Note 60 — HOYLE LAKE, [58] A POEM, WRITTEN ON THAT COAST, AND ADDRESSED TO ITS PROPRIETOR, SIR JOHN STANLEY.
Reading edition
l. 14. Of Deva—Deva, the classical name of the Dee.
“Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.” Milton’s Lycidas.
Also Prior, in Henry and Emma.
“Him, great in peace and wealth, fair Deva knows.”
Milton probably uses the epithet wizard, in allusion to the rites and mysteries performed on the banks of the Deva, or Dee. In Spencer, the river is made the haunt of magicians. That fine poetic scholar and critic, the late Mr T. Warton, observes, in his Edition of Milton’s lesser Poems, that Merlin used to visit old Timon in a green valley, at the foot of the mountain, Rauran-Vaur, in Merionethshire, from which mountain the river Deva springs. See Fairy Queen, B. 1. C. ix. V. 4. In Drayton, an old poet, with whose works Milton was familiar, it is styled “the hallowed, the holy, the ominous flood.”