' But, above all. believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis, when a man hath attained worthy ends and expectations.'
��Written in the November of 1637, and printed next year in the Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King. ' In this Monody," the title runs, ' the Author bewails a Learned Friend unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruine of our corrupted Clergie, then in their height.' King, who died at five- or six-and- twenty, was a personal friend of Milton's, but the true accents of grief are inaudible in Lycidas, which is, indeed, an example as perfect as exists of Milton's capacity for turning whatever he touched into pure poetry : an arrangement, that is, of ' the best words in the best order ' ; or, to go still further than Coleridge, the best words in the prescribed or inevitable sequence that makes the arrangement art. For the innumerable allusions see Professor Masson's edition of Milton (Macmillan, 1890), i. 187-201, and iii. 254-276.
XII
The Eighth Sonnet (Masson) : ' When the Assault was Intended to the City.' Written in 1642, with Rupert and the King at Brentford, and printed in the edition of 1645.
��XIII
The Sixteenth Sonnet (Masson) : ' To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652: On the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel.' Printed by Philips, Life of Milton, 1694. In defence of the principle of Religious Vol- untaryism, and against the intolerant Fifteen Proposals of John Owen and the majority of the Committee.
��XIV
The Eighteenth Sonnet (Masson). 'Written in 1655," says Masson, and referring ' to the persecution instituted, in the early part of the year, by Charles Emmanuel II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont, against his Protestant subjects of the valleys of the Cotiian Alps.' In January, an edict required them to turn Romanists or quit the country out of hand; it was enforced with such barbarity that Cromwell took the case of the sufferers in hand; and so vigorous was his aclion that the Edict was withdrawn and a convention was signed (August 1655) by which the Vaudois were permitted to worship as they would. Printed in 1673.
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