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Nova Solyma, the Ideal City, Or, Jerusalem Regained; An Anonymous Romance Written in the Time of Charles I.
Nova Solyma the Ideal City Or Jerusalem Regained An Anonymous Romance Written in the Time of Charles I Author:John Milton General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1902 Original Publisher: John Murray Subjects: Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Medieval Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and w... more »hite OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: NOVA SOLYMA BOOK I CHAPTER I SPRING-TIME -- RETURN OF THE HERO JOSEPH TO NOVA SOLYMA, BRINGING WITH HIM TWO ENGLISH FRIENDS -- THE CITY AND ITS ANNUAL PAGEANT DESCRIBED -- THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. Spring's eager breath had thawed tljg icy showers, The signs that mark the winter of the Jews Had left the sky, and partly now had sunk Beneath earth's utmost edge.1 The quickening sun 1 It may be said of this note that the last has become first, for the curious evidence which it contains only came to my knowledge just before going to press. It is this. I have discovered by the merest accident that these first few lines of our anonymous Romance are borrowed or imitated, no doubt unconsciously, from that out-of-the- way Latin work Columella, De re Rustica. In that book (x. 77-80) we read of thawing of the wintry snow and hail by the winds of early spring; we hear of the heavenly constellation which now descends deep down below the horizon, and he names it even -- it is Lyra. Elsewhere he gives the date of this as early in February, and adds that the wind is often in the north then (se. e Latin Appendix). Now, all these signs of advancing spring are reproduced pretty closely in the original Latin of Nova Solyma, and the question naturally arises, What contemporary Latin scholar was there who was likely to draw upon Columella, of all people, for the beginnin...« less