templated. 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, 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 no where 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. obliged him to relinguish 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 the 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.

It

"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 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." 2

The

"We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. 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

1 Campbell.

"Specimens, &c.," Introduction, p. lxxx. 2 Dr. Johnson. "Life of Milton."

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 synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed."1

VERSIFICATION." Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language, except Shakspeare'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 any thing like the same ear for music, the same power of approximating the varieties of poetical to those of musical rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet. The 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 or affectation, as the occasion seems to require."2

"Was there ever any thing 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."3

Macaulay. "Edinburgh Review," Vol. xlii, p. 311.

2 Hazlitt. "Lectures, &c.," p. 120.

3 Cowper.

"Letters."

HYMN ON THE NATIVITY.'

Ir was the winter wild,

ABRIDGED.

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 sympathise :
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.

But he, her fears to cease,2

Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;

She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,

His ready harbinger,

With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;

And waving wide her myrtle wand,

She strikes a universal peace3 through sea and land.

1 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 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 the poems far superior to the L'Allegro,' and 'Il Penseroso,'" though, as he sagaciously forbodes "the popular taste may not concur with him."

2 Cease-i. e. to make to cease, to allay.

3 Universal peace-in allusion to the peace which ensued after the battle of Actium, and the establishment of Augustus upon the throne of Rome.

No war,1 or battle's sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

But peaceful was the night,

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist,2

Smoothly the waters kissed,

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean;

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave.

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or e'er3 the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they than+

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below;

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,

Were all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep;

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal fingers strook ;

Divinely-warbled voice

Answering the stringéd noise,"

As all their souls in blissful rapture took :

The air, such pleasures loth to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

No war, &c.-"There is a dignity and simplicity in these lines [i. e. in this stanza] worthy of the maturest years and best times:" Warton.

2 Whist-past participle of the old verb to whist, to still or hush-hushed. 3 Or e'er-before. Than-the old form of "then."

5 Pan-Though the introduction even of the name of a heathen deity in such a connection hurts the ear and the taste, yet it should be remembered that as Pan was mythologically the god of universal nature and also of shepherds-so our Saviour was in a far higher sense at once the Creator of all things, and the great Shepherd of his people.

6 Silly-simple, innocent; the original meaning of the word. 7 Noise-music. See note 10, p. 158.