Follow me ;

I will bring you where she sits;
30 Clad in splendour as befits
Her deity.

of famous Arcardy ye are, and sprang
Of that renowned flood, so often sung,
Divine Alphéus, who by secret sluce
Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse;
And ye, the breathing roses of the wood,
Fair silver-buskin'd nymphs, as great and good;
I know, this quest of yours, and free intent,
Was all in honour and devotion meant
To the great mistress of yon princely shrine,
Whom with low reverence I adore as mine;
And, with all helpful service, will comply
To further this night's glad solemnity;
And lead ye, where ye may more near behold 40
What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold;
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone,
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon:
For know, by lot from Jove I am the power
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower,
To nurse the sapplings tall, and curl the grove
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.
And all my plants I save from nightly ill
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill:
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, (50
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,
Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites,
Or hurtful worm with canker'd venom bites.
When Evening grey doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallow'd ground;
And early, ere the odorous breath of Morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tassel'd horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout
With puissant words, and murmurs made to
bless.

But else in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial Syrens' harmony,
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measur'd motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear,
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear;
And yet such music worthiest were to blaze
The peerless height of her immortal praise,
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,
If my inferior hand or voice could hit
Inimitable sounds: yet, as we go,
Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show,
I will assay, her worth to celebrate,
And so attend ye toward her glittering state;
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem.

11. SONG.

O'er the smooth enamell'd green Where no print of step hath been, Follow me, as I sing

And touch the warbled string,

Under the shady roof

Of branching elm star-proof.

61

Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.

III. SONG.

Nymphs and shepherds, dance no more
By sandy Ladon's lilied banks;
On old Lycæus, or Cyllene hoar,
Trip no more in twilight ranks ;
Though Erymanth your loss deplore,
A better soil shall give ye thanks.
From the stony Mænalus
Bring your flocks, and live with us;
Here ye shall have greater grace,
To serve the lady of this place.
Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were,
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.
Such a rural queen

All Arcadia hath not seen.

க

100

ORIGINAL VARIOUS READINGS OF ARCADES.

From Milton's MS, in his own hand.

Ver. 10.

Now seems guiltie of abuse
And detraction from her praise,
Lesse than halfe she hath exprest:
Envie bid her hide the rest.

Here her hide is erased, and conceale written overit.
Ver. 18. Seated like a goddess bright.
But sealed is also expunged, and sitting supplied.
Ver. 23. Ceres dares not give her odds:
Who would have thought, &c.
Both these readings are erased, and Juno and
had, as the printed copies now read, are written
over them.

Ver. 41. Those virtues which dull Fame, &c. This likewise is expunged, and What shallow is 70 substituted.

80

Ver. 44. For know, by lot from Jove I have the power.

Here again the pen is drawn through have, and
am is written over it.

Ver. 47. In ringlets quaint.
But With is placed over In expunged.

Ver. 49.

pours chill.

Of noisome winds, or blasting va

Ver. 50. And from the leaves brush off, &c. So it was at first. But the pen is drawn through leaves, and bowes supplied.

Ver. 52. Or what the crosse, &c.

It was at first And, as in the printed copies; but that is erased, and Or substituted.

Ver. 59. And number all my ranks, and every sprout.

Here And and all are expunged with the pen, and visit, as in the printed copies, completes the line.

Ver. 62. Hath chain'd mortalitie. This also is erased, and lockt pp mortal sense written over it.

COMUS

A MASK,

COMUS.

PRESENTED AT LUDLOW CASTLE, 1634, BEFORE
JOHN EARL OF BRIDGEWATER, THEN PRESI-

DENT OF WALES.

To the right honourable

stowed upon me here the first taste of your ac-
quaintance, though no longer then to make me
know that I wanted more time to value it, and
to enjoy it rightly; and in truth, if I could then
have imagined your farther stay in these parts,
which I understood afterwards by Mr. H., I
would have been bold, in our vulgar phrase,
to mend my draught (for you left me with an ex-
treme thirst) and to have begged your conver-

JOHN lord viscount BRACLY son and heir ap-sation again, joyntly with your said learned
parent to the earl of BRIDGEWATER, &c.

MY LORD,

THIS poem, which received its first occasion of
birth from yourself and others of your noble
family, and much honour from your own person
in the performance, now returns again to make
a final dedication of itself to you. Although not
openly acknowledged by the authors, yet it
is a legitimate off-spring, so lovely, and so much
desired, that the often copying of it hath tired
my pen to give my severall friends satisfaction,
and brought me to a necessity of producing it to
the publike view; and now to offer it up in all
rightful devotion to those fair hopes, and rare
endowments of your much promising youth,
which give a full assurance to all that know you,
of a future excellence. Live, sweet lord, to be
the honour of your name, and receive this
as your own, from the hands of him, who hath
by many favours been long obliged to your
most honoured parents, and as in this represen-
tation your attendant Thyrsis, so now in all reall
expression

Your faithfull and most humble servant,
H. LAWES⚫.

The copy of a Letter written by sir Henry
Wootton, to the Author, upon the following

Poem.

SIR,

From the Colledge, this 13 of April,

16385.

friend, at a poor meal or two, that we might have
banded together som good authors of the "an-
cient time: among which, I observed you to
have been familiar.

Since your going, you have charged me with
new obligations, both for a very kinde letter from
you dated the sixth of this month, and for a
dainty peece of entertainment which came ther-
Wherin I should much commend the
with.
tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish me
with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs
and odes; whereunto I must plainly confess to
have seen yet nothing parallel in our language:
ipsa mollities.

But I must not omit to tell you that I now onely owe you thanks for intimating unto me (how modestly soever) the true artificer. For the work itself I had viewed som good while before with singular delight, having received it from our common friend Mr. R.7 in the very close of the late R.s Poems, printed at Oxford, whereunto it is added (as I now suppose) that the accessary might help out the principal, according to the art of stationers, and to leave the reader con la bocca dolce.

Now, sir, concerning your travels wherin E may chalenge a little more privilege of discours with you; I suppose you will not blanch Paris in your way; therefore I have been bold to trouble you with a few lines to Mr. M. B. whom you shall easily find attending the young lord

6 Mr. H.] Mr. Warton in his first edition of Comus says, that Mr. H. was "perhaps Milton's

It was a special favour, when you lately be- friend, Samuel Hartlib, whom I have seen men

This is the dedication to Lawes's edition of the Mask, 1637, to which the following motto was prefixed, from Virgil's second Eclogue,

tioned in some of the pamphlets of this period, as well acquainted with sir Henry Wotton :"> but this is omitted in his second edition. Mr. Warton perhaps doubted his conjecture of the I venture to state from a copy of the person. Reliquiae Wotlonianæ in my possession, in which a few notes are written (probably soon after the This motto is omitted by Milton himself in the publication of the book, 3d edit. in 1672) that editions of 1645, and 1673.

Eheu! quid volui misero mihi! floribus

austrum

Perditus

WARTON.

The First Brother in the Mask. WARTON. 3 It never appeared under Milton's name, till the year 1645. WARTON.

4 This dedication does not appear in the edition of Milton's Poems, printed under his own inspection, 1673, when lord Brackley, under the title of earl Bridgwater, was still living. Milton was perhaps unwilling to own his early connections with a family, conspicuous for its unshaken loyalty, and now highly patronised by king Charles the Second. WARTON.

s April, 1638.] Milton had communicated to sir Henry his design of seeing foreign countries, and had sent him his Mask. He set out on his travels soon after the receipt of this letter.

TODD.

the person intended was the "ever-memorable" John Hales. This information will be supported by the reader's recollecting sir Henry's intimacy with Mr. Hales; of whom sir Henry says, in one of his letters, that he gave to his learned friend the title of Bibliotheca ambulans, the walkTODD. ing Library. See Reliq. Wotton. 3d edit, p. 475.

7 Mr. R.] Ibelieve "Mr. R." to be John Rouse, "The late R." is unquesBodley's librarian. tionably Thomas Randolph, the poet.WARTON. 8 Mr. M. B.] Mr. Michael Branthwait, as I suppose; of whom sir Henry thus speaks in one of his Letters, Reliq. Wotton. 3d edit. p. 546. "Mr. Michael Branthwait, heretofore his majestie's agent in Venice, a gentleman of approved confidence and sincerity."

TODD.

S.9 as his governour; and you may surely receive from him good directions for the shaping of your farther journey into Italy, where he did reside by my choice som time for the king, after mine own recess from Venice.

I should think that your best line will be thorow the whole length of France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa, whence the passage into Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend barge: I hasten, as you do, to Florence, or Siena, the rather to tell you a short story from the interest you have given me in your safety.

more obscure and early annals of the castle; to which therefore I will briefly refer, trusting that the methodical account of an edifice, more particularly ennobled by the representation of Comus within its walls, may not be improper, or uninteresting.

It was built by Roger de Montgomery, who was related to William the Conqueror. The date of its erection is fixed by Mr. Warton in the year 1112. By others it is said to have been erected before the Conquest, and its founder to have been Edric Sylvaticus, carl of Shrewsbury, whom Roger de Montgomery was sent by the Conqueror into the marshes of Wales to subdue, and with those estates in Salop he was afterwards rewarded. But the testimonies of various writers assign the foundation of this structure to Roger de Montgomery, soon after the Conquest.

The son of this nobleman did not long enjoy it, as he died in the prime of life. The grandson, Robert de Belesme, earl of Shrewsbury, forfeited it to Henry I. by having joined the party of Ro

At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman courtier in dangerous times, having bin steward to the duca di Pagliano, who with all his family were strangled, save this onely man that escaped by foresight of the tempest: with him I had often much chat of those affairs; into which he took pleasure to look back from his native harbour; and at my departure toward Rome (which had been the center of his experience) I had wonn confidence enough to beg his advice, how I might carry my-bert duke of Normandy against that king. It self securely there, without offence to others, or of mine own conscience. Signor Arrigo mio, (sayes he) 1 pensieri stretti, et il viso sciolto, will go safely over the whole world; Of which Delphian oracle (for so I have found it) your judgement doth need no commentary; and therefore (sir) I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, God's dear love, remaining

Your friend as much at command
as any of longer date

SIB,

HENRY WOOTTON.

POSTSCRIPT.

In

I have expressly sent this my foot-boy to prevent your departure without som acknowledgement from me of the receipt of your obliging letter, having myself through som business, I know not how, neglected the ordinary conveyance. any part where I shall understand you fixed, shall be glad, and diligent, to entertain you with home-novelties; even for some fomentation of our friendship, too soon interrupted in the cradle.

COMUS.

LUDLOW CAStle.

BY MR. TODD.

SOME idea of this venerable and magnificent pile, in which Comus was played with great splendour, at a period when masks were the most fashionable entertainment of our nobility, will probably gratify those, who read Milton with that curiosity which results from taste and imagination. Mr. Warton, the learned author of this elegant remark, declines entering into the

9 Lord S.] The son of lord viscount Scudamore, then the English ambassador at Paris, by whose notice Milton was honoured, and by whom he was introduced to Grotius, then residing at Paris, also as the minister of Sweden. TODD.

became now a princely residence, and was guarded by a numerous garrison. Soon after the accession of Stephen, however, the governor betrayed his trust, in joining the empress Maud. Stephen besieged it; in which endeavour to regain the possession of his fortress some writers assert that he succeeded, others that he failed. The most generally received opinion is, that the governor, repenting of his baseness, and wishing to obtain the king's forgiveness, proposed a capitulation advantageous to the garrison, to which Stephen, despairing of winning the castle by arms, readily acceded. Henry II. presented it to his favourite, Fulk Fitz-Warine,or de Dinan, whom and Hugh de Mortimer lord of Wigmore to whom succeeded Joccas de Dinan; between such dissensions arose, as at length occasioned the seizure of Mortimer, and his confinement in is called Mortimer's Tower; from which he one of the towers of the castle, which to this day was not liberated, till he had paid an immense ransom. This tower is now inhabited, and used as a fives-court.

It was again belonging to the crown in the 8th year of king John, who bestowed it on Philip de Albani, from whom it descended to the Lacies of Ireland, the last of which family, Walter de Lacy, dying without issue male, left the castle to his grand daughter Maud, the wife of Peter de Geneva, or Jeneville, a Poictevin, of the house of Lorrain, from whose posterity it passed by a daughter to the Mortimers, and from them hereditarily to the crown. In the reign of Henry III. it was taken by Simon de Montfort earl of Leicester, the ambitious leader of the confederate barons, who, about the year 1263 are said to have taken possession of all the royal castles and fortresses. Of Ludlow Castle in almost two succeeding centuries nothing is recorded.

In the thirteenth year of Henry VI. it was in the possession of Richard duke of York, who there drew up his declaration of affected allegiance to the king, pretending that the army of ten thousand men, which he had raised in the marshes of Wales, was "for the public weale of the realme." The event of this commotion between

the Royalists and Yorkists, the defeat of Richard's perfidious attempt, is well known. The castle of Ludlow, says Hall," was spoyled." The king's troops seized on whatever was valuable in it; and, according to the same chronicler, hither "the king sent the dutchess of Yorke with her two younger sons to be kept in ward, with the dutchess of Buckingham her sister, where she continued a certain space."

a chimney excellently wrought in the best cham ber, is St. Andrewes Crosse joyned to prince Arthurs armes in the hall windowe." The poet also notices the "Chappell most trim and costly sure:" about which are armes in colours of sondrie kings, but chiefly noblemen." He then specifies in prose, “that sir Harry Sidney being lord president, buylt twelve roumes in the sayd castle, which goodly buildings doth shewe a The castle was soon afterwards put into the great beautie to the same. He made also a possession of Edward duke of York, afterwards goodly wardrobe underneath the new parlor, and king Edward IV., who at that time resided in repayrd an old tower, called Mortymer's Tower, the neighbouring castle of Wigmore, and who, to keepe the auncient records in the same; and in order to revenge the death of his father, had he repayred a fayre roume under the court collected some troops in the Marches, and had house, to the same entent and purpose, and attached the garrison to his cause. On his ac- made a great wall about the woodyard, and built cession to the throne the castle was repaired by a most brave condit within the inner court: and him, and a few years after was made the court of all the newe buildings over the gate sir Harry his son, the prince of Wales; who was sent hither Sidney (in his daies and government there) by him, as Hall relates, "for justice to be doen made and set out to the honour of the queene, in the Marches of Wales, to the end that by the and glorie of the castle. There are in a goodly authoritie of his presence, the wild Welshmenne or stately place set out my lord earle of Warwicks and evill disposed personnes should refraine from armes, the earle of Darbie, the earle of Worcestheir accustomed murthers and outrages." Sir ter, the earle of Pembroke, and sir Harry SidHenry Sidney, some years afterwards, observed, neys armes in like maner: al these stand on the that, since the establishment of the lord presi-left hand of the chamber. On the other side dent and council, the whole country of Wales have been brought from their disobedient and barbarous incivility, to civil and obedient condition; and the bordering English counties had been freed from those spoils and felonies, with which the Welsh, before this institution, had annoyed them. See Sidney State-Papers, vol. i. p. 1. On the death of Edward, his eldest son was here first proclaimed king by the name of Edward V.

In the reign of Henry VII. his eldest son, Arthur, prince of Wales, inhabited the castle; in which great festivity was observed upon his marriage with Catherine of Arragon; an event that was soon followed, within the same walls, by the untimely and lamented death of that accomplished prince.

are the arms of Northwales and Southwales, two red lyons and two golden lyons, prince Arthurs, At the end of the dyning chamber, there is a pretie device how the hedgehog brake the chayne, and came from Ireland to Ludloe." The device is probably an allusion to sir Henry's armorial bearings, of which two porcupines were the crest. Sir Henry Sidney caused also many salutary regulations to be made in the court. See Sidney State Papers, vol. i. p. 143 asd p. 170, in which are stated the great sums of money he had expended, and the indefatigable diligence he had exerted in the discharge of his office.

In 1616, the creation of prince Charles (afterwards king Charles I.) to the principality of Wales, and earldom of Chester, was celebrated here with uncommon magnificence. It became next distinguished by "one of the most memo-' rable and honourable circumstances in the course of its history," THE REPRESENTATION OF COMUS in 1634, when the earl of Bridgewater was lord president, and inhabited it. A scene in the Mask presented both the castle and the town of Ludlow. Afterwards, as I have been informed, Charles the first, going to pay a visit at Powis castle, was here splendidly received and entertained, on his journey. But " pomp, and feast, and revelry, with mask, and antique pageantry,” were soon succeeded in Ludlow castle by the din of arms. During the unhappy civil war it was garrisoned for the king; who, in his flight from Wales, staid a night it. See Iter Carolinum in "Wednesday

The castle had now long been the palace of the prince of Wales annexed to the principality, and was the habitation appointed for his deputies the lords presidents of Wales, who held in it the court of the Marches. It would therefore hardly have been supposed, that its external splendour should have suffered neglect, if Powel, the Welsh historian, had not related, that "sir Henry Sidney, who was made lord president in 1564, repaired the castle of Ludlowe which is the cheefest house within the Marches, being in great decaie, as the chapell, the court-house, and a faire fountaine." See Mr. Warton's second edit. p. 124, where he quotes D. Powell's Hist. of Cambria, edit. 1580, 4to. p. 401. Sir H. Sidney, however, was made lord president in the second year of Eli-Gutch's Collect. Cur. vol. ii. 443. zabeth, which was in 1559. See Sidney StatePapers, vol. i. Memoirs prefixed, p. 86. Sir Henry's munificence to this stately fabric is more particularly recorded by T. Churchyard, in his poem called, The Worthines of Wales, 4to. Lond. 1578. The chapter is entitled the Castle of Ludloe," in which it is related, that "Sir Harry built many things here worthie praise and memorie." From the same information we learn the following particulars. "Over VOL, VIL

Aug.st 6th 1645, at Old Radnor, supper, a yeoman's house; the court dispersed. Thursday the 7.th to LUDLOW CASTLE, no dinner, Col. Wodehouse. Friday the 8th to Bridgnorth, &c." The castle was at length delivered up to the parliament in June 1646.

A few years after this event, the goods of the castle were inventoried and sold. The rev. Mr Ayscough, of the British Museum, has oblig ingly directed me to a priced catalogue of the Ji