a native tendency and a godlike instinct, to the contemplation of objects of grandeur and awfulness. He always moves with a conscious energy. There is no subject so vast or terrific as to repel or intimidate him. The overpowering grandeur of a theme kindles and attracts him. He enters on the description of the infernal regions with a fearless tread, as if he felt within himself a power to erect the prison-house of fallen spirits, to encircle them with flames and horrors worthy of their crimes, to call forth from them shouts which should "tear hell's concave," and to embody in their chief an archangel's energies and a demon's pride and hate. Even the stupendous conception of Satan seems never to oppress his faculties. This character of power runs through all Milton's works. His descriptions of nature show a free and bold hand. He has no need of the minute, graphic skill which we prize in Cowper or Crabbe. With a few strong or delicate touches, he impresses, as it were, his own mind on the scenes which he would describe, and kindles the imagination of the gifted reader to clothe them with the same radiant hues under which they appeared to his own.

2. From this very imperfect view of the qualities of Milton's poetry, we hasten to his great work, Paradise Lost, perhaps the noblest monument of human genius. The two first books, by universal consent, stand pre-eminent in sublimity. Hell and hell's king have a terrible harmony, and dilate into new grandeur and awfulness the longer we contemplate them. From one element, "solid and liquid fire," the poet has framed a world of horror and suffering, such as imagination had never traversed. But fiercer flames than those which encompass Satan burn in his own soul. Revenge, exasperated pride, consuming wrath, ambition; though fallen, yet unconquered by the thunders of the Omnipotent, and grasping still at the empire of the universe— these form a picture more sublime and terrible than hell. Hell yields to the spirit which it imprisons. The intensity of its fires reveals the intenser passions and more vehement will of Satan; and the ruined Archangel gathers into himself the sublimity of the scene which surrounds him. This forms the tremendous interest of these wonderful books. We see mind triumphant over the most terrible powers of nature. We see unutterable agony subdued by energy of soul.

3. Milton's versification has the prime charm of expressiveness. His numbers vary with, and answer to, the depth or tenderness or sublimity of his conceptions, and hold intimate alliance with the soul. Like Michael Angelo, in whose hands the marble was said to be flexible, he bends our language, which foreigners reproach with hardness, into whatever forms the subject demands. All the treasures of sweet and solemn sound are at his command. Words harsh and discordant in the writings of less gifted men flow through his poetry in a full stream of harmony. This power over language is not to be ascribed to Milton's musical ear. It belongs to the soul. It is a gift or exercise of genius, which has power to impress itself on whatever it touches; and finds or frames, in sounds, motions, and material forms, correspondences and harmonies with its own fervid thoughts and feeelings.

4. Milton's poetry is characterized by seriousness. Great and various as are its merits, it does not discover all the variety of genius which we find in Shakespeare, whose imagination revelled equally in regions of mirth, beauty, and terror, now evoking spectres, now sporting with fairies, and now "ascending the highest heaven of invention." Milton was cast on times too solemn and eventful, was called to take part in transactions too perilous, and had too perpetual need of the presence of high thoughts and motives, to indulge himself in light and gay creations, even had his genius been more flexible and sportive. But his poetry, though habitually serious, is always healthful and bright and vigorous. It has no gloom. He took no pleasure in drawing dark pictures of life; for he knew by experience that there is a power in the soul to transmute calamity into an occasion and nutriment of moral power and triumphant virtue. We find nowhere in his writings that whining sensibility and exaggeration of morbid feeling which make so much of modern poetry effeminating. If he is not gay, he is not spirit-broken. His L'Allegro proves that he understood thoroughly the bright and joyous aspects of nature; and in his Penseroso, where he was tempted to accumulate images of gloom, we learn that the saddest views which he took of creation are such as inspire only pensive musing or lofty contemplation.

5. From Milton's poetry we turn to his prose; and, first, it is

objected to his prose writings that the style is difficult and obscure, abounding in involutions, transpositions, and Latinisms; that his protracted sentences exhaust and weary the mind, and too often yield it no better recompense than confused and indistinct perceptions.

6. We mean not to deny that these charges have some grounds; but they seem to us much exaggerated; and when we consider that the difficulties of Milton's style have almost sealed up his prose writings, we cannot but lament the fastidiousness and effeminacy of modern readers. We know that simplicity and perspicuity are important qualities of style; but there are vastly nobler and more important ones, such as energy and richness, and in these Milton is not surpassed. The best style is not that which puts the reader most easily and in the shortest time in possession of a writer's naked thoughts; but that which is the truest image of a great intellect, which conveys fully and carries furthest into other souls the conceptions and feelings of a profound and lofty spirit. To be universally intelligible is not the highest merit. A great mind cannot, without injurious constraint, shrink itself to the grasp of common passive readers. Its natural movement is free, bold, and majestic; and it ought not to be required to part with these attributes that the multitude may keep pace with it. A full mind will naturally overflow in long sentences; and in the moment of inspiration, when thick-coming thoughts and images crowd on it, will often pour them forth in a splendid confusion, dazzling to common readers, but kindling to congenial spirits. There are writings which are clear through their shallowness. We must not expect in the ocean the transparency of the calm inland stream. For ourselves, we love what is called easy reading perhaps too well, especially in our hours of relaxation; but we love, too, to have our faculties tasked by master-spirits. We delight in long sentences in which a great truth, instead of being broken up into numerous periods, is spread out in its full proportions, is irradiated with variety of illustrations and imagery, is set forth in a splendid affluence of ianguage, and flows, like a full stream, with a majestic harmony which fills at once the ear and soul.

THREE POETS ON MILTON.

I.

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go:
To make a third, she joined the other two.

II.

Nor second he that rode sublime

Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,

The secret of th' abyss to spy.

DRYDEN

He passed the flaming bounds of place and time-
The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,

Where angels tremble, while they gaze,

He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

III.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour.'
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

GRAY

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart ;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

WORDSWORTH.

This hour;" to wit, 1802, when this sonnet was written.

1.-L'ALLEGRO.

[INTRODUCTION.-L'Allegro (Italian) signifies the cheerful or merry man, and the poem celebrates the charms of mirth, just as Il Pensero'so (the melancholy man-see page 57) celebrates the charms of melancholy. The two poems should be read together, for they are counterparts of each other. It may be noted that the respective characteristics of the two speakers are scarcely expressed by the terms merry and melancholy. L'Allegro is a celebration of the social side of life-the view taken of life by one who loves to associate with the "kindly race of men ;" while Il Penseroso brings before us the moods and feelings of a grave and serious spirit-of one whose eye looks inward rather than outward. "There can be little doubt as to which of the two characters he portrays was after Milton's own heart. He portrays L'Allegro with much skill and excellence; but he cannot feign with him the sympathy he genuinely feels with the other; into his portrait of Il Penseroso he throws himself, so to speak, with all his soul."-HALES: Longer English Poems.]

Hence, loathéd Melancholy,*

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth* cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night raven sings;

There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,

NOTES.-Line 2. Of Cerberus ... born. 3. Styg'lan, relating to Styx, a river of

The genealogy here assigned

to "Melancholy" is Milton's
own invention.

the infernal region; hence, hellish, hateful.

5. uncouth, wild, strange.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-Explain the following names in classical mythology: "Cerberus" (2); "Euphrosyne" (12); and “Bacchus " (16).—Give the etymology of the following words: "Melancholy" (1); "ycleped" (12); "dight" (54).

1-16. Hence . . . bore. To what class (grammatically considered) do the first three sentences belong?

1. Melancholy. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 22.)-Give another instance of the use of this figure in sentence I, and another in sentence 2. 3,4 What phrases present a vivid picture of the under-world?

5. uncouth. How does its modern differ from its original meaning? 9. As ragged, etc. What figure of speech? (See Def. 19.)

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