[11] “To Fancy.”

[12] Cf.  Gray’s “Elegy,” first printed in 1751: 

    “Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
      The moping owl does to the moon complain
    Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
      Molest her ancient, solitary reign.”

[13] “On the Approach of Summer.”  The “wattled cotes,” “sweet-briar hedges,” “woodnotes wild,” “tanned haycock in the mead,” and “valleys where mild whispers use,” are transferred bodily into this ode from “L’Allegro.”

[14] Three volumes appeared in 1748; a second edition, with Vol.  IV. added in 1749, Vols.  V. and VI. in 1758.  There were new editions in 1765, 1770, 1775, and 1782.  Pearch’s continuations were published in 1768 (Vols.  VII. and VIII.) and 1770 (Vols.  IX. and X.); Mendez’s independent collection in 1767; and Bell’s “Fugitive Poetry,” in 18 volumes, in 1790-97.

[15] The reader who may wish to pursue this inquiry farther will find the following list of Miltonic imitations useful:  Dodsley’s “Miscellany,” I. 164, Pre-existence:  “A Poem in Imitation of Milton,” by Dr. Evans.  This is in blank verse, and Gray, in a letter to Walpole, calls it “nonsense.”  II. 109.  “The Institution of the Order of the Garter,” by Gilbert West.  This is a dramatic poem, with a chorus of British bards, which is several times quoted and commended in Joseph Warton’s “Essay on Pope.”  West’s “Monody on the Death of Queen Caroline,” is a “Lycidas” imitation.  III. 214, “Lament for Melpomene and Calliope,” by J. G. Cooper; also a “Lycidas” poem.  IV. 50, “Penshurst,” by Mr. F. Coventry:  a very close imitation of “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.”  IV. 181, “Ode to Fancy,” by the Rev. Mr. Merrick:  octosyllables.  IV. 229, “Solitude, an Ode,” by Dr. Grainger:  octosyllables.  V. 283, “Prologue to Comus,” performed at Bath, 1756.  VI. 148, “Vacation,” by——­, Esq.:  “L’Allegro,” very close—­

    “These delights, Vacation, give,
    And I with thee will choose to live.”

IX. (Pearch) 199, “Ode to Health,” by J. H. B., Esq.:  “L’Allegro.”  X. 5, “The Valetudinarian,” by Dr. Marriott; “L’Allegro,” very close.  X. 97, “To the Moon,” by Robert Lloyd:  “Il Penseroso,” close.  Parody is one of the surest testimonies to the prevalence of a literary fashion, and in Vol X. p 269 of Pearch, occurs a humorous “Ode to Horror,” burlesquing “The Enthusiast” and “The Pleasures of Melancholy,” “in the allegoric, descriptive, alliterative, epithetical, hyperbolical, and diabolical style of our modern ode wrights and monody-mongers,” form which I extract a passage: 

    “O haste thee, mild Miltonic maid,
    From yonder yew’s sequestered shade. . . 
    O thou whom wandering Warton saw,
    Amazed with more than youthful awe,
    As by the pale moon’s glimmering gleam
    He mused his melancholy theme. 
    O Curfew-loving goddess, haste! 
    O waft me to some Scythian waste,
    Where, in Gothic solitude,
    Mid prospects most sublimely rude,
    Beneath a rough rock’s gloomy chasm,
    Thy sister sits, Enthusiasm.”