Chapter IX: Part I (4)

"_At the same time, amid the classical coldness which then dried up English literature, and the social excess which then corrupted English morals . . . appeared a mighty and superb mind (Milton), prepared by logic and enthusiasm for eloquence and the epic style; the heir of a poetical age, the precursor of an austere age, holding his place between the epoch of unselfish dreaming and the epoch of practical action._"--TAINE.

=Poets of the Seventeenth Century.=

=Ben Jonson= (1573-1637). See biographical note, page 213.

=William Drummond of Hawthornden= (1585-1649). Short poems; "Poems: Amorous, Funerall, Divine, Pastorall, in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals"; "Floures of Sion."

=William Browne= (1588-1643). "Britannia's Pastorals"; "The Shepherd's Pipe"; "The Inner Temple Masque."

=George Wither= (1588-1667). Short poems; "Collection of Emblems"; "Nature of Man"; "The Shepheard's Hunting"; "Fidelia."

=Phineas Fletcher= (1582-1650). "The Locustes"; "The Purple Island."

=Giles Fletcher= (1588-1623). "Christ's Victory and Triumph."

=Thomas Carew= (1589-1639). Short poems; "Cælum Britannicum."

=Francis Quarles= (1592-1644). "Divine Poems"; "Emblems, Divine and Moral."

=Robert Herrick= (1594-1674). See biographical note, page 202.

=Sir John Suckling= (1608-1642). Love poems.

=Richard Lovelace= (1618-1658). Short poems; "Lucasta: Odes, Sonnets, Songs," etc.

=Lord Herbert of Cherbury= (1581-1648). Odes and short poems.

=George Herbert= (1592-1634). "The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations"; short poems.

=George Sandys= (1577-1643). "Christ's Passion."

=Richard Crashaw= (1615-1650). "Steps to the Altar."

=Henry Vaughan= (1621-1695). "Silex Scintillans"; "The Mount of Olives."

=Abraham Cowley= (1618-1667). "Poetical Blossomes"; "The Mistress."

=Edmund Waller= (1605-1687). See biographical note, page 205.

=Sir John Denham= (1615-1668). "Cooper's Hill."

=Sir William Davenant= (1605-1668). "Gondibert"; "Madagascar and Other Poems."

=John Milton= (1608-1674). See biographical note, page 195.

=Andrew Marvell= (1621-1678). Lyric and satiric poems.

=Samuel Butler= (1612-1680). "Hudibras."

=Thomas Otway= (1651-1685). "The Poet's Complaint of his Muse"; "Windsor Castle."

=John Dryden= (1631-1700). See biographical note, page 175.

John Dryden.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST; OR, THE POWER OF MUSIC:

AN ODE IN HONOR OF ST. CECILIA'S DAY.

'Twas at the royal feast,{1} for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne:
His valiant peers were placed around;
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound:{2}
(So should desert in arms be crowned.)
The lovely Thais,{3} by his side,
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.

_Chorus._

Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.

Timotheus,{4} placed on high
Amid the tuneful quire,
With flying fingers touched the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,{5}
Who left his blissful seats above,
(Such is the power of mighty love.)
A dragon's fiery form belied the god:
Sublime on radiant spires he rode.
The listening crowd admire the lofty sound,
A present deity,{6} they shout around;
A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound:
With ravish'd ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,{7}
And seems to shake the spheres.

_Chorus._

With ravish'd ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.

The praise of Bacchus then, the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums;
Flush'd with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face:
Now give the hautboys{8} breath; he comes! he comes!
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

_Chorus._

Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain.{9}
The master saw the madness rise;
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And, while he Heaven and Earth defied,
Changed his hand, and check'd his pride.
He chose a mournful muse,
Soft pity to infuse:
He sung Darius{10} great and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And welt'ring in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed:
On the bare earth expos'd he lies,{11}
With not a friend to close his eyes.{12}
With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his alter'd soul
The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,{13}
And tears began to flow.

_Chorus._

Revolving in his alter'd soul
The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

The mighty master smil'd to see
That love was in the next degree:
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.{14}
Softly sweet, in Lydian{15} measures,
Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honor, but an empty bubble;{16}
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, oh think it worth enjoying!
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee.
The many{17} rend the air with loud applause;
So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gaz'd on the fair
Who caus'd his care,
And sigh'd and look'd,{18} sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again;
At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

_Chorus._

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gaz'd on the fair
Who caus'd his care,
And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again;
At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again;
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep{19} asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark, the horrid sound
Has raised up his head!
As awaked from the dead,
And amaz'd he stares around.
Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries,
See the Furies{20} arise:
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
Those are Grecian ghosts,{21} that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.{22}
Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods!
The princes applaud with a furious joy;
And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,{23}
To light him to his prey,
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

_Chorus._

And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

Thus, long ago,
Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow,
While organs{24} yet were mute;
Timotheus to his breathing flute,
And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;{25}
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown:
He rais'd a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.{26}

_Grand Chorus._

At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown:
He rais'd a mortal to the skies
She drew an angel down.

NOTES.

This song was written in 1697. Lord Bolingbroke relates that, calling upon the poet one morning, Dryden said to him: "I have been up all night; my musical friends made me promise to write them an ode for their Feast of St. Cecilia, and I was so struck with the subject which occurred to me that I could not leave it till I had completed it: here it is, finished at one sitting."

The poem was first set to music by one Jeremiah Clarke, a steward of the Musical Society, whose members had solicited Dryden to write it. In 1736 it was rearranged by the great composer Handel, and again presented at a public performance.

M. Taine says, "His 'Alexander's Feast' is an admirable trumpet-blast, in which metre and sound impress upon the nerves the emotions of the mind, a master-piece of rapture and of art, which Victor Hugo alone has come up to."

"As a piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or recited in alternate strophe and anti-strophe," says Hazlitt, "nothing can be better."

"This ode is Dryden's greatest and best work."--_Macaulay._

1. =royal feast.= About the year B.C. 331, Alexander the Great, having overthrown the Persian Empire, held a great feast at Persepolis in celebration of his victories. At the close of the revelries, instigated, it is said, by Thais, his Athenian mistress, he set fire with his own hand to the great palace of Persepolis; and a general massacre of the inhabitants ensued. The ruins of the city and palace are still to be seen in a beautiful valley watered by the river Araxes--now called Bendemir--not far from the border of the Carmanian Desert.

2. =with roses and with myrtles.= At the banquets of the Greeks it was the custom of the guests to wear garlands of roses and myrtles.

3. =Thais.= "Her name is best known from the story of her having stimulated the Conqueror, during a great festival at Persepolis, to set fire to the palace of the Persian kings; but this anecdote, immortalized as it has been by Dryden's famous ode, appears to rest on the sole authority of Cleitarchus, one of the least trustworthy of the historians of Alexander, and is in all probability a mere fable." After the death of Alexander, Thais became the wife of Ptolemy Lagus.

4. =Timotheus.= A famous flute-player from Thebes. Another and more celebrated Timotheus, "the poet of the later Athenian dithyramb," was a native of Miletus and died about the time of Alexander's birth.

5. Alexander claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon; and when he visited the temple of that god, in the Libyan Desert, he was received by the priests and honored as such. See Plutarch's _Life of Alexander_.

6. =present deity.= See Psalm xlvi. 1.

7. =affects to nod.= See Homer's "Iliad." I, 528-530: "Jove spake, and nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from his immortal head; and he made great Olympus quake."

8. =hautboys.= Oboes. French _hautbois_. Wind instruments resembling the clarionet.

=Bacchus.= Compare Shakespeare:

"Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne."
--_Antony and Cleopatra_, Act ii, sc. 7.

9. =thrice he slew the slain.= How could he slay the slain?

10. =Darius.= At the time of this feast at Persepolis, Darius, the vanquished king of Persia, was still living, although a fugitive. In the following year Alexander pursued him into the Parthian Desert, where he was murdered by the satrap of Bactria. By order of Alexander, the body of the unfortunate king was sent to Persepolis, to be buried in the tombs of the kings.

11. =expos'd he lies.= Dryden seems to have written this under the impression that Darius had been killed before the time of the great feast at Persepolis.

12. =close his eyes.= Compare this with the lines from Pope ("Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady"):

"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed;
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed."

13. =a sigh he stole.= Sighed silently. His sighs when the result of pity were not very distinctly uttered. Compare Shakespeare:

"And then the lover,
Sighing like a furnace."
--_As You Like It_, Act ii, sc. 7.

And then read, in the next stanza, how Alexander sighed when moved by love.

14. =pity melts the mind to love.= Compare:

"Pity swells the tide of love."
--_Young's Night Thoughts_, III, 106.

"Pity's akin to love."
--_Southern's Oroonoko_, II, 1.

15. =Lydian measures.= The people of Lydia were noted for the effeminacy of their manners. And Lydian music was peculiarly soft and voluptuous.

"And ever against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs."
--_Milton's L'Allegro_, 135.

"And all the while sweet Musicke did divide
Her looser notes with Lydian harmony."
--_Spenser's Faerie Queene_, III, 1.

Observe the change in metre in the ten lines beginning "Softly sweet." What does the word _sweet_ modify?

16. =Honor, but an empty bubble.= So Shakespeare:

"Honor is a mere scutcheon."
--_1 Henry IV._, Act v, sc. 1.

17. =The many.= The multitude.

18. =sigh'd and look'd.= He no longer _steals_ a sigh, as he did when pitying Darius. See note 13, above.

19. =Break his bands of sleep.= The music now is very different from the Lydian measures which "soothed his soul to pleasures." "Suidas," says Dr. Warton, "mentions the Orthian style in music, in which Timotheus is said to have played to Alexander; and one Antigenidas inflamed this prince still more by striking into what were called Harmatian measures. Quintus Curtius gives a minute description of the burning of the palace at Persepolis, when Alexander was accompanied by Thais. But it does not appear in the accurate Arrian that Thais had any share in this transaction. Arrian, but more so Aristobulus, endeavored to exculpate Alexander from the charge of frequent ebriety; but Menander plainly mentions the drunkenness of Alexander as proverbial."

20. =Furies.= The Eumenides, or avengers of evil. They are variously represented by the poets. Æschylus describes them as having black bodies, hair composed of twining snakes, and eyes dripping with blood.

21. =Grecian ghosts.= The spirits of the Greek warriors in Alexander's army who had been slain by the Persians.

22. =crew.= This word was formerly used to designate any associated multitude or assemblage of persons. It is now restricted to a ship's company, except when occasionally used in a bad sense. From A.-S. _cread_ or _cruth_, a crowd.

23. =Thais led the way, etc.= See note 19, above. Neither Thais nor Helen actually fired any city. What the poet means to say is that, as Helen was the cause of the destruction of Troy, so Thais instigated the burning of Persepolis.

24. =organs.= The word _organ_ originally denoted but a single pipe, and hence the older English writers, when referring to the complete instrument, generally used the word in the plural number. "Father Schmidt and other famous organ-builders flourished in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The organ in Temple Church, London, was built by Schmidt in Charles II.'s time."

25. =vocal frame.= The organ--the grand instrument of church music--so perfect that it may literally be said to speak. See introductory note to Pope's "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," page 153.

26. St. Cecilia, according to the story in the "Golden Legend," was under the immediate protection of an angel. But it was not her sweet playing, but her spotless purity, that brought the angel to earth, not to listen, but to be "a heavenly guard."

Compare these last four lines with those at the close of Pope's Ode.

Dr. Warton says of "Alexander's Feast": "If Dryden had never written anything but this ode, his name would have been immortal, as would that of Gray, if he had never written anything but his 'Bard.' It is difficult to find new terms to express our admiration of the variety, richness, and melody of its numbers; the force, beauty, and distinctness of its images; the succession of so many different passions and feelings; and the matchless perspicuity of its diction. No particle of it can be wished away, but the epigrammatic turn of the four concluding lines."

Hallam says: "This ode has a few lines mingled with a far greater number ill conceived and ill expressed; the whole composition has that spirit which Dryden hardly ever wanted, but it is too faulty for high praise. It used to pass for the best work of Dryden and the best ode in the language. But few lines are highly poetical, and some sink to the level of a common drinking song. It has the defects as well as the merits of that poetry which is written for musical accompaniment."

THE FIRE OF LONDON.

[FROM "ANNUS MIRABILIS."]

Such was the rise of this prodigious fire,{1}
Which, in mean buildings first obscurely bred,
From thence did soon to open streets aspire,
And straight to palaces and temples spread.

The diligence of trades, and noiseful gain,
And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;
All was the Night's, and in her silent reign
No sound the rest of Nature did invade.

In this deep quiet, from what source unknown,{2}
Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose;
And first few scattering sparks about were blown,
Big with the flames that to our ruin rose.

Then in some close-pent room it crept along,
And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed;
Till the infant monster, with devouring strong,
Walk'd boldly upright with exalted head.

Now, like some rich or mighty murderer,
Too great for prison which he breaks with gold,
Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear,
And dares the world to tax him with the old,

So scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail,
And makes small outlets into open air;
There the fierce winds his tender force assail,
And beat him downward to his first repair.

The winds, like crafty courtesans, withheld
His flames from burning but to blow them more:
And, every fresh attempt, he is repell'd
With faint denials, weaker than before.

And now, no longer letted{3} of his prey,
He leaps up at it with enraged desire,
O'erlooks the neighbors with a wide survey,
And nods at every house his threatening fire.

The ghosts of traitors from the Bridge{4} descend,
With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice;
About the fire into a dance they bend,
And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.

Our guardian angel saw them where they sate,
Above the palace of our slumbering King;
He sighed, abandoning his charge to Fate,
And drooping oft look'd back upon the wing.

At length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze
Call'd up some waking lover to the sight;
And long it was ere he the rest could raise,
Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night.

The next to danger, hot pursued by fate,
Half-clothed, half-naked, hastily retire;
And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late
For helpless infants left amidst the fire.

Their cries soon waken all the dwellers near;
Now murmuring noises rise in every street;
The more remote run stumbling with their fear,
And in the dark men justle as they meet.

So weary bees in little cells repose;
But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive,
An humming through their waxen city grows,
And out upon each other's wings they drive.{5}

Now streets grow throng'd and busy as by day;
Some run for buckets to the hallow'd quire;
Some cut the pipes, and some the engines play,
And some more bold mount ladders to the fire.

In vain; for from the east a Belgian wind
His hostile breath through the dry rafters sent;
The flames impell'd soon left their foes behind,
And forward with a wanton fury went.

A key{6} of fire ran all along the shore,
And lighten'd all the river with a blaze;
The waken'd tides began again to roar,
And wondering fish in shining waters gaze.

Old Father Thames rais'd up his reverend head,
But fear'd the fate of Simois{7} would return;
Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed,
And shrank his waters back into his urn.

The fire meantime walks in a broader gross;{8}
To either hand his wings he opens wide;
He wades the streets, and straight he reaches cross,
And plays his longing flames on the other side.

At first they warm, then scorch, and then they take;
Now with long necks from side to side they feed;
At length, grown strong, their mother-fire forsake,
And a new colony of flames succeed.

To every nobler portion of the town
The curling billows roll their restless tide;
In parties now they straggle up and down,
As armies unopposed for prey divide.

One mighty squadron, with a sidewind sped,
Through narrow lanes his cumber'd fire does haste,
By powerful charms of gold and silver led
The Lombard bankers and the Change to waste.

Another backward to the Tower would go,
And slowly eats his way against the wind;
But the main body of the marching foe
Against the imperial palace is design'd.

Now day appears; and with the day the King,
Whose early care had robb'd him of his rest;
Far off the cracks of falling houses ring,
And shrieks of subjects pierce his tender breast.

Near as he draws, thick harbingers of smoke
With gloomy pillars cover all the place;
Whose little intervals of night are broke
By sparks that drive against his sacred face.

More than his guards his sorrows made him known,
And pious tears which down his cheeks did shower;
The wretched in his grief forgot their own;
So much the pity of a king has power.

He wept the flames of what he lov'd so well,
And what so well had merited his love;
For never prince in grace did more excel,
Or royal city more in duty strove.

NOTES.

This selection from Dryden's long and very tedious poem, "Annus Mirabilis, the year of Wonders, 1666," is given here as a specimen of that kind of mechanical versification so popular in the latter half of the seventeenth century. "That part of my poem which describes the Fire," says Dryden, "I owe first to the piety and fatherly affection of our monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city; both of which were so conspicuous that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they deserve. And I have chosen to write my poem in quatrains or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us." This opinion, however, was certainly not long maintained by the poet, for he never afterward practised that form of versification which he has here praised.

1. =this prodigious fire.= A half sheet published immediately after the Great Fire contains this account of the catastrophe which Dryden describes in his verses:

"On Sunday, the second of September, this present year 1666, about one o'clock in the morning, there happened a sad and deplorable fire in _Pudding-lane_ near _New Fish-street_; which, falling out in a part of the city so close built with wooden houses . . . in a short time became too big to be mastered by any engines or working near it. . . . It continued all Monday and Tuesday with such impetuosity, that it consumed houses and churches all the way to _St. Dunstan's Church_, in _Fleet-street_; at which time, by the favour of God, the wind slackened; and that night, by the vigilancy, industry, and indefatigable pains of his Majesty and his Royal Highness, calling upon all people, and encouraging them by their personal assistances, a stop was put to the fire in Fleet-street, etc. But on Wednesday night it suddenly broke out afresh in the _Inner Temple_. His Royal Highness in person fortunately watching there that night, by his care, diligence, great labour, and seasonable commands for the blowing up, with gunpowder, some of the said buildings, it was most happily before day extinguished."

2. =source unknown.= "It was ascribed by the rage of the people either to the Republicans or the Catholics, especially the latter. An inscription on the monument, intended to perpetuate this groundless suspicion, was erased by James II., but restored at the Revolution."--_Warton._

3. =letted.= Hindered. This use of the word _let_ is now obsolete, except in the phrase, "Without let or hindrance." It was frequently employed by the older writers.

"What lets but one may enter?"--_Shakespeare._

4. =the Bridge.= The heads of traitors were displayed on London Bridge. "How inferior is this passage," says Dr. Dodd, "to Milton's animated description of the wild ceremonies of Moloch, which Dryden, however, seems to have here had in mind." See "Ode on the Nativity," stanza xxiii.

5. The simile in this stanza was doubtless intended to be very effective.

6. =key.= Quay. A bank, or ledge.

7. =Simois.= See Homer's "Iliad," Bk. XXI.

8. =gross.= Bulk.

REASON AND RELIGION.

[FROM "RELIGIO LAICI."]

Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is Reason to the soul: and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few whose light shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's secret head;
And found that one first principle must be,
But what, or who, that Universal HE;
Whether some soul incompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmov'd, yet making, moving all,
Or various atoms' interfering dance
Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance,
Or this great All was from eternity--
Not even the Stagirite himself could see,
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he;
As blindly groped they for a future state,
As rashly judged of providence and fate.
In this wild maze their vain endeavors end:
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite Reason reach Infinity?
For what could fathom God were more than He.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

JOHN DRYDEN was born on the 9th of August, 1631, at Aldwincle All Saints, near Oundle in Northamptonshire. He was educated at Westminster School, under the famous Dr. Busby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. At the age of twenty-six he went up to London with the intention of devoting himself to literature and politics. During the brief remaining years of the Commonwealth (1657-1660) he was nominally a friend to the Puritan party; and one of the first poems written by him was a series of "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell." At the Restoration he at once espoused the cause of the Royalists; and his recent panegyric on the Protector did not prevent him from writing a poem, "Astræa Redux," in honor of the return of Charles the Second. In 1663 he married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, a Royalist nobleman. For several years he devoted himself chiefly to the writing of plays,--comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies. The comedies he wrote in prose; the earliest tragedies in blank verse, followed by several in rhyme, and, after these, others in blank verse. In 1670 he was appointed Poet-Laureate. In 1681, when nearly fifty years old, by the publication of "Absalom and Achitophel," he suddenly became famous as a satirical poet. He soon afterwards wrote "The Medal," another satire, directed against the Earl of Shaftesbury, and "Mac Flecknoe," aimed at Shadwell, the chief poet of the Opposition. At about the same time he produced "Religio Laici," a didactic poem explaining his religious opinions and defending the Church of England against dissenters, atheists, and Catholics. Not long after the accession of James II., Dryden, true to his policy of being always on the side of the ruling party, became a Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," in which he eulogized many things that, in the former poem, he had ridiculed. His political career ended with the overthrow of James II., in 1688; but his literary activity continued unabated. The last years of his life were occupied in translating the works of Persius and Juvenal and the Æneid of Virgil. In 1697 he wrote "Alexander's Feast"; and his "modernizations" of some of Chaucer's poems appeared in 1700, the year of his death.

"If there is grandeur in the pomp of kings and the march of hosts," says A. W. Ward, "in the 'trumpet's loud clangor' and in tapestries and carpetings of velvet and gold, Dryden is to be ranked with the grandest of English poets. The irresistible impetus of an invective which never falls short or flat, and the savor of a satire which never seems dull or stale, give him an undisputed place among the most glorious of English wits."

"His descriptive power was of the highest," says Hales. "Our literature has in it no more vigorous portrait-gallery than that he has bequeathed it. His power of expression is beyond praise. There is always a singular _fitness_ in his language: he uses always the right word. He is one of our greatest masters of metre: metre was, in fact, no restraint to him, but rather it seems to have given him freedom. It has been observed that he argues better in verse than in prose; verse was the natural costume of his thoughts."

Professor Masson says: "Not only is Dryden the largest figure in one era of our literature: he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a whole. Of all that he wrote, however, there is but a comparatively small portion that has won for itself a permanent place in our literature."

=Other Poems to be Read:= Absalom and Achitophel; Mac Flecknoe; Religio Laici; Threnodia Augustalis.

REFERENCES: Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_; Hazlitt's _English Poets_; Lowell's _Among My Books_; Macaulay's _Essay on John Dryden_; Taine's _English Literature_; Masson's _Three Devils and Other Essays_; Thackeray's _English Humorists_.

John Milton.

ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.

I.

This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid and Virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring:
For so the holy Sages once did sing:
That he our deadly forfeit should release,{1}
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II.

The glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
Wherewith he wont{2} at Heav'ns high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.{3}

III.

Say, heav'nly muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein
To welcome him to this his new abode
Now while the Heav'n by the suns team untrod
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV.

See how from far upon the eastern rode
The star-led Wisards{4} haste with odours sweet;
O run, prevent{5} them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel quire,{6}
From out his secret altar toucht with hallow'd fire.

THE HYMN.

I.

It was the winter wilde
While the Heav'n-born childe
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw of him
Had doff't her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun her lusty paramour.{7}

II.

Onely with speeches fair
She woo's the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinfull blame,
The saintly veil of maiden{8} white to throw:
Confounded that her Makers eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

III.

But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace,
She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphear,{9}
His ready harbinger,{10}
With turtle{11} wing the amorous clouds dividing,
And, waving wide her mirtle wand,
She strikes a universall peace{12} through sea and land.

IV.

No war, or battails sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked chariot{13} stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sate still with awfull eye,{14}
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

V.

But peacefull was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His raign of peace upon the earth began;
The windes, with wonder whist,{15}
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joyes to the milde ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

VI.

The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixt in stedfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence,{16}
And will not take their flight
For{17} all the morning light
Or Lucifer{18} that often warn'd them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Untill their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

VII.

And, though the shady Gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferiour flame
The new-enlightn'd world no more should need;
He saw a greater sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axle-tree{19} could bear.

VIII.

The shepherds on the lawn{20}
Or ere{21} the point of dawn
Sate simply chatting in a rustick row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan{22}
Was kindly com to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly{23} thoughts so busie keep.

IX.

When such musick sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortall finger strook,{24}
Divinely warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise{25}
As all their souls in blissfull rapture took;
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echo's still prolongs each heav'nly close.{26}

X.

Nature that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round{27}
Of Cynthia's seat the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was don,
And that her raign had here its{28} last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heav'n and Earth in happier union.

XI.

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shame-fac't Night array'd;
The helmed Cherubim,{29}
The sworded Seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaied,
Harping in loud and solemn quire
With unexpressive{30} notes to Heav'n's new-born Heir.

XII.

Such musick (as 'tis said)
Before was never made
But when of old the sons of Morning sung,{31}
While the Creator great
His constellation set,
And the well-ballanc't world on hinges{32} hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltring{33} waves their oozy channel keep.

XIII.

Ring out, ye crystall sphears;{34}
Once bless our humane ears
(If ye have power to touch our senses so),
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the base of Heav'ns deep organ blow,
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort{35} to th' angelike symphony.

XIV.

For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the age of Gold;{36}
And speckl'd Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;{37}
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her{38} dolorous mansions to the peering day.

XV.

Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will set between,
Thron'd in celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing;
And Heav'n, as at som festivall,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.{39}

XVI.

But wisest Fate sayes no;
This must not yet be so;
The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy,
That on the bitter cross{40}
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorifie;
Yet first to those ychain'd{41} in sleep
The wakefull trump{42} of doom must thunder through the deep.

XVII.

With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,{43}
While the red fire and smould'ring clouds out brake;
The aged Earth, agast,
With terrour of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake;
When at the worlds last session{44}
The dreadfull Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

XVIII.

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day,
Th' old Dragon{45} under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway;
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swindges{46} the scaly horrour of his foulded tail.

XIX.

The oracles are dumm;{47}
No voice or hideous humm
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos{48} leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell.

XX.

The lonely mountains o'er
And the resounding shore
A voice of weeping{49} heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale
Edged with poplar pale
The parting{50} Genius is with sighing sent;
With floure-inwov'n tresses torn
The nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

XXI.

In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth{51}
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint
In urns and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamins{52} at their service quaint
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes{53} his wonted seat.

XXII.

Peor and Baälim{54}
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twise batter'd god{55} of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heav'ns queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn;{56}

XXIII.

And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dred{57}
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals ring
They call the grisly{58} King
In dismall dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish{59} gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis last.

XXIV.

Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green
Trampling the unshowr'd grass{60} with lowings loud,
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud;
In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

XXV.

He feels from Judas land
The dredded Infants hand;
The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;{61}
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands controul the damned crew.

XXVI.

So, when the Sun in bed,{62}
Curtain'd with cloudy red
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to th' infernal jail;
Each fetter'd ghost slips to his severall grave;
And the yellow-skirted Fayes
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-lov'd maze.

XXVII.

But see the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest;
Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heav'ns youngest teemed{63} star
Hath fixt her polish'd car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.{64}

NOTES.

This poem was begun by Milton on Christmas day, 1629. He had then just completed his twenty-first year, and was still an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge. From certain fragments and other evidence, it is believed that he contemplated writing a series of poems on great Christian events in a similar way. This is the first poem of importance which he wrote. Hallam speaks of it as perhaps the finest lyric of its kind in the English language. "A grandeur, a simplicity, a breadth of manner, an imagination at once elevated and restrained by the subject, reign throughout it. If Pindar is a model of lyric poetry, it would be hard to name any other ode so truly Pindaric; but more has naturally been derived from the Scriptures."

1. =our deadly forfeit should release.= Should remit the penalty of death pronounced against us. Shakespeare has a similar use of the word "forfeit."

"Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal
Remit thy other forfeits."
--_Measure for Measure_, Act v, sc. 1.

2. =wont.= The past tense of the A.-S. verb _wunian_, to persist, to continue, to be accustomed. Now used only in connection with some form of the auxiliary verb _be_.

3. Explain the meaning of each word in this line, and of the whole line. The next two stanzas comprise an invocation to the Muse of Poetry. See note 1, page 153.

4. =Wisards.= Wizards. Wise men. The word was originally used in this sense, and not with the depreciatory meaning of "magician," as at present. Spenser says:

"Therefore the antique wizards well invented
That Venus of the fomy sea was bred,"

meaning by "antique wizards" ancient philosophers.

5. =prevent.= Go before; the original meaning of the word, from Lat. _præ_, before, and _venio_, to go or come.

"I prevented the dawning of the morning."--_Psalm_ cxix. 147.

"I will have nothing to hinder me in the morning, for I will
prevent the sun rising."--_Izaak Walton_, _Compleat Angler_.

6. =angel quire.= "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God."--_Luke_ ii, 13.

7. =paramour.= See note 9, page 80.

8. =maiden.= Pure, innocent, unpolluted. Compare

"When I am dead, strew me o'er
With maiden flowers."
--_Shakespeare_, _Henry VIII_, Act iv, sc. 2.

9. =turning sphear.= The Ptolemaic system of astronomy taught that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved about it, being fixed in a complicated framework, or series of hollow crystalline spheres moving one within the other. The "turning sphear" is here this entire system of revolving spheres. See note 34, below.

10. =harbinger.= One who provides a resting-place for a superior person. It was the duty of the king's harbinger, when the court removed from one place to another, to provide lodgings for the king's retinue. Derived from _harbor_, _harborage_. The word "harbor" is from A.-S. _here_, army, and _beorg_, a refuge. Others derive the word from _har_, a message, and _bringer_--hence, one who brings a message, a herald.

Parkes's _Topography of Hampstead_, 1818, contains the following:

"The office of harbinger still exists in the Royal Household, the nominal duty of the officer being to ride one stage onward before the king on his progress, to provide lodging and provision for the court."

The last knight-harbinger was Sir Henry Rycroft (appointed in 1816, died October, 1846, aged eighty). The office became extinct at his death.

11. =turtle.= Commonly _turtle-dove_. For history of the word as now applied to the tortoise, see Worcester's Dictionary.

12. =universall peace.= About the time of the birth of Christ there was peace throughout the Roman Empire, and the temple of Janus was shut.

13. =hooked chariot.= The war-chariot armed with scythes, a Celtic invention adopted by the Romans.

14. =awfull eye.= We would say, "awe-filled eyes."

=sovran.= Old French _souverain_. Some derive it from Lat. _supra_, above, and _regno_, to reign.

15. =whist.= Hushed. This word, now used as a sort of interjection commanding silence, seems to have had in earlier English more of a verbal meaning, as Spenser in "The Faerie Queene," VII, vii, 59:

"So was the Titaness put downe and whist."

It also meant _to keep silent_, as in Surrey's "Virgil":

"They whisted all, with fixed face intent."

A game of cards in which the players are supposed to keep silent is called whist.

=birds of calm.= Halcyons. See note 1, page 78.

16. =influence.= From Lat. _in_, into, and _fluo_, to flow. This word, until a comparatively modern date, was always used with respect to the supposed mysterious rays or aspects flowing from the stars to the earth, and thus having a strange power over the fortunes of men. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?"--_Job_ xxviii. 31.

"Happy constellations on that hour
Shed their selectest influences."
--_Paradise Lost_, VIII, 512.

17. =For.= Notwithstanding.

18. =Lucifer.= The morning star. The idea of Lucifer appearing to warn the stars of the approach of the sun is a happy figure. See note 7, page 80.

19. =axle-tree.= Axis. _Tree_ in O. E. is used to signify beam. We still have _single-tree_, _double-tree_, _whiffle-tree_, etc. Compare "Comus," 95:

"The gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay."

20. =lawn.= Used in its original sense of a pasture, or open, grassy space. Formerly _laund_. Similarly we have _lane_, an open passage between houses or fields.

21. =Or ere.= _Or_ is here used in its old sense, meaning _before_, from A.-S. _ær_. _Ere_ = e'er, ever. Compare Ecclesiastes xii. 6: "Or ever the silver cord be loosed." Also "King Lear," Act ii, sc. 4:

"But this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I'll weep."

22. =Pan.= See note, page 72. The application of the name _Pan_ to Christ is evidently derived from Spenser. See "Shepheards Calendar," July:

"And such, I ween, the brethren were
That came from Canaän,
The brethren Twelve, that kept yfere
The flocks of mightie Pan."

In the Glosse to the Calendar for May it is said that "Great Pan is Christ, the very God of all shepheards, which calleth himselfe the great and good shepheard. The name is most rightly (methinks) applied to him; for Pan signifieth all, or omnipotent, which is only the Lord Iesus. And by that name (as I remember) he is called of Eusebius in his fifth booke, _De Preparat. Evange._"

23. =silly.= From A.-S. _saelig_, blessed, happy. Spenser uses the word in the sense of innocent, as in "Faerie Queene," III, viii, 27:

"The silly virgin strove him to withstand."

Chaucer, in the "Reves Tale," uses it in the more modern sense of simple, or foolish:

"These sely clerkes han ful fast yronne."

But in the "Legend of Good Women" it has another meaning:

"O sely woman, full of innocence."

The meaning of this word has completely changed.

24. =strook.= Caused to sound as on a stringed instrument. Compare Dryden in "Alexander's Feast":

"Now strike the golden lyre again."

25. =noise.= A company of musicians under a leader. Used in this sense by both Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

26. =close.= Cadence. See Dryden, "Fables":

"At every _close_ she made, th' attending throng
Replied, and bore the burden of the song."

27. =hollow round.= The sphere in which the moon has its motion. See notes 9 and 34.

=Cynthia.= The moon. In the ancient mythology applied to Artemis, from Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos, her birthplace.

28. =its.= In all his poetry, Milton uses this word only three times. The other examples are in "Paradise Lost," I, 254, and IV, 814. This possessive form of the pronoun it was never used until the time of Shakespeare, who employs it five times in "A Winter's Tale," and once in "Measure for Measure"; it does not occur anywhere in the authorized version of the Bible.

29. Why are the Cherubim "helmed," while the Seraphim are "sworded"? Addison says, "Some of the rabbins tell us that the cherubims are a set of angels who know most, and the seraphims a set of angels who love most." Observe that the plural of cherub or of seraph may be formed in three ways: viz. cherubs, cherubim, cherubims; seraphs, seraphim, seraphims.

30. =unexpressive.= Inexpressible. See Shakespeare, "As You Like It":

"The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she."

Also Milton, "Lycidas," 176:

"And hears the unexpressive nuptiall song."

31. =the sons of Morning sung.= See Job xxxviii. 4-7, the oldest reference to the "music of the spheres." See note 34, below.

32. =hinges.= Literally, a hinge is anything for hanging something upon. From A.-S. _hangian_.

33. =weltring.= Rolling, wallowing. See "Lycidas," 13.

34. =Ring out.= An allusion to the music of the spheres. See note 27, above. The theory of Pythagoras was that the distances between the heavenly bodies were determined by the laws of musical concord. "These orbs in their motion could not but produce a certain sound or note, depending upon their distances and velocities; and as these were regulated by harmonic laws, they necessarily formed as a whole a complete musical scale." "In the whorl of the distaff of necessity there are eight concentric whorls. These whorls represent respectively the sun and moon, the five planets, and the fixed stars. On each whorl sits a siren singing. Their eight tones make one exquisite harmony." Milton added a ninth whorl,--"that swift nocturnal and diurnal rhomb,"--and then spoke of the "ninefold harmony," as just below. This was a favorite idea with the poets.

"Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres,
Listening the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years."
--_Tennyson_, _Ode to Memory_.

"The music of the spheres! list, my Mariana!"
--_Shakespeare_, _Pericles_, Act v, sc. 1.

"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims."
--_Shakespeare_, _Merchant of Venice_, Act v, sc. 1.

"If Nature thunder'd in his opening ears,
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heaven had left him still
The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!"
--_Pope_, _Essay on Man_, I.

"Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud, it deafens mortals' ears,
As wise philosophers have thought,
And that's the cause we hear it not."
--_Butler's Hudibras_, II, i, 617.

See, also, Montaigne, _Essays_, I, xxii; Sir Thomas Browne's _Religio Medici_, II, 9; Plato's _Republic_, VI; Dryden's "Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew," etc.

35. =consort.= Accompaniment. This word, so written until Milton's time, has now given place to _concert_, whenever used as here.

36. =age of Gold.= The fabled primeval age of universal happiness.

"A blisful lyfe, a peseable, and so swete,
Ledde the peplis in the former age."--_Chaucer._

37. =mould.= Matter, substance. The word is used in the old Romances to denote the earth itself. Milton elsewhere says:

"Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment?"

38. =her.= Observe what has already been said (note 28, above) about the pronoun _its_. _Hell_, in the Anglo-Saxon language, is feminine. But, just above, observe the expression _it self_. See, in the last line of stanza xv, the pronoun _her_ with _heaven_ as its antecedent. _Heofon_, in the Anglo-Saxon, is also feminine.

39. This stanza is a fine example of word-painting. What idea is conveyed to your mind by the expressions, "orb'd in a rainbow," "like glories wearing," "thron'd in celestiall sheen," "the tissued clouds down stearing," etc.? What kind of glories will Mercy wear? Where will she sit? How will she be enthroned? What are _radiant_ feet? Why are Mercy's feet radiant? Does she steer the tissued clouds "with radiant feet," or does she steer herself down the tissued clouds? Why will the opening of Heaven's high palace wall be "as at some festivall"?

40. =bitter cross.= Compare Shakespeare, "1 Henry IV," Act i, sc. 1, 27:

"Those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage, on the bitter cross."

41. =ychain'd.= The _y_ is a corruption of the prefix _ge_, anciently used in connection with the past participle, and still retained in many German words. Often used by Chaucer and Spenser, as in yblessed, yburied, ybrent, yfonden, ygeten, yclad, yfraught, etc.

42. =trump.= "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first."--_1 Thessalonians_ iv. 16.

=wakefull.= Awakening.

43. =rang.= See Exodus xix.

44. =session.= Assize. Both words were originally from the same root, Lat. _sedeo_, _sessum_.

=spread.= Prepare, make ready. A similar use of the word survives in the idiom "to spread the table."

45. =Dragon.= See Revelation xii. 9.

46. =Swindges.= Swings about violently. This is the only case in which Milton uses this word. It is used several times by Shakespeare in the sense of _to whip_, _to scourge_.

47. =oracles are dumm.= Keightly says: "This was a frequent assertion of the Fathers, who ascribed to the coming of Christ what was the effect of time. They regarded the ancient oracles as having been the inspiration of the devil."

Spenser, quoting the story which Plutarch relates in "his Booke of the ceasing of miracles," says, "For at that time, as hee sayth, all Oracles surceased, and enchaunted spirites that were woont to delude the people thenceforth held their peace."--_Glosse to Shepheards Calendar, May._

48. =Delphos.= The mediæval form of the word _Delphi_. The temple where was the chief oracle of Apollo was at Delphi, built at the foot of a precipitous cliff two thousand feet high. This oracle was suppressed by the Emperor Theodosius.

49. =weeping.= Compare Matthew ii. 19, and Jeremiah xxxi. 15.