Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/385

 ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS

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��Hcec ego mente olim lava, studioque supino,

Nequitice posui vana trophcea mece. Scilicet abreptum sic me malus impulit error,

Indocllisque cetas prava magistrafu.it: Donee Socraticos umbrosa Academia rivos

Prcebuit, admissum dedocuitque jugum. Protinas, extinctis ex illo tempore Jiammis,

Cincta rigent multo pectora nostra gelu- Unde suisfrigus metuit puer ipse sagittis,

Et Diomedeam mm timet ipsa Venus.

��These vain trophies of my idleness I set up in time past, in unserious mood and with lax endeavor. Error hurried me astray, and my untaught years were an ill mistress to me until the shady Academe [i. e. Plato's philo- sophy] offered me its Socratic streams, and loosened from my neck the yoke to which I had submitted. Since then, all those youthful flames are extinct, and my breast is rigid with accumulated ice whence Cupid himself fears freezing for his arrows, and Venus dreads my Diomedean strength.

��[EPIGRAMMATA] [EPIGRAMS]

��The short pieces which follow were origi- nally printed without the general title Epi- grams, under which they appear in modern editions, but were included under the title Elegies, as being written in elegiac metre. The four epigrams on the Gunpowder Plot are heavy and tasteless ; they are signal illustra- tions of Milton's congenital lack of humor. The epigrams on Leonora Baroni are interest- ing autobiographically. It has been plausibly conjectured that Milton heard this famous singer at the concert which he speaks of at- tending at the palace of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. during his first visit to Rome, Octo- ber and November, 1638. Efforts have been made, ineffectually, to identify her with the " donna leggiadra " of Milton's Italian poems, the Bolognese lady whose novel beauty ' sotto nova idea pellegrina bellezza " enthralled him at some period of his Italian residence.

��The Baroni were originally a Neopolitan fam- ily, but they had settled in Rome about a year before Milton's visit. Of Leonora, Bayle's Dictionary, quoted by Masson, says that she was "one of the finest voices in the world," and that " an infinity of beaux esprits made verses in her praise." It is interesting in this connection to note that Milton's suscepti- bility to music was accompanied by an almost complete insensibility to the appeal of the plastic and graphic arts, if we are to judge by the absence of any mention of the latter among his recorded impressions of Italy.

Three "epigrams" of minor interest, en- titled respectively Apologus de Eustico et Hero, De Moro (title supplied by the editors), and Ad Christinam, Suecorum Reginam, will be found, together with three Greek pieces from the SYLVJE, and two epigrams on Salmasius, in the Appendix.

��IN PRODITIONEM BOMBARDICAM

CUM simul in regem nuper satrapasque

Britannos Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, ne-

fas, Fallor ? an et mitis voluisti ex parte vi-

deri,

Et pensare rnala cam pietate scelus ? Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria ca3li,

Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis; Qualiter ille, feris caput inviolabile Par-

cis, Liquit Idrdanios turbine raptus agros.

��ON THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

WHEN, perfidious Faux, you attempted your late unspeakable crime against the British King and Parliament, do I mis- take you, or did you really want to show a kind of false mildness and piety in the midst of your wickedness ? Perhaps ; since you intended to send them to the high courts of Heaven in a chariot of sulphurous smoke and wheeling flame, even as Elijah, that head inviolable by the fierce Parcse, was snatched away in a whirlwind from the fields of Jordan.

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