and the press are at full liberty;For your king and your country you safely may write,
You may say black is black, and prove white is white;
Let no pamphleteers
Be concerned for their ears;
For every man now shall be tried by his peers.
Twelve good honest men shall decide in each cause,
And be judges of fact, tho' not judges of laws."
In the third verse are the lines Lord Mansfield cited from memory:—
"For Sir Philip well knows
That innuen-does
Will serve him no longer in verse or in prose;
Since twelve honest men have decided the cause,
And were judges of fact, tho' not judges of laws."
Lord Campbell and Mr. Harris both make another mistake with reference to this ballad which I may perhaps be excused if I notice. They say that it was composed on an unsuccessful prosecution of the Craftsman by Sir Philip Yorke, and that this unsuccessful prosecution was subsequent to the successful prosecution of that paper on December 3rd, 1731. This was not so: Sir Philip Yorke's unsuccessful prosecution, and to which of course Pulteney's ballad refers, was in 1729, when Francklin was tried for printing "The Alcayde of Seville's Speech," and, as the song indicates, acquitted.
Cambridge, July 29. 1850.
NOTES ON MILTON
Comus.
On l. 8. (G.):—
"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."
Macbeth, iii. 2.
On l. 101. (M.):—
"The bridegroom Sunne, who late the Earth had spoused,
Leaves his star-chamber; early in the East
He shook his sparkling locks."
Fletcher's Purple Island C. ix. St. 1.
On l. 102. (M.):—
"And welcome him and his with joy and feast."
Fairfax's Tasso, B. i. St. 77.
On l. 155. (D.):—
"For if the sun's bright beams do blear the sight
Of such as fix'dly gaze against his light."
Sylvester's Du Bartas. Week i. Day 1.
On l. 162. (G.):—
"Such reasons seeming plausible."
Warners Albion's England, p. 155. ed. 1612.
On l. 166. (G.):—
"We are a few of those collected here
That ruder tongues distinguish villager."
Beaumont and Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen, iii. 5.
On l. 215. (G.) "Unblemished" was originally (Trin. Coll. Cam. MSS.) written "unspotted," perhaps from Drayton:—
"Whose form unspotted chastity may take,"
On l. 254. (G.) Add to Mr. Warton's note, that after the creation of Sir Robert Dudley to be Earl of Leicester by Queen Elizabeth in 1564, "He sat at dinner in his kirtle." So says Stow in Annals, p. 658. edit. 1633.
On l. 290. (G.):—
"My wrinckl'd face,
Grown smooth as Hebe's."
Randolph's Aristippus, p. 18. 4to. ed. 1630.
On l. 297. (G.):—
"Of frame more than celestial."
Fletcher's Purple Island, C. 6. S. 28. p. 71. ed. 1633.
On l. 331. (G.):—
"Night begins to muffle up the day."
Wither's Mistresse of Philarete.
On l. 335. (G.):—
"That whiles thick darkness blots the light,
My thoughts may cast another night:
In which double shade," &c.
Cartwright's Poems, p. 220. ed. 1651.
On l. 345. (G.):—
"Singing to the sounds of oaten reed."
Drummond, p. 128.
On l. 373. (G.):—
"Virtue gives herself light thro' darkness for to wade."
Spenser's F. Queene.
(D.) For what is here finely said, and again beautifully expressed (v. 381.), we may perhaps refer to Ariosto's description of the gems which form the walls of the castle of Logistilla, or Reason:—
"Che chi l'ha, ovunque sia, sempre che vuole,
Febo (mal grado tuo) si può far giorno."
Orl. Fur. x. 60.
On l. 404. (G.):—
"Whiles a puft and rechlesse libertine,
Himselfe the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And reakes not his owne reed."
Hamlet> i. 3.
On l. 405. (G.):—
"Where death and danger dog the heels of worth."
All's Well that ends Well, iii. 4.
On l. 421. (M.):—
"Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just:
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted."
2 Henry IV., iii. 2.
On l. 424. (G.):—
"And now he treads th' infamous woods and downs."
Ph. Fletcher's Eclog., i. p. 4. ed. 1633.
On l. 494. (G.) The same sort of compliment occurs in Wither's Sheperd's Hunting. (See Gentleman's Mag. for December 1800, p. 1151.)
"Thou wert wont to charm thy flocks;
And among the massy rocks
Hast so cheered me with thy song,
That I have
