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Raphael. Milton was educated with great care. At fifteen, he was sent (even then an accomplished scholar) to St Paul's school, London, and two years afterwards to Christ's college, Cambridge. He was a severe student, of a nice and haughty temper, and jealous of constraint or control. He complained that the fields around Cambridge had no soft shades to attract the muse, as Robert Hall, a century and a half afterwards, attributed his first attack of insanity to the flatness of the scenery, and the want of woods in that part of England! Milton was designed for the church, but he preferred a 'blameless silence' to what he considered servitude and forswearing.' At this time, in his twenty-first year, he had written his grand Hymn on the Nativity, any one verse of which was sufficient to show that a new and great light was about to rise on English poetry. In 1632 he retired from the university, having taken his degree of M.A., and went to the house of his father, who had relinquished business, and purchased a small property at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. Here he lived five years, studying classical literature, and here he wrote his Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas. The Arcades' formed part of a masque, presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby, at Harefield, near Horton, by some noble persons of her family. Comus,' also a masque, was presented at Ludlow castle in 1634, before the Earl

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of Bridgewater, then president of Wales. This drama was founded on an actual occurrence. The Earl of Bridgewater then resided at Ludlow castle; his sons, Lord Brackley and Mr Egerton, and Lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing through Haywood forest in Herefordshire, on their way to Ludlow, were benighted, and the lady was for a short time lost. This accident being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend Henry Lawes, the musician (who taught music in the family), wrote the masque.

Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night, 1634, the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the representation. Comus' is better entitled to the appellation of a moral masque than any by Jonson, Ford, or Massinger. It is a pure dream of Elysium. The reader is transported, as in Shakspeare's Tempest,' to scenes of fairy enchantment, but no grossness mingles with the poet's creations, and his muse is ever ready to moralise the song' with strains of solemn imagery and lofty sentiment. 'Comus' was first published in 1637, not by its author, but by Henry Lawes, who, in a dedication to Lord Bridgewater, says, although not openly acknowledged by the author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely, and so much desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction.' Lycidas' was also published in the same year. This exquisite poem is a monody on a college companion of Milton's, Edward King, who perished by shipwreck on his passage from Chester to Ireland. Milton's descriptive poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, are generally referred to the same happy period of his life; but from the cast of the imagery, we suspect they were sketched in at college, when he walked the studious cloisters pale,' amidst 'storied windows,' and 'pealing anthems.' And, indeed, there is a tradition that the scenery depicted in 'L'Allegro' is that around a country college retirement of the poet, at Forest Hill, about three miles from Oxford. In 1638 the poet left the paternal roof, and travelled for fifteen months in France and Italy, returning homewards by the Leman lake' to Geneva and Paris. His society was courted by the choicest Italian wits,' and he visited Galileo, then a prisoner of the Inquisition. The statuesque grace and beauty of some of Milton's poetical creations (the figures of Adam and Eve, the angel Raphael, and parts of Paradise Regained) were probably suggested by his study of the works of art in Florence and Rome. The poet had been with difficulty restrained from testifying against popery within the verge of the Vatican; and on his return to his native country, he engaged in controversy against the prelates and the royalists, and vindicated, with characteristic ardour, the utmost freedom of thought and expression. His prose works are noticed in another part of this volume. In 1643 Milton went to the country, and married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, a high cavalier of Oxfordshire, to whom the poet was probably known, as Mr Powell had, many years before, borrowed £500 from his father. He brought his wife to London, but in the short period of a month, the studious habits and philosophical seclusion of the republican poet proved so distasteful to the cavalier's fair daughter, that she left his house on a visit to her parents, and refused to return. Milton resolved to repudiate her, and published some treatises on divorce, in which he argues that the law of Moses, which allowed of divorcement for uncleanness, was not adultery only, but uncleanness of the mind as well as the body. This dangerous doctrine he maintained through life; but the year after her desertion (when the poet was practically enforcing his opinions by soliciting the hand of another lady), his erring and repentant wife fell on her knees before him, submissive in distress,' and Milton, like his own Adam, was fondly overcome with female charm.' He also behaved with great generosity to her parents when the further progress of the civil war involved them in ruin. In 1649 Milton was, unsolicited, appointed foreign or Latin secretary to the council of state. His salary was about £300 per annum, which was afterwards reduced one half,

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when the duties were shared, first with Philip Meadowes, and afterwards with the excellent Andrew Marvell. He served Cromwell when Cromwell had thrown off the mask and assumed all but the name of king, and it is to be regretted that, like his friend Bradshaw, the poet had not disclaimed this new and usurped tyranny, though dignified by a master mind. He was probably hurried along by the stormy tide of events, till he could not well recede.

For ten years Milton's eyesight had been failing, owing to the 'wearisome studies and midnight watchings' of his youth. The last remains of it were sacrificed in the composition of his Defensio Populi (he was willing and proud to make the sacrifice), and by the close of the year 1652, he was totally blind, 'Dark, dark, irrecoverably dark.' His wife died about the same time; but he soon married again. His second partner died within a year, and he consecrated to her memory one of his simple, but solemn and touching sonnets:

Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old law did save,

And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, goodness, sweetness, in her person shin'd
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But, oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd,

I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

him greater leisure; it was completed in 1665, at a cottage at Chalfont, in Bucks, to which the poet had withdrawn from the plague, then raging in the metropolis; but it was not published till two years afterwards, when the copyright was purchased by Samuel Simmons, a bookseller, on the following terms:

An immediate payment of £5, and £5 more when 1300 copies should be sold; the like sum after the same number of the second edition (each edition to consist of 1500 copies), and other £5 after the sale of the third. The third edition was not published till 1678 (when the poet was no more), and his widow (Milton married a third time, about 1660) sold all her claims to Simmons for £8. It appears that in the comparatively short period of two years, the poet became entitled to his second payment, so that 1300 copies of 'Paradise Lost' had been sold in the

Apnl 26 1669

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The Restoration deprived Milton of his public employment, and exposed him to danger, but by the interest of Davenant and Marvell (as has been said), his name was included in the general amnesty. The great poet was now at liberty to pursue his private studies, and to realise the devout aspirations of his

Milton's Cottage at Chalfont.

youth for an immortality of literary fame. His spirit was unsubdued. Paradise Lost was begun in 1658, when the division of the secretaryship gave

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Fac-simile of Milton's Second Receipt to Simmons,

two first years of its publication-a proof that the nation was not, as has been vulgarly supposed, insensible to the merits of the divine poem then entering on its course of immortality. In eleven years from the date of its publication, 3000 copies had been sold; and a modern critic has expressed a doubt whether Paradise Lost,' published eleven years since, would have met with a greater demand! The fall of man was a theme suited to the serious part of the community in that age, independently of the claims of a work of genius. The Puritans had not yet wholly died out-their beatific visions were not quenched by the gross sensualism of the times. Compared with Dryden's plays, how pure, how lofty and sanctified, must have appeared the epic strains of Milton! The blank-verse of 'Paradise Lost' was, however, a stumblingblock to the reading public. So long a poem in this measure had not before been attempted, and ere the second edition was published, Samuel Simmons procured from Milton a short and spirited explanation of his reasons for departing from the troublesome bondage of rhyming.' In 1671 the poet produced his Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The severe simplicity and the restricted plan of these poems have rendered them less popular than Comus' or 'Paradise Lost;' but they exhibit the intensity and force of Milton's genius: they were 'the ebb of a mighty tide.' The survey of Greece and Rome in Paradise Regained," and the poet's description of the banquet in the grove, are as rich and exuberant as anything in Paradise Lost;' while his brief sketch of the thunder-storm in the wilderness, in the same poem, is perhaps the most strikingly dramatic and effective passage of the kind in all his works. The active and studious life of the poet was now near a close. It is pleasing to reflect that Poverty, in her worst shape, never entered his dwelling, irradiated by

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visions of paradise; and that, though long a sufferer from hereditary disease, his mind was calm and bright to the last. He died without a struggle on Sunday the 8th of November, 1674. By his first rash and ill-assorted marriage, Milton left three daughters, whom, it is said, he taught to read and pronounce several languages, though they only un-time when the common superstition of the country derstood their native tongue. He complained that the children were undutiful and unkind' to him; and they were all living apart from their illustrious parent for some years before his death. His widow inherited a fortune of about £1500, of which she gave £100 to each of his daughters.

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Milton's early poems have much of the manner of Spenser, particularly his 'Lycidas.' In 'Comus' there are various traces of Fletcher, Shakspeare, and other poets.* Single words, epithets, and images, he freely borrowed, but they were so combined and improved by his own splendid and absorbing imagination, as not to detract from his originality. His imperial fancy (as was said of Burke) laid all art and nature under tribute, yet never lost its own original brightness.' Milton's diction is peculiarly rich and pictorial in effect. In force and dignity he towers over all his contemporaries. He is of no class of poets: his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.' The style of Milton's verse was moulded on classic models, chiefly the Greek tragedians; but his musical taste, his love of Italian literature, and the lofty and solemn cast of his own mind, gave strength and harmony to the whole. His minor poems alone would have rendered his name immortal, but there still wanted his great epic to complete the measure of his fame and the glory of his country.

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remarkable for their grandeur and sublimity. The delineation of Satan and the fallen angels hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,' and their assembled deliberations in the infernal council, are astonishing efforts of human genius- their appearance dwarfs every other poetical conception.' At a presented the Spirit of Evil in the most low and debasing shapes, Milton invested him with colossal strength and majesty, with unconquerable pride and daring, with passion and remorse, sorrow and tearsthe archangel ruined, and the excess of glory obscured.' Pope has censured the dialogues in heaven as too metaphysical, and every reader feels that they are prolix, and, in some instances, unnecessary and unbecoming. The taste of Milton for argumentative speech and theology had overpowered his poetical imagination. It has also been objected, that there is a want of human interest in the poem. This objection, however, is not felt. The poet has drawn the characters of Adam and Eve with such surpassing art and beauty, and has invested their residence in Paradise with such an accumulation of charms, that our sympathy with them is strong and unbroken; it accompanies them in their life of innocence, their daily employment among fruits and flowers, their purity, affection, and piety, and it continues after the ruins of the fall. More perfect and entire sympathy could not be excited by any living agents. In these tender and descriptive scenes, the force and occasional stiffness of Milton's style, and the march of his stately sonorous verse, are tempered and modulated with exquisite skill. The allegorical figures of Sin and Death have been found fault with: they will not bear exact criticism,' says 'Paradise Lost,' or the fall of man, had long been Hallam, yet we do not wish them away.' They familiar to Milton as a subject for poetry. He at appear to us to be among the grandest of Milton's first intended it as a drama, and two draughts of his conceptions-terrific, repulsive, yet sublime, and scheme are preserved among his manuscripts in sternly moral in their effects. Who but must enterTrinity college library, Cambridge. His genius, how-tain disgust and hatred at sin thus portrayed? ever, was better adapted for an epic than a dramatic The battle of the angels in the sixth book is perhaps poem. His Samson,' though cast in a dramatic open to censure. The material machinery is out of form, has little of dramatic interest or variety of place in heaven, and seems to violate even poetical character. His multifarious learning and uniform probability. The reader is sensible how the combat dignity of manner would have been too weighty for must end, and wishes that the whole had been more dialogue; whereas in the epic form, his erudition was veiled and obscure. The martial demons,' remarks well employed in episode and illustration. He was Campbell, who charmed us in the shades of hell, perhaps too profuse of learned illustration, yet there lose some portion of their sublimity when their is something very striking and imposing even in his artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven.' long catalogues of names and cities. They are gene- The discourses of the angel Raphael, and the vision rally sonorous and musical. The subject of Para- of Michael in the two last books-leading the reader dise Lost,' says Mr Campbell, was the origin of gently and slowly, as it were, from the empyrean evil-an era in existence-an event more than all heights down to earth-have a tranquil dignity of others dividing past from future time-an isthmus tone and pathos that are deeply touching and imin the ocean of eternity. The theme was in its pressive. The Christian poet triumphs and predonature connected with everything important in the minates at the close. circumstances of human history; and amidst these circumstances Milton saw that the fables of Paganism were too important and poetical to be omitted. As a Christian, he was entitled wholly to neglect them; but as a poet, he chose to treat them, not as dreams of the human mind, but as the delusions of infernal existences. Thus anticipating a beautiful propriety for all classical allusions, thus connecting and reconciling the co-existence of fable and truth, and thus identifying his fallen angels with the deities of "gay religions full of pomp and gold," he yoked the heathen mythology in triumph to his subject, and clothed himself in the spoils of superstition.' The two first books of Paradise Lost' are * Dryden, in his preface to the Fables,' says, Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original.' Browne, Fletcher, Burton, and Drummond, also assisted: Milton, as has been happily remarked, was a great collector of sweets from these wild flowers.

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[Hymn on the Nativity.]

It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doff'd her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathise:
It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air,

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden white to throw ;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

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His ready harbinger,

With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And, waving wide her myrtle wand,

She strikes a universal peace through sea and land. No war or battle's sound,

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked chariot stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sov'reign lord was by.

But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kiss'd,

Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

The stars, with deep amaze,

Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence;

And will not take their flight,

For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence;

But in their glimmering orbs did glow,

Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

And, though the shady gloom

Had given day her room,

The sun himself withheld his wonted speed, And hid his head for shame,

As his inferior flame

The new-enlighten'd world no more should need; He saw a greater sun appear

Than his bright throne, or burning axletree, could bear.

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or ere the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they then

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below;

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook,

Divinely-warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took: The air, such pleasure loath to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

Nature, that heard such sound,

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling, Now was almost won,

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;

She knew such harmony alone

Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light,

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And the well-balanc'd world on hinges hung, And cast the dark foundations deep,

And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out, ye crystal spheres,

Once bless our human ears,

If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time;

And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow;
And, with your ninefold harmony,

Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.
For, if such holy song

Enwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold; And speckled Vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould; And Hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between,

Thron'd in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering; And Heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
But wisest Fate says no,

This must not yet be 80,

The babe yet lies in smiling infancy, That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss,

So both himself and us to glorify:

Yet first, to those ychain'd in sleep,

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

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With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-ey'd priest from the prophetic cell.

That with long beams the shamefac'd night array'd; The lonely mountains o'er,

The helmed cherubim,

And sworded seraphim,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn quire,

With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born heir.

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale,

Edg'd with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;

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In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

Sonnet on his own Blindness.

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,

The Lars and Lemurs mourn with midnight plaint; Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent

In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine; And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Libyac Hammon shrinks his horn;

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz

mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue;

In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue: The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bears his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait!'

[In Anticipation of the Attack of the Royalists upon
the City.]

Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms,
Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If deed of honour did thee ever please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
He can requite thee; for he knows the charms
That call fame on such gentle acts as these,
And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,
Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.
Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower:
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground: And the repeated air

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud: Of sad Electra's poet had the power

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest ;

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark.

He feels from Judah's land

The dreaded infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned

So, when the sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale,

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave; And the yellow-skirted fays

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.

[On the Massacre of the Protestants in Piedmont.]
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forget not in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
crew. To Heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who, having learn'd thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian wo.

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-lov'd

maze.

But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

[Scene from Comus.]

The LADY enters.

This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now: methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-manag'd merriment,
Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending: Stirs up among the loose unletter'd hinds,

Heaven's youngest-teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.

On May Morning.

Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail bounteous May! that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

When for their teeming flocks, and granges full,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loath

To meet the rudeness and swill'd insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet O! where else
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,
Stept, as they said, to the next thicket side,
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left me then, when the gray-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
But where they are, and why they came not back,

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