[In the following essay, Carpenter offers an interpretation of Milton's sonnet in praise of Lawes, arguing that the poem likens Lawes to Casella and the poet himself to Dante.]

Several of Milton's sonnets, Italian and English, rely for effect upon musical allusions and overtones; only one (XIII) is completely musical—“To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Aires.” Although, at first reading, the sonnet seems to be typical laudatory verse, couched in the classical imagery beloved of Milton, closer attention to the poem reveals several puzzling matters never fully explained. If one looks deeply at the last three lines, especially, one finds ideas and techniques beneath the surface, which add immensely to the overall interest of the poem.

Facts of composition and publication of the poem, first of all, present something of a mystery. Henry Lawes, thirteen years older than Milton, was already an eminent composer and in the King's personal employ when his name graced the title page of Milton's poems, printed late in 1645: “The SONGS were set in Musick by Mr. HENRY LAWES Gentleman of the KINGS Chappel, and one of his MAIESTIES Private Musick.”¹ Milton's complimentary poem to Lawes is dated February 9, 1645 (that is, 1646) in the Trinity manuscript, and may have been written for a volume of songs Lawes was preparing for the press: the second version of the sonnet in the Trinity manuscript has the title—added by a scribe—“To Mr: Hen: Laws on the publishing of his Aires.”² After the death of William Lawes in 1645, however, Henry apparently turned his energies to bringing out a memorial volume in honor of his brother, who had died fighting for the King before Chester. Thus, publication of Henry's volume of songs (Ayres and Dialogues) was delayed until 1653. Milton's poem, however, along with other laudatory verse, was printed in Choice Psalmes (1648), the collection of sacred music for three voices by William and Henry Lawes, followed by eight elegies for William set by England's leading composers—the entire collection dedicated to the King on the eve of his execution.³ That Milton's poem should appear in such a severely Royalist work is usually explained by the fact that art is stronger than politics⁴ and by the fact of Milton's long friendship with Lawes (the first version of the sonnet in the Trinity manuscript, in Milton's hand, is headed, “To my freind Mr Hen. Laws”)—a friendship dating back at least to the time of Arcades (1632), for which Lawes, music master to the Egerton children, had composed the music, singing the lead role himself. But when the first book of Lawes' Ayres and Dialogues appeared in 1653, curiously enough there was no poem, old or new, by Milton among the laudatory verses following the composer's preface, nor in either of the subsequent books.⁵ Thus it seems that Milton's poem complimenting the musician on his talent and success in writing ayres found its way, for some reason still unknown, into a volume of religious and elegiac music for which it was not originally intended.

In the sonnet to Lawes, Milton addresses his friend “Harry” with somewhat extravagant praise for having been the first to teach “our English Musick how to span / Words with just note and accent, not to scan / With Midas Ears, committing short and long”—in other words, for having tempered his music to the textual needs of the declamatory ayre.⁶ Having bestowed artistic isolation upon Lawes (“Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng”) and such praise as to make Envy itself envious (“With praise enough for Envy to look wan”), the poet ends his octave with a pun on “air,” meaning melody in general as well as a particular type of song: “To after age thou shalt be writ the man, / That with smooth aire couldst humor best our tongue.”

With the sestet, there is a turn in thought: “Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must send her wing / To honour thee, the Priest of Phoebus Quire / That tun'st their happiest lines in Hymn, or Story.” The reference to Apollo, god of music, parallels the earlier allusion to Midas, whose ear was notoriously bad.⁷ But the epithet “Priest of Phoebus Quire” is especially suitable because Lawes had experimented with setting Greek words to music, as he himself tells us in the preface to his Ayres and Dialogues (1653); and he even printed in his second collection (1655) a setting of “Anacreon's Hymn” with a Greek text.⁸ Milton's word “Hymn” might also refer to Lawes' first printed collection—music for George Sandys' Paraphrase upon the Psalmes of David (1637). About Milton's word “Story” we can be quite sure, for in the original edition of the poem (Choice Psalmes, 1648), a marginal note glosses this word: “The story of Ariadne set by him in Music.” The poem referred to is a complaint or lament, William Cartwright's Ariadne Deserted by Theseus, composed c. 1642 and modeled upon Monteverdi's famous Lamento d'Arianna (1607).⁹ It is not known, of course, whether the gloss was added by Milton or by someone else; the marginal note does not appear in the 1673 edition of Milton's poems. The only known gloss to any of Milton's poetic works, this note strongly reinforces the poem's praise for Lawes' skill in setting the declamatory ayre, based upon speech accents of the English language—a technique developed by Lawes and carried to ultimate fruition by Henry Purcell.

So far, so good: octave and sestet complement each other, as the composer is praised in classical terms especially fitting here, since early operatic subjects (like the Ariadne lament) were overwhelmingly classical. But the three closing lines form what at first seems a strange conclusion to the poem: “Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher / Then his Casella whom he woo'd to sing / Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.” Why end a poem of praise for Lawes in—of all places—Purgatory, and by comparing him with a musician so minor as to be unknown except for his association with Dante? Why not exalt this “Priest of Phoebus Quire” to the height of Monteverdi, whose shadow does indeed hover over the sonnet at third hand, or of some other distinguished modern whose work Milton surely knew?¹⁰

Attempts to elucidate these lines have resulted in no entirely satisfactory explanation, for most interpreters of the sonnet have either ignored the verses altogether or have simply noted the obvious parallels between the poets and the musicians.¹¹ But surely there is more to be said. First of all, closing lines alluding to Italian music and poetry are especially suitable here, for the aria parlante cultivated by Lawes owed its origin to the Florentine humanists who experimented to revive the close union of music and poetry enjoyed by the ancient Greeks—and invented opera, in the new recitative style. Milton's own fondness for secular song is expressed as early as L'Allegro, where the young poet invites “soft Lydian aires, / Married to immortal verse”—flamboyant with virtuoso passages: “with many a winding bout / Of lincked sweetness long drawn out, / With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, / The melting voice through mazes running. …” And as late as 1655, deeply involved in weighty matters of church and state, the now blind poet could still think of the Italian aria in terms of sheer delight: when will he and Lawrence, he asks in his sonnet XX to another friend, be able to enjoy a “neat repast” and afterwards “To hear the Lute well toucht, or artfull voice / Warble immortal Notes and Tuskan Ayre?”

Milton's choice of Italy's greatest poet for personal comparison, moreover, must be viewed not as arrogance but as an indication of the seriousness of his own calling, an idea expressed many times in his works (and often related to the figure of Orpheus, Milton's own symbol for poet-prophet-musician-lover).¹² If the poet is Dante, the musician must be Casella: the Florentine is the only such person available in Dante's long poem. But the Dante-Casella reference becomes more meaningful if one keeps in mind Milton's well-known penchant for wordplay and academic wit. Already in the sonnet Milton has punned three times on the key word ayre—for certainly the title to Lawes contains a double (if not triple) meaning that the poet could not resist; the informal address to his friend “Harry”—who was himself not above musical facetiae¹³—portends a light touch; and even the surface statement that Fame will give Henry in eternity a higher place than Purgatory continues the light vein. One has only to look at the Italian original to find a last clue to the puzzle. Dante begins his speech to Casella (Purgatorio ii.106), “Se nuova legge”—“If a new law”: “If a new law does not take from thee memory or practice of the songs of love which used to quiet all my longings, may it please thee to refresh my soul with them for a while.”¹⁴ The unspoken reference to Dante's legge allows Milton the possibility of punning in two languages and of making multiple (unheard) wordplays on Henry's name—all this without breaking the law of good taste which no doubt caused him to shun such stereotypes as laus-Lawes in the sonnet.

The double comparison, then, of Dante and Milton, Casella and Lawes, makes a highly subtle and effective conclusion to the poem, all the more intime and pleasing because one must know the Dante passage to appreciate the lines fully, just as one must know that the innocuous word “story” actually meant Lawes' music for Ariadne Deserted in the new stile recitativo. No gloss is necessary here: the location of Dante and Casella in Purgatory tells the alert reader exactly where to look. As Dante requests a love song so Milton suggests that if a new law—a new composer, musical canon or rule, even governmental law—does not interfere, Henry will continue to produce the songs so much admired by Milton and others. And Dante's request for “songs of love which used to quiet all my longings” could echo poignantly Milton's own emotions in earlier (and no doubt happier) years when he was companionably at home with Anglo-Italian musicians in London and even writing love sonnets to a gifted young Italian singer; or traveling in Italy, hearing the “new music” and writing poems “to Leonora singing in Rome.”¹⁵

Notes

1. Almost identical words had appeared on the title page of a volume of Edmund Waller's poems issued by Humphrey Moseley earlier in 1645: see Willa McClung Evans, Henry Lawes: Musician and Friend of Poets (New York, 1941), pp. 166-68.

2. See three facsimile versions of the sonnet in The Cambridge Manuscript of John Milton, ed. Frank A. Patterson (New York, 1933).

3. For a description of this book, see Evans, Lawes, pp. 175ff., and Murray Lefkowitz, William Lawes (London, 1960), pp. 21ff. Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), p. 157, gives a short biography of William Lawes and an account of his death at the Siege of Chester, September 24, 1645.

   William Parker, Milton: A Biography (Oxford, 1968), I, 302, suggests that Milton's sonnet to Lawes may have been written for a presentation copy of Milton's recently issued Poems.

4. Milton was not the only anti-Royalist among authors of commendatory verses for this volume: see Evans, p. 179.

5. For easy reference to the prefaces of Ayres and Dialogues, Books I and II (1653 and 1655), see Evans, pp. 198-200 and 204-05, where these addresses “To all Understanders or Lovers of Musick” are printed in full. For authors of poems, see pp. 200-22. Contributors of commendatory verse to the second book seem to be altogether Royalist. There was only one such poem (by Horatio Moore) in the third book (1658).

6. First to introduce the stile recitativo into England was Nicolas Lanier, not Lawes. (That Milton himself was not unaware of his exaggeration is seen in the original version of l. 8 in the Trinity MS—“that didst reform thy art, the cheif among.”) Others who set solo songs for masques early in the century were William Lawes, John Wilson, Simon Ives, Charles Coleman, John Gamble: see Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (New York, 1947), pp. 182-84, and Lefkowitz, Lawes, pp. 150-58.

   Text of the sonnet here is from The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank Patterson (New York, 1931-38), I, 63.

7. See Ovid, Metamorphoses xi.146-79.

8. See the preface to Book I: “since our palates are so much after Novelties, I desir'd to try the Greek, having never seen any thing Set in that Language by our own Musicians or Strangers; and (by Composing some of Anacreon's Odes) I found the Greek Tongue full as good as any for Musick”; and the preface to Book II (concluding sentence): “I have Printed the Greek in a Roman Character, for the ease of Musitians of both Sexes.”

9. Milton was not the only poet to praise Lawes' Ariadne extravagantly: see Evans, p. 164. Miss Evans (p. 162) thinks that Milton—just back from Italy and filled with enthusiasm for Italian music—may have suggested to Lawes that he write an English Ariadne in the style of Monteverdi's lament.

10. Monteverdi was at the height of his fame when Milton visited Italy in 1638-39. Moreover, according to Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, the young poet shipped home from Venice “a Chest or two of choice Musick-books of our best Masters flourishing about that time in Italy, namely Luca Marenzo [sic], Monte Verde, Horatio Vecchi, Cifa, the Prince of Venosa, and several others”: see Helen Darbishire, The Early Lives of Milton (London, 1932), p. 59. For the few facts known about Casella, see Paget Toynbee, A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, rev. ed. Charles S. Singleton (Oxford, 1968), p. 150.

11. Parker (Milton, I, 302) analyzes the sonnet and prints the first ten lines but omits the last lines altogether. Gretchen Finney, Musical Backgrounds for English Literature: 1580-1650 (New Brunswick, 1962), p. 170, discusses the sonnet but likewise omits any reference to the last three lines. MacDonald Emslie comments (“Milton on Lawes: The Trinity MS Revisions” in Music in English Renaissance Drama, ed. John H. Long [Lexington, 1968], p. 100), “The point of the sonnet's conclusion merely seems to be that Casella probably had set Dante's words, as Lawes had set Milton's, but whereas Dante put Casella in Purgatory, Milton says, by way of compliment, that Lawes' reward after death will be better than that.” Professor Emslie is surely nearer the mark, however, as he notes how Casella responds to Dante's request for a song by singing one of Dante's, which enthralls the listeners (Purgatorio ii.106-20). For a more fanciful comment (“in Milton's dreams of writing a monumental poem he thought of Lawes as chanting his own great epic to lute accompaniment”), see Evans, p. 168. E. A. J. Honigmann's speculations about the sonnet embrace the world of politics, as he suggests (Milton's Sonnets [London, 1966], p. 132) that in choosing the Italians for comparison Milton “may have been influenced by the fact that they belonged, at the time of their reunion, to different worlds, the living and the dead, just as Milton and Lawes belonged to different sides during the Civil War.”

12. See, e.g., his letter “Ad Patrem” of 1634, filled with musical references. For more on this subject, see Nan C. Carpenter, “The Place of Music in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso,” University of Toronto Quarterly, XXII (1953), 363ff.

13. See his address “To all Understanders or Lovers of Musick,” Ayres and Dialogues, I, where he tells how he once took “a Table or Index of old Italian Songs … and this Index (which read together made a strange medley of Non-Sense) I set to a varyed Ayre, and gave out that it came from Italy, whereby it hath passed for a rare Italian Song. This very Song I have now here printed.”

14. Trans. John D. Sinclair (New York, 1961), p. 39.

15. Other contemporary references to Lawes are considerably weaker. Waller, e.g., puns openly on the composer's name in his couplets “To Mr. Henry Lawes, Who Had Then Newly Set a Song of Mine, in the Year 1635” (ll. 15-16): “Noy [an eminent lawyer] pleading, no man doubts the cause; / Or questions verses set by Lawes.” Several other admirers left tributes containing obvious wordplay—e.g., these lines from a set of verses by “the Matchless Orinda,” Katherine Philips: “So Poets on the lower World look down, / But Lawes on them, his height is all his own.” And Lawes' pupil, Mary Knight, writes, “For I … have cause / To sacrifice to none but LAWES. … / For Musick these Felicities hath found; / Then say how much we all to LAWES are bound.” John Cobb's poem to William Lawes ends in an even triter burst of rhetoric: “To heav'n is he gone? The life of Musick / And laus, the life and laus of our Nation.” Aurelian Townshend, in his verses “To the Incomparable Brothers, Mr. Henry, and Mr. William Lawes (Servants to His Majestie) upon the setting of these Psalmes,” calls the brothers “Lawes of themselves, needing no more direction.” The poem, however, contains an interesting one-line characterization of each of the composers—William first, then Henry, always noted for his ayres: “The depth of Musique one of them did sound, / The t'other took his flight into the aire.”

    How much better is Robert Herrick's epigrammatic poem “To M. Henry Lawes, the excellent Composer of his Lyricks,” which concludes: “Three, unto whom the whole world give applause; / Yet their Three praises, praise but One; that's Lawes.” (The three, mentioned earlier in the poem, are Gotire [i.e., Gaultier], Laniere [Nicolas Lanier], and Wilson [John]: see The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, ed. L. C. Martin [Oxford, 1956], p. 276.) Herrick's poem to William Lawes, “the rare Musitian,” contains yet another pun (p. 288): “Sho'd I not grieve (my Lawes) when every Lute, / Violl, and Voice, is (by thy losse) struck mute?”