which were peculiarly zealous in the royal cause, he soon assembled an army of two or three thousand Highlanders, to whom he successfully united the Irish under Colkitto. This last leader, who, to the great embarrassment of Milton's commentators, is commemorated in one of that great poet's sonnets,[1] was properly named Alister, or Al-
- ↑ Milton's book, entitled Tetrachordon, had been ridiculed, it would seem, by the divines assembled at Westminster, and others, on account of the hardness of the title; and Milton in his sonnet retaliates upon the barbarous Scottish names which the Civil War had made familiar to English ears:—
why is it harder, sirs, than Gordon,
Colkitto, or M'Donald, or Gallasp,
These rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."We may suppose," says Bishop Newton, "that these were persons of note among the Scotch ministers, who were for pressing and enforcing the covenant;" whereas Milton only intends to ridicule the barbarism of Scottish names in general, and quotes, indiscriminately, that of Gillespie one of the Apostles of the Covenant, and those of Colkitto and M'Donnel, (both belonging to one person) one of its bitterest enemies.
