Lyra Heroica Part 46

VII, VIII

This pair of 'n.o.ble numbers,' of brilliant and fervent lyrics, is from _Hesperides, or, The Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrich, Esq._ (1648).

IX

No. 61, '_Vertue_,' in _The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns_, 1632-33. Compare Herbert to Christopher Farrer, as reported by Izaak Walton:--'Tell him that I do not repine, but am pleased with my want of health; and tell him, my heart is fixed on that place where true joy is only to be found, and that I long to be there, and do wait for my appointed change with hope and patience.'

X

From _The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses_, printed 1659. Compare VI. (Beaumont, _ante_, p. 15), and Bacon, _Essays_, 'On Death': 'But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is _Nunc dimittis_, when a man hath attained worthy ends and expectations.'

XI

Written in the November of 1637, and printed next year in the _Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King_. 'In this Monody,'

the t.i.tle runs, 'the Author bewails a Learned Friend unfortunately drowned in his pa.s.sage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruine of our corrupted Clergie, then in their height.' King, who died at five- or six-and-twenty, was a personal friend of Milton's, but the true accents of grief are inaudible in _Lycidas_, which is, indeed, an example as perfect as exists of Milton's capacity for turning whatever he touched into pure poetry: an arrangement, that is, of 'the best words in the best order'; or, to go still further than Coleridge, the best words in the prescribed or inevitable sequence that makes the arrangement art. For the innumerable allusions see Professor Ma.s.son's edition of Milton (Macmillan, 1890), i. 187-201, and iii. 254-276.

XII

The Eighth Sonnet (Ma.s.son): 'When the a.s.sault was Intended to the City.' Written in 1642, with Rupert and the King at Brentford, and printed in the edition of 1645.

XIII

The Sixteenth Sonnet (Ma.s.son): 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652: On the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel.' Printed by Philips, _Life of Milton_, 1694. In defence of the principle of Religious Voluntaryism, and against the intolerant Fifteen Proposals of John Owen and the majority of the Committee.

XIV

The Eighteenth Sonnet (Ma.s.son). 'Written in 1655,' says Ma.s.son, and referring 'to the persecution inst.i.tuted, in the early part of the year, by Charles Emmanuel II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont, against his Protestant subjects of the valleys of the Cottian Alps.' In January, an edict required them to turn Romanists or quit the country out of hand; it was enforced with such barbarity that Cromwell took the case of the sufferers in hand; and so vigorous was his action that the Edict was withdrawn and a convention was signed (August 1655) by which the Vaudois were permitted to wors.h.i.+p as they would. Printed in 1673.

XV

The Nineteenth Sonnet (Ma.s.son) 'may have been written any time between 1652 and 1655,' the first years of Milton's blindness, 'but it follows the Sonnet on the Piedmontese Ma.s.sacre in Milton's own volume of 1673.'

XVI, XVII

From the choric parts of _Samson Agonistes_ (i.e. the Agonist, or Wrestler), first printed in 1671.

XVIII

Of uncertain date; first printed by Watson 1706-11. The version given here is Emerson's (which is shorter than the original), with the exception of the last stanza, which is Napier's (_Montrose_, i. Appendices). Napier is at great pains to prove that the ballad is allegorical, and that Montrose's 'dear and only love'

was that unhappy King whose Epitaph, the famous _Great, Good, and Just_, he is said--falsely--to have written with his sword. Be this as it may, the verses have a second part, which has dropped into oblivion. For the Great Marquis, who reminded De Retz of the men in Plutarch's _Lives_, was not averse from the practice of poetry, and wrote, besides these numbers, a prayer ('Let them bestow on every airth a limb'), a 'pasquil,' a pleasant string of conceits in praise of woman, a set of vehement and fiery memorial stanzas on the King, and one copy of verses more.

XIX, XX

_To Lucasta going to the Wars_ and _To Althea from Prison_ are both, I believe, from Lovelace's _Lucasta_ (1645).

XXI

First printed by Captain Thomson, _Works_ (1776), from a copy he held, on what seems excellent authority, to be in Marvell's hand. The true t.i.tle is _A Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland_ (1650). It is always ascribed to Marvell (whose verse was first collected and printed by his widow in 1681), but there are faint doubts as to the authors.h.i.+p.

XXII

_Poems_ (1681). This elegant and romantic lyric appears to have been inspired by a pa.s.sage in the life of John Oxenbridge, of whom, 'religionis causa oberrantem,' it is enough to note that, after migrating to Bermudas, where he had a church, and being 'ejected' at the Restoration from an English cure, he went to Surinam (1662-67), to Barbadoes (1667), and to New England (1669), where he was made pastor of 'the First Church of Boston'

(1670), and where he died in 1674. These details are from Mr.

Grosart's _Marvell_ (1875), i. 82-85, and ii. 5-8.

XXIII

Dryden's second Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day, _Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Sound_, as it is called, was written and printed in 1697. As it was designed for music (it was set by Jeremiah Clarke), the closing lines of every strophe are repeated by way of chorus. I have removed these repet.i.tions as impertinent to the effect of the poem in print, and as interrupting the rus.h.i.+ng vehemency of the narrative. The incident described is the burning of Persepolis.

XXIV

Written early in 1782, in memory of Robert Levett: 'an old and faithful friend,' says Johnson, and withal 'a very useful and very blameless man.' Excepting for the perfect odes of Cowper (_post_, pp. 85, 86), in these excellent and affecting verses the 'cla.s.sic' note is audible for the last time in this book until we reach the _Iphigeneia_ of Walter Savage Landor, who was a lad of seven at the date of their composition. They were written seventeen years after the publication of the _Reliques_ (1765), and a full quarter century after the appearance of _The Bard_ (1757); but in style they proceed from the age of Pope. For the rest, the Augustan Muse was an utter stranger to the fighting inspiration. Her gait was pedestrian, her purpose didactic, her practice neat and formal: and she prosed of England's greatest captain, the victor of Blenheim, as tamely as himself had been 'a parson in a tye-wig'--himself, and not the amiable man of letters who acted as her amanuensis for the nonce.

XXV

_Chevy Chase_ is here preferred to _Otterbourne_ as appealing more directly to Englishmen. The text is Percy's, and the movement like that of all the English ballads, is jog-trot enough. Sidney's confession--that he never heard it, even from a blind fiddler, but it stirred him like the sound of a trumpet--refers, no doubt, to an earlier version than the present, which appears to date from the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Compare _The Brave Lord Willoughby_ and _The Honour of Bristol_ (_post_, pp. 60, 73).

XXVI

First printed by Percy. The text I give is, with some few variants, that of the vastly better version in _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ (1802-3). Of the 'history' of the ballad the less said the better. The argument is neatly summarised by Mr. Allingham, p. 376 of _The Ballad Book_ ('Golden Treasury,'

1879).

skeely = _skilful_ white monie = _silver_ gane = _would suffice_ half-fou = _the eighth part of a peck_ gurly = _rough_ lap = _sprang_ bout = _bolt_ twine = _thread_, i.e. canvas wap = _warp_ flattered = '_fluttered_, or rather, floated' (Scott) kaims = _combs_

XXVII

Printed by Percy, 'from an old black-letter copy; with some conjectural emendations.' At the suggestion of my friend, the Rev. Mr. Hunt, I have restored the original readings, as in truer consonancy with the vainglorious, insolent, and swaggering ballad spirit. As for the hero, Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, described as 'one of the Queen's best swordsmen' and 'a great master of the art military,' he succeeded Leicester in the command in the Low Countries in 1587, distinguished himself repeatedly in fight with the Spaniards, and died in 1601. 'Both Norris and Turner were famous among the military men of that age' (Percy). In the Roxburgh Ballads the full t.i.tle of the broadside--which is 'printed for S. Coles in Vine St., near Hatton Garden,'--is as follows:--'_A true relation of a famous and bloudy Battell fought in Flanders by the n.o.ble and valiant Lord Willoughby with 1500 English against 40,000 Spaniards, wherein the English obtained a notable victory for the glory and renown of our nation._ Tune: _Lord Willoughby_.'

XXVIII