calmness, on the 8th of November, 1674, and was buried in the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate.

In reference to the tone of his mind during his later years, an eminent modern writer thus speaks :-"The strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was, when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes; such it continued to be, when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die!"

دو

PRINCIPAL WORKS.-Besides "Comus," " Lycidas," "L'Allegro, Il Penseroso," and "Paradise Lost," already mentioned, Milton wrote Paradise Regained," "Samson Agonistes," and many miscellaneous poems and sonnets. He also wrote in Latin prose the two famous "Defences of the People of England;" and in English "A Tractate on Education;""Areopagitica, A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing;" "History of England to the Conquest;" and many other works both political and literary.

CHARACTERISTIC SPIRIT AND STYLE.-In speaking of the intellectual qualities of Milton, we may observe, that the very splendour of his poetic fame has tended to obscure or conceal the extent of his mind, and the variety of its energies and attainments. To many, he seems only a poet, when in truth he was a profound scholar, a man of vast compass of thought, imbued thoroughly with all ancient and modern learning, and able to master, to mould, to impregnate with his own intellectual power, his great and various acquisitions. He had not learned the superficial doctrines of a later day-that poetry flourishes most in an uncultivated soil, and that imagination shapes its brightest visions from the mists of a superstitious age; and he had no dread of accumulating knowledge, lest it should oppress and smother his genius. He was conscious of that within him which could quicken all knowledge, and wield it with ease and might; which could give freshness to old truths, and harmony to discordant thoughts; which could bind together by living ties and mysterious affinities the most remote discoveries, and rear fabrics of glory and beauty from the rude

(1) Macaulay. "Edinburgh Review," vol. xlii., p. 323.

materials which other minds had collected. Milton had that universality which marks the highest order of intellect. Though accustomed almost from infancy to drink at the fountains of classi cal literature, he had nothing of the pedantry and fastidiousness which disdains all other draughts. His healthy mind delighted in genius, on whatever soil or in whatever age it burst forth and poured out its fulness. He understood too well the rights, the dignity, and pride of creative imagination, to lay on it the laws of the Greek or Roman school. Parnassus was not to him the only holy ground of genius. He felt that poetry was as a universal presence. Great minds were everywhere his kindred. He felt the enchantment of oriental fiction, surrendered himself to the strange creations of Araby the Blest,' and delighted still more in the romantic spirit of chivalry, and in the tales of wonder in which it was embodied. Accordingly, his poetry reminds us of the ocean, which adds to its own boundlessness contributions from all regions under heaven. Nor was it only in the department of imagination that his acquisitions were vast. He travelled over the whole field of knowledge as far as it had then been explored. His various philological attainments were used to put him in possession of the wisdom stored in all countries where the intellect had been cultivated."1

"In Milton there may be traced obligations to several minor English poets; but his genius had too great a supremacy to belong to any school. Though he acknowledged a filial reverence for Spenser as a poet, he left no Gothic irregular tracery in the design of his own great work, but gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous pile. It thus resembles a dome, the vastness of which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, but which expands more and more to the eye while it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have neither disturbed nor corrected the bad taste of the age. 'Comus' came into the world unacknowledged by its author, and Lycidas' appeared at first only with his initials. Almost a century elapsed before his minor works obtained their proper fame. Even when 'Paradise Lost' appeared, though it was not neglected, it attracted no crowd of imitators, and made no visible change in the poetical practice of the age. He stood alone and aloof above his times, the bard of immortal subjects; and, as far as there is perpetuity in language, of immortal fame. There is something that overawes the mind in conceiving his long deliberated selection of that theme-his attempting it when his eyes were shut upon the face of nature-his dependence, we might almost say,

(1) Dr. Channing. "Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton."

on supernatural inspiration; and in the calm air of strength with which he opens Paradise Lost,' beginning a mighty performance without the appearance of an effort. Taking the subject all in all, his powers could nowhere else have enjoyed the same scope. It was only from the 'height of this great argument' that he could look back upon eternity past, and forward upon eternity to come. Still the subject had precipitous difficulties. It obliged him to relinquish the warm, multifarious interests of human life. For these, indeed, he could substitute holier things; but a more insuperable objection to the theme was, that it involved a representation of a war between the Almighty and his created beings. To the vicissitudes of such a warfare it was impossible to make us attach the same fluctuations of hope and fear, the same curiosity, suspense, and sympathy which we feel amidst the battles of the Iliad,' and which make every brave young spirit long to be in the midst of them.

"Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his subject-the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents; for no one, in contemplating the garden of Eden, would wish to exchange it for a more populous world. His earthly pair could only be represented, during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoyment and negative virtue, with no other passions than the fear of heaven and the love of each other. Yet from these materials what a picture has he drawn of their homage to the Deity, their mutual affection, and the horrors of their alienation! By concentrating all exquisite ideas of external nature in the representation of their abode-by conveying an inspired impression of their spirits and forms, whilst they first shone under the fresh light of creative heaven-by these powers of description he links our first parents, in harmonious subordination, to the angelic natures-he supports them in the balance of poetical importance with their divine coadjutors and enemies, and makes them appear at once worthy of the friendship and envy of gods."1

"He had considered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. The characteristic quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantic loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish.

"He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more

(1) Campbell. "Specimers," &c., Introduction, p. lxxx.

bountifully than upon others--the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful: he therefore chose a subject on which too much could not be said; on which he might tire his fancy without the censure of extravagance.

"The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are, requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel; and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven."

"We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing, but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence, substitute one synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed."2

VERSIFICATION.- "Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language, except Shakspere's," that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who had modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of Pope, condemns the 'Paradise Lost' as harsh and unequal. I shall not pretend to say that this is not sometimes the case; for where a degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted, the poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine that there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage, than in all our other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put together (with the exception already mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our poets, as Dryden is the most sounding and varied of our rhymists. But in neither is there anything like the same ear for music, the same power of approximating the varieties of poetical to those of musical rhymth, as there is in our great epic poet. The

(1) Dr. Johnson. "Life of Milton."

(2) Macaulay. "Edinburgh Review," vol. xlii., p. 311.

sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without the least trick of affectation, as the occasion seems to require."1

"Was there ever anything so delightful as the music of the 'Paradise Lost?' It is like that of a fine organ; has the fullest and the deepest tones of majesty, with all the softness and elegance of the Dorian flute; variety without end, and never equalled, unless perhaps by Virgil.'

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HYMN ON THE NATIVITY.3

(ABRIDGED.)

It was the winter wild,

While the heaven-born child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature, in awe to him,

Had dofft her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize:
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.

(1) Hazlitt. "Lectures," &c., p. 120.

(2) Cowper. "Letters."

(3) Written in 1629, when Milton was only twenty-one years old. This poem, though occasionally disfigured by conceits more befitting the muse of Cowley than that of Milton, is melodious and beautiful, and in every sense a worthy harbinger of "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," which soon followed it. Sir E. Brydges even "ventures" (an appropriate word!) "to pronounce this poem far superior to the 'L'Allegro' and' Il Penseroso,"" though, as he sagaciously forebodes, "the popular taste may not concur with him."