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Norden, in his "Speculum Britanniæ," about 1590, speaking of Harefield, says, "There Sir Edmond Anderson, Knight, Lord-Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas, hath a fair house, standing on the edge of the hill; the river Colne passing near the same, through the pleasant meadows and sweet pastures, yielding both delight and profit." "I viewed this house," says Warton, "a few years ago, when it was for the most part remaining in its original state. It has since been pulled down; the porters' lodges on each side of the gateway are converted into a commodious dwelling-house. It is near Uxbridge; and Milton, when he wrote 'Arcades,' was still living with his father at Horton, near Colnebrook, in the same neighbourhood. He mentions the singular felicity he had in vain anticipated in the society of his friend Deodate, on the shady banks of the river Colne :

Imus, et argutâ paulum recubamus in umbrâ,

Aut ad aquas Colni, &c.-Epit. Damon. 1. 149.

Amidst the fruitful and delightful scenes of this river the nymphs and shepherds had no reason to regret, as in the third song, the Arcadian Ladon's lilied banks.' Unquestionably this Mask was a much longer performance. Milton seems only to have written the poetical part, consisting of these three songs and the recitative soliloquy of the Genius: the rest was probably prose and machinery. In many of Jonson's Masques the poet but rarely appears, amid a cumbersome exhibition of heathen gods and mythology."

The Countess of Derby died 26th January, 1635-6, and was buried at Harefield. (See "Lysons's Environs of London.")

Harrington has an epigram on this lady, B. iii. 47.

IN PRAISE OF THE COUNTESS OF DERBY, MARRIED TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR,

This noble Countess lived many years

With Derby, one of England's greatest peers:
Fruitful and fair, and of so clear a name,
That all this region marvell'd at her fame.
But this brave peer extinct by hasten'd fate,
She stay'd, ha, too, too long in widow's state;
And in that state took so sweet state upon her,

All ears, eyes, tongues, heard, saw, and told her honour, &c.

But Milton is not the only great English poet who has celebrated the Countess Dowager of Derby. She was the sixth daughter, as we have seen, of Sir John Spencer, with whose family Spenser the poet claimed an alliance. In his "Colin Clout's come home again," written about 1595, he mentions her under the appellation of Amaryllis, with her sisters Phyllis or Elizabeth, and Charyllis or Anne; these three of Sir John Spencer's daughters being best known at Court. See 1. 536.

No less praiseworthy are the sisters three,

The honour of the noble family,

Of which I meanest boast myself to be,

And most that unto them I am so nigh.

After a panegyric on the first two, he next comes to Amaryllis, or Alice, our lady, the dowager of Earl Ferdinando, lately deceased :—

But Amaryllis, whether fortunate,

Or else unfortunate may I aread,

That freed is from Cupid's yoke by fate,

Since which she doth new bands adventure dread,
Shepherd, whatever thou hast heard to be

In this or that praised diversely apart,

In her thou mayest them assembled sce,

And seal'd up in the treasure of her heart.

And in the same poem he thus apostrophises to her late husband, under the name of Amyntas: see l. 434.

Amyntas quite is gone, and lies full low,
Having his Amaryllis left to moan.
Help, O ye shepherds! help ye all in this,--
Her loss is yours; your loss Amyntas is!
Amyntas, flower of shepherds' pride forlorn;

He, whilst he lived, was the noblest swain
That ever piped on an oaten quill;

Both did he other, which could pipe, maintain,

And eke could pipe himself with passing skill.

And to the same Lady Alice, when Lady Strange, before her husband Ferdinando's succession to the earldom, Spenser addressed his "Tears of the Muses," published in 1591, in a dedication of the highest regard; where he speaks of "your excellent beauty, your virtuous behaviour, and your noble match with that most honourable lord, the very pattern of right nobility." He then acknowledges the particular bounties which she had conferred upon the poets. Thus the lady who presided at the representation of Milton's "Arcades" was not only the theme but the patroness of Spenser. The peerage-book of this most respectable countess is the poetry of her times.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON MILTON'S FOREIGN TRAVELS.

IN 1637, ætat. twenty-nine, Milton, on the death of his mother, obtained his father's leave to visit Italy. I have already mentioned the course of his travels. The accomplished and amiable Sir Henry Wotton, whose admiration and heart had been won by the poet's "Comus," gave him his advice and recommendations. At Florence, Rome, and Naples, he was received with applause and kindness by all the most eminent literati. He, who had been little noticed in l.is own country, was received with the most distinguished honours abroad, in the country of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso.

How happened this? Yet such is the perversity of human nature!

It is a subject of deep regret that Milton has not left a written account of his travels, with details such as modern visitors of the same and other countries give; or even such short notes as Gray sent in his letters. It is impossible to conceive any other so qualified to receive delight from these visits as Milton. Above all other men, his mind was full of the richest and most profound classical recollections. Not only his fancy held a mirror to all the beautiful and golden scenery, and all the exquisite and grand displays of the arts of painting and sculpture, but he had a creative imagination, beyond all other men, which must have fired into a blaze at them. All with which his mind had been stored from boyhood, drawn from distant sources, must now have seemed to be realised. He saw the very identical relics of classical times embodied before his eyes: he saw clear skies, and beautiful scenes, of which we have no idea in a northern climate. The Alps and the Apennines, the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, and above all the bay of Naples, gave him landscapes and sea-views such as an Englishman, who has never quitted his own country, can have no conception of.

He visited Galileo, which, however, was supposed to have raised some dangerous prejudices against him: but his great friend was the Marquis Manso of Naples, who had been the friend of Tasso, and who was himself a poet. "Ad Mansum" is one of the best of his Latin poems. With what enthusiasm must Milton have entered into Tasso's character, as well as that of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto! Dante's genius was, no doubt, the nearest to his own: but in addition to the epic imagination, there is in his personal history something so striking, so melancholy, and so full of deep interest, that it adds twofold to the attraction with which we read his poetry. Three, at least, of these four mighty poets suffered great misfortunes: but the history of their lives is well known, and this is not the place for treating of them. have nothing English of the same sort as their respective geniuses, unless, perhaps, Spenser. The sombreness and mystical sublimity of Dante is peculiar to himself: he has been admirably translated by Cary: he lived in a glorious time for poetry, when superstition fostered and coloured all its noblest creations; and when the chilling and false artifices of the cold critic had not yet paralysed exertion;-when all was hope and adventure, both of mind and body.

We

Had Milton's mind at this epoch been so strongly infected with puritanism as his enemies averred, he could not have enjoyed Italian manners and Italian genius.

There he saw all the pomp and warmth of religion: puritanism had all its acidity and rigidness, and all its freezing bareness. Coming fresh from these things, of which he has expressed his delight, I know not how he could so at once plunge into principles, which would destroy them all to the very root; but such are the inconsistencies of frail humanity! Gray saw all these things with equal sensibility and taste, if not with equal genius; and he remained fixed in the love of them through life.

But it is worthy of remark, that as soon as Milton actively took the side of this cause of destruction, the Muses left him for twenty years. Coming fresh from the living fountains of all imaginative creation, the happy delirium of glorious genius subsided into a cold and harsh stagnation of all that was eloquent and generous. The blight was more violent and effective in proportion as the bloom had been strong. Milton did not stay long enough at any of the great Italian cities: instead of eighteen months among them all, his stay ought to have been four or five years. I give in this place Cowper's translation of the Latin epistle to Manso.

TO GIOVANNI BATTISTA MANSO,

MARQUIS OF VILLA.

["Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, is an Italian nobleman of the highest estimation among his countrymen for genius, literature, and military accomplishments. To him Torquato Tasso addressed his Dialogues on Friendship; for he was much the friend of Tasso, who has also celebrated him among the other princes of his country in his poem entitled 'Gerusalemme Conquistata,' book xx. Fra cavalier magnanimi, e cortesi, Risplende il Manso.

During the author's stay at Naples, he received at the hands of the Marquis a thousand kind offices and civilities; and, desirous not to appear ungrateful, sent him this poem a short time before his departure from that city."]

These verses also to thy praise the Nine,

O Manso happy in that theme, design;

For, Gallus and Mæcenas gone, they see

None such besides, or whom they love, as thee;
And, if my verse may give the meed of fame,
Thine too shall prove an everlasting name.

Already such it shines in Tasso's page,

For thou wast Tasso's friend, from age to age;
And next, the Muse consign'd, not unaware
How high the charge, Marino to thy care;
Who, singing to the nymphs Adonis' praise,
Boasts thee the patron of his copious lays.
To thee alone the poet would entrust
His latest vows; to thee alone his dust:
And thou with punctual piety hast paid,
In labour'd brass, thy tribute to his shade.

Nor this contented thee-but, lest the grave

Should aught absorb of theirs, which thou couldst save,

All future ages thou hast deign'd to teach

The life, lot, genius, character of each,

Eloquent as the Carian sage, who true

To his great theme, the life of Homer drew.

I, therefore, though a stranger youth, who come,
Chill'd by rude blasts, that freeze my northern home,
Thee dear to Clio, confident proclaim,

And thine, for Phœbus' sake, a deathless name.
Nor thou, so kind, wilt view with scornful eye

A Muse scarce rear'd beneath a northern sky;

Who fears not, indiscreet as she is young,

To seek in Latium hearers of her song.

We too, where Thames with his unsullied waves

The tresses of the blue-hair'd ocean laves,

Hear oft by night, or, slumbering, seem to hear,

O'er his wide stream, the swan's voice warbling clear;

And we could boast a Tityrus of yore,

Who trod, a welcome guest, yon happy shore.

Yes,-dreary as we own our northern clime,
Ev'n we to Phoebus raise the polish'd rhyme;
We too serve Phoebus: Phoebus has received,
If legends old may claim to be believed,
No sordid gifts from us, the golden ear,
The burnish'd apple, ruddiest of the year,
The fragrant crocus, and, to grace his fane,
Fair damsels chosen from the Druid train;
Druids, our native bards in ancient time,
Who gods and heroes prais'd in hallow'd rhyme!
Hence, often as the maids of Greece surround
Apollo's shrine with hymns of festive sound,
They name the virgins, who arrived of yore
With British offerings on the Delian shore:
Loxo, from giant Corineas sprung;

Upis, on whose bless'd lips the future hung;

And Hecaërge, with the golden hair,

All deck'd with Pictish hues, and all with bosoms bare.

Thou, therefore, happy sage, whatever clime
Shall ring with Tasso's praise in after-time,
Or with Marino's, shalt be known their friend,
And with an equal flight to fame ascend.
The world shall hear, how Phoebus and the Nine
Were inmates once, and willing guests of thine.
Yet Phoebus, when of old constrain'd to roam
The earth, an exile from his heavenly home,
Enter'd, no willing guest, Admetus' door,
Though Hercules had ventured there before.
But gentle Chiron's cave was near, a scene
Of rural peace, clothed with perpetual green;
And thither, oft as respite he required
From rustic clamours loud, the god retired:
There many a time, on Peneus' bank reclined
At some oak's root, with ivy thick entwined,
Won by his hospitable friend's desire,

He soothed his pains of exile with the lyre.
Then shook the hills, then trembled Peneus' shore,

Nor (Eta felt his load of forests more;

The upland elms descended to the plain,

And soften'd lynxes wonder'd at the strain.

Well may we think, O dear to all above!
Thy birth distinguish'd by the smile of Jove;
And that Apollo shed his kindliest power,
And Maia's son, on that propitious hour;
Since only minds so born can comprehend
A poet's worth, or yield that worth a friend.
Hence, on thy yet unfaded check appears
The lingering freshness of thy greener years;
Hence in thy front and features we admire
Nature unwither'd, and a mind entire.
O, might so true a friend to me belong,
So skill'd to grace the votaries of song,
Should I recall hereafter into rhyme
The kings and heroes of my native clime;
Arthur the chief, who even now prepares,
In subterraneous being, future wars,
With all his martial knights, to be restored
Each to his seat, around the federal board;
And, O if spirit fail me not, disperse

Our Saxon plunderers in triumphant verse!
Then, after all, when with the past content,
A life I finish, not in silence spent,

Should he, kind mourner, o'er my death-bed bend,

I shall but need to say, "Be yet my friend!"

He too, perhaps, shall bid the marble breathe

To honour me, and with the graceful wreath,

Or of Parnassus, or the Paphian isle,
Shall bind my brows,-but I shall rest the while.

Then also, if the fruits of Faith endure,
And Virtue's promised recompense be sure,
Borne to those seats, to which the blest aspire

By purity of soul, and virtuous fire,

These rites as Fate permits, I shall survey

With eyes illumined by celestial day;

And, every cloud from my pure spirit driven,

Joy in the bright beatitude of heaven!

We may conceive what delight Milton had in talking with Manso about Tasso, and how it encouraged his own desire of poetical immortality. The honours paid to Tasso as a poet were of a kind of which the cold northern clime of England gave no example. Spenser had died in poverty, ruined and neglected: Shakspeare seems to have been little personally known in his lifetime; for nothing is recorded of his habits and private character.

But though Tasso was cruelly used by his inglorious and base prince, his countrymen worshipped him, and bore with all his eccentricities. In England, except by Chaucer and Spenser, there had been no great epics of fiction. The metrical narratives were, for the most part, dull chronicles: that fiery force, where life breathes in every line and every image, was almost unknown. It is by the invention of grand fables that poets must stand high: little patches of flowers-a style of similes and metaphors, will not do. The manners and credences of Europe, from the commencement of the crusades, afforded inexhaustible subjects of heroic poetry: fictions improved upon the romantic tales of the Provençal bards could never be wanting to the imagination or the lyre.

Milton returned by Venice, where he made a large collection of music for his father; and thence passed through Geneva, at which he made a short sojourn with John Deodate, a learned theologian and professor, the relation of his friend Charles Deodate, and became acquainted with Frederick Spanheim. Here he is supposed to have renewed his Calvinistic and puritanical prejudices. It is somewhat strange that this small place should have been the focus of all that troubled the governments of Europe for more than a century. They were not content with forming a republican government for their own petty canton, for which it was well suited, but struggled to turn all the great monarchies into republics.

The poet must have been delighted with the lake-scenery and Alpine summits of this magnificent country: yet, after the pomp of Italy, its splendid arts, its princely societies, its genial skies, its imaginative delights, men must have seemed here to have dwindled into formal and dull automatons. Here might be learning; but it was dry and tasteless: here was now no Beza, or D'Aubigné; nor any anticipation of the eloquent and passionate Rousseau, or spiritual De Staël, or historic and philosophical Sismondi.

I have endeavoured to find some traces of Milton's visit in Geneva; but have yet discovered none. I am told it is a mistake that the Deodate campagne at the adjoining village of Cologni, which Byron inhabited in 1816, was that which belonged to the Deodate family when Milton was here. In the "Livre des Anglais," preserved in the state-archives at the Hotel de Ville, are registers of the English (including John Knox), who took refuge here from 1554 to 1558, and had an English chapel in Geneva.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE COMMENCEMENT OF MILTON'S PROSE WORKS.

IN 1639 Milton returned to England: he had the grief of finding that his friend Charles Deodate was already dead: on that occasion he wrote the Latin pastoral entitled "Epitaphium Damonis." He now undertook the tutorship of his two nephews, John and Edward Phillips, and added to them some other pupils. Having professed to have been drawn back to England to take a part in the cause of liberty, then breaking out into open contest, Johnson considers this occupation a falling off from his boasted high intentions, and utters a growling sort of merriment at the failure. This is in the tone of the biographer's usual insults on the great bard: he is on these occasions coarse, pompous, and unjust. Milton did not

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