With a sad, leaden, downward cast Those fix them on the earth as fast. Here the images and terms, with some exceptions, are equally beautiful and happy. "Flowing with majestic train" indicates the manners of Milton's age. The epithet majestic, does not seem to coalesce easily with the impression which other parts of the picture produce. Neither can we approve of sad, leaden cast. Leaden is akin to all that is stupid, heavy and dreary. The looks of this raptured contemplatist need not surely be sad. The companions, or attendants of melancholy, are, Peace and quiet, the old formal style of rural decoration, which it is worth observing, nowhere enters into the subsequent account of the haunts, most dear to the museful wanderer, or into any of Milton's rural descriptions. Contemplation, the last of the group, is described as a cherub, golden-winged, soaring, and guid ing a throne, with wheels of fire. I must confess, that these images do not please me. Golden wing is a phrase without peculiar significance; and there seems to be something incompatible in the double office of soaring, and guiding a chariot. I am at a loss too, to know what is meant by the fiery-wheeled throne. From this display of allegorical Spare fast, that oft with gods doth portraits, the poet now proceeds, diet, And hears the muses in a ring Ay round about Jove's altar sing; And add to these, retired leisure That in trim gardens takes his plea sure. But first and chiefest with thee, bring This selection of images appears to have been made carelessly, and by chance. The personages are not distinguished with skill or precision. Peace, quiet, fast, retirement, leisure, contemplation are an odd assemblage to walk in the train of "melancholy." The privileges of "fast" to diet with gods, and hear the song of the muses, as they circle Jove's altar, have, at once, the mythological and religious peculiarities of Milton's age. The merit of fasting, and its influence in facilitating intercourse with heaven, are now exploded; but no one but our poet seems to have imagined it favourable to poetical inspiration: and the modern votarist will generally prefer some other mode of gaining access to the banquets of Olympus, and the concerts of the muses..... Trim gardens are no longer the favourite retirements of leisure. This epithet "trim" forcibly indicates by a happy transition, to describe the occupations of the melancholy man. into such as are pursued during the These naturally divide themselves night, and such as belong to the day. His nights are spent, according to the state of the air, either in the woods and fields, or within doors; and are employed in listening to solemn sounds, or surveying the face of nature: or, when confined by the atmosphere at home, either first, in musing by the fire-side.... or secondly, in the study of the sciences....or thirdly, in musical performances....or lastly, in reading poetry. On the return of day, he resorts to the woods and glades; books and company, and all the social recreations are avoided. He seeks the shadiest and loneliest haunts, and strives to loose himself in reverie. The only substitute for nature's recesses, he allows to be the arcades and recesses of some public edifice, where the sublimities of architecture and the moral greatness of some appendage are adapted to raise the soul above all private and personal affections. It is thus that the museful man wishes to pass the flower of his days. For his declining years, his imagination looks forward to the pleasures of seclusion, and the calm pursuits of some enobling science. This is the outline of Milton's picture. It agrees pretty accurately with the scheme of every mind, habituated to the exercise of its faculties; but no two minds, it is likely, would fill up the picture precisely in the same manner. It would be curious and instructive to examine what are the minuter particulars of Milton's scheme. What objects of nature would most attract his contemplation in his wanderings, and what guides he would take through the regions of poetry and science. In these respects, the individual character of the poet, and the fashions of his age and nation, will manifest themselves, and afford us an occasion of comparing the views of others with our own. In his nightly rambles we may observe, that his darling passion is to listen to the nightingale. He invokes, the company of silence.... 'Less Philomel will deign a song In her sweetest saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of night; While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke, Gently o'er th' accustomed oak.... This previlege an American contemplatist must dispense with. Our groves are full of the music of nocturnal insects, which can have nothing in common with the notes of Philomela. Why is the nightingale's song so commonly supposed indicative either of sadness or love? It is obvious, that the music may be particularly adapted to call up meTancholy in the hearer, and to sooth the reveries of one whom love keeps awake; but this supplies no reason for imputing amorous despair, or a rueful temper to the bird itself.... The dragon yoke of Cynthia, applied to the lunar progress, is an antiquated image, which true taste does not incline us to relish, though learning may enable us, in some degree, to comprehend. Night, turned into a person, whose rugged brow is smoothed by the music, is a very grand conception. The grandeur of the starry firmament is omitted, though, perhaps, that is a more sublime, various and thought-producing spectacle than the other. It is, however, afterwards introduced as one of the amusements of old age. This image is congenial with every fancy, and is to be seen in every climate. The poet goes on to particularize the only two situations in which the moon is advantageously seen; in a clear, and in a chequered sky. After the moon and the nightingale, the curfew is introduced.... Oft on a plat of rising ground, These lines are very defective in perspicuity. Is it the curfew, or the shore that swings on this occasion? If the wide water be meant, which, though not expressed, is highly probable, the term swinging conveys no adequate or significant image. The sullen roar must belong to a torrent, and the kind of concert which a tolling bell, and a roaring torrent produce, can be known only to those who have witnessed the combination. Either, separately, must have a powerful influence on the imagination. The air not permitting" these enjoyments, we are transported to the room, warmed by embers on the hearth, with no sound to engage the attention, but the chirrup of the cricket and the watchman's larum, which, in our country, is a call, and not a bell. From these contemplative employments we are now carried to the summit of a tower, where, by the midnight lamp, the melancholy man pores over his books. What are the subjects, or the masters, which the poet selects? They are either the works of Hermes Trismagistus, or the speculations of Plato on the soul's immortality, guides which a more recent student would not be likely to select, especially the former. The following are the topics of a visionary, or a necromancer, more than of a rational student. And of those demons that are found In air, fire, flood, or under ground; Whose power hath a true consent With planet or with element. The theory which peoples all nature with active and subordinate intelligences is very agreeable. No wonder that a warm imagination has built large inferences on slender premises in relation to this subject. That hints and tokens, noted or imparted in dreams, or in casual coincidences of events, have been eagerly employed to remove, in some degree, the veil which hides the original and primary agencies of nature from our view. The laws of nature are still, with all strenuous minds, objects of curious research; but instead of vague and superstitious reveries, we now confide in the power of industrious experiments to decompound, set free, and render sensible the primitive ingredients of the universe..... The same passion which led men to solicit the intercourse and aid of demons, now incites them to investigate the simplest and most evanescent elements of nature. The enthusiast for knowledge has descended from the summit of the tower to the recesses of the laboratory; and Hermes and Plato are superceded by Boerhaave and Lavoi sier. These lines are remarkably comprehensive. More meaning in fewer words it would be scarcely possible to comprise. The respective mediums of this activity are accurately enumerated.....air, fire, flood, or under ground; and a poetical use is made of the supposed connexion between events, and the influence either of the planets or the elements. Philosophy looks not beyond the elements themselves, which act agreeably to a supreme will; but poetry discovers beings whose powers harmonize or concur with these elements. The sciences, however, are sometimes to give place to poetry, and especially to tragic scenes. Sometimes let gorgeous tragedy, We may remark, that some words have undergone a singular revolution of meaning since the time of Milton. "Gorgeous" and "Demure" are instances of this, being used by the poet in a serious sense, though, at present, they have a burlesque or ludicrous meaning. Could the figure thus displayed be painted? No doubt every epithet here used, contributed to an actual picture in the poet's fancy. The sceptre, the pall, and the sweeping motion will be as differently imagined as there are different readers. The succeeding lines shew Milton's preference of the ancient drama. Shakspeare, it should seem by his silence here, was held in little repute as a tragic poet. Jonson and Shakespear are mentioned in the Allegro, merely as administering entertainment to the man of gaiety and good humour. Mournful music is next mentioned as a darling occupation. It is worth while to remark the mythological images which the idea of music suggests to his fancy. O sad virgin that thy power In his picture of lively music in the Allegro, Orpheus again recurs; but such is the superiority of mirth ful, over mournful strains, in this Of Pluto to have quite set free Milton's passion for ancient lore, the theme and style of Attic tragedy, one would think hardly compatible with his attachment to the chimeras of modern romance. Yet his favourite books we are informed, were Ovid's Metamorphoses and Spenser's Fairy Queen. Accordingly we find in this place, the pleasures of music succeeded by stories of forests, inchantments, turneys trophies, and all the apparatus of the Italian poetry. In this manner does the melancholy enthusiast pass the night, the civil-suited man has no sooner risen than he hies him to the forests. The morning which the rambler loves, must not Be trick'd and frounc't as she was With the Attic boy to hunt, I cannot affix any distinct meaning to the epithet civil-suited, the morning here is personified, but the image of a modern female, with a cloud for a kerchief seems wanting in dignity. The allusion to the Attic boy's is, I confess, unintelligible to me, and, I much suspect is so to most readers. There is a confusion of images in-Rocking winds are piping loud-though each separately is very vivid. A blustering and cloudy dawn, or one calm and still, after the subsiding of a rain-storm, are the favourites of his fancy, "With minute drops from off the eaves-" contains one of those specimens of original observation and selection, so rarely to be found among poets. Groves and glades could not occur to the poet's fancy, without calling up Silvanus and the nymphs. These lines are full of images; the scene described, and the moral incidents are calculated deeply to affect the sensibility to rural charms. The grove and its arched walks, the formation of art, was accessible to Milton, but the forests of pine and oak, where the ax was never heard, could not occur within the circuit of his rambles. No more powerful conception of solitude can be formed than what must flow from the covert of such a forest, as many a pilgrim in the American wilderness is capable of judging. The epithets in this passage are tion may perhaps be made against very energetic, though some excepmonumental oak. Why is oak called monumental? The effect of the woodman's presence to fright away the nymphs is, to me, original, and is very beautiful. Having reached this friendly covert, what attitude does the entract his attention, and what images thusiast assume? What sounds athimself like the melancholy man, in hover in his fancy. He stretches Shakspeare, along some brook, the hum of bees constitute his music. ripling of whose waters, and the This music is propitious to sleep, which is invoked, in company with mystic visions, and which must retire only at the bidding of some unseen Genius. Hide me from day's garish eye With such concert as they keep, Entice the dewy feathered sleep ;.... The poet was not physiologist enough to know that the working Bee is of no sex, that the honey is extracted by the tongue, and deposited for safe carriage, in the mouth of the insect. It was probably for rhyme-sake that the Bee is made to sing, but, in reality, it is ascertained that the Bee has a voice capable of various modulations. The term garish conveys no meaning to me. I never met with it elsewhere. It is capable, no doubt, of explication, but its etymology is not obvious. Milton's use has consecrated it, and it is often quoted, but the same use would have sanctified any other arbitrarily invented sound. And let some strange mysterious dream, Wave at bis wings, an airy stream, I cannot clear up the obscurity of this passage. At whose wings? those of the dream or those of sleep? in either sense, to wave an airy stream of lively portraiture display'd, is vague and without meaning. And as I wake, sweet music breathe, This is a luminous thought. Milton fostered the imagination of this interposition with great delight. Comus is entirely built upon it, and a survey of that poem, would afford a pleasing opportunity of investigating the various hints, and sources which contributed to form his notion of the essence and attributes of these aerial beings. In this passage, the ancient and modern, the mythological and christian notions on the subject are briefly and strikingly displayed. Let an aerial musician be heard, a spirit that is guardian and attendant, either of person or of place; the genius of the sleeper himself, or of the wood in which he loiters. Devotion is not forgotten among the employments of this enthusiast. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowed roof With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow To the full voic'd choir below, In service high, and anthems clear As may with sweetness thro' my ea., Dissolve me into extasies And bring all Heaven before my eyes. Milton was in love with the solemn peculiarities of the gothic temple. To those therefore who never entered such a building, the first six lines communicate no image. Antique pillars, embowed roof, storied windows, cloistered pale, are unmeaning sounds to those on this side the ocean, who have never seen, and never collected from delineations or descriptions any images of Gothic building. In Milton's mind, these terms possessed vivid counter parts. Memory set before him the studious cloisters of Cambridge where he passed his youth, and the aisles and arches of St. Paul's or Westminster, with their organs and chorusses, whose devotional influence he had often experienced. How different the conceptions then, which the poet derived from these lines, from those of an American reader. We are not however totally deprived of the solemnities of the organ and the chorusses of public worship. Having passed the flower of his days in such amusements, what is reserved for the pastime of age. Different minds touched with the same sublime passion, for serious pleasures, would probably form very different visions of the future. We might, in general, aspire after quiet and seclusion, but we should not be ambitious of absolute solitude, and the penury and hardships of the |