Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/363

 DE AUCTORE TESTIMONIA

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��apprenticeship had passed, and especially to the Epitaphium Damonis. No more con- vincing proof is needed of the artistic sincerity of Milton's Latin poetry than the fact that he chose the Latin medium for this threnody. For sweet directness of feeling, undiverted by the conventional mould into which it is thrown, it challenges comparison with Theocritus himself, of whose lament for Bion it is formally an imitation. To place the Epitaphium Da- monis beside Lycidas is to show the differ- ence between pastoral poetry in its early purity and pastoral poetry after it had gathered up the confused riches of the Re- naissance. Lycidas is more splendid; the poet's imagination circles out from his theme with a mightier wing, and lays under contribution a wider area of sugges- tion: but the Epitaphium Damonis has a unity, a plaintive clinging to its grief, a touching absorption in the familiar aspects of the life it mourns, which compensate

��for its narrower range. This effect of unity is subtly heightened by the recur- rence of the plaint :

" Ite domum, impasti; domino jam non vacat, agni,"

interrupting the pastoral pictures as they drift by in lovely succession. The epi- sodic passages descriptive of Milton's ex- periences at Florence, of the Manso cups, and of the incepted epic upon King Arthur, might seem to be exceptions to the unity of design. Such episodes, however, were traditional in poetry of the kind; and they serve, by the touch of garrulous egotism that is in them, to heighten the effect of naivete' proper to the speaker. The con- clusion is similar to that of Lycidas, but touched with a wilder phantasy. Perhaps no passage in Milton is so original, so dar- ing, as this, where the joys of the redeemed soul in Paradise are represented under the symbolism of the Dionysiac orgies.

��LATIN POEMS

[DE AUCTORE TESTIMONIA]

H(EC qua sequuntur de Authore testimonia, tametsi ipse intelligebat non tarn de se quam supra se esse dicta, eo quod prtzclaro ingenio viri, nee non amid, ita fere solent laudare ut omnia suis potius virtutibus quam veritati con- gruentia nimis cupide affingant, noluit tamen horum egregiam in se voluntatem non esse notam, cum alii prasertim ut id facer et mag- nopere suaderent. Duni enim nimi<z laudis invidiam totis ab se viribus amolitur, sibique quod plus aquo est non attributum esse mavult, judicium interim hominum cordatorum atque illustrium quin summo sibi honori ducat negare non potest.

JOANNES BAPTISTA MANSUS, MARCHIO VILLENSIS NEAPOLITANUS, AD JOANNEM MILTONIUM ANGLUM

Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pie-

tas sic,

Non Anglus, verum hercle Angelus ipse, fores.

��AD JOANNEM MILTOXEM ANGLUM, TRI- PLICI POESEOS LAUREA CORONANDUM, GRjECA" NIMIRUM, LATINA*, ATQUE HE- TRUSCA", EPIGRAMMA JOANNIS SALSILLI ROMANI

Cede, Meles ; cedat depressa Mincius urna;

Sebetus Tassum desinat usque loqui; At Thamesis victor cunctis ferat altior un' das;

Nam per te, Milto, par tribus unua erit.

AD JOANNEM MILTONUM

Grsecia Maeonidem, jactet sibi Roma Maro-

nem;

Anglia Miltonum jactat utrique parem. SELVAGGI.

AL SIGNOR GIO. MILTONI, NOBILE INGLESE

ODE

Ergimi all' Etra o Clio,

Perche di stelle intrecciero coronal

Non pin del biondo Dio

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