From Lucasta,
Going to the Wars
The Grasshopper
To My Noble Friend, Mr. Charles Cotton[1]
To Althea, from Prison
Song Set By Dr. John Wilson[7]
Love Made in the First Age.
To Chloris
Annotation
1. Charles Cotton the elder, father of the poet‘ He died in 1658. This poem is extracted in c’ensura Literaria, ix. 352, as a favourable specimen of Lovelace’s poetical genius. The text is manifestly corrupt, but I have endeavoured to amend it. In Elton’s Specimens of Classic Poets, 1814, i. 148, is a trans lation of Anacreon’s Address to the Cicada, or Tree-Locust (Lovelace’s grasshopper ?), which is superior to the modern poem, being less prolix, and more natural in its manner. In all Lovelace’s longer pieces there are too many obscure and feeble conceits, and too many evidences of a leaning to the metaphysical and antithetical school of poetry.
2. Original has haire.
3. i. e. a heard of oats
4. Meleager’s invocation to the tree-locust commences thus in Elton’s translation :— “ Oh shrill-voiced insect! that with dew-drops sweet lnebriate ” See also Cowley’s Anacreontiques, No. X. The Grasshopper
5. i. e. horizontal lines tinged with gold. See Halliwell’s‘ Glossary of Archaic Words, 1860, art. PLAT (seventh and eighth meaning). The late editors of Nares cite this passage from Lucasta as an illustration of guilt-plats, which they define to be “plots of gold.” This definition, unsupported by any other evidence, is not very satisfactory, and certainly it has no obvious application here. * Randolph says :— “ toiling ants perchance delight to hear The summer musique of the gras-hopper.” Poems, 1640, p. 90. It is a question, perhaps, whether Lovelace intended by the grasshopper the cicada or the locusta. See Sir Thomas Browne’s Inquiries into Vulgar Errors (Works, by Wilkins, 1836, iii. 93).
6. Perch.
7. The first stanza of this famous song is harmonized in Chemjfull Ayres or Ballads: First composed jbr one single voice, and since set for three voices‘ By John Wilson, Dr. in Music, Professor of the same in the University of Oxford. Oxford, 1660 (Sept. 20, 1659), 4to. p. 10. I have sometimes thought that, when Lovelace composed this production, he had in his recollection some of the sentiments in Wither’s Shepherds Hunting, 1615. See, more particularly, the sonnet (at p. 248 of Mr. Gutch’s Bristol edition) commencing: “I that er’st while the world’s sweet air did draw.”
8. Peele, in King David and Fair Bethsabe, 1599, has a similar figure, where David says :- “ Now comes my lover tripping like the roe, And brings my longings tangled in her hair.” The “ lover ” is of course Bethsabe.
9. Thus Middleton, in his More Dissemblers besides Women, printed in 1657, but written before 1626, says : “ But for modesty, I should fall foul in words upon fond man, That can forget his excellence and honour, His serious meditations, being the end Of his creation, to learn well to die; And live a prisoner to a woman’s eye.”
10. Original reads gods; the present word is substituted in ac— cordance with a MS. copy of the song printed by the late Dr. Bliss, in his edition of Woods Athena. If Dr. Bliss had been aware of the extraordinary corruptions under which the text of LUCASTA laboured, he would have had less hesitation in adopt ing birds as the true reading. The “ Song to Althea,” is a fa vourable specimen of the class of composition to which it belongs; but I fear that it has been over-estimated.
11. Percy very unnecessarily altered like committed Zinnets to linnet-like confined (Percy’s Reliques, ii. 247 ; Moxon’s ed.) Ellis (Specimens of Early English Poets, ed. 1801, iii. 252) says that this latter reading is “ more intelligible.” It is not, however, either what Lovelace wrote, or what (it may be presumed) he intended to write, and nothing, it would seem, can be clearer than the passage as it stands, committed signifying, in fact, nothing more than confined. It is fortunate for the lovers of early English literature that Bp- Percy had comparatively little to do with it. Emeudation of a text is well enough; but the wholesale and arbitrary slaughter of it is quite another matter.
12. This and the succeeding stanza are omitted by Mr. Singer in his reprint.
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