our boast of genius, there cannot be much expected, unless we plough deep, cross-cut, and heap and mellow the sward to catch the nitrous particles which evolve the fertilizing gases, and even then we must pray for prosperous seasons to gain a rich harvest, and even these may come without good markets.

I must necessarily leave a number of the much distinguished dramatic poets-Jonson, Marlow, and others— and hasten to say a word of Milton. The puritans had not had many poets before Milton arose, and it was said that their austerity was unfriendly to the loftier efforts of the muse. It was thought that they would not use the tasteful fictions of the classic ages; that they would not cull an evergreen from Mount Ida, or drink of the waters welling from Helicon; but it happened in this that the world were mistaken. The bard of immortality had tried his hand at minor poems, and had surpassed all his predecessors in the English language. The smaller works of Shakspeare bear no comparison, in point of dignity, ease, and elegance, to Milton's. He was master of antiquity, and showed at every flourish of his pen how much he venerated the bards of other times. He coursed over nature, and selected her choicest beauties, as one inspired by Flora herself. With a playful hand, under the guidance of a chastened taste, he rifled Attica, the groves of Numa, and even the gardens of Armida, to make up his basket of flowers. He threw his treasures on the winds, with a careless hand, or distilled their essences to perfume the breezes. He was free from cant and bigotry; and you may search in vain for any narrowness of creeds or mystical fanaticism about Milton. Never lived there a man who used.

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more direct means to come to honest ends, as he thought them, than John Milton.

Letters were his profession. His father was a man of information, and early seeing his genius, educated him for a scholar. For this purpose he travelled into Italy when about thirty years of age, and was received as one who had surpassed all his countrymen, in his talents and acquirements, and they were then the best judges, being themselves in advance of all Europe in the arts, sciences, and literature.

Milton on his return to his country was involved in controversy, both political and religious; but in the midst of his labors, however uncongenial to the muse, he constantly felt the workings of an exalted genius, and now and then intimates, yea, almost promises, something for the use and honor of his country. "This," says Milton, " is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to the Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs, till which in some measure be compact, I refuse not to sustain this expectation."

This noble intention was for a while retarded by his dipping deeply into politics. Party spirit, not only retards, but often destroys the love of letters, and the determination of their votaries, and not unfrequently cuts up, root and branch, every fondness for them, and leaves the mind in apathy for philosophy of any kind, 'while it whettens the appetite for the thorny honors of political life.

Milton was made Latin secretary to the council of state, which was to supply the office of Royalty.

In 1652, Milton had lost his eyesight, yet he still clung to polemic and political life, and was a gladiator on the arena until after his friend Oliver Cromwell's death, and the restoration of Charles II, when he gave it up. When the storm had blown over, Milton retired to contemplate his immortal work-" Paradise Lost." Johnson says that "he fixed upon this subject, a design so comprehensive, that it could only be justified by its success." More than this can be said; it was a design so vast, and one which entered so far into eternity, and the destinies of man, connected with a machinery so weighty and awful, that no one who was not armed with the panoply of that deep religious feeling that is ready to venture on martyrdom, and felt the possession of a genius that gained strength by every obstacle, would have ventured upon. To any other man it would have been not only a failure, but his destruction. If he had not been prepared by faith to pass the burning ploughshare, the attempt would have been considered as allied to blasphemy. But Milton scaled the battlements of Heaven by privilege, and was allowed to take with him all his human knowledge. In this poem is to be found all the learning of the ancients, strained and purified for the occasion. The seraphim he mentions seems to have touched the heathen Apollo, and to have changed his lyre to a burning harp of eternal praise; and the god of taste and wisdom to a ministering angel of revelation,

FROM THE MASK OF 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-managed merriment,

Such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe,
Stirs up among the loose unletter'd hinds,
When for their teeming flocks, and granges full,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the Gods amiss. I should be loth
To meet the rudeness and swill'd insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet oh, 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 grey 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,
Is now the labor of my thought; 'tis likeliest
They had engag'd their wand'ring steps too far,
And envious darkness, ere they could return,
Had stole them from me; else, O thievish night,
Why wouldst thou, but for some felonious end,
In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars,

That nature hung in Heav'n, and fill'd their lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light

To the misled and lonely traveller ?
This is the place, as well as I may guess,
Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth
Was rife and perfect in my list'ning ear;
Yet nought but single darkness do I find.
What might this be? A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues, that syllable men's names
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.
These thoughts may startle well, but not astound
The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
By a strong siding champion, Conscience.
O welcome pure-ey'd faith, white-handed hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings,
And thou, unblemished form of chastity!
I see ye visibly, and now believe

That he, the Supreme Good, t' whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glist'ring guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honor unassail'd.

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err; there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

I cannot halloo to my brothers, but
Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest
I'll venture; for my new enliven❜d spirits
Prompt me; and they perhaps are not far off.