'Alas! what boots it with uncessant care Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?' Milton's poem comes last in the collection, without title, and with simply the initials I. M. appended. It presents a strange contrast to the worthless productions which precede it. Unless the other writers' poetic appreciation was very far in advance of their poetic power, as exhibited in their several contributions, they could have had but little appreciation of the merits of Milton's poem. There is no reason for supposing that King's death caused Milton a deep personal grief, such as that which was caused by the death of Charles Diodati, and to which the Epitaphium Damonis bears testimony. Milton had no doubt cherished for King a deep regard, as one exceptionally fitted, by his purity of character, and sincere piety, for the sacred office. And the presentation, in his elegiac ode, of these qualities, afforded an occasion for giving an expression to what was evidently a greater grief to him than the death of his College friend, namely, the condition of the Church, which he regarded as corrupt in itself, and as in league with the despotic tendencies of the political power. All the 'higher strains' of the ode are inspired by a holy indignation toward the time-serving ecclesiastics, whose unworthiness, as shepherds of Christ's flock, he sets forth in the burning denunciations attributed to St. Peter, as the type of true episcopal power, - denunciations which are prophetic of those he is destined to pronounce in a few years, in his polemic prose works, against the more developed ecclesiastical and political abuses of the time, as one specially commissioned by God, so to do, in the words delivered to the prophet: Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins.' When the poem was republished with the author's full name, in 1645, it had the following heading: 'In this Monody the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637; and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in their height.' This heading would, no doubt, have caused the rejection of the poem by the Cambridge authorities. Milton's hostility to the hierarchy of England was little suspected then he was no doubt regarded as a loyal and dutiful son of his Alma Mater, and, besides, it is not likely that the several contributions to the King Memorial were looked into very closely by the Committee of Examination. The death of the Shepherd Lycidas is made to image forth the death of a pure priesthood. It is possible that Milton may have seen an etymological significance in the name Lycidas (which the philology of the present day would not admit) and which caused him to adopt the name as bearing upon the ecclesiastical import of the poem. The name for him may have signified a wolf-seer, to look out for the wolf being one of the most important duties of the shepherd who has the care of the sheep and of the spiritual shepherd or pastor who watches over Christ's flock. 'The pilot of the Galilean lake,' St. Peter, 'the type and head of true episcopal power,' is introduced among the mourners of the death of King, denouncing the lewd hirelings of the priesthood of the time. How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least. That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs Daily devours apace, and nothing said. But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.' The two last verses some commentators have explained as a prophecy of the execution of Archbishop Laud, which took place on the 10th of January, 1644, six years after the publication of 'Lycidas.' Warton thus paraphrases the lines: 'But there will soon be an end of all these evils; the axe is at hand, to take off the head of him who has been the great abettor of these corruptions of the gospel. This will be done by one stroke.' If this is the meaning of the passage, it was certainly a very remarkable prophecy, when it was written, for the king and the archbishop were then at the height of their power, and there was little or nothing to indicate its overthrow. The passage admits of a more probable explanation. The two-handed engine, the epithet 'two-handed' meaning that its length and weight required it to be grasped with both hands, refers to the sword of St. Michael, the guardian and protector of the Church. In the 6th Book of the 'Paradise Lost' (vv. 250 -253) it is said of the sword of Michael that it 'Smote and felled Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway The poet in this passage therefore means to say that St. Michael's sword is to smite off the head of Satan, who, at the door of Christ's fold, is, 'with privy paw,' daily devouring the hungry sheep. In a sublime invocation to the Son of God, at the conclusion of the fourth section of 'Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus,' Milton says: 'As thou didst dignify our fathers' days with many revelations above all the foregoing ages, since thou tookest the flesh, so thou canst vouchsafe to us (though unworthy) as large a portion of thy spirit as thou pleasest; for who shall prejudice thy all-governing will? Seeing the power of thy grace is not passed away with the primitive times, as fond and faithless men imagine, but thy kingdom is now at hand, and thou standing at the door. Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth! put on the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.' The view taken is strengthened by another disputed passage of the poem, a few verses farther on. The poet is addressing his drowned friend, whose body he imagines to be tossed about by the waves (vv. 154–163): 'Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.' By the fable of Bellerus old,' is meant St. Michael's Mount at the Land's End in Cornwall, anciently named Bellerium, from Bellerus, a Cornish giant, where the Vision of St. Michael was, by the old fable, represented to sit, looking toward far Namancos and the hold of Spanish Bayona. Much of the deeper meaning of the poem centres in the three last verses of the passage quoted: 'Where the great Vision of the guarded mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold, Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.' The annotators say nothing, so far as I know, about the application of the great Vision of the guarded mount to the ecclesiastical meaning of the poem. The meaning I take to be this: in making the Archangel Michael, the guardian and defender of the Church of Christ, look toward Namancos and Bayona's hold, i.e. toward Spain, the great stronghold, at the time, of Papacy, and which, in the reign of Elizabeth, had threatened England with invasion and with the imposition of the Roman Catholic religion, the poet would evidently imply the Archangel's watchfulness over the Church against foreign foes. But the danger is not from without (this I take to be the idea |