Lo thus was Bridges hurt
In cradel of her kynd.

And in the Hymne in Honour of Love.

The wondrous cradle of thine infancy.

B. i. c. x. f. lv.

From thence a Faerie thee unweeting reft.

Thus St. George, while an infant, is stolen by an enchantress. "Not many yeares after his nati"vitie, the fell enchantress Kalyb,.... by charmes " and witchcraft stole this infant from the carefull " nurses*."

He thought at once him to have swallowd quight,
And rusht upon him, &c.

Thus the winged ferpent, in the Black Castle, attacks St. George, " pretending to have swallowed " whole this courageous warrior, &c t.

So downe he fell, and forth his life did breath
That vanisht into smoake, and clowdes swift.

We meet with the same circumstance in Hawes's
Pastime of Pleasure. But it is usual in romance.

B. i. c. xii. f. xxxviii.

To drive away the dull melancholy.

The same verse occurrs, and upon the same occafion, 1.5.3.

B. ii. c. i. f. vi.

And knighthood took of good Syr Huon's hand.

There is a romance, called SIR HUON of BORDEAUX, mentioned among other old histories of the same kind, in Laneham's Letter, concerning queen Elizabeth's entertainment at Kenelworth-castle, above quoted *. It is entitled, The famous Exploits of Syr Hugh of Bordeaux, and was translated from the french by John Bourchier, lord Berners, in the reign of Henry VIII. This book passed through three editions. William Copland printed another translation by this nobleman, " ARTHUR OF BRYTAN. The history of the most noble and valyant knight, Arthur of Lytell Brytayne, translated out of french, &c." fol. He also tranflated Froissart.

* Vol. i, sect, 2.

1

1

B. ii. c. i. f. liii.

The woodes, the nymphes, the bowres my midwives

were.

The pregnant heroines of romance are often delivered in solitary forefts, without assistance; and the child, thus born, generally proves a knight of most extraordinary puissance.

B. ii. c. ii. f. iv.

To shewe how fore BLOUD-GUILTINESSE he hat'th. We meet with BLOUD-GUILTINESSE again, below. -With BLOUD-GUILTINESSE to heap offence. f. 30. Again,

Or that BLOUD-GUILTINESSE or guile them blot. 2.7.19.

This is a word which would have been ranked among Spenser's obsolete terms, had it not been accidentally preserved to us in the tranflation of the Pfalms used in our Liturgy, and by that means rendered familiar. "Deliver me from BLOUD-GUILTI

NESSE, O Godt." The same may be said of

BLOUD-THIRSTIE.

And high advancing his BLOUD-THIRSTIE BLADE.

B. ii. c. ii. f. xxxiv.

-As doth a hidden moth

The inner garmeat fret, not th' outer touch.

He seems to have had his eye on that verse in the Pfalms,

" Like as it were a moth fretting a garment *."

B. ii. c. iii. f. xxix.

Her dainty paps which like young fruit in May
Now little gan to fwell, and being tide,
Through their thin weed their places only fignifide.

Dryden, who had a particular fondness for our author, and from whom he confesses to have learned his art of verfification, has copied this passage, in Cymon and Iphigenia.

Her bosom to the view was only bare;
Where two beginning paps were scarcely spy'd,
For yet their places were but fignify'd.

B. ii. c. iii. f. xxxiii.

O goddesse (for such I thee take to bee)
For neither doth thy face terrestrial shew,
Nor voice found mortall, &c.

Drawn from Æneas's address to his mother; and in the same manner again,

Angell, or goddesse, do I call thee right. 3.5.35.

Milton has finely applied this manner of address, originally taken from Ulyffes's address to Nausicaa, Odyff. 6. in Comus.

Whom certain these rough shades did never breed,
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine

Dwellst here with Pan and Sylvan; by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog

To touch the profperous growth of this tall wood.

This speech is highly agreeable to the character of the flattering and deceitful Comus; and the supposition that she was the goddess or genius of the wood, re-sulting from the situation of the perfons, is no less new than proper.

There is another passage in Comus, whose subject is not much unlike that of the verses just produced, which probably Milton copied from Euripides, whose tragedies he is known to have studied with uncommon diligence.

Their port was more than human, as they stood;
I took it for a faery vision

Of