "Johnson has confounded two descriptions!"

The melancholy man does not go out while it rains, but waits, till----the sun begins to fling His flaring beams. J. B.]

[Footnote 57: Mr. Warton intimates, and there can be little doubt of the truth of his conjecture, that Milton borrowed many of the images in these two fine poems from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a book published in 1621, and, at sundry times since, abounding in learning, curious information, and pleasantry. Mr. Warton says, that Milton appears to have been an attentive reader thereof; and to this a.s.sertion I add, of my own knowledge, that it was a book that Dr. Johnson frequently resorted to, as many others have done, for amus.e.m.e.nt after the fatigue of study.

H.--Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Johnson said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.

Boswell's Life, ii. 120.]

[Footnote 58: Surely there are precedents enough for the practice, though pessimi exempli, in Milton's favourite tragedian Euripides. ED.]

[Footnote 59: Author of the Essay on Study.]

[Footnote 60: Algarotti terms it, "gigantesca sublimita Miltoniana."

Dr.J.]

[Footnote 61: But, says Dr. Warton, it has, throughout, a reference to human life and actions. C.]

[Footnote 62: The earl of Surrey translated two books of Virgil without rhyme; the second and the fourth. J.B.]

BUTLER.

Of the great author of Hudibras there is a life prefixed to the later editions of his poem, by an unknown writer, and, therefore, of disputable authority; and some account is incidentally given by Wood, who confesses the uncertainty of his own narrative; more, however, than they knew cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.

Samuel Butler was born in the parish of Strensham, in Worcestershire, according to his biographer, in 1612. This account Dr. Nash finds confirmed by the register. He was christened Feb. 14.

His father's condition is variously represented: Wood mentions him as competently wealthy; but Mr. Longneville, the son of Butler's princ.i.p.al friend, says he was an honest farmer, with some small estate, who made a shift to educate his son at the grammar school of Worcester, under Mr.

Henry Bright[63], from whose care he removed, for a short time, to Cambridge; but, for want of money, was never made a member of any college.

Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford; but, at last, makes him pa.s.s six or seven years at Cambridge, without knowing in what hall or college; yet it can hardly be imagined that he lived so long in either university but as belonging to one house or another; and it is still less likely that he could have so long inhabited a place of learning with so little distinction as to leave his residence uncertain. Dr. Nash has discovered that his father was owner of a house and a little land, worth about eight pounds a year, still called Butler's tenement.

Wood has his information from his brother, whose narrative placed him at Cambridge, in opposition to that of his neighbours, which sent him to Oxford. The brother's seems the best authority, till, by confessing his inability to tell his hall or college, he gives reason to suspect that he was resolved to bestow on him an academical education; but durst not name a college, for fear of detection.

He was, for some time, according to the author of his life, clerk to Mr.