motive and a reward; there should have been a distinction between the defire of applaufe as the pur, and the obtainment of it as a guerdon. There is a difficulty in thefe lines:

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal foil,
Nor in the glistering foil,

Set off to the world.

It seems doubtful whether the metaphor of a plant in the first line is continued to the second, or exchanged for another. If it is continued, what connexion can a plant have with a foil? if it is exchanged, what is it exchanged for? perhaps a conjectural emendator would read,

Nor ftone in gliftering foil,
Set off to the world.-

* Foil is the appellation of a thin piece of metal, in which crystals, or other stones are fet, to heighten their colour, or improve their luftre. Milton feems to use the word, generally, for any ornament. Perhaps he meant an allufion to a plant with leaves naturally variegated, or to one on fome occafion artificially, or fancifully adorned with gilding,

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But

But most probably the metaphor of a plant is not varied at all. If it is quitted, it is foon resumed, for after the intervention of a superfluous negative alternative under the name of broad rumour; the affirmative describes fame as living and Spreading by the pure eyes, that is, in the prefence of all judging Jove.

Mythological machinery is managed with so much difficulty, that in modern compofition it feldom fails to disgust. Milton, however, has employed it in a manner, which all Dr. Johnson's ridicule cannot degrade, when he fays, one god asks another god what is become of Lycidas, and neither god can ⚫ tell.' Milton's friend was drowned in his paffage from Chefter, on the Irish feas, The Monodift represents himfelf as liftening to Triton, the herald of the sea, who comes to exculpate Neptune from occafioning the misfortune:

But

V. 88. But now my Oat proceeds,

And liftens to the herald of the fea,
That came in Neptune's plea ;

He afk'd the waves, and afk'd the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?
And question'd every guft of rugged wing,
That blows from off each beaked promontory;

They knew not of his story,

And fage Hippotades* their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon ftray'd,
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope, with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark

Built in th' eclipfe, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That funk fo low that facred head of thine.

The creation of fictitious perfons, and the description of real ones, have generally been esteemed among the principal operations of poetry. Camus, the genius of the river Cam, and St. Peter, are now introduced, and their fuppofed appearance forcibly painted;

V. 103. Next Camus, reverend Sire, went footing flow,
V.103.
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet fedge,

Hippotades, or Eolus, god of the winds.

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In-wrought

In-wrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that fanguine flow'r, infcrib'd with woe.*
Ah! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?
Laft came, and last did go,

The pilot of the Galilean lake,

Two maffy keys he bore of metals twain,
(The golden opes, the iron fhuts amain)
He shook his miter'd locks, and stern befpake.

St. Peter's fpeech is an animated and severe cenfure of the clergy of the times. This fatire, however juft, is certainly no neceffary, nor perhaps very proper, part of the poem, and contains fome imagery that is more natural and ftriking, than agreeable; for inftance:

V. 125. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But fwoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.

Dr. Johnson's infinuation, that there is in it a confufion of the actual feeder

* There seems some ambiguity in the point of refemblance here; but the poet probably did not mean that the bonnet's edge was fanguine or red, but that it was infcribed with fymbols of woe.

of

of sheep with the ecclefiaftical pastor, feems nevertheless void of foundation. To the literal shepherd all the circumftances mentioned feem juftly attributable, though there was doubtless here a correfpondent allegorical meaning defigned for all of them.

The poet now apoftrophizes to Alpheus, and the Sicilian Mufe; and as if totally forgetting the fituation of Lycidas, invokes them to call the vales to ftrew his hearfe with flowers:

V. 131. Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That fhrunk thy ftreams;* return Sicilian
Muse,

And call the vales, and bid them hither caft
Their bells and flourets of a thousand hues.

Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use

* Bishop Newton, from Richardfon, has noticed Milton's poetical judgment in this paffage; he had marked the fuperiority of the fpeech of Apollo, by terming it a 'ftrain of higher mood.' He now marks the speech of St. Peter, by the grand circumftance of its shrinking the streams of Alpheus.

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