404 CANADA IN THE BODLEIAN. 



George III. does not appear to have possessed the poetic sense very 

 strongly. He expressed his regret that Milton had not written Paradise 

 Lost in prose. In the spirit of ooniplaisanco, a "gentleman of Oxford" 

 accordingly provided a version of the work in the form suggested by 

 the royal taste. Occasionally a volume is to he met with in the old 

 booksellers' stalls, bearing the following title, " Milton's Paradise Lost, 

 State of Innocence and Fall of Man ; rendered into Prose; with histo- 

 rical, philosophical and explanatory Notes, from the French of Raymond 

 do St. Maur, by a Gentleman of Oxford." This is the work. It is in 

 octavo shape, and was printed at Aberdeen, in 1770. 



A poem on the death of George II., by R. Warton, the Professor of 

 Poetry, and the respectable author of the History of English Poetry, 

 is preserved in the " Elegant Extracts." From its contents, it appears 

 to have been one of a number of contributions from Oxford. I am not 

 sure that it was not the opening piece in the Bodleian folio. Warton 

 indulges in the customary adulation of Pitt, and prays him to accept 

 the volume as an appropriate offering from Oxford. " Lo ! this her 

 genuine love!" he says; and, writing from Trinity College, of which 

 Society he was a fellow, he intimates that the gift will probably be all 

 the more agreeable, as that was his college also — the college likewise, 

 ho takes occasion to say, where the great Lord Soraers, the famous 

 Chancellor and statesman of King William's day, had studied; and 

 where Harrington wrote his Oceana, a work, like the New Atlantis of 

 Plato and the Utopia of More, descriptive of a transcendental human 

 community. Thus he concludes, expressing the opinion that now, by 

 the aid of Pitt, and under the auspices of the new King, the specula- 

 tions of Harrington, on the subject of a perfect Commonwealth, are 



realized : 



" Lo ! this her gonuino love ! — Nor tliou refuse 

 This humble present of no partial muse. 

 From that calm bower which nurs'd thy youth 

 In the pure precepts of Athenian truth : 

 "Where first the form of British Liberty 

 Beam'd in full railianco on thy musing eye ; 

 Tliat form, whoso mien sublime, with equal awe. 

 In the same shade unblemish'd Somcrs saw: 

 Where once (for well she lov'd tlio friendly grovo 

 Where every classic Grace had learn'd to rove) 

 Ilor whispers wak'd sage Harrington to feign 

 The blessings of her visionary reign ; 



