¹ Cf. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy: the Revival of Learning (New York, 1883), pp. 490–491; Saintsbury, The Earlier Renaissance (London, 1901), p. 34; J. Cartwright, Baldassare Castiglione (London, 1908), i, 144–145; J. H. Hanford, “The Pastoral Elegy and Milton's Lycidas,” PMLA, xxv (1910), 432; and A Milton Handbook (New York, 1926), p. 133; G. Norlin, “The Conventions of the Pastoral Elegy,” AJP, xxxii (1911), 307; and L. E. Kastner, Poetical Works of William Drummond (London, 1913), ii, 363.—Drummond's poem (1638) on the death of Sir Anthony Alexander is a frank adaptation of Alcon, but Kastner does not believe that Lycidas reflects Drummond. Independently both English poets had recourse to the same model.

² Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1903), i, 113.

³ W. L. Renwick, Edmund Spenser (London, 1925), p. 126.—The author is discussing the sources of the Amoretti.

⁴ Professor Hanford, “The Youth of Milton” in Studies in Shakespeare, Milton, and Donne (1925), p. 148, observes that the Latin elegy, even more than Lycidas, adheres to convention.

⁵ Except for the title and an implied indebtedness at the beginning, Milton's Epitaphium manifests no direct dependence upon Bion's Lament for Adonis, which is not a pastoral, or upon Moschus' Lament for Bion. Hanford,“The Pastoral Elegy,” op. cit., p. 416, draws attention to Moody's error in stating that Milton's poem formally imitates Moschus. Kerlin, Theocritus in English Literature (1910), pp. 40–41, affirms that Milton's “immediate model no doubt” was Moschus. And W. MacKellar, Latin Poems of John Milton (1930), p. 61, citing Kerlin, states that the Epitaphium is a return to the manner of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus.“ Even to Theocritus Milton owes nothing directly.

⁶ Of the many anthologies (cf. Symonds, op. cit., p. 451, and Saintsbury, op. cit., p. 21) the most famous was Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum, Florence, 1719. Those used in the present study are an earlier collection, with same title (Paris, 1576), 3 vols., and A. Pope's, Selecta Poemata Italorum (London, 1740), 2 vols.; Alcon appears in Carmina (Paris), i, 61–64, and in Pope, ii, 237–242, as of course elsewhere.

⁷ Eleven years later a comedy by Falcone was performed during the festivities at Castiglione's marriage, “as a delicate attention to Castiglione.”—C. Hare, Courts and Camps of the Italian Renaissance (N. Y., 1908), p. 113.

⁸ Cartwright, op. cit., p. 142.

⁹ Cf. ibid., pp. 179–186, for an account of the English visit, during which Castiglione, as Duke Guidobaldo's representative, was installed as Knight of the Garter.

¹⁰ Masson, Life (London, 1894), i, 830, concludes it was during his second stay in Rome or Florence that Milton heard of Diodati's death; two years later he wrote the Epitaphium, in the summer of 1640.

¹¹ The text and translation in the Columbia University edition of Milton (New York, 1931), i, appear throughout this study. For assistance in the translations from Alcon the present writer is obliged to Professor H. J. Leon, of the classical department, University of Texas.

¹² Norlin, op. cit., 296–297, devotes a paragraph to the subject.

¹³ Professor Mustard in “Later Echoes of the Greek Bucolic Poets,” AJP, xxx (1909), 249, believes the invocation “indicates that he has Theocritus in mind, not Virgil.” The passage itself produces no evidence; and “Sicelicum carmen” may perhaps be regarded as a conventional literary epithet; cf. Virgil's “Sicelides Musae” (iv, 1).

¹⁴ The significance of these concluding lines, “the mask of Latin being in itself a sufficient drapery,” is discussed by Professor Hanford, “The Youth of Milton,” op. cit., p. 153.

¹⁵ For discussion of classical authority in these two features, cf. Hanford, “The Pastoral Elegy,” op. cit., pp. 414 and 411 respectively. In the Renaissance pastoral elegy, digressions became an accepted license. Theocritus set the fashion for describing cups and other gifts; there is no evidence of direct indebtedness, one reason being that Milton's cups were probably actual gifts from Manso.

¹⁶ Hanford, ibid., p. 446, notes the similar phrasing in Lyc. 12: “He must not float upon his watery bier unwept.” Compare further Alcon 101–102: “Ast ego nec tristes lacrimas in funere fudi, Debita nec misero persolvi justa sodali.” The sentiment is fairly commonplace; see MacKellar's notes on the passage.

¹⁷ With this Hanford, ibid., p. 432, compares Lyc. 151 ff., where the singer “to interpose a little ease” fancies that he is decking the tomb. Professor Hanford further mentions the emphasis in Lyc. and Alcon upon the intimacy between singer and his friend. He does not, however, acknowledge any explicit connection between Milton's later elegy and Alcon.

¹⁸ Shepherd names in Milton as in Castiglione are commonplace and hence have little or no bearing upon sources: ultimately Thyrsis comes from Theocr. i and Damon from Virg. iii and viii, Iollas from Virg. ii, and Alcon, suggested by Falcone, from Virg. v.

¹⁹ C. S. Jerram in Lycidas and Epitaphium Damonis (London, 1874) regards the phrase as an obvious metrical imitation of Virg. Aen. iii, 91, “liminaque laurusque dei.”

²⁰ Italics mine, as in Milton's passage. Cf. Alcon, 138, “quasque cava haec responsant antra querelas.” Verbal parallels between the two poems are few. Though Castiglione's hexameters are always smooth, Milton, better Latinist and poet, would resort to Alcon mainly for plan, ideas, or turns of thought.

²¹ For the practice of repeating the dead shepherd's name, as in Lyc. 8–9, cf. Alcon 24–25: “Alcon, deliciae Musarum & Apollinis, Alcon Pars animae, cordis pars Alcon maxima nostri.” Hanford, p. 443, quotes Spenser's November 37–38 and Astrophel 7–8. The shepherd's youth is also conventionally emphasized; with Lyc. 8, “dead ere his prime,” cf. Alcon 1, “sub flore juventae.” Beginning with Moschus, dead shepherds have been termed poets; with Lyc. 34, cf. Alcon 3, “Quem toties Fauni & Dryades sensere canentem,” both inspired by Virg. Ec. vi, 27–28; and with Lyc. 42–44, cf. Alcon 73–74, “Non tua vicinos mulcebit fistula montes, Docta nec umbrosae resonabunt carmina valles.” With Milton's lines Hanford, p. 423, quotes Virg. Ec. viii, 4.

²² Italics mine. Cf. Alcon 38, “Prata suum amisere decus, morientibus herbis.” Masson cites Virg. Geor. i, 424, “solem ad rapidum”; and MacKellar adds Gear. iv, 427–428, “arebant herbae, et cava flumina siccis Faucibus ad limum radii tepefacta coquebant.” Hanford, p. 421, notes that the imagery of Milton's entire passage owes something to Virg. Ec. x, 55–68.

²³ Jerram, op. cit., cites Lucan's Phar. iii, 423, “medio cum Phoebus in axe est.”

²⁴ The dread of disturbing Pan, Warton traces to Theocr. i, 15–17; MacKellar cites Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess 1, 1; and Mustard, op. cit., 247, observes its occurrence in Sann. Arc. Ecl. ix, 146–147, and in Baïf, Ecl. xix.

²⁵ Italics mine. Cf. Epit. 148, “Imus? & argutâ paulùm recubamus in umbra.”

²⁶ Hanford, “The Pastoral Elegy,” op. cit., p. 432, cites this passage as a source of Lyc. 23–31: “For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill; together both” etc.

²⁷ See, for example, Ec. i, 38–39: “Ipsae te, Tityre, pinus, Ipsi te fontes, ipsa haec arbusta vocabant.” As Conington in Opera (London, 1881), i, observes, the pines, springs, and orchards called him back in the sense that they depended on his care.

²⁸ MacKellar cites Lyc. 125, noting the conventionality of “hungry sheep”; and for line 65—no counterpart in Alcon—he finds a number of precedents.

²⁹ Commenting upon the Renaissance and Miltonic imitative art, Professor E. K. Rand observes, in “Milton in Rustication,” St. in Phil., xix (1922), 119: “He [a poet] must season his verse with the antique, but avoid too obvious reminiscence, sheer steals. … And not only words and images and turns of thought must be stolen from antiquity, but the flavor, the atmosphere. Substances inconsistent with one another must be combined harmoniously.”

³⁰ The passage is derived from Virgil's famous simile in the Georgics, iv, 511–515: “Qualis populea maerens philomela sub umbra Amissos queritur fletus,” etc.

³¹ For the extensive use of this contrast in poetry from Moschus to modern times, cf. present writer, “Spenser and the Earlier Pastoral Elegy,” Texas Studies in English, xiii (1933), 37–41.

³² Cf. Lyc. 31, “Towards heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.” Cf. further 190; “And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,” with which Hanford, op. cit., p. 423, cites Virg. Ec. i, 83, “Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.”

³³ Similar passages occur in Catullus v, 4–6 and in Sannazaro, Arc., Ec. xi, 61–63.

³⁴ In a note, which subsequently came to the present writer's attention, Norlin, op. cit., p. 307, n. 1, quotes Mustard's observation that Castiglione's passage “will remind the English reader of the splendid passage in Lycidas about the Day-star and the ocean bed.”

³⁵ Masson, op. cit., ii, 90, cites Virg. Ec. i, 26, where Meliboeus asks Tityrus, “Et quae tanta fuit Romam tibi causa videndi?” Obviously Milton and Castiglione recall this eclogue, in which Virgil recounts his visit to Rome in the interests of his property.

³⁶ Cf. Epit. 71–72: Hîc gelidi fontes, hîc illita gramina musco, Hîc Zephiri, hîc placidas interstrepit arbutus undas.“ Both poets here follow Virg. Ec. x, 42–43: ”Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori. Hic nemus.“

³⁷ A paraphrase of Virg. Ec. ii, 1 and v, 86.

³⁸ Cf. Spenser's Astrophel 137–138, Whilest none is nigh, thine eylids up to close, And kisse thy lips like faded leaves of rose.“

³⁹ For the clause Jerram cites Virg. Aen. iv, 633, “Namque suam patria antiqua cinis ater habebat.”

⁴⁰ The Poems of John Milton (London, 1925), p. vi.