648 The Beauty of Shakspeare's Epithets. [JUNE, 



their genius to the best advantage. Who, indeed, that has a particle of 

 poetry in his soul, does not infinitely prefer the rocks and rugged places 

 of the early muse, with here and there a cataract, whose sounding waters 

 render the silence of her more stilly nooks delicious as the calm after the 

 summer storm, rattier than wandering by the " lazy Loires," and along 

 the smooth promenades, shaven grass-plots, and boxen alleys, where the 

 Wallers and Roscommons scattered the polite fumes of their poetry to 

 simpering beaux in bag-wigs, and mincing mistresses in hoops and 

 masks ? It is not to be denied that more of the wonders, the flowers, 

 the music, and the magic, of poetry, lies among the obscure Chapmans 

 Harringtons, Brownes, and Herricks, than among the " mob of gentle- 

 men who wrote with ease." The first are poets, with all their faults 

 their polished rivals are not, with all their perfections. The present age 

 feels that there is none of the mens divinior to save them from oblivion 

 none of the salt of genius to savour and keep them fresh for the hunger 

 of intellects to come. It is the native ore of poetry running in deep 

 veins through the ground over which the elder poets walked with di- 

 vining rods in their hands, which makes the saving difference between 

 them and their more refined followers. 



But we are wandering from our immediate subject the poetry of 

 epithet. Instances innumerable of almost an over-abundance of epithets 

 occur in Milton a profusion which is not, perhaps, like the display of gems 

 in the crown of an emperor of Ind, necessary to our abstract notions of 

 his splendour, but which yet serve to impress us with Ms magnificence, 

 and convey a powerful sense of his abundant riches. This wealth of 

 mind is more especially observable in that greatest of all minor poems, 

 " Comus." Shakspeare is still more profuse in golden epithets arrays 

 his lines in still more glorious clothing, and enriches them with gems 

 brought earlier from the same Golconda. 



It is not, perhaps, quite out of the path of these remarks, to refer to 

 that beautiful little masque, in the third act of the Tempest, as the origin 

 of the style of Milton's. It may be conjectured, that lines like the fol- 

 lowing lingered like a delicious melody in the ear of Milton, and set 

 him to tune his solemn organ to the same harmony. Listen to Shak- 

 speare's Iris, entering to music not sweeter than the verse she utters ! 



" Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas, 

 Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, 

 And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep ; 

 Thy banks with peonied and lilied brims, 

 . Which spongy April at thy best betrims, 



To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves, 

 Whose shadow the dismissed* bachelor loves, 

 Being lass-lorn ; thy pole-clipt vineyard ; 

 And thy sea-marge, steril, and rocky-hard, 

 Where thou thyself dost air, the queen of the sky, 

 Whose watery arch and messenger am I, 

 Bids thee leave these ; and with her sovereign grace, 

 Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, 

 . To come and sport : her peacocks fly amain ; 

 Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain." 



This, as we have remarked, seems at once to have been the origin of 



* This fine epithet tells as perfect a tale of unsuccessful wooing, as if volumes had 

 been wasted in narrating it. 



