age. I had rather be my Lord Mayor, for then I should keep the nickname but a year, and mine I may retain a little longer; not, that at feventy-five, I reckon on becoming my Lord Methufalem!"

A Letter from Lord Orford to Dr. Berkenhout, in Anfwer to a Letter, requefting Materials for writing his Life, 1773

SIR,

I am fo much engaged in private bufinefs at prefent, that I have not had time to thank you for the favour of your letter, nor can I now anfwer it to your fatisfaction.

My life has been too infignificant to afford materials interefting to the public. In general, the lives of mere authors are dry and unentertaining; nor though I have been one occafionally, are my writings of a clafs or mes rit to entitle me to any distinction. I can as little furnish you, fir, with a lift of them, or their dates, which would give me more trouble to make out than is worth while. If I have any merit with the public, it is for printing and-preferving fome valuable works of others; and if you ever write the lives of printers, I may be enrolled in the number. My own works, I fuppofe, are dead and buried; but as I am not impatient to be interred along with them, I hope you will leave that office to the parfon of the parish, and I fhall be as long as I live,

Your obliged, humble fervant,

HOR. WALPOLE.

MILTON,

SAID Lord Orford, has merit fo much fuperior to mere grace, that I will only fay that if his Raphael, his Satan, and his Adam, have as much dignity as the Apollo Belvidere, his Eve has all the delicacy of the Venus of Medici, and his defcription of Eden has the colouring of Albano. His tenderness always imprints ideas as graceful

graceful as Guido's Madonnas and the Allegro Penferofo, and Comus might be denominated from the three Graces.

Milton's foul was full of poetry, fenfe, and fire; and he had improved all thefe qualities by ftudying the best models. Thus prepared, he gave a loose to his genius, which was too impetuous and fublime to be curbed by the mechanifm of rhyme, which would often have impeded his expreffing all he felt, and oftener, perhaps, have obliged him to add frigidities to help out the return of the found. The language, therefore, of MILTON's blank verfe was not ftudied, but the natural application of his own tongue to deliver his own ideas.

THE REFLECTOR.

[No. XXXIII.]

THE LYCIDAS OF MILTON,

LYCIDAS is dead-dead e're his prime
Young LYCIDAS, and hath not left his peer;
Who would not fing for LYCIDAS? he knew
Himself to fing, and build the lofty rhyme;
He must not float upon his wat ry bier,
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of fome melodious tear.

MILTON.

ILTON is an author of fuch exquifite merit,

excellent productions. His Paradife Loft, Paradife Regained, and Sampfon Agonistes, have already engaged our attention. We now proceed to a thort elegiac poem, known by the name of LYCIDAS, parts of which exhibit traits both of beauty and fublimity. The critics, we are aware, have differed on its merits; but the reader fhall have it in his power to determine according to his own judgment.

In the edition of Milton's fmaller poems, Lycidas is entitled a monody, and the following melancholy cause is faid to have given rife to the compofition. A learned friend was unfortunately drowned, 1637, in the month of Auguft, on the Irish feas, in his paffage from Chefter. This friend (we are informed by Bishop Newton) was Mr. Edward King, fon of Sir John King, Secretary of Ireland under Queen Elizabeth, King James I. and King Charles I. and was a fellow of Chrift College, and was fo well beloved and efteemed at Cambridge, that fome of the greatest names in the university have united in celebrating his obfequies, and published a collection of poems, Greek and Latin, and English, facred to his memory. This poem is fuppofed to have been written by Milton, at Horton, the feat of his father, in Buckinghamshire. Here the poet opened his mind to all the delicacies of friendship, and was, therefore, fufceptible of the forrows which its loffes muft have occafioned. The motto conftitutes a part of the introduction to the poem, and fhews how deeply the mind of the poet was affected by the decease of his amiable and learned friend.

Their affociation together, and their interchanges of mutually kind offices to one another, are thus delicately defcribed:

Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd,
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her fultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night;
Oft till the ftar that rose at ev'ning bright,

Toward heav'n's defcent had flop'd his weft'ring
wheel;

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough fatyrs danc'd, and fawns with cloven heel,
From the glad found would not be abfent long,
And old Damcetas lov'd to hear our fong.

Immediately

Immediately afterwards the heavy change is feelingly depicted; it is a perfect contrast to the preceding pa, ragraph:

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, fhepherd, thee, the woods and defert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'er grown,
And all their echoes mourn.

The willows and the hazel copfes green,
Shall now no more be seen,

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy foft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rofe,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or froft to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When firft the white-thorn blows;

Such LYCIDAS thy lofs to fhepherd's ear.

Having thus fweetly sketched the pleasures and for, rows of friendship, Milton burfts forth into the follow, ing affecting apoftrophe, replete with genuine poetry:

Where were ye; nymphs, when the remorseless deep!
Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd LYCIDAS?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous Druids lie;
Nor on the fhaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva fpreads her wizard stream.
Ah! me, I fondly dream!

Had ye been there-for what could that have done?
What could the mufe herfelf, that Orpheus bore,
The mufe herself for her enchanting fon,

Whom univerfal nature did lament,

When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His goary vifage down the ftream was fent,
Down the fwift Hebrus to the Lefbian shore?

Some beautiful reflections are then introduced on the uncertainty of human life, and on the nature of true fame; the paffage is too remarkable to be here omit, ted:

Fame is the fpur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds).

To fcorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into fudden blaze,
Comes the blind fury, with th' abhorred shears,
And flits the fine fpun life. But not the praife,
Phoebus reply'd, and touch'd my trembling ears:
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil,

Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and fpreads aloft by thofe pure eyes,
And perfect witnefs of all-judging Jove,
As he pronounces laftly on each deed,

Of fo much fame in heav'n-expect thy meed.

The poet then proceeds to various poetical perfonifications, all of which tend to imprefs us with the livelinefs and delicacy of his imagination. He also touches on the very corrupt state of the clergy at that period, and is fuppofed to allude to the probable and violent death of Laud, many years after the time in which the poem was written. The lines are fingular :

Befides what the grim wolf with privy paw,
Daily devours apace, and nothing faid;
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to fmite once, and smite no more!

At the close of the elegy we meet with thefe pathetic ftrains, worthy the subject of his song :

Weep no more, woeful fhepherds, weep no more
For LYCIDAS, your forrow is not dead!
Sunk tho' he be beneath the watry floor,
So finks the day-ftar in the ocean-bed;
And yet anon uprears his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new fpangled ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;
So LYCIDAS funk low, but mounted high

Thro'