MR MILTON'S PICTURE,
BEFORE HIS PARADISE LOST.
This inscription appeared under the engraving prefixed to Tonson's folio edition of the Paradise Lost, published by subscription, under the patronage of Somers, in 1688. Dryden was one of the subscribers. Atterbury, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, was active in procuring subscribers. See a letter of his to Tonson, Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 203.
Mr Malone regards Dryden's hexastich as an amplification of Selvaggi's distich, addressed to Milton while at Rome:
Græcia Mœonidem, jactet sibi Roma Maronem,
Anglia Miltonum jactat utrique parem.
T hree poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn.
The first, in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both, the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.
[ODES, SONGS,]
AND
LYRICAL PIECES.