'Baccare frontem
Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.'
VIRGIL, Eclog. vii.
Printed and publish'd according to Order. London, Printed by Ruth
Raworth, for Humphrey Moseley; and are to be sold at the signe of the
Princes Arms in Paul's Churchyard. 1645."
The volume is a very tiny octavo, divided into two parts in the paging. First come the ENGLISH POEMS, occupying 120 pages, and arranged thus:— On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, compos'd 1629; A Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV. ; Psalm CXXXVI. ; The Passion; On Time; Upon the Circumcision; At a Solemn Music; An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester; Song on May Morning; On Shakespear, 1630; On the University Carrier who, &c. ; Another on the Same; L'Allegro; Il Penseroso; Sonnets, English and Italian—ten in number (I. "O Nightingale;" II. "Donna leggiadra;" III. "Qual in colle," with the attached "Canzone;" IV. "Diodati e te'l;" V. "Per certo i bei;" VI. "Giovane piano;" VII. "How soon hath Time;" VIII. "Captain or Colonel;" IX. "Lady that in the prime;" X. "Daughter to that good Earl");— Arcades; Lycidas; Comus. [Footnote: To this enumeration of the English pieces in the volume of 1645 I may append three bibliographical notes—(1) Of the 28 pieces the original drafts of 10 still exist in the volume of Milton MSS. in Trinity College, Cambridge—viz.: On Time, Upon the Circumcision, At a Solemn Music, Sonnets 7, 8, 9, and 10, Arcades, Lycidas, and Comus. All these drafts are in Milton's own hand, except that of Sonnet 8, only the heading of which is in his hand. Of the other 18 pieces, the most important of which are L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, the original MSS. have not come down to us. (2) It will be seen that two of the known early English Poems are omitted in the volume: viz. the piece On the Death of a Fail Infant dying of a Cough— i.e. the poem on the death of his niece, the infant girl Phillips, written in 1626; and the College piece of 1628 entitled At a Vacation Exercise. These pieces first appeared in the Second Edition of the Poems in 1673. (3) It may also be noted that the latest written pieces which appear in the volume of 1645 are Sonnets 9 and 10—the one to the anonymous young lady, the other to the Lady Margaret Ley. We have assigned them to the year 1644, but they may have been as late as 1645.] As if to call attention to Comus as the longest and chief of the poems, it has a separate title-page, thus, "A Mask of the same Author, presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales, Anno Dom. 1645;" but, though there is this break of a new title-page, the paging runs on without interruption, Lycidas ending p. 65, and Comus taking up the rest to p. 120. Here, however, there is a complete break, as if it were intended that the English Poems, there ending, might be bound by themselves. The LATIN POEMS follow as a separate collection, paged separately from p. 1 to p. 88, and with this new title-page prefixed to them: "Joannis Miltoni Londinensis Poemata: quorum pleraque intra annum oetatis vigesimum conscripsit: nunc primum edita. Londini, Typis R.R., Prostant ad Insignia Principis, in Coemeterio D. Pauli, apud Humphredum Moseley, 1645." There is, however, a double arrangement of the Latin Poems, or a distribution of them into two classes. First come those which constitute the so-called ELEGIARUM LIBER; viz., the "Elegies" proper, numbered from I. to VII., as they now stand in all editions of Milton, together with the eight little scraps in the same elegiac verse (five of them on the subject of the Gunpowder Plot, and three on the Italian singer Leonora) which some modern editors have preferred to detach from the Elegies, and put under the separate heading of "Epigrams." This is contrary to Milton's intention; for the phrase "Elegiarum Finis" follows those scraps in the volume, showing that he meant them to go with the Elegies, and that, in fact, he thought it permissible to call anything an Elegy that was written in the ordinary elegiac verse of alternate Hexameter and Pentameter. Accordingly, all his Latin poems in that kind of verse having been included in the Elegiarum Liber, all his other Latin poems, not in that kind of verse, but either in Hexameter pure or in rarer metres, together with two fragments of Greek verse, are regarded as "Sylvæ," and constitute the distinct SYLVARUM LIBER which ends the volume. First among the "Sylvæ" come the six Latin poems of the Cambridge period—In obitum Procancellarii Medici, In Quintum Novembris, In obitum Præsulis Eliensis, Naturam non pati Senium, De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, and Ad Patrem; then, by way of typographic interruption, come the two scraps of Greek verse—viz. Psalm LXIV. and the scrap entitled Philosophus ad Regem Quendam, &c.; after which are the two Latin pieces, Ad Salsillum and Mansus, written in Italy, and the Epitaphium Damonis, written immediately after the return to England. This last stands a little apart from the body of the "Sylvæ," as if Milton attached a peculiar sacredness to it.
Such is a general description of the First or 1645 Edition of Milton's Miscellaneous Poems. The volume, however, presents some points of additional interest:——Has the reader noticed the motto on the title- page from Virgil's seventh Eclogue? It is peculiarly significant of the mood in which the volume was published. Milton, who had called himself Thyrsis in the Epitaphium Damonis, here adopts in the happiest manner the words of the young poet-shepherd Thyrsis in Virgil's pastoral. Thyrsis there, contending with Corydon for the prize in poetry, begs from his brother shepherds, if not the ivy of perfectly approved excellence, at least
"Some green thing round the brow,
Lest ill tongues hurt the poet yet to be."
Could anything more gracefully express Milton's intention in the volume? This collection of his Poems, written between his sixteenth year and his thirty-eighth, was a smaller collection by much, he seems to own, than he had once hoped to have ready by that point in his manhood; but it might at least correct the impression of him common among those who knew him only as a prose pamphleteer. Something green round his brow for the present, were it only the sweet field-spikenard, would attest that he had given his youth to Poesy, and would re-announce, amid the clamour of evil tongues which his polemical writings had raised, that he meant to return to Poesy before all was done, and to die, when he did die, a great Poet of England.
This feeling, which is the motive of the publication, appears curiously in all the details of its arrangement. The order in which the poems are printed, within each division or class, is, as nearly as possible, the order in which they were written; the deviations being only such as proper editorial art required. To almost every juvenile piece, too, whether in English or in Latin, there is prefixed some indication of the exact date of its composition; and the title-page of the Latin Poems distinctly solicits attention to the fact that most of them were composed before the author was twenty. Even more remarkable than this care in the dating is the introduction into the volume of all the eulogiums which Milton had already received from private friends on account of the Poems, or of any portion of them. To the Comus there is prefixed Henry Lawes's eulogistic Dedication of it, in the edition of 1637, to Viscount Brackley, and also Sir Henry Wotton's cordial letter to Milton, with its praise of the poem in that edition, when Milton was on the start for his continental tour in the spring of 1638. To the Latin Poems as a whole there is even a more formal vestibule of encomiums. First of all, there is a little preface by Milton in Latin apologizing to the reader for troubling him with them. "Though these following testimonies concerning the Author," he says, "were understood by himself to be pronounced not so much about him as over him, by way of subject or occasion— it being the general habit of men of brilliant genius, if they are at the same time one's friends, to fashion their praises too eagerly rather by the standard of their own excellencies than by truth—yet he was unwilling that the singular goodwill of such persons towards him should remain unknown, and the rather because others advised him strongly to the step he is now taking. While therefore he puts from him with all his strength the imputation of desiring overpraise, and would rather not have attributed to him more than is due, he cannot deny but he considers the opinion of him meantime by wise and celebrated men a very high honour." Accordingly there here follow the encomiums of his various Italian friends, known to us long ago, and which had been carefully preserved by him till now among his papers—the Latin distich by the famous Marquis Manso of Naples; the outrageously complimentary Latin verses of the two Romans, Salzilli and Selvaggi; and the more interesting Italian ode of compliment and Latin Dedication by the two Florentines, Francini and Carlo Dati. (See Vol. I. pp. 732-4, 753-4, and 768.) One has to remember that the insertion of such commendatory verses in new volumes of poetry was a fashion of the day. But, besides, there was really the anxiety for "something green round the brow." In short, it is as if Milton said to his countrymen—"Here is plenty of greenery, and to spare, with florid stuff intermixed, of which I am rather ashamed: pick out as much or as little of it as you like; only, at this date in my life, to prevent mistake, let me have some kind of garland."
The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, for one, was most willing to oblige Milton. Prefixed to the volume, on the blank space before the poems themselves begin, is this most interesting preface in Moseley's own name:—
"THE STATIONER TO THE READER.
"It is not any private respect of gain, gentle Reader—for the slightest Pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men—but it is the love I have to our own language, that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue; and it's the worth of these both English and Latin Poems, not the flourish of any prefixed encomions, that can invite thee to buy them—though these are not without the highest commendations and applause of the learnedest Academicks, both domestick and foreign, and amongst those of our own country the unparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eton, Sir Henry Wootton. I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is: perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But, howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that encouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men, in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late choice pieces, hath once more made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these ever- green and not to be blasted laurels. The Author's more peculiar excellency in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled. Reader, if thou art eagle-eyed to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal.