Part 17 (1/2)
[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his residence at Ludlow castle, in Shrops.h.i.+re, at which time lord Brackly and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, pa.s.sing through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefords.h.i.+re, were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night: the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the representation.
The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury, who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthens.h.i.+re, harboured Dr.
Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.
Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's a.s.sertion, that the fiction is derived from Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the Comus of Erycius Putea.n.u.s, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R.]
[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton, after him, say a garden-house, i.e. a house situated in a garden, and of which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many, if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of his dwellings after his settlement in London. H.]
[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum, as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone, to another work by the same author, ent.i.tled, Tractatulus de carmine dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B.]
[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, William Spurstow. R.]
[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case 2. J.B.]
[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus refers to it in his index: ”Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving.”
J.B.]
[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr.
Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED.]
[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes, that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J.B.]
[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether _gloriosissimus_ be here used with Milton's boasted purity. _Res gloriosa_ is an _ill.u.s.trious thing_; but _vir gloriosus_ is _commonly_ a _braggart_, as in _miles gloriosus_.
Dr. J.]
[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew, Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i.
p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is a.s.serted in the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large folios in ma.n.u.script, collected and digested into alphabetical order by Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the t.i.tle of the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid.
Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's ma.n.u.scripts. H.]
[Footnote 40: _Id est_, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by sir Richard Blackmore. H.]
[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R.]
[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were introduced, were moralities, not mysteries. MALONE.]
[Footnote 43: Philips says expressly, that Milton was excepted and disqualified from bearing any office; but Toland says he was not excepted at all, and consequently included in the general pardon, or act of indemnity, pa.s.sed the 29th of August, 1660. Toland is right, for I find Goodwin and Ph. Nye, the minister, excepted in the act, but Milton not named. However, he obtained a special pardon in December, 1660, which pa.s.sed the privy seal, but not the great seal. MALONE.]
[Footnote 44: It was told before by A. Wood in Ath. Oxon. vol. ii. p.
412. second edition.]
[Footnote 45: That Milton saved Davenant, is attested by Aubrey, and by Wood, from him; but none of them say that Davenant saved Milton: this is Richardson's a.s.sertion merely. MALONE.]
[Footnote 46: A different account of the means by which Milton secured himself, is given by an historian lately brought to light: ”Milton, Latin secretary to Cromwell, distinguished by his writings in favour of the rights and liberties of the people, pretended to be dead, and had a publick funeral procession. The king applauded his policy in escaping the punishment of death, by a seasonable show of dying.” Cunningham's History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 14. R.]
[Footnote 47: Gildon, in his continuation of Langbaine's account of the dramatick poets, 8vo. 1693, says, that he had been told that Milton, after the restoration, kept a school at or near Greenwich. The publication of an Accidence at that period gives some countenance to this tradition. MALONE]
[Footnote 48: It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, that this relation of Voltaire's was perfectly true, as far as relates to the existence of the play which he speaks of, namely, the Adamo of Andreini; but it is still a question whether Milton ever saw it. J.B.]
[Footnote 49: This opinion is, with great learning and ingenuity, refuted in a book now very little known, an Apology or Declaration of the Power and Providence of G.o.d in the Government of the World, by Dr.