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POEMATA: LATIN, GREEK AND ITALIAN POEMS BY JOHN MILTON
(Translated by William Cowper).
Digraphs, accents and italics have been omitted.Spelling has been modernized. Some notes and Titleshave been slightly edited without comment. Notes followthe poem to which they refer.
Complimentary Pieces Addressed to the Author.
1. Elegies
Elegy I -To Charles Diodati.
Elegy II -On the Death of the University Beadle at
Cambridge.
Elegy III-On the Death of the Bishop of Winchester.
Elegy IV -To My Tutor, Thomas Young.
Elegy V -On the Approach of Spring.
Elegy VI -To Charles Diodati.
Elegy VII
On the Gunpowder Plot.
Another on the Same.
Another on the Same.
Another on the Same.
On the Invention of Gunpowder.
To Leonora, Singing in Rome.
Another to the Same.
Another to the Same.
The Fable of the Peasant and his Landlord.
2. Poems in Various Metres.
On the Death of the Vice-Chancellor, a Physician.
On the Fifth of November.
On the Death of the Bishop of Ely.
That Nature is Not Subject to Decay.
On the Platonic Ideal as Understood by Aristotle.
To My Father.
Psalm CXIV.
The Philosopher and the King.
On the Engraver of his Portrait.
To Giovanni Salzilli.
To Giovanni Battista Manso.
The Death of Damon.
To John Rouse.
3. Translations of the Italian Poems.
Appendix: To Christina, Queen of Sweden.
Appendix: Translations of Poems in the Latin Prose Works.
Appendix: Translation of a Latin Letter.
Appendix: Translations of the Italian Poems by George
MacDonald (I876).
Complimentary Pieces Addressed to the Author.
1Well as the author knows that the following testimonies are notso much about as above him, and that men of great ingenuity, aswell as our friends, are apt, through abundant zeal, so to praiseus as rather to draw their own likeness than ours, he was yetunwilling that the world should remain always ignorant ofcompositions that do him so much honour; and especially because hehas other friends, who have, with much importunity, solicitedtheir publication. Aware that excessive commendation awakens envy,he would with both hands thrust it from him, preferring just somuch of that dangerous tribute as may of right belong to him; butat the same time he cannot deny that he sets the highest value onthe suffrages of judicious and distinguished persons.
1 Milton's Preface, Translated.
1 These complimentary pieces have been sufficiently censuredby a great authority, but no very candid judge either of Miltonor his panegyrists. He, however, must have a heart sadlyindifferent to the glory of his country, who is not gratified bythe thought that she may exult in a son whom, young as he was,the Learned of Italy thus contended to honour.—W.C.
The Neapolitan, Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa,
to the Englishman, John Milton.
What features, form, mien, manners, with a mind
Oh how intelligent, and how refined!
Were but thy piety from fault as free,
Thou wouldst no Angle1 but an Angel be.
1 The reader will perceive that the word "Angl