Butson, the bishop of Clonfert, whose talents, erudition, and moral worth make me proud to challenge him as my friend, for some more specific intelligence on the topic in question; and to the kindness of this most respectable prelate am I now indebted for the power of correcting the mistake of which I have been guilty in the note to p. 396. The person, to whom is inscribed the volume preserved in the library of Trin. Coll. Dublin, was Patrick Young, the librarian of Charles I. The words and the arrangement of the inscription are the following: Ad doctissimum virum unum in fasciculum conjecta, mittit, paucis hujusmodi lectoribus contentus. Patrick Young, who was a prebendary of St. Paul's, was probably Milton's neighbour, when the latter resided in St. Bride's Churchyard; and this circumstance, with the natural effect of learning to conciliate its votaries, might be sufficient to cement a friendship between these two great scholars, notwithstanding the opposition of their political principles. In the pure sunshine of Athens or of Rome, the republican Milton and the royalist Young might meet and entertain each other, without attending to the gloomy and pestilential atmosphere which, in that disastrous season, covered and diseased their native island. For these errors of oversight or misapprehension which I have acknowledged, and for many more of a similar nature which may have escaped my detection, I will entreat the pardon of my readers; and will hope that, imitating the candour of the great Roman critic and poet, while they see my faults they will suggest the venial cause of them in the common imperfection of the mind of man. Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus. Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens; Poscentique gravem persæpe remittit acutum: Nec semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus. HOR. De Art Poet. 347. But if, refusing the indulgence which I solicit, my readers will be strict in remarking the imperfections of my page, I can only address them in the terms, in which the great and the modest Locke addressed Bishop Stillingfleet: “I see that you would have me exact, and without any faults; and I wish that I could be so, the better to deserve your approbation." More than half of this volume had passed the press, before I obtained a sight of Mr. Todd's second edition of the poetical works of my author; and to this circumstance must be imputed my apparent inattention to this respectable publication. To Mr. Todd I have formerly professed obligations for the information with which he has supplied me; and had I been able to avail myself, at the proper period, of this new edition of his biographical and editorial labours, I might possibly have had more obligations of a similar nature to acknowledge. Of some of the new matter however, with which his industrious researches have enabled him to enlarge his biography, I was already possessed; and much of the rest I should not perhaps have been very solicitous to employ. With respect to his edition of our great poet, I must think that the variorum notes are much too numerous, and that their bulk might very advantageously have been diminished. In two instances, which have occurred to me on a hasty glance through the volumes, the commentary (the general character of which is redundancy) proves to be deficient. On that place in the 2d book of Paradise Lost, 592 A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog, the classical prototype is not cited; and we are referred to Herodotus and Lucan, in none of whose pages is to be found any authority for the assertion in the line distinguished by italics. The passage to which Milton immediately points on this occasion is in Diodorus. After describing the lake Serbonis, this historian says, διὸ καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν ἀγνούντων τὴν ἰδιότητα το τόπε, μετὰ ςρατευμάτων ὅλων ἠφανίσθησαν, τῆς ὑποκειμένης ὁδι διαμαρτόντες. "Wherefore many, wandering from the proper road, and not previously acquainted with the nature of this place, have, with their whole armies, been swallowed up in it." Dio. Sic. 1. 35. ed. Wessel. 1746. The other instance of omission, to which I allude, is in the 7th book of the Paradise Lost, l. 142 66 rule of the English Grammar ought to be, we;" and yet the error is not noticed in the commentary. But it is not intended to throw trifles of this nature into the scale to weigh against the general merit of the edition. Of more consequence however is the neglect throughout these volumes of the proper poetic orthography; or the indiscriminate and unsystematic excision of the e, in the inflected tenses and the perfect participle of the verb. By this inconsiderate conduct of the Editor much mischief has been done; and if a page of his Milton were to be read according to the invariable rules of English pronunciation, the ear would be frequently outraged with barbarous sounds, occasioned by the erroneous shortening of the penultimate vowel, or the equally erroneous hardening of the penultimate consonant, when it happened to be c, or g. In the following lines for instance"If thou beest he: but O! how fallen! how chang'd From him, who in the happy realms of light, Cloth'd with transcendent brightness, didst outshine, &c." the g in "chang'd" is hard as in clang or rang, and the o in cloth'd is short as in clot or plot. In these lines however the Editor has deviated from his usual practice by leaving the e of the inflexion in "beest" and 66 fallen," in the latter of which words it happens to be of very immaterial consequence. It is strange that a principle of poetic orthography which is so obvious, and has more than once been publicly explained, should yet not be followed: but if the editors of our poets are inflexibly bent on retaining their |