occasion. Milton, like a true poet, in describing the Syrian superstition, selects such as were most susceptible of poetical enlargement; and which, from the wildness of their ceremonies, were most interesting to the fancy." There are magical words of the same character in almost every stanza. There is not a finer line in the whole range of descriptive poetry than this: In dismal dance about the furnace blue. Yet this ode Johnson passes over in silence. Milton was already in a state of mental fervour, in which all the materials of poetry were spiritualized into a pure golden flame ascending in glory to the skies. Read also the two following lines, where the poet speaks of the flight of Osiris :— In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark The sable-stoléd sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark. We cannot reason upon the effect of such combinations of words,—the charm is indefinable. Into what a temperament of aërial power must the author have been worked! Well might this sublime priest of the Muses then exclaim, Nec duri libet usque minas preferre magistri, No notice has been handed down how this extraordinary performance was received: it seems yet to have produced no fame to him. When he retired to his father's house at Horton next year, he retired as one who had yet done nothing. His Latin poems want the solemnity, the sublimity, the enthusiasm, the wildness, the imaginativeness, of these English, in which the spirit of Dante and Spenser already began to show itself, moulded up with a character of his own. But Ovid was a poet of a more whimsical and undignified kind, of whom it was strange that he should have been fond, but whom his Latin verses almost everywhere show to have been a great favourite with him. When we see to what holy subjects and holy imagery Milton's mind was already turned, there is reason for some surprise that he should still have had it in contemplation to produce an epic poem on the inferior and comparatively puerile theme of King Arthur, which no imaginative invention could have invested with the same dignity; when even chivalry had not yet arrived at its historic grandeur, and when everything must have had a fabulousness which shocked probability. This is the more extraordinary, because Milton, though intimately conversant with the old romances, was still more familiar with the spirit, the language, the sublimity of the Sacred Story. It is clear that he was not frightened by the difficulty of duly treating this awful subject, from the manner in which he touched upon it in his majestic hymn, where he showed himself a master of all its mysterious tones. Had he at this time taken subjects from the Bible for a series of odes and hymns, he might even have excelled himself. He has been supposed not to have had a lyrical ear: nothing can be a greater mistake. The arrangement of his stanza, and the climax of his rhymes in this hymn, are perfect. To my perception there is no other lyrical stanza in our language so varied, so musical, and so grand. The Alexandrian close is like the swelling of the wind when the blast rises to its height. The poet, perhaps, already grasped at too immense a circuit of human learning: he might be at this early age darkening his mind with the factitious subtleties of politics and theology, which might overlay the sublime and inimitable fire of the Muse. It seems as if he pursued the most abstruse, dry, and puzzling tracks of study. It is indeed to be remarked, that in most of his poems there is an occasional over-fondness for allusion to these blind parts of learning. Life is not long enough for everything; nor can the most ardent flame of the intellect entirely overcome an excessive superincumbence of dead matter. Though Milton's Latin poetry has been remarked not generally to partake of the character of his English, it has some exceptions. Warton observes of his poem "In Quintum Novembris," '—a college exercise,-that "it contains a council, conspiracy, and expedition of Satan, which may be considered as an early and promising prolusion of the bard's genius to the 'Paradise Lost.' In this poem the cave of Phonos (Murther) and Prodotes (Treason), with its inhabitants, are finely imagined, and in the style of Spenser. "There is," says Warton, "great poetry and strength of imagination in supposing that Murther and Treason often fly as alarmed from the inmost recesses of their own horrid cavern, looking back, and thinking themselves pursued." In his seventeenth year Milton wrote a poem (" In Obitum Præsulis Eliensis") on Dr. Nicholas Felton, bishop of Ely, who died 5th October, 1626. In the midst of his lamentations he supposes himself carried to heaven. Cowper shall give the general reader a taste of it; for as Warton, candid in his very admiration, observes, this sort of imagery, so much admired in Milton, appears to me to be much more practicable than many readers seem to suppose." I bade adieu to bolts and bars, And soar'd with angels to the stars, Or e'en the Scorpion's horrid claws, &c. &c. The same elegant and classical commentator remarks, that "the poet's natural disposition, so conspicuous in the Paradise Lost,' and even in his prose works, for describing divine objects, such as the bliss of the saints, the splendour of heaven, and the music of the angels, is perpetually breaking forth in some of the earliest of his juvenile poems, and here more particularly in displaying the glories of heaven, which he locally represents, and clothes with the brightest material decorations: his fancy, to say nothing of the Apocalypse, was aided and enriched with descriptions in romances.' The next poem, “Naturam non pati senium,” a college exercise, is also praised by Warton. He says that it "is replete with fanciful and ingenious allusions. It has also a vigour of expression, a dignity of sentiment, and elevation of thought, rarely found in very young writers." The poem consists of sixty-nine lines. The whole is beautiful. In answer to those who assert the liability of nature to old age, the poet says, At Pater Omnipotens, fundatis fortius astris, No! the Almighty Father surer laid Hence the prime mover wheels itself about But ever rich in influence, runs his road, Beautiful, as at first, ascends the star Το pour them o'er the skies again at eve, And to discriminate the night and day.-COWPER. Gray, a century afterwards, wrote tripos verses, at Cambridge, on the subject— "Anne Luna est habitabilis ?" In 1627, anno ætatis 15, Milton wrote his elegy, “ Ad Thomam Junium præceptorem suum, apud mercatores Anglicos Hamburghæ agentes, Pastoris munere fungentem." This Thomas Young was Milton's tutor before he went to St. Paul's school. He was a Puritan, of Scotch birth. He returned to England in 1628, and was afterwards preferred by the Parliament to the mastership of Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1644, whence he was ejected for refusing the engagement. He died, and was buried at Stow-market, in Suffolk, where he had been vicar thirty years.* From Young, Milton says that he received his first introduction to poetry. Primus ego Aonios, illo præeunte, recessus CHAPTER III. THE SUBJECT OF MILTON'S COLLEGE POETRY CONTINUEd. Ir does not appear at what exact date Milton wrote his beautiful Latin poem to his .father (who lived till 1647), excusing his devotion to the Muses: it was probably before he left Cambridge. Though it assumes that his father did not oppose his pursuits, yet I think we may infer that he had endeavoured to persuade him to occupy himself with some lucrative profession :· : Nec tu perge precor, sacras contemnere Musas, &c. The poet ends in this noble manner : Et vos, o nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus, This is an aspiration which Warton praises with congenial enthusiasm, and which was duly fulfilled to its utmost extent. This poem may be taken as perfectly biographical, as well as poetical: I think it proper, therefore, to give the whole poem, as translated by Cowper. TO HIS FATHER. (TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM COWPER.) O, that Pieria's spring would through my breast No rill. but rather an o'erflowing flood! That, for my venerable father's sake, All meaner themes renounced, my Muse on wings Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain. For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please, She frames this slender work; nor know I aught *See Mitford's Poetical Dedication to his edition of Parnell. With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought; Verse is a work divine: despise not thou Verse, therefore, which evinces (nothing more) Bespeaks him animated from above. The gods love verse: the infernal powers themselves Confess the influence of verse, which stirs The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains Of adamant both Pluto and the shades. In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale And he who sacrifices, on the shrine Hangs verse, both when he smites the threatening bull, And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide To scrutinise the fates enveloped there. We, too, ourselves, what time we seek again Shall be the only measure of our being), Crown'd all with gold, and chanting to the lyre That wheels yon circling orbs, directs, himself, To share the banquet; and his length of locks To imitation: sang of chaos old; Of nature's birth; of gods that crept in search Nor thou persist, I pray thee, still to slight Art skilful to associate verse with airs Harmonious, and to give the human voice A thousand modulations, heir by right Indisputable of Arion's fame. Now say, what wonder is it, if a son Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoin'd In close affinity, we sympathize In social arts, and kindred studies sweet? Such distribution of himself to us Was Phoebus' choice; thou hast thy gift, and I Mine also; and between us we receive, Father and son, the whole inspiring god. No! howsoe'er the semblance thou assume I speak not now, on more important themes My Father! who, when I had open'd once The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learn'd The full-toned language of the eloquent Greeks, Whose lofty music graced the lips of Jove, Thyself didst counsel me to add the flowers That Gallia boasts,-these too with which the smooth Italian his degenerate speech adorns, That witnesses his mixture with the Goth; And Palestine's prophetic songs divine. To sum the whole, whate'er the heaven contains, The earth beneath it, and the air between, The rivers and the restless deep, may all Prove intellectual gain to me, my wish And offers me the lip, if dull of heart I shrink not, and decline her gracious boon. Go, now, and gather dross, ye sordid minds That covet it: what could my Father more? To his young brows his own all-dazzling wreath. And bear them treasured in a grateful mind. Ye, too, the favourite pastime of my youth, My voluntary numbers! if ye dare To hope longevity, and to survive Your master's funeral, not soon absorb'd In the oblivious Lethæan gulf, Shall to futurity perhaps convey This theme, and by these praises of my sire |