Till free consent the gods among And from her fair unspotted side But now my task is smoothly done, I can fly, or I can run Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, To the corners of the moon. Mortals, that would follow me, Love Virtue; she alone is free. She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her. ΙΟΙΟ 1015 1020 LYCIDAS THE poem of Lycidas was occasioned by the death of Milton's College friend, Edward King, son of Sir John King, Knight, Privy Councillor for Ireland, and Secretary to the Irish Government. King was admitted on the 9th of June, 1626, at the age of fourteen, to Christ's College, Cambridge, about sixteen months after Milton's admission. Milton left College after receiving his Master's degree in July, 1632; so that at this date, he and King had been at College together about six years. King was made a Fellow of his College in June, 1630, in conformity with a royal mandate, secured, it may have been, through Sir John's influence at court, due to his official position. He had also been Privy Councillor for the Kingdom of Ireland, to their majesties, Elizabeth and James. Milton's claim, as a scholar, to the Fellowship must have been far superior to King's, and he was ahead of him in his College course. But Fellowships went a good deal by political and ecclesiastical influence; and, furthermore, it is not likely that Milton would have accepted a Fellowship at the time, if it had been offered to him, involving, as it did, the taking of orders, against which Milton's mind must already at that time have been decided, though he had been sent to the University with the Church in view. King received his Master's degree in July, 1633, and continued his connection with the College as fellow, tutor, and, in 1634-35, as 'prælector.' He was noted for his amiability and purity of character and genuine piety; and Milton was probably drawn to him more by these qualities than by his intellectual and poetical abilities. He left numerous Latin compositions (published in various collections), which, according to Masson, have no remarkable poetical merit. But their subjects, all, with one exception, royal occasions, did not afford opportunities for the display of poetic genius, the birth of the Princess Mary, the king's recovery from the smallpox, the king's safe return from Scotland, July, 1633, commendatory iambics prefixed to a Latin comedy, Senile Odium, performed in Queen's College, the birth of Prince James, Duke of York, the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, and the birth of the Princess Anne. King was preparing himself for the Church; and it may be inferred from Milton's poem that he regarded him as worthy, in an eminent degree, to discharge the responsible duties of a Christian minister. In the Long Vacation of 1637, King set out to visit his family and friends in Ireland. He embarked at Chester for Dublin. When but a short distance from the Welsh coast, the weather being at the time, as appears from Milton's poem, perfectly calm, the ship (it is alluded to as a 'fatal and perfidious bark') struck on a rock and soon went down, only a few of the passengers being rescued. A volume of ' In Memoriam' poems, by members of different Colleges of the University, and others, twenty in Latin, three in Greek, and thirteen in English, was printed at the University Press and published early in the following year (1638). The Latin and Greek part of the volume bore the title, 'Justa Edovardo King naufrago, ab amicis morentibus, amoris et μveías xápiv. Si recte calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est. Petron. Arb. Cantabrigiæ, apud Thomam Buck et Rogerum Daniel, celeberrimæ Academiæ typographos. 1638.' The English part bore the title, 'Obsequies to the memorie of Mr. Edward King, Anno Dom. 1638. Printed by Th. Buck and R. Daniel, printers to the Vniversitie of Cambridge, 1638.' Prefixed to the volume is a brief Latin inscriptive panegyric, in which King's last moments are described: 'haud procul a littore Britannico, navi in scopulum allisa et rimis ex ictu fatiscente, dum alii vectores vitæ mortalis frustra satagerent, immortalem anhelans in genu provolutus oransque una cum navigio ab aquis absorptus, animam deo reddidit iiii eid. Sextilis anno Salutis MDCXXXVII, Ætatis xxv.' The extracts given by Masson, from the English poems, have no poetic merit, nor merit of any kind, being clumsy tissues of far-fetched, cold-blooded conceits, of which the following, from three of the contributions, are not unfair specimens. There could not have been an excess of poetical ability in the University at the time. 'I am no poet here; my pen's the spout 'Since first the waters gave And would regain some virtue from a touch.' 'Weep forth your tears, then; pour out all your tide; All waters are pernicious since King died.' The writers must all have sat at the feet and learned of John Donne, whose coldly ingenious conceits had for some time been passing for poetry. Milton might well lament, in the person of his bereaved shepherd, the sad decline of poetry, since the Elizabethan days. 'Alas! what boots it with uncessant care Milton's poem comes last in the collection, without title, and with simply the initials I. M. appended. It presents a strange contrast to the worthless productions which precede it. Unless the other writers' poetic appreciation was very far in advance of their poetic power, as exhibited in their several contributions, they could have had but little appreciation of the merits of Milton's poem. There is no reason for supposing that King's death caused Milton a deep personal grief, such as that which was caused by the death of Charles Diodati, and to which the Epitaphium Damonis bears testimony. Milton had no doubt cherished for King a deep regard, as one exceptionally fitted, by his purity of character, and sincere piety, for the sacred office. And the presentation, in his elegiac ode, of these qualities, afforded an occasion for giving an expression to what was evidently a greater grief to him than the death of his College friend, namely, the condition of the Church, which he regarded as corrupt in itself, and as in league with the despotic tendencies of the political power. All the higher strains' of the ode are inspired by a holy indignation toward the time-serving ecclesiastics, whose unworthiness, as shepherds of Christ's flock, he sets forth in the burning denunciations attributed to St. Peter, as the type of true episcopal power, denunciations which are prophetic of those he is destined to pronounce in a few years, in his polemic prose works, against the more |