Note 279:C — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Ibid. p. 388.—Milton appears to have read Pericles with attention, and to have caught some of its phraseology, a circumstance strongly confirmatory of the genuineness of the play: thus Gower, in the opening lines, speaking of Antiochus, says,—
"This king unto him took a pheere, Who died and left a female heir, So buxom, blithe, and full of face, As heaven had lent her all her grace;"
a passage which evidently hung on Milton's ear, when, in his L'Allegro, he is describing the uncertain origin of Euphrosyne:—
"Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair."
Again, in the first edition of Lycidas, v. 157., a very significant epithet seems to have been copied from the same source:—
"Where thou perhaps under the HUMMING tide:"
Milton.
"The belching whale, And HUMMING water must o'erwhelm thy corpse."
Pericles.
It is remarkable, that when Milton, in his second edition, altered the word to whelming, he still clung to his former prototype.
The notice may appear whimsical or trifling, but I cannot help observing here, that a few lines of the initiatory address of Gower irresistibly remind me of some of the cadences of The Lay of the Last Minstrel; for instance, this contemporary of Chaucer, alluding to the antiquity of his song, says,—
"It hath been sung at festivals, On ember-eves, and holy ales; And lords and ladies of their lives, Have read it for restoratives:— If you, born in these latter times, When wit's more ripe, accept my rhymes, And that to hear an old man sing, May to your wishes pleasure bring, I life would wish, and that I might Waste it for you, like taper-light."