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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lives of the English Poets: Waller, Milton,
+Cowley, by Samuel Johnson, Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Lives of the English Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley
+
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2014  [eBook #5098]
+[This file was first posted on April 24, 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS:
+WALLER, MILTON, COWLEY***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                       CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  LIVES
+                                  OF THE
+                              ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+                          Waller  Milton  Cowley
+
+                                    BY
+                          SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
+
+[Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                       CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+                      _LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
+                                  1891.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON, born at Lichfield in the year 1709, on the 7th of
+September Old Style, 18th New Style, was sixty-eight years old when he
+agreed with the booksellers to write his “Lives of the English Poets.”
+“I am engaged,” he said, “to write little Lives, and little Prefaces, to
+a little edition of the English Poets.”  His conscience was also a little
+hurt by the fact that the bargain was made on Easter Eve.  In 1777 his
+memorandum, set down among prayers and meditations, was “29 March, Easter
+Eve, I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the time was not long.”
+
+The history of the book as told to Boswell by Edward Dilly, one of the
+contracting booksellers, was this.  An edition of Poets printed by the
+Martins in Edinburgh, and sold by Bell in London, was regarded by the
+London publishers as an interference with the honorary copyright which
+booksellers then respected among themselves.  They said also that it was
+inaccurately printed and its type was small.  A few booksellers agreed,
+therefore, among themselves to call a meeting of proprietors of honorary
+or actual copyright in the various Poets.  In Poets who had died before
+1660 they had no trade interest at all.  About forty of the most
+respectable booksellers in London accepted the invitation to this
+meeting.  They determined to proceed immediately with an elegant and
+uniform edition of Poets in whose works they were interested, and they
+deputed three of their number, William Strahan, Thomas Davies, and
+Cadell, to wait on Johnson, asking him to write the series of prefatory
+Lives, and name his own terms.  Johnson agreed at once, and suggested as
+his price two hundred guineas, when, as Malone says, the booksellers
+would readily have given him a thousand.  He then contemplated only
+“little Lives.”  His energetic pleasure in the work expanded his Preface
+beyond the limits of the first design; but when it was observed to
+Johnson that he was underpaid by the booksellers, his reply was, “No,
+sir; it was not that they gave me too little, but that I gave them too
+much.”  He gave them, in fact, his masterpiece.  His keen interest in
+Literature as the soul of life, his sympathetic insight into human
+nature, enabled him to put all that was best in himself into these
+studies of the lives of men for whom he cared, and of the books that he
+was glad to speak his mind about in his own shrewd independent way.
+Boswell was somewhat disappointed at finding that the selection of the
+Poets in this series would not be Johnson’s, but that he was to furnish a
+Preface and Life to any Poet the booksellers pleased.  “I asked him,”
+writes Boswell, “if he would do this to any dunce’s works, if they should
+ask him.”  JOHNSON.  “Yes, sir; and _say_ he was a dunce.”
+
+The meeting of booksellers, happy in the support of Johnson’s
+intellectual power, appointed also a committee to engage the best
+engravers, and another committee to give directions about paper and
+printing.  They made out at once a list of the Poets they meant to give,
+“many of which,” said Dilly, “are within the time of the Act of Queen
+Anne, which Martin and Bell cannot give, as they have no property in
+them.  The proprietors are almost all the booksellers in London, of
+consequence.”
+
+In 1780 the booksellers published, in separate form, four volumes of
+Johnson’s “Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the most Eminent of
+the English Poets.”  The completion followed in 1781.  “Sometime in
+March,” Johnson writes in that year, “I finished the Lives of the Poets.”
+The series of books to which they actually served as prefaces extended to
+sixty volumes.  When his work was done, Johnson then being in his
+seventy-second year, the booksellers added £100 to the price first asked.
+Johnson’s own life was then near its close.  He died on the 13th of
+December, 1784, aged seventy-five.
+
+Of the Lives in this collection, Johnson himself liked best his Life of
+Cowley, for the thoroughness with which he had examined in it the style
+of what he called the metaphysical Poets.  In his Life of Milton, the
+sense of Milton’s genius is not less evident than the difference in point
+of view which made it difficult for Johnson to know Milton thoroughly.
+They know each other now.  For Johnson sought as steadily as Milton to do
+all as “in his great Taskmaster’s eye.”
+
+                                                                     H. M.
+
+
+
+
+WALLER.
+
+
+EDMUND WALLER was born on the third of March, 1605, at Coleshill, in
+Hertfordshire.  His father was Robert Waller, Esquire, of Agmondesham, in
+Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish
+Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden, in
+the same county, and sister to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion.
+
+His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income
+of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value
+of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to
+ten thousand at the present time.
+
+He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed
+afterwards to King’s College, in Cambridge.  He was sent to Parliament in
+his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year, and frequented the court of
+James the First, where he heard a very remarkable conversation, which the
+writer of the Life prefixed to his Works, who seems to have been well
+informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, has
+delivered as indubitably certain:
+
+“He found Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, Bishop of
+Durham, standing behind his Majesty’s chair; and there happened something
+extraordinary,” continues this writer, “in the conversation those
+prelates had with the king, on which Mr. Waller did often reflect.  His
+Majesty asked the bishops, ‘My Lords, cannot I take my subject’s money,
+when I want it, without all this formality of Parliament?’  The Bishop of
+Durham readily answered, ‘God forbid, Sir, but you should: you are the
+breath of our nostrils.’  Whereupon the king turned and said to the
+Bishop of Winchester, ‘Well, my Lord, what say you?’  ‘Sir,’ replied the
+bishop, ‘I have no skill to judge of Parliamentary cases.  The king
+answered, ‘No put-offs, my Lord; answer me presently.’  ‘Then, Sir,’ said
+he, ‘I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale’s money; for
+he offers it.’  Mr. Waller said the company was pleased with this answer,
+and the wit of it seemed to affect the king; for a certain lord coming in
+soon after, his Majesty cried out, ‘Oh, my lord, they say you lig with my
+Lady.’  ‘No, Sir,’ says his lordship in confusion; ‘but I like her
+company, because she has so much wit.’  ‘Why, then,’ says the king, ‘do
+you not lig with my Lord of Winchester there?’”
+
+Waller’s political and poetical life began nearly together.  In his
+eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first in his works, on
+“The Prince’s Escape at St. Andero:” a piece which justifies the
+observation made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity
+like instinct, a style which perhaps will never be obsolete; and that
+“were we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was wrote
+at twenty, and what at’ fourscore.”  His versification was, in his first
+essay, such as it appears in his last performance.  By the perusal of
+Fairfax’s translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates, he confessed
+himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety
+of observation, he had already formed such a system of metrical harmony
+as he never afterwards much needed, or much endeavoured, to improve.
+Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and gained ground gradually
+upon the ruggedness of his age; but what was acquired by Denham was
+inherited by Waller.
+
+The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is supposed by
+Mr. Fenton to be the “Address to the Queen,” which he considers as
+congratulating her arrival, in Waller’s twentieth year.  He is apparently
+mistaken; for the mention of the nation’s obligations to her frequent
+pregnancy proves that it was written when she had brought many children.
+We have therefore no date of any other poetical production before that
+which the murder of the Duke of Buckingham occasioned; the steadiness
+with which the king received the news in the chapel deserved indeed to be
+rescued from oblivion.
+
+Neither of these pieces that seem to carry their own dates could have
+been the sudden effusion of fancy.  In the verses on the prince’s escape,
+the prediction of his marriage with the Princess of France must have been
+written after the event; in the other, the promises of the king’s
+kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could not be properly
+praised till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken for
+revision and improvement.  It is not known that they were published till
+they appeared long afterwards with other poems.
+
+Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds
+at the expense of their fortunes.  Rich as he was by inheritance, he took
+care early to grow richer, by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress in the
+city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for Mr.
+Crofts.  Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who
+was afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in
+childbed, and left him a widower of about five-and-twenty, gay and
+wealthy, to please himself with another marriage.
+
+Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself
+resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half-fondly and half-ambitiously,
+upon the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester,
+whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; the
+name is derived from the Latin appellation of “sugar,” and implies, if it
+means anything, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, such as
+excites rather tenderness and esteem, and such as, though always treated
+with kindness, is never honoured or admired.
+
+Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty
+charms, and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather
+than fondness, whose chains he wishes, though in vain, to break, and
+whose presence is “wine” that “inflames to madness.”
+
+His acquaintance with this high-born dame gave wit no opportunity of
+boasting its influence; she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse,
+but rejected his addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him away
+to solace his disappointment with Amoret or Phillis.  She married in 1639
+the Earl of Sunderland, who died at Newbury in the king’s cause; and, in
+her old age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him, when he would
+again write such verses upon her; “When you are as young, Madam,” said
+he, “and as handsome as you were then.”
+
+In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, among the
+rest of the men who were eminent in that age for genius and literature;
+but known so little to his advantage, that they who read his character
+will not much condemn Sacharissa, that she did not descend from her rank
+to his embraces, nor think every excellence comprised in wit.
+
+The lady was, indeed, inexorable; but his uncommon comprised in wit,
+qualifications, though they had no power upon her, recommended him to the
+scholars and statesmen; and undoubtedly many beauties of that time,
+however they might receive his love, were proud of his praises.  Who they
+were, whom he dignifies with poetical names, cannot now be known.
+Amoret, according to Mr. Fenton, was the Lady Sophia Murray.  Perhaps by
+traditions preserved in families more may be discovered.
+
+From the verses written at Penshurst, it has been collected that he
+diverted his disappointment by a voyage; and his biographers, from his
+poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas;
+but it seems much more likely that he should amuse himself with forming
+an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to
+America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability.
+
+From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year, he wrote his pieces on
+the Reduction of Sallee; on the Reparation of St. Paul’s; to the King on
+his Navy; the Panegyric on the Queen Mother; the two poems to the Earl of
+Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time cannot be
+discovered.
+
+When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa, he looked round him for an
+easier conquest, and gained a lady of the family of Bresse, or Breaux.
+The time of his marriage is not exactly known.  It has not been
+discovered that his wife was won by his poetry; nor is anything told of
+her, but that she brought him many children.  He doubtless praised some
+whom he would have been afraid to marry, and perhaps married one whom he
+would have been ashamed to praise.  Many qualities contribute to domestic
+happiness, upon which poetry has no colours to bestow; and many airs and
+sallies may delight imagination, which he who flatters them never can
+approve.  There are charms made only for distant admiration.  No
+spectacle is nobler than a blaze.
+
+Of this wife, his biographers have recorded that she gave him five sons
+and eight daughters.
+
+During the long interval of Parliament, he is represented as living among
+those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and enjoying an
+exuberant fortune with that independence and liberty of speech and
+conduct which wealth ought always to produce.  He was, however,
+considered as the kinsman of Hampden, and was therefore supposed by the
+courtiers not to favour them.
+
+When the Parliament was called in 1640, it appeared that Waller’s
+political character had not been mistaken.  The king’s demand of a supply
+produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection and discontent
+regularly dictate; a speech filled with hyperbolical complaints of
+imaginary grievances: “They,” says he, “who think themselves already
+undone, can never apprehend themselves in danger; and they who have
+nothing left can never give freely.”  Political truth is equally in
+danger from the praises of courtiers, and the exclamations of patriots.
+
+He then proceeds to rail at the clergy, being sure at that time of a
+favourable audience.  His topic is such as will always serve its purpose;
+an accusation of acting and preaching only for preferment: and he exhorts
+the Commons “carefully” to “provide” for their “protection against Pulpit
+Law.”
+
+It always gratifies curiosity to trace a sentiment.  Waller has in his
+speech quoted Hooker in one passage; and in another has copied him,
+without quoting.  “Religion,” says Waller, “ought to be the first thing
+in our purpose and desires; but that which is first in dignity is not
+always to precede in order of time; for well-being supposes a being; and
+the first impediment which men naturally endeavour to remove, is the want
+of those things without which they cannot subsist.  God first assigned
+unto Adam maintenance of life, and gave him a title to the rest of the
+creatures before he appointed a law to observe.”
+
+“God first assigned Adam,” says Hooker, “maintenance of life, and then
+appointed him a law to observe.  True it is, that the kingdom of God must
+be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but inasmuch as a
+righteous life presupposeth life, inasmuch as to live virtuously it is
+impossible, except we live; therefore the first impediment which
+naturally we endeavour to remove is penury, and want of things without
+which we cannot live.”
+
+The speech is vehement; but the great position, that grievances ought to
+be redressed before supplies are granted, is agreeable enough to law and
+reason: nor was Waller, if his biographer may be credited, such an enemy
+to the king, as not to wish his distresses lightened; for he relates,
+“that the king sent particularly to Waller, to second his demand of some
+subsidies to pay off the army, and Sir Henry Vane objecting against first
+voting a supply, because the king would not accept unless it came up to
+his proportion, Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to Sir Thomas Jermyn,
+comptroller of the household, to save his master from the effects of so
+bold a falsity; ‘for,’ he said, ‘I am but a country gentleman, and cannot
+pretend to know the king’s mind:’ but Sir Thomas durst not contradict the
+secretary; and his son, the Earl of St. Albans, afterwards told Mr.
+Waller, that his father’s cowardice ruined the king.”
+
+In the Long Parliament, which, unhappily for the nation, met Nov. 3,
+1640, Waller represented Agmondesham the third time; and was considered
+by the discontented party as a man sufficiently trusty and acrimonious to
+be employed in managing the prosecution of Judge Crawley, for his opinion
+in favour of ship-money; and his speech shows that he did not disappoint
+their expectations.  He was probably the more ardent, as his uncle
+Hampden had been particularly engaged in the dispute, and, by a sentence
+which seems generally to be thought unconstitutional, particularly
+injured.
+
+He was not, however, a bigot to his party, nor adopted all their
+opinions.  When the great question, whether Episcopacy ought to be
+abolished, was debated, he spoke against the innovation so coolly, so
+reasonably, and so firmly, that it is not without great injury to his
+name that his speech, which was as follows, has been hitherto omitted in
+his works:
+
+“There is no doubt but the sense of what this nation had suffered from
+the present bishops hath produced these complaints; and the apprehensions
+men have of suffering the like, in time to come, make so many desire the
+taking away of Episcopacy: but I conceive it is possible that we may not,
+now, take a right measure of the minds of the people by their petitions;
+for, when they subscribed them, the bishops were armed with a dangerous
+commission of making new canons, imposing new oaths, and the like; but
+now we have disarmed them of that power.  These petitioners lately did
+look upon Episcopacy as a beast armed with horns and claws; but now that
+we have cut and pared them (and may, if we see cause, yet reduce it into
+narrower bounds), it may, perhaps, be more agreeable.  Howsoever, if they
+be still in passion, it becomes us soberly to consider the right use and
+antiquity thereof; and not to comply further with a general desire, than
+may stand with a general good.
+
+“We have already showed that Episcopacy and the evils thereof are mingled
+like water and oil; we have also, in part, severed them; but I believe
+you will find, that our laws and the present government of the Church are
+mingled like wine and water; so inseparable, that the abrogation of, at
+least, a hundred of our laws is desired in these petitions.  I have often
+heard a noble answer of the Lords, commended in this House, to a
+proposition of like nature, but of less consequence; they gave no other
+reason of their refusal but this, ‘_Nolumus mutare Leges Angliæ_:’ it was
+the bishops who so answered them; and it would become the dignity and
+wisdom of this House to answer the people, now, with a ‘_Nolumus
+mutare_.’
+
+“I see some are moved with a number of hands against the bishops; which,
+I confess, rather inclines me to their defence; for I look upon
+Episcopacy as a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this
+assault of the people, and, withal, this mystery once revealed, ‘that we
+must deny them nothing when they ask it thus in troops,’ we may, in the
+next place, have as hard a task to defend our property, as we have lately
+had to recover it from the Prerogative.  If, by multiplying hands and
+petitions, they prevail for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the
+next demand perhaps may be _Lex Agraria_, the like equality in things
+temporal.
+
+“The Roman story tells us, that when the people began to flock about the
+Senate, and were more curious to direct and know what was done, than to
+obey, that Commonwealth soon came to ruin; their _Legem regare_ grew
+quickly to be a _Legem ferre_: and after, when their legions had found
+that they could make a Dictator, they never suffered the Senate to have a
+voice any more in such election.
+
+“If these great innovations proceed, I shall expect a flat and level in
+learning too, as well as in Church preferments: _Hones alit Artes_.  And
+though it be true, that grave and pious men do study for learning-sake,
+and embrace virtue for itself; yet it is true, that youth, which is the
+season when learning is gotten, is not without ambition; nor will ever
+take pains to excel in anything, when there is not some hope of excelling
+others in reward and dignity.
+
+“There are two reasons chiefly alleged against our Church government.
+
+“First, Scripture, which, as some men think, points out another form.
+
+“Second, the abuses of the present superiors.
+
+“For Scripture, I will not dispute it in this place; but I am confident
+that, whenever an equal division of lands and goods shall be desired,
+there will be as many places in Scripture found out, which seem to favour
+that, as there are now alleged against the prelacy or preferment of the
+Church.  And, as for abuses, when you are now in the remonstrance told
+what this and that poor man hath suffered by the bishops, you may be
+presented with a thousand instances of poor men that have received hard
+measure from their landlords; and of worldly goods abused, to the injury
+of others, and disadvantage of the owners.
+
+“And therefore, Mr. Speaker, my humble motion is that we may settle men’s
+minds herein; and by a question, declare our resolution, ‘to reform,’
+that is, ‘not to abolish, Episcopacy.’”
+
+It cannot but be wished that he, who could speak in this manner, had been
+able to act with spirit and uniformity.
+
+When the Commons begun to set the royal authority at open defiance,
+Waller is said to have withdrawn from the House, and to have returned
+with the king’s permission; and, when the king set up his standard, he
+sent him a thousand broad-pieces.  He continued, however, to sit in the
+rebellious conventicle; but “spoke,” says Clarendon, “with great
+sharpness and freedom, which, now there was no danger of being out-voted,
+was not restrained; and therefore used as an argument against those who
+were gone upon pretence that they were not suffered to deliver their
+opinion freely in the House, which could not be believed, when all men
+knew what liberty Mr. Waller took, and spoke every day with impunity
+against the sense and proceedings of the House.”
+
+Waller, as he continued to sit, was one of the commissioners nominated by
+the Parliament to treat with the king at Oxford; and when they were
+presented, the king said to him, “Though you are the last, you are not
+the lowest nor the least in my favour.”  Whitelock, who, being another of
+the commissioners, was witness of this kindness, imputes it to the king’s
+knowledge of the plot, in which Waller appeared afterwards to have been
+engaged against the Parliament.  Fenton, with equal probability, believes
+that his attempt to promote the royal cause arose from his sensibility of
+the king’s tenderness.  Whitelock says nothing of his behaviour at
+Oxford: he was sent with several others to add pomp to the commission,
+but was not one of those to whom the trust of treating was imparted.
+
+The engagement, known by the name of Waller’s plot, was soon afterwards
+discovered.  Waller had a brother-in-law, Tomkyns, who was clerk of the
+queen’s council, and at the same time had a very numerous acquaintance,
+and great influence, in the city.  Waller and he, conversing with great
+confidence, told both their own secrets and those of their friends; and,
+surveying the wide extent of their conversation, imagined that they found
+in the majority of all ranks great disapprobation of the violence of the
+Commons, and unwillingness to continue the war.  They knew that many
+favoured the king, whose fear concealed their loyalty; and many desired
+peace, though they durst not oppose the clamour for war; and they
+imagined that, if those who had these good intentions should be informed
+of their own strength, and enabled by intelligence to act together, they
+might overpower the fury of sedition, by refusing to comply with the
+ordinance for the twentieth part, and the other taxes levied for the
+support of the rebel army, and by uniting great numbers in a petition for
+peace.  They proceeded with great caution.  Three only met in one place,
+and no man was allowed to impart the plot to more than two others; so
+that, if any should be suspected or seized, more than three could not be
+endangered.
+
+Lord Conway joined in the design, and, Clarendon imagines, incidentally
+mingled, as he was a soldier, some martial hopes or projects, which
+however were only mentioned, the main design being to bring the loyal
+inhabitants to the knowledge of each other; for which purpose there was
+to be appointed one in every district, to distinguish the friends of the
+king, the adherents to the Parliament, and the neutrals.  How far they
+proceeded does not appear; the result of their inquiry, as Pym declared,
+was, that within the walls, for one that was for the Royalists, there
+were three against them; but that without the walls, for one that was
+against them, there were five for them.  Whether this was said from
+knowledge or guess, was perhaps never inquired.
+
+It is the opinion of Clarendon, that in Waller’s plan no violence or
+sanguinary resistance was comprised; that he intended only to abate the
+confidence of the rebels by public declarations, and to weaken their
+powers by an opposition to new supplies.  This, in calmer times, and more
+than this, is done without fear; but such was the acrimony of the
+Commons, that no method of obstructing them was safe.
+
+About this time another design was formed by Sir Nicholas Crispe, a man
+of loyalty, that deserves perpetual remembrance; when he was a merchant
+in the city, he gave and procured the king, in his exigencies, a hundred
+thousand pounds; and, when he was driven from the Exchange, raised a
+regiment, and commanded it.
+
+Sir Nicholas flattered himself with an opinion, that some provocation
+would so much exasperate, or some opportunity so much encourage, the
+king’s friends in the city, that they would break out in open resistance,
+and would then want only a lawful standard, and an authorised commander;
+and extorted from the king, whose judgment too frequently yielded to
+importunity, a commission of array, directed to such as he thought proper
+to nominate, which was sent to London by the Lady Aubigny.  She knew not
+what she carried, but was to deliver it on the communication of a certain
+token which Sir Nicholas imparted.
+
+This commission could be only intended to lie ready till the time should
+require it.  To have attempted to raise any forces would have been
+certain destruction; it could be of use only when the forces should
+appear.  This was, however, an act preparatory to martial hostility.
+
+Crispe would undoubtedly have put an end to the session of Parliament,
+had his strength been equal to his zeal; and out of the design of Crispe,
+which involved very little danger, and that of Waller, which was an act
+purely civil, they compounded a horrid and dreadful plot.
+
+The discovery of Waller’s design is variously related.
+
+In “Clarendon’s History” it is told, that a servant of Tomkyns, lurking
+behind the hangings when his master was in conference with Waller, heard
+enough to qualify him for an informer, and carried his intelligence to
+Pym.
+
+A manuscript, quoted in the “Life of Waller,” relates, that “he was
+betrayed by his sister Price, and her Presbyterian chaplain Mr. Goode,
+who stole some of his papers; and if he had not strangely dreamed the
+night before, that his sister had betrayed him, and thereupon burnt the
+rest of his papers by the fire that was in his chimney, he had certainly
+lost his life by it.”  The question cannot be decided.  It is not
+unreasonable to believe that the men in power, receiving intelligence
+from the sister, would employ the servant of Tomkyns to listen at the
+conference, that they might avoid an act so offensive as that of
+destroying the brother by the sister’s testimony.
+
+The plot was published in the most terrific manner.
+
+On the 31st of May (1643), at a solemn fast, when they were listening to
+the sermon, a messenger entered the church, and communicated his errand
+to Pym, who whispered it to others that were placed near him, and then
+went with them out of the church, leaving the rest in solicitude and
+amazement.  They immediately sent guards to proper places, and that night
+apprehended Tomkyns and Waller; having yet traced nothing but that
+letters had been intercepted, from which it appears that the Parliament
+and the city were soon to be delivered into the hands of the cavaliers.
+
+They perhaps yet knew little themselves, beyond some general and
+indistinct notices.  “But Waller,” says Clarendon, “was so confounded
+with fear, that he confessed whatever he had heard, said, thought, or
+seen; all that he knew of himself, and all that he suspected of others,
+without concealing any person of what degree or quality soever, or any
+discourse which he had ever upon any occasion entertained with them; what
+such and such ladies of great honour, to whom, upon the credit of his wit
+and great reputation, he had been admitted, had spoken to him in their
+chambers upon the proceedings in the Houses, and how they had encouraged
+him to oppose them; what correspondence and intercourse they had with
+some Ministers of State at Oxford, and how they had conveyed all
+intelligence thither.”  He accused the Earl of Portland and Lord Conway
+as co-operating in the transaction; and testified that the Earl of
+Northumberland had declared himself disposed in favour of any attempt
+that might check the violence of the Parliament, and reconcile them to
+the king.
+
+He undoubtedly confessed much which they could never have discovered, and
+perhaps somewhat which they would wish to have been suppressed; for it is
+inconvenient in the conflict of factions, to have that disaffection known
+which cannot safely be punished.
+
+Tomkyns was seized on the same night with Waller, and appears likewise to
+have partaken of his cowardice; for he gave notice of Crispe’s commission
+of array, of which Clarendon never knew how it was discovered.  Tomkyns
+had been sent with the token appointed, to demand it from Lady Aubigny,
+and had buried it in his garden, where, by his direction, it was dug up;
+and thus the rebels obtained, what Clarendon confesses them to have had,
+the original copy.
+
+It can raise no wonder that they formed one plot out of these two
+designs, however remote from each other, when they saw the same agent
+employed in both, and found the commission of array in the hands of him
+who was employed in collecting the opinions and affections of the people.
+
+Of the plot, thus combined, they took care to make the most.  They sent
+Pym among the citizens, to tell them of their imminent danger and happy
+escape; and inform them, that the design was, “to seize the Lord Mayor
+and all the Committee of Militia, and would not spare one of them.”  They
+drew up a vow and covenant, to be taken by every member of either House,
+by which he declared his detestation of all conspiracies against the
+Parliament, and his resolution to detect and oppose them.  They then
+appointed a day of thanksgiving for this wonderful delivery; which shut
+out, says Clarendon, all doubts whether there had been such a
+deliverance, and whether the plot was real or fictitious.
+
+On June 11, the Earl of Portland and Lord Conway were committed, one to
+the custody of the mayor, and the other of the sheriff; but their lands
+and goods were not seized.
+
+Waller was still to immerse himself deeper in ignominy.  The Earl of
+Portland and Lord Conway denied the charge; and there was no evidence
+against them but the confession of Waller, of which undoubtedly many
+would be inclined to question the veracity.  With these doubts he was so
+much terrified, that he endeavoured to persuade Portland to a declaration
+like his own, by a letter extant in Fenton’s edition.  “But for me,” says
+he, “you had never known anything of this business, which was prepared
+for another; and therefore I cannot imagine why you should hide it so far
+as to contract your own ruin by concealing it, and persisting
+unreasonably to hide that truth, which, without you, already is, and will
+every day be made more manifest.  Can you imagine yourself bound in
+honour to keep that secret, which is already revealed by another? or
+possible it should still be a secret, which is known to one of the other
+sex?—If you persist to be cruel to yourself for their sakes who deserve
+it not, it will nevertheless be made appear, ere long, I fear, to your
+ruin.  Surely, if I had the happiness to wait on you, I could move you to
+compassionate both yourself and me, who, desperate as my case is, am
+desirous to die with the honour of being known to have declared the
+truth.  You have no reason to contend to hide what is already
+revealed—inconsiderately to throw away yourself, for the interest of
+others, to whom you are less obliged than you are aware of.”
+
+This persuasion seems to have had little effect.  Portland sent (June 29)
+a letter to the Lords, to tell them that he “is in custody, as he
+conceives, without any charge; and that, by what Mr. Waller hath
+threatened him with since he was imprisoned, he doth apprehend a very
+cruel, long, and ruinous restraint:—He therefore prays, that he may not
+find the effects of Mr. Waller’s threats, a long and close imprisonment;
+but may be speedily brought to a legal trial, and then he is confident
+the vanity and falsehood of those informations which have been given
+against him will appear.”
+
+In consequence of this letter, the Lords ordered Portland and Waller to
+be confronted; when the one repeated his charge, and the other his
+denial.  The examination of the plot being continued (July 1), Thinn,
+usher of the House of Lords, deposed, that Mr. Waller having had a
+conference with the Lord Portland in an upper room, Lord Portland said,
+when he came down, “Do me the favour to tell my Lord Northumberland, that
+Mr. Waller has extremely pressed me to save my own life and his, by
+throwing the blame upon the Lord Conway and the Earl of Northumberland.”
+
+Waller, in his letter to Portland, tells him of the reasons which he
+could urge with resistless efficacy in a personal conference; but he
+overrated his own oratory; his vehemence, whether of persuasion or
+entreaty, was returned with contempt.
+
+One of his arguments with Portland is, that the plot is already known to
+a woman.  This woman was doubtless Lady Aubigny, who, upon this occasion,
+was committed to custody; but who, in reality, when she delivered the
+commission, knew not what it was.
+
+The Parliament then proceeded against the conspirators, and committed
+their trial to a council of war.  Tomkyns and Chaloner were hanged near
+their own doors.  Tomkyns, when he came to die, said it was a “foolish
+business;” and indeed there seems to have been no hope that it should
+escape discovery; for, though never more than three met at a time, yet a
+design so extensive must by necessity be communicated to many who could
+not be expected to be all faithful and all prudent.  Chaloner was
+attended at his execution by Hugh Peters.  His crime was, that he had
+commission to raise money for the king; but it appears not that the money
+was to be expended upon the advancement of either Crispe’s or Waller’s
+plot.
+
+The Earl of Northumberland, being too great for prosecution, was only
+once examined before the Lords.  The Earl of Portland and Lord Conway
+persisting to deny the charge, and no testimony but Waller’s yet
+appearing against them, were, after a long imprisonment, admitted to
+bail.  Hassel, the king’s messenger, who carried the letters to Oxford,
+died the night before his trial.  Hampden [Alexander] escaped death,
+perhaps by the interest of his family; but was kept in prison to the end
+of his life.  They whose names were inserted in the commission of array
+were not capitally punished, as it could not be proved that they had
+consented to their own nomination; but they were considered as
+malignants, and their estates were seized.
+
+“Waller, though confessedly,” says Clarendon, “the most guilty, with
+incredible dissimulation affected such a remorse of conscience, that his
+trial was put off, out of Christian compassion, till he might recover his
+understanding.”  What use he made of this interval, with what liberality
+and success he distributed flattery and money, and how, when he was
+brought (July 4) before the House, he confessed and lamented, and
+submitted and implored, may be read in the “History of the Rebellion” (B.
+vii.).  The speech, to which Clarendon ascribes the preservation of his
+“dear-bought life,” is inserted in his works.  The great historian,
+however, seems to have been mistaken in relating that “he prevailed” in
+the principal part of his supplication, “not to be tried by a council of
+war;” for, according to Whitelock, he was by expulsion from the House
+abandoned to the tribunal which he so much dreaded, and, being tried and
+condemned, was reprieved by Essex; but after a year’s imprisonment, in
+which time resentment grew less acrimonious, paying a fine of ten
+thousand pounds, he was permitted to “recollect himself in another
+country.”
+
+Of his behaviour in this part of life, it is not necessary to direct the
+reader’s opinion.  “Let us not,” says his last ingenious biographer,
+“condemn him with untempered severity, because he was not a prodigy which
+the world hath seldom seen, because his character included not the poet,
+the orator, and the hero.”
+
+For the place of his exile he chose France, and stayed some time at Roan,
+where his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite,
+and his amanuensis.  He then removed to Paris, where he lived with great
+splendour and hospitality; and from time to time amused himself with
+poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation,
+in the natural language of an honest man.
+
+At last it became necessary, for his support, to sell his wife’s jewels;
+and being reduced, as he said, at last “to the rump-jewel,” he solicited
+from Cromwell permission to return, and obtained it by the interest of
+Colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married.  Upon the remains of a
+fortune, which the danger of his life had very much diminished, he lived
+at Hallbarn, a house built by himself very near to Beaconsfield, where
+his mother resided.  His mother, though related to Cromwell and Hampden,
+was zealous for the royal cause, and, when Cromwell visited her, used to
+reproach him; he, in return, would throw a napkin at her, and say he
+would not dispute with his aunt; but finding in time that she acted for
+the king, as well as talked, he made her a prisoner to her own daughter,
+in her own house.  If he would do anything, he could not do less.
+
+Cromwell, now Protector, received Waller, as his kinsman, to familiar
+conversation.  Waller, as he used to relate, found him sufficiently
+versed in ancient history; and, when any of his enthusiastic friends came
+to advise or consult him, could sometimes overhear him discoursing in the
+cant of the times: but, when he returned, he would say, “Cousin Waller, I
+must talk to these men in their own way;” and resumed the common style of
+conversation.
+
+He repaid the Protector for his favours (1654) by the famous Panegyric,
+which has been always considered as the first of his poetical
+productions.  His choice of encomiastic topics is very judicious; for he
+considers Cromwell in his exaltation, without inquiring how he attained
+it; there is consequently no mention of the rebel or the regicide.  All
+the former part of his hero’s life is veiled with shades; and nothing is
+brought to view but the chief, the governor, the defender of England’s
+honour, and the enlarger of her dominion.  The act of violence by which
+he obtained the supreme power is lightly treated, and decently justified.
+It was certainly to be desired that the detestable band should be
+dissolved, which had destroyed the Church, murdered the king, and filled
+the nation with tumult and oppression; yet Cromwell had not the right of
+dissolving them, for all that he had before done could be justified only
+by supposing them invested with lawful authority.  But combinations of
+wickedness would overwhelm the world by the advantage which licentious
+principles afford, did not those, who have long practised perfidy, grow
+faithless to each other.
+
+In the poem on the War with Spain are some passages at least equal to the
+best parts of the Panegyric; and, in the conclusion, the poet ventures
+yet a higher flight of flattery, by recommending royalty to Cromwell and
+the nation.  Cromwell was very desirous, as appears from his
+conversation, related by Whitelock, of adding the title to the power of
+monarchy, and is supposed to have been withheld from it partly by fear of
+the army, and partly by fear of the laws, which, when he should govern by
+the name of king, would have restrained his authority.  When, therefore,
+a deputation was solemnly sent to invite him to the crown, he, after a
+long conference, refused it, but is said to have fainted in his coach
+when he parted from them.
+
+The poem on the death of the Protector seems to have been dictated by
+real veneration for his memory.  Dryden and Sprat wrote on the same
+occasion; but they were young men, struggling into notice, and hoping for
+some favour from the ruling party.  Waller had little to expect; he had
+received nothing but his pardon from Cromwell, and was not likely to ask
+anything from those who should succeed him.
+
+Soon afterwards, the Restoration supplied him with another subject; and
+he exerted his imagination, his elegance, and his melody, with equal
+alacrity, for Charles the Second.  It is not possible to read, without
+some contempt and indignation, poems of the same author, ascribing the
+highest degree of “power and piety” to Charles the First, then
+transferring the same “power and piety” to Oliver Cromwell; now inviting
+Oliver to take the Crown, and then congratulating Charles the Second on
+his recovered right.  Neither Cromwell nor Charles could value his
+testimony as the effect of conviction, or receive his praises as
+effusions of reverence; they could consider them but as the labour of
+invention, and the tribute of dependence.
+
+Poets, indeed, profess fiction; but the legitimate end of fiction is the
+conveyance of truth, and he that has flattery ready for all whom the
+vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt must be scorned as a
+prostituted mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the
+dignity of virtue.
+
+The Congratulation was considered as inferior in poetical merit to the
+Panegyric; and it is reported that, when the king told Waller of the
+disparity, he answered, “Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in
+truth.”
+
+The Congratulation is indeed not inferior to the Panegyric, either by
+decay of genius, or for want of diligence, but because Cromwell had done
+much and Charles had done little.  Cromwell wanted nothing to raise him
+to heroic excellence but virtue, and virtue his poet thought himself at
+liberty to supply.  Charles had yet only the merit of struggling without
+success, and suffering without despair.  A life of escapes and indigence
+could supply poetry with no splendid images.
+
+In the first Parliament summoned by Charles the Second (March 8, 1661),
+Waller sat for Hastings, in Sussex, and served for different places in
+all the Parliaments of that reign.  In a time when fancy and gaiety were
+the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller
+was forgotten.  He passed his time in the company that was highest, both
+in rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude
+him.  Though he drank water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to
+heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said, that
+“no man in England should keep him company without drinking but Ned
+Waller.”
+
+The praise given him by St. Evremond is a proof of his reputation; for it
+was only by his reputation that he could be known, as a writer, to a man
+who, though he lived a great part of a long life upon an English pension,
+never consented to understand the language of the nation that maintained
+him.
+
+In Parliament, “he was,” says Burnet, “the delight of the House, and
+though old, said the liveliest things of any among them.”  This, however,
+is said in his account of the year seventy-five, when Waller was only
+seventy.  His name as a speaker occurs often in Grey’s Collections, but I
+have found no extracts that can be more quoted as exhibiting sallies of
+gaiety than cogency of argument.
+
+He was of such consideration, that his remarks were circulated and
+recorded.  When the Duke of York’s influence was high, both in Scotland
+and England, it drew, says Burnet, a lively reflection from Waller, the
+celebrated wit.  He said, “The House of Commons had resolved that the
+duke should not reign after the king’s death: but the king, in opposition
+to them, had resolved that he should reign even in his life.”  If there
+appear no extraordinary “liveliness” in this “remark,” yet its reception
+proves its speaker to have been a “celebrated wit,” to have had a name
+which men of wit were proud of mentioning.
+
+He did not suffer his reputation to die gradually away, which may easily
+happen in a long life, but renewed his claim to poetical distinction from
+time to time, as occasions were offered, either by public events or
+private incidents; and, contenting himself with the influence of his
+Muse, or loving quiet better than influence, he never accepted any office
+of magistracy.
+
+He was not, however, without some attention to his fortune, for he asked
+from the king (in 1665) the provostship of Eton College, and obtained it;
+but Clarendon refused to put the seal to the grant, alleging that it
+could be held only by a clergyman.  It is known that Sir Henry Wotton
+qualified himself for it by deacon’s orders.
+
+To this opposition, the Biographia imputes the violence and acrimony with
+which Waller joined Buckingham’s faction in the prosecution of Clarendon.
+The motive was illiberal and dishonest, and showed that more than sixty
+years had not been able to teach him morality.  His accusation is such as
+conscience can hardly be supposed to dictate without the help of malice.
+“We were to be governed by Janizaries instead of Parliaments, and are in
+danger from a worse plot than that of the fifth of November; then, if the
+Lords and Commons had been destroyed, there had been a succession; but
+here both had been destroyed for ever.”  This is the language of a man
+who is glad of an opportunity to rail, and ready to sacrifice truth to
+interest at one time, and to anger at another.
+
+A year after the chancellor’s banishment, another vacancy gave him
+encouragement for another petition, which the king referred to the
+Council, who, after hearing the question argued by lawyers for three
+days, determined that the office could be held only by a clergyman,
+according to the Act of Uniformity, since the provosts had always
+received institution as for a parsonage from the Bishops of Lincoln.  The
+king then said he could not break the law which he had made; and Dr.
+Zachary Cradock, famous for a single sermon, at most for two sermons, was
+chosen by the Fellows.
+
+That he asked anything else is not known; it is certain that he obtained
+nothing, though he continued obsequious to the court through the rest of
+Charles’s reign.
+
+At the accession of King James (in 1685) he was chosen for Parliament,
+being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the
+Downfall of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king on his
+birthday.  It is remarked, by his commentator Fenton, that in reading
+Tasso he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the Holy War,
+and a zealous enmity to the Turks, which never left him.  James, however,
+having soon after begun what he thought a holy war at home, made haste to
+put all molestation of the Turks out of his power.
+
+James treated him with kindness and familiarity, of which instances are
+given by the writer of his life.  One day, taking him into the closet,
+the king asked him how he liked one of the pictures: “My eyes,” said
+Waller, “are dim, and I do not know it.”  The king said it was the
+Princess of Orange.  “She is,” said Waller, “like the greatest woman in
+the world.”  The king asked who was that; and was answered, Queen
+Elizabeth.  “I wonder,” said the king, “you should think so; but I must
+confess she had a wise council.”  “And, Sir,” said Waller, “did you ever
+know a fool choose a wise one?”  Such is the story, which I once heard of
+some other man.  Pointed axioms, and acute replies, fly loose about the
+world, and are assigned successively to those whom it may be the fashion
+to celebrate.
+
+When the king knew that he was about to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch,
+a clergyman, he ordered a French gentleman to tell him that “the king
+wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a falling church.”
+“The king,” said Waller, “does me great honour in taking notice of my
+domestic affairs; but I have lived long enough to observe that this
+falling church has got a trick of rising again.”
+
+He took notice to his friends of the king’s conduct; and said that “he
+would be left like a whale upon the strand.”  Whether he was privy to any
+of the transactions that ended in the revolution is not known.  His heir
+joined the Prince of Orange.
+
+Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer
+life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have
+turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and therefore
+consecrated his poetry to devotion.  It is pleasing to discover that his
+piety was without weakness; that his intellectual powers continued
+vigorous; and that the lines which he composed when “he, for age, could
+neither read nor write,” are not inferior to the effusions of his youth.
+
+Towards the decline of life he bought a small house, with a little land,
+at Coleshill; and said “he should be glad to die, like the stag, where he
+was roused.”  This, however, did not happen.  When he was at
+Beaconsfield, he found his legs grow tumid: he went to Windsor, where Sir
+Charles Scarborough then attended the king, and requested him, as both a
+friend and physician, to tell him “what that swelling meant.”  “Sir,”
+answered Scarborough, “your blood will run no longer.”  Waller repeated
+some lines of Virgil, and went home to die.
+
+As the disease increased upon him, he composed himself for his departure;
+and calling upon Dr. Birch to give him the holy sacrament, he desired his
+children to take it with him, and made an earnest declaration of his
+faith in Christianity.  It now appeared what part of his conversation
+with the great could be remembered with delight.  He related, that being
+present when the Duke of Buckingham talked profanely before King Charles,
+he said to him, “My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace and
+have, I believe, heard more arguments for atheism than ever your grace
+did; but I have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them; and
+so, I hope, your grace will.”
+
+He died October 21, 1687, and was buried at Beaconsfield, with a monument
+erected by his son’s executors, for which Rymer wrote the inscription,
+and which I hope is now rescued from dilapidation.
+
+He left several children by his second wife, of whom his daughter was
+married to Dr. Birch.  Benjamin, the eldest son, was disinherited, and
+sent to New Jersey as wanting common understanding.  Edmund, the second
+son, inherited the estate, and represented Agmondesham in parliament, but
+at last turned quaker.  William, the third son, was a merchant in London.
+Stephen, the fourth, was an eminent doctor of laws, and one of the
+commissioners for the union.  There is said to have been a fifth, of whom
+no account has descended.
+
+The character of Waller, both moral and intellectual, has been drawn by
+Clarendon, to whom he was familiarly known, with nicety, which certainly
+none to whom he was not known can presume to emulate.  It is therefore
+inserted here, with such remarks as others have supplied; after which,
+nothing remains but a critical examination of his poetry.
+
+“Edmund Waller,” says Clarendon, “was born to a very fair estate, by the
+parsimony, or frugality, of a wise father and mother; and he thought it
+so commendable an advantage, that he resolved to improve it with his
+utmost care, upon which in his nature he was too much intent; and in
+order to that, he was so much reserved and retired, that he was scarcely
+ever heard of, till by his address and dexterity he had gotten a very
+rich wife in the city, against all the recommendation and countenance and
+authority of the court, which was thoroughly engaged on the behalf of Mr.
+Crofts, and which used to be successful, in that age, against any
+opposition.  He had the good fortune to have an alliance and friendship
+with Dr. Morley, who had assisted and instructed him in the reading many
+good books, to which his natural parts and promptitude inclined him,
+especially the poets; and at the age when other men used to give over
+writing verses (for he was near thirty years when he first engaged
+himself in that exercise, at least that he was known to do so), he
+surprised the town with two or three pieces of that kind; as if a tenth
+Muse had been newly born to cherish drooping poetry.  The doctor at that
+time brought him into that company which was most celebrated for good
+conversation, where he was received and esteemed with great applause and
+respect.  He was a very pleasant discourser in earnest and in jest, and
+therefore very grateful to all kind of company, where he was not the less
+esteemed for being very rich.
+
+“He had been even nursed in parliaments, where he sat when he was very
+young; and so, when they were resumed again (after a long intermission)
+he appeared in those assemblies with great advantage; having a graceful
+way of speaking, and by thinking much on several arguments (which his
+temper and complexion, that had much of melancholic, inclined him to), he
+seemed often to speak upon the sudden, when the occasion had only
+administered the opportunity of saying what he had thoroughly considered,
+which gave a great lustre to all he said; which yet was rather of delight
+than weight.  There needs no more be said to extol the excellence and
+power of his wit, and pleasantness of his conversation, than that it was
+of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults; that is, so to
+cover them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproach, viz., a
+narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness and want of
+courage to support him in any virtuous undertaking; an insinuation and
+servile flattery to the height, the vainest and most imperious nature
+could be contented with; that it preserved and won his life from those
+who most resolved to take it, and in an occasion in which he ought to
+have been ambitious to have lost it; and then preserved him again from
+the reproach and the contempt that was due to him for so preserving it,
+and for vindicating it at such a price that it had power to reconcile him
+to those whom he had most offended and provoked; and continued to his age
+with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable where his spirit
+was odious; and he was at least pitied where he was most detested.”
+
+Such is the account of Clarendon; on which it may not be improper to make
+some remarks.
+
+“He was very little known till he had obtained a rich wife in the city.”
+
+He obtained a rich wife about the age of three-and-twenty; an age, before
+which few men are conspicuous much to their advantage.  He was now,
+however, in parliament and at court; and, if he spent part of his time in
+privacy, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he endeavoured the
+improvement of his mind as well as his fortune.
+
+That Clarendon might misjudge the motive of his retirement is the more
+probable, because he has evidently mistaken the commencement of his
+poetry, which he supposes him not to have attempted before thirty.  As
+his first pieces were perhaps not printed, the succession of his
+compositions was not known; and Clarendon, who cannot be imagined to have
+been very studious of poetry, did not rectify his first opinion by
+consulting Waller’s book.
+
+Clarendon observes, that he was introduced to the wits of the age by Dr.
+Morley; but the writer of his life relates that he was already among
+them, when, hearing a noise in the street, and inquiring the cause, they
+found a son of Ben Jonson under an arrest.  This was Morley, whom Waller
+set free at the expense of one hundred pounds, took him into the country
+as director of his studies, and then procured him admission into the
+company of the friends of literature.  Of this fact Clarendon had a
+nearer knowledge than the biographer, and is therefore more to be
+credited.
+
+The account of Waller’s parliamentary eloquence is seconded by Burnet,
+who, though he calls him “the delight of the House,” adds, that “he was
+only concerned to say that which should make him be applauded, he never
+laid the business of the House to heart, being a vain and empty, though a
+witty man.”
+
+Of his insinuation and flattery it is not unreasonable to believe that
+the truth is told.  Ascham, in his elegant description of those whom in
+modern language we term wits, says, that they are “open flatterers, and
+private mockers.”  Waller showed a little of both, when, upon sight of
+the Duchess of Newcastle’s verses on the Death of a Stag, he declared
+that he would give all his own compositions to have written them, and
+being charged with the exorbitance of his adulation, answered, that
+“nothing was too much to be given, that a lady might be saved from the
+disgrace of such a vile performance.”  This, however, was no very
+mischievous or very unusual deviation from truth; had his hypocrisy been
+confined to such transactions, he might have been forgiven, though not
+praised: for who forbears to flatter an author or a lady?
+
+Of the laxity of his political principles, and the weakness of his
+resolution, he experienced the natural effect, by losing the esteem of
+every party.  From Cromwell he had only his recall; and from Charles the
+Second, who delighted in his company, he obtained only the pardon of his
+relation Hampden, and the safety of Hampden’s son.
+
+As far as conjecture can be made from the whole of his writing, and his
+conduct, he was habitually and deliberately a friend to monarchy.  His
+deviation towards democracy proceeded from his connexion with Hampden,
+for whose sake he prosecuted Crawley with great bitterness; and the
+invective which he pronounced on that occasion was so popular, that
+twenty thousand copies are said by his biographer to have been sold in
+one day.
+
+It is confessed that his faults still left him many friends, at least
+many companions.  His convivial power of pleasing is universally
+acknowledged; but those who conversed with him intimately, found him not
+only passionate, especially in his old age, but resentful; so that the
+interposition of friends was sometimes necessary.
+
+His wit and his poetry naturally connected him with the polite writers of
+his time: he was joined with Lord Buckhurst in the translation of
+Corneille’s Pompey; and is said to have added his help to that of Cowley
+in the original draft of the Rehearsal.
+
+The care of his fortune, which Clarendon imputes to him in a degree
+little less than criminal, was either not constant or not successful; for
+having inherited a patrimony of three thousand five hundred pounds a year
+in the time of James the First, and augmented at least by one wealthy
+marriage, he left, about the time of the Revolution, an income of not
+more than twelve or thirteen hundred; which, when the different value of
+money is reckoned, will be found perhaps not more than a fourth part of
+what he once possessed.
+
+Of this diminution, part was the consequence of the gifts which he was
+forced to scatter, and the fine which he was condemned to pay at the
+detection of his plot; and if his estate, as is related in his life, was
+sequestered, he had probably contracted debts when he lived in exile; for
+we are told, that at Paris he lived in splendour, and was the only
+Englishman, except the Lord St. Albans, that kept a table.
+
+His unlucky plot compelled him to sell a thousand a year; of the waste of
+the rest there is no account, except that he is confessed by his
+biographer to have been a bad economist.  He seems to have deviated from
+the common practice; to have been a hoarder in his first years, and a
+squanderer in his last.
+
+Of his course of studies, or choice of books, nothing is known more than
+that he professed himself unable to read Chapman’s translation of Homer
+without rapture.  His opinion concerning the duty of a poet is contained
+in his declaration, that “he would blot from his works any line that did
+not contain some motive to virtue.”
+
+The characters by which Waller intended to distinguish his writing are
+sprightliness and dignity; in his smallest pieces, he endeavours to be
+gay; in the larger to be great.  Of his airy and light productions, the
+chief source is gallantry, that attentive reverence of female excellence
+which has descended to us from the Gothic ages.  As his poems are
+commonly occasional, and his addresses personal, he was not so liberally
+supplied with grand as with soft images; for beauty is more easily found
+than magnanimity.
+
+The delicacy, which he cultivated, restrains him to a certain nicety and
+caution, even when he writes upon the slightest matter.  He has,
+therefore, in his whole volume, nothing burlesque, and seldom anything
+ludicrous or familiar.  He seems always to do his best; though his
+subjects are often unworthy of his care.
+
+It is not easy to think without some contempt on an author, who is
+growing illustrious in his own opinion by verses, at one time, “To a
+Lady, who can do anything but sleep, when she pleases;” at another, “To a
+Lady who can sleep when she pleases;” now, “To a Lady, on her passing
+through a crowd of people;” then, “On a braid of divers colours woven by
+four Ladies;” “On a tree cut in paper;” or, “To a Lady, from whom he
+received the copy of verses on the paper-tree, which, for many years, had
+been missing.”
+
+Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle.  We still read the Dove of
+Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus: and a writer naturally pleases himself
+with a performance, which owes nothing to the subject.  But compositions
+merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted in
+time for something useful; they are flowers fragrant and fair, but of
+short duration; or they are blossoms to be valued only as they foretell
+fruits.
+
+Among Waller’s little poems are some, which their excellency ought to
+secure from oblivion; as, To Amoret, comparing the different modes of
+regard with which he looks on her and Sacharissa; and the verses on Love,
+that begin, “Anger in hasty words or blows.”
+
+In others he is not equally successful; sometimes his thoughts are
+deficient, and sometimes his expression.
+
+The numbers are not always musical; as,
+
+    Fair Venus, in thy soft arms
+       The god of rage confine:
+    For thy whispers are the charms
+       Which only can divert his fierce design.
+    What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;
+       Thou the flame
+    Kindled in his breast canst tame
+    With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.
+
+He seldom indeed fetches an amorous sentiment from the depths of science;
+his thoughts are for the most part easily understood, and his images such
+as the superfices of nature readily supplies; he has a just claim to
+popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge; and is free
+at least from philosophical pedantry, unless perhaps the end of a song to
+the Sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a Copernican.  To which
+may be added the simile of the “palm” in the verses “on her passing
+through a crowd;” and a line in a more serious poem on the Restoration,
+about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by those who
+happen to know the composition of the Theriaca.
+
+His thoughts are sometimes hyperbolical and his images unnatural
+
+       The plants admire,
+    No less than those of old did Orpheus’ lyre;
+    If she sit down, with tops all tow’rds her bow’d,
+    They round about her into arbours crowd;
+    Or if she walks, in even ranks they stand,
+    Like some well-marshall’d and obsequious band.
+
+In another place:
+
+    While in the park I sing, the listening deer
+    Attend my passion, and forget to fear:
+    When to the beeches I report my flame,
+    They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.
+    To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers
+    With loud complaints they answer me in showers.
+    To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
+    More deaf than trees, and prouder than the Heaven!
+
+On the head of a stag:
+
+    O fertile head! which every year
+    Could such a crop of wonder bear!
+    The teeming earth did never bring,
+    So soon, so hard, so large a thing:
+    Which might it never have been cast,
+    Each year’s growth added to the last,
+    These lofty branches had supplied
+    The earth’s bold sons’ prodigious pride:
+    Heaven with these engines had been scaled,
+    When mountains heap’d on mountains fail’d.
+
+Sometimes having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble
+conclusion.  In the song of “Sacharissa’s and Amoret’s Friendship,” the
+two last stanzas ought to have been omitted.
+
+His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate.
+
+    Then shall my love this doubt displace
+       And gain such trust that I may come
+    And banquet sometimes on thy face,
+       But make my constant meals at home.
+
+Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as in
+the verses on the Lady Dancing:
+
+       The sun in figures such as these
+    Joys with the moon to play:
+       To the sweet strains they advance,
+    Which do result from their own spheres;
+       As this nymph’s dance
+    Moves with the numbers which she hears.
+
+Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a distich, is expanded and
+attenuated till it grows weak and almost evanescent.
+
+    Chloris! since first our calm of peace
+       Was frighted hence, this good we find,
+    Your favours with your fears increase,
+       And growing mischiefs make you kind.
+    So the fair tree, which still preserves
+       Her fruit, and state, while no wind blows,
+    In storms from that uprightness swerves;
+       And the glad earth about her strows
+       With treasure from her yielding boughs.
+
+His images are not always distinct; as in the following passage, he
+confounds _Love_ as a person with _Love_ as a passion:
+
+    Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
+    And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,
+    And a weak heart in time destroy;
+    She has a stamp, and prints the boy;
+    Can, with a single look, inflame
+    The coldest breast, the rudest tame.
+
+His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that
+in return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling, as that
+upon the Card torn by the Queen.  There are a few lines written in the
+Duchess’s Tasso, which he is said by Fenton to have kept a summer under
+correction.  It happened to Waller, as to others, that his success was
+not always in proportion to his labour.
+
+Of these pretty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults deserve
+much attention.  The amorous verses have this to recommend them, that
+they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets.  Waller is not
+always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a
+smile.  There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles.  Little
+things are made too important: and the Empire of Beauty is represented as
+exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of
+human passions, and the variety of human wants.  Such books, therefore,
+may be considered as showing the world under a false appearance, and, so
+far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading
+expectation, and misguiding practice.
+
+Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is
+panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by his
+imitator, Lord Lansdowne:
+
+    No satyr stalks within the hallow’d ground,
+    But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;
+    Glory and arms and love are all the sound.
+
+In the first poem, on the danger of the prince on the coast of Spain,
+there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the beginning; and
+the last paragraph, on the cable, is in part ridiculously mean, and in
+part ridiculously tumid.  The poem, however, is such as may be justly
+praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language
+at that time.
+
+The two next poems are upon the king’s behaviour at the death of
+Buckingham, and upon his Navy.
+
+He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:
+
+    ’Twas want of such a precedent as this
+    Made the old heathens frame their gods amiss.
+
+In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble which suppose the
+king’s power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were
+almost criminal to remark the mistake of “centre” for “surface,” or to
+say that the empire of the sea would be worth little if it were not that
+the waters terminate in land.
+
+The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is
+feeble.  That on the Repairs of St. Paul’s has something vulgar and
+obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and harsh:
+as,
+
+    So all our minds with his conspire to grace
+    The Gentiles’ great apostle and deface
+    Those state obscuring sheds, that like a chain
+    Seem’d to confine, and fetter him again:
+    Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,
+    As once the viper from his sacred hand.
+    So joys the aged oak, when we divide
+    The creeping ivy from his injured side.
+
+Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean.
+
+His praise of the Queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that he
+“saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping the
+limb,” presents nothing to the mind but disgust and horror.
+
+Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether it
+is intended to raise terror or merriment.  The beginning is too splendid
+for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness.  The
+versification is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and the
+images artfully amplified; but as it ends neither in joy nor sorrow, it
+will scarcely be read a second time.
+
+The panegyric upon Cromwell has obtained from the public a very liberal
+dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have been unjustly
+lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the
+English language.  Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and
+all are musical.  There is now and then a feeble verse; or a trifling
+thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.
+
+The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and
+striking than Waller is accustomed to produce.  The succeeding parts are
+variegated with better passages and worse.  There is something too
+farfetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on by
+saluting St. Lucar with cannon, “to lambs awakening the lion by
+bleating.”  The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, who were burnt in their
+ship, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the
+Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expressed their affection
+and their end by a conceit at once false and vulgar:
+
+    Alive, in equal flames of love they burn’d,
+    And now together are to ashes turn’d.
+
+The verses to Charles, on his return, were doubtless intended to
+counterbalance the panegyric on Cromwell.  If it has been thought
+inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its
+deficience has been already remarked.
+
+The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly.  They must be
+supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the rest.  The
+Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they were the work of
+Waller’s declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the fame
+and the folly of the time past with the sentiments which his great
+predecessor Petrarch bequeathed to posterity, upon his review of that
+love and poetry which have given him immortality.
+
+That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much
+excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the
+mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced to
+confess superior, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves.  By
+delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead;
+and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the
+exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places at his
+fifty-fifth year.  This is to allot the mind but a small portion.
+Intellectual decay is doubtless not uncommon; but it seems not to be
+universal.  Newton was in his eighty-fifth year improving his chronology,
+a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my opinion, to
+have lost at eighty-two any part of his poetical power.
+
+His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but before
+the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects, his success
+would hardly have been better.
+
+It has been the frequent lamentation of good men that verse has been too
+little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been
+made to animate devotion by pious poetry.  That they have very seldom
+attained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper to
+inquire why they have miscarried.
+
+Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many
+authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please.  The doctrines
+of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he, who has
+the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject
+is sacred.  A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature,
+the flowers of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes
+of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the Maker for his
+works, in lines which no reader shall lay aside.  The subject of the
+disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the
+description is not God, but the works of God.
+
+Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul,
+cannot be poetical.  Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator,
+and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than
+poetry can confer.
+
+The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as by producing
+something unexpected, surprises and delights.  The topics of devotion are
+few, and being few are universally known; but, few as they are, they can
+be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and
+very little from novelty of expression.
+
+Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than
+things themselves afford.  This effect proceeds from the display of those
+parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel,
+the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and
+addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.
+
+From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always
+obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy:
+but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion.
+Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of
+the Supreme Being.  Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be
+amplified; Perfection cannot be improved.
+
+The employments of pious meditation are Faith, Thanksgiving, Repentance,
+and Supplication.  Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy
+with decorations.  Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions,
+yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined to a few modes,
+and is to be felt rather then expressed.  Repentance, trembling in the
+presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets.
+Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through many topics of
+persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy.
+
+Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple
+expression is the most sublime.  Poetry loses its lustre and its power,
+because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than
+itself.  All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight
+the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies
+nothing to the mind.  The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
+the sidereal hemisphere.
+
+As much of Waller’s reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness
+of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to
+which a versifier must attend.
+
+He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who
+were living when his poetry commenced.  The poets of Elizabeth had
+attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or
+forgotten.  Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might
+have studied with advantage the poem of Davies, which, though merely
+philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.
+
+But he was rather smooth than strong; of “the full resounding line,”
+which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples.  The
+critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of
+sweetness to Waller.
+
+His excellence of versification has some abatements.  He uses the
+expletive “do” very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost
+universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last
+compositions than in his first.  Praise had given him confidence; and
+finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.
+
+His rhymes are sometimes weak words: “so” is found to make the rhyme
+twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.
+
+His double rhymes, in heroic verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips,
+who was his rival in the translation of Corneille’s “Pompey;” and more
+faults might be found were not the inquiry below attention.
+
+He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as “waxeth,”
+“affecteth;” and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite,
+as “amazed,” “supposed,” of which I know not whether it is not to the
+detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.
+
+Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an
+Alexandrine he has given no example.
+
+The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety.  He is never
+pathetic, and very rarely sublime.  He seems neither to have had a mind
+much elevated by nature nor amplified by learning.  His thoughts are such
+as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily
+supply.  They had however then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which they
+are now often supposed to want by those who, having already found them in
+later books, do not know or inquire who produced them first.  This
+treatment is unjust.  Let not the original author lose by his imitators.
+
+Praise, however, should be due before it is given.  The author of
+Waller’s Life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythræus and
+some late critics call “Alliteration,” of using in the same verse many
+words beginning with the same letter.  But this knack, whatever be its
+value, was so frequent among early writers, that Gascoigne, a writer of
+the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it;
+Shakespeare, in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is supposed to ridicule
+it; and in another play the sonnet of Holofernes fully displays it.
+
+He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old
+mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets;
+the deities, which they introduced so frequently, were considered as
+realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober
+reason might even then determine.  But of these images time has tarnished
+the splendour.  A fiction, not only detected but despised, can never
+afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it may furnish a
+transient allusion, or slight illustration.  No modern monarch can be
+much exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had his “club” he has his
+“navy.”
+
+But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will
+remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance
+of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and to him may be
+applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and justice, of himself and
+Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor Fido, he cried out, “If he had
+not read Aminta, he had not excelled it.”
+
+As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification from
+Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of his work,
+which, after Mr. Hoole’s translation, will perhaps not be soon reprinted.
+By knowing the state in which Waller found our poetry, the reader may
+judge how much he improved it.
+
+                                      1.
+
+       Erminia’s steed (this while) his mistresse bore
+    Through forrests thicke among the shadie treene,
+    Her feeble hand the bridle raines forelore,
+    Halfe in a swoune she was for fear I weene;
+    But her flit courser spared nere the more,
+    To beare her through the desart woods unseene
+       Of her strong foes, that chas’d her through the plaine
+       And still pursu’d, but still pursu’d in vaine.
+
+                                      2.
+
+    Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,
+    Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,
+    When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,
+    No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:
+    The Christian knights so full of shame and ire
+    Returned backe, with faint and wearie pace!
+    Yet still the fearfull Dame fled, swift as winde
+    Nor euer staid, nor euer lookt behinde.
+
+                                      3.
+
+    Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she driued,
+    Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,
+    Her plaints and teares with euery thought reuiued,
+    She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.
+    But when the sunne his burning chariot diued
+    In Thetis wane, and wearie teame vntide,
+       On Iordans sandie banks her course she staid,
+       At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid
+
+                                      4.
+
+    Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,
+    This was her diet that vnhappie night;
+    But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)
+    To ease the greefes of discontented wight,
+    Spred forth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,
+    In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;
+       And loue, his mother, and the graces kept
+       Strong watch and warde, while this faire Ladie slept
+
+                                      5.
+
+    The birds awakte her with their morning song,
+    Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,
+    The murmuring brookes and whistling windes among
+    The rattling boughes, and leaues, their parts did beare;
+    Her eies vnclos’d beheld the groues along
+    Of swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare;
+       And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,
+       Prouokt again the virgin to lament.
+
+                                      6.
+
+    Her plaints were interrupted with a sound,
+    That seem’d from thickest bushes to proceed,
+    Some iolly shepherd sung a lustie round,
+    And to his voice had tun’d his oaten reed;
+    Thither she went, an old man there she found,
+    (At whose right hand his little flock did feed)
+       Sat making baskets, his three sonnes among
+       That learn’d their father’s art, and learn’d his song.
+
+                                      7.
+
+    Beholding one in shining armes appeare
+    The seelie man and his were sore dismaid;
+    But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,
+    Her ventall vp, her visage open laid
+    You happie folke, of heau’n beloued deare,
+    Work on (quoth she) upon your harmless traid,
+       These dreadfull armes I beare no warfare bring
+       To your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes yon sing.
+
+                                      8.
+
+    But father, since this land, these townes and towres,
+    Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,
+    How may it be unhurt, that you and yours
+    In safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?
+    My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of ours
+    Is euer safe from storm of warlike broile;
+       This wilderneese doth vs in safetie keepe,
+       No thundering drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.
+
+                                      9.
+
+    Haply iust heau’ns defence and shield of right,
+    Doth loue the innocence of simple swains,
+    The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,
+    And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines;
+    So kings have cause to feare _Bellonaes_ might,
+    Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,
+       Nor ever greedie soldier was entised
+       By pouertie, neglected and despised.
+
+                                     10.
+
+    O Pouertie, chefe of the heau’nly brood,
+    Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!
+    No wish for honour, thirst of others good,
+    Can moue my hart, contented with mine owne:
+    We quench our thirst with water of this flood,
+    Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne;
+       These little flocks of sheepe and tender goates
+       Giue milke for food, and wool to make us coates.
+
+                                     11.
+
+    We little wish, we need but little wealth,
+    From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;
+    These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealth
+    Their fathers flocks, nor servants moe I need:
+    Amid these groues I walks oft for my health,
+    And to the fishes, birds, and beastes give heed,
+       How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,
+       And their contentment for ensample take.
+
+                                     12.
+
+    Time was (for each one hath his doting time,
+    These siluer locks were golden tresses than)
+    That countrie life I hated as a crime,
+    And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,
+    To Memphis’ stately pallace would I clime,
+    And there became the mightie Caliphes man
+       And though I but a simple gardner weare,
+       Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.
+
+                                     13.
+
+    Entised on with hope of future gaine,
+    I suffred long what did my soule displease;
+    But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,
+    I felt my native strength at last decrease;
+    I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,
+    And wisht I had enjoy’d the countries peace;
+       I bod the court farewell, and with content
+       My later age here have I quiet spent.
+
+                                     14.
+
+    While thus he spake, Erminia husht and still
+    His wise discourses heard, with great attention,
+    His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,
+    Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;
+    After much thought reformed was her will,
+    Within those woods to dwell was her intention,
+       Till fortune should occasion new afford,
+       To turne her home to her desired Lord.
+
+                                     15.
+
+    She said therefore, O shepherd fortunate!
+    That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue.
+    Yet liuest now in this contented state,
+    Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,
+    To entertaine me as a willing mate
+    In shepherds life, which I admire and loue;
+       Within these plessant groues perchance my hart,
+       Of her discomforts, may vnload some part.
+
+                                     16.
+
+    If gold or wealth of most esteemed deare,
+    If iewels rich, thou diddest hold in prise,
+    Such store thereof, such plentie haue I seen,
+    As to a greedie minde might well suffice:
+    With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,
+    Two christall streames fell from her watrie eies;
+       Part of her sad misfortunes then she told,
+       And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.
+
+                                     17.
+
+    With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deare
+    Towards his cottage gently home to guide;
+    His aged wife there made her homely cheare,
+    Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.
+    The Princesse dond a poor pastoraes geare,
+    A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;
+       But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)
+       Were such, as ill beseem’d a shepherdesse.
+
+                                     18.
+
+    Not those rude garments could obscure, and hide
+    The heau’nly beautie of her angels face,
+    Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,
+    Or ought disparag’de, by those labours bace;
+    Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,
+    And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,
+       Both cheese and butter could she make, and frame
+       Her selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.
+
+
+
+
+MILTON.
+
+
+THE life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with
+such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented
+myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton’s elegant
+abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the
+uniformity of this edition.
+
+John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of
+Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in
+the times of York and Lancaster.  Which side he took I know not; his
+descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose.
+
+His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous
+Papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion of
+his ancestors.
+
+His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his
+support to the profession of a scrivener.  He was a man eminent for his
+skill in music, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his
+reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and retired to
+an estate.  He had probably more than common literature, as his son
+addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems.  He married a
+gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two
+sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law and adhered,
+as the law taught him, to the king’s party, for which he was a while
+persecuted; but having by his brother’s interest obtained permission to
+live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by chamber-practice,
+that, soon after the accession of King James, he was knighted and made a
+judge; but, his constitution being too weak for business, he retired
+before any disreputable compliances became necessary.
+
+He had likewise a daughter Anne, whom he married with a considerable
+fortune to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the
+Crown-office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward,
+who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only
+authentic account of his domestic manners.
+
+John the poet, was born in his father’s house, at the Spread Eagle, in
+Bread Street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning.  His
+father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he
+was instructed at first by private tuition under the care of Thomas
+Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh,
+and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered
+him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.
+
+He was then sent to St. Paul’s school, under the care of Mr. Gill; and
+removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ’s College, in
+Cambridge, where he entered a sizar, Feb. 12, 1624.
+
+He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he
+himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of
+which the learned Politian has given him an example, seems to commend the
+earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity.
+
+But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and
+particularly by his contemporary Cowley.  Of the powers of the mind it is
+difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first
+essays, who never rose to works like “Paradise Lost.”
+
+At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or
+versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the public
+eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would in any numerous
+school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.
+
+Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year,
+by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very
+nice discernment.  I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius,
+remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who,
+after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance.
+If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the
+pride of Elizabeth’s reign, however they may have succeeded in prose, no
+sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision.  If we produced anything
+worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster’s
+“Roxana.”
+
+Of these exercises, which the rules of the University required, some were
+published by him in his maturer years.  They had been undoubtedly
+applauded; for they were such as few can form: yet there is reason to
+suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness.  That
+he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he
+was treated was not merely negative.  I am ashamed to relate what I fear
+is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either University
+that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction.
+
+It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him, that
+he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true;
+but it seems plain, from his own verses to “Diodati”, that he had
+incurred “rustication,” a temporary dismission into the country, with
+perhaps the loss of a term.
+
+    Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ,
+       Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.
+    Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum
+       Nec dudum _vetiti_ me _laris_ angit amor.—
+    Nec duri libet usque minas preferre magistri,
+       Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
+    Si sit hoc exilium patrias adiisse penates,
+       Et vacuum curis otia greta sequi,
+    Non ego vel _profugi_ nomen sortemve recuso,
+       Lætus et _exilii_ conditione fruor.
+
+I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can
+give to the term, “vetiti laris,” “a habitation from which he is
+excluded;” or how “exile” can be otherwise interpreted.  He declares yet
+more, that he is weary of enduring “the threats of a rigorous master, and
+something else which a temper like his cannot undergo.”  What was more
+than threat was probably punishment.  This poem, which mentions his
+“exile,” proves likewise that it was not perpetual; for it concludes with
+a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge.  And it may be
+conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the
+memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.
+
+He took both the usual degrees: that of bachelor in 1628, and that of
+master in 1632; but he left the University with no kindness for its
+institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his
+governors, or his own captious perverseness.  The cause cannot now be
+known, but the effect appears in his writings.  His scheme of education,
+inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being
+intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in
+literature, from their entrance upon grammar, till they proceed, as it is
+called Masters of Art.  And in his discourse “on the likeliest Way to
+remove Hirelings out of the Church,” he ingeniously proposes that the
+profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses should
+be applied to such academies all over the land where languages and arts
+may be taught together that youth may be at once brought up to a
+competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such of them
+as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves (without tithes) by
+the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers.
+
+One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted,
+is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act
+plays, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and
+dishonest gestures of Trincalos, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the
+shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes
+of courtiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles.
+
+This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile
+from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which
+the pleasures of the theatre afford him.  Plays were therefore only
+criminal when they were acted by academics.
+
+He went to the university with a design of entering into the church, but
+in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a
+clergyman, must “subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless
+he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure
+himself.  He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the
+office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”
+
+These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the
+Articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical
+obedience.  I know not any of the Articles which seem to thwart his
+opinions: but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil,
+raise his indignation.
+
+His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to
+a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his
+friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems
+to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastic luxury of
+various knowledge.  To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in
+which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from the
+delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more
+fitness for his task; and that he goes on, “not taking thought of being
+late, so it gives advantage to be more fit.”
+
+When he left the University, he returned to his father, then residing at
+Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years, in which time
+he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers.  With what
+limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?
+
+It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing
+else; but Milton found time to write the “Masque of Comus,” which was
+presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales,
+in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater’s
+sons and daughter.  The fiction is derived from Homer’s “Circe;” but we
+never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:
+
+       —a quo ceu fonte perenni
+    Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.
+
+His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the death
+of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, Secretary for Ireland in the time
+of Elizabeth, James, and Charles.  King was much a favourite at
+Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory.
+Milton’s acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a
+mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan
+poetry, and his malignity to the church by some lines which are
+interpreted as threatening its extermination.
+
+He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for while he
+lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days,
+which he spent at Harefield, the house of the Countess Dowager of Derby,
+where the Arcades made part of a dramatic entertainment.
+
+He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking
+chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother set him at
+liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father’s consent, and Sir
+Henry Wotton’s directions; with the celebrated precept of prudence, _i
+pensieri stretti_, _ed il viso sciolto_; “thoughts close, and looks
+loose.”
+
+In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour of
+Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then residing
+at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden.  From Paris
+he hasted into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence studied
+the language and literature; and, though he seems to have intended a very
+quick perambulation of the country, stayed two months at Florence; where
+he found his way into the academies, and produced his compositions with
+such applause as appears to have exalted him in his own opinion, and
+confirmed him in the hope, that, “by labour and intense study, which,”
+says he, “I take to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong
+propensity of nature,” he might “leave something so written to
+after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.”
+
+It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant of
+great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not
+without some contempt of others, for scarcely any man ever wrote so much,
+and praised so few.  Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its
+value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against
+the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.
+
+At Florence he could not indeed complain that his merit wanted
+distinction.  Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastic inscription,
+in the tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the
+first stanza is only empty noise; the rest are perhaps too diffuse on
+common topics: but the last is natural and beautiful.
+
+From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was
+again received with kindness by the learned and the great.  Holstenius,
+the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three years at Oxford,
+introduced him to Cardinal Barberini: and he, at a musical entertainment,
+waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly.
+Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a tetrastich:
+neither of them of much value.  The Italians were gainers by this
+literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli,
+though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance
+indisputably in Milton’s favour.
+
+Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to
+publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected but
+to have known that they were said _non tam de se_, _quam supra se_.
+
+At Rome, as at Florence, he stayed only two months: a time indeed
+sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its
+antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too
+short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.
+
+From Rome he passed on to Naples, in company of a hermit, a companion
+from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his
+introduction to Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron
+of Tasso.  Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour
+him with a sorry distich, in which he commends him for everything but his
+religion: and Milton, in return, addressed him in a Latin poem, which
+must have raised a high opinion of English elegance and literature.
+
+His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but hearing of the
+differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper to
+hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements while his
+countrymen were contending for their rights.  He therefore came back to
+Rome, though the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the
+Jesuits, for the liberty of his conversations on religion.  He had sense
+enough to judge that there was no danger, and therefore kept on his way,
+and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning controversy.  He had
+perhaps given some offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in the
+Inquisition for philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by Manse,
+that, by his declarations on religious questions, he had excluded himself
+from some distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him.  But such
+conduct, though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe; and Milton
+stayed two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence without
+molestation.
+
+From Florence he visited Lucca.  He afterwards went to Venice; and,
+having sent away a collection of music and other books, travelled to
+Geneva, which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.
+
+Here he reposed as in a congenial element, and became acquainted with
+John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity.
+From Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence of
+a year and three months.
+
+At his return he heard of the death of his friend, Charles Diodati; a man
+whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was thought by
+Milton worthy of a poem, entitled “Epitaphium Damonis,” written with the
+common but childish imitation of pastoral life.
+
+He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel a tailor in St. Bride’s
+Churchyard, and undertook the education of John and Edward Philips, his
+sister’s sons.  Finding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden
+in Aldersgate Street, which was not then so much out of the world as it
+is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a passage, that he
+might avoid the noise of the street.  Here he received more boys, to be
+boarded and instructed.
+
+Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of
+merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens
+home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when
+he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private
+boarding-school.  This is the period of his life from which all his
+biographers seem inclined to shrink.  They are unwilling that Milton
+should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but since it cannot be denied that
+he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another
+that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue;
+and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act
+which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful.  His father was
+alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by
+an honest and useful employment.
+
+It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a
+formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read
+in Aldersgate Street by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of
+age.  Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, that
+nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.  The speed of the horseman
+must be limited by the power of his horse.  Every man that has ever
+undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been
+able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant
+inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd
+misapprehension.
+
+The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid
+than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that
+treat of physical subjects, such as the Georgic, and astronomical
+treatises of the ancients.  This was a scheme of improvement which seems
+to have busied many literary projectors of that age.  Cowley, who had
+more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments
+of life, formed the same plan of education in his imaginary college.
+
+But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences
+which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the
+frequent business of the human mind.  Whether we provide for action or
+conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first
+requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the
+next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those
+examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the
+reasonableness of opinions.  Prudence and justice are virtues and
+excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists,
+but we are geometricians only by chance.  Our intercourse with
+intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are
+voluntary, and at leisure.  Physiological learning is of such rare
+emergence, that one may know another half his life without being able to
+estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and
+prudential character immediately appears.
+
+Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most
+axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials
+for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators,
+and historians.
+
+Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical;
+for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side.  It was his
+labour to turn philosophy from the study of Nature to speculations upon
+life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from
+life to nature.  They seem to think that we are placed here to watch the
+growth of plants, or the motions of the stars.  Socrates was rather of
+opinion that what we had to learn was how to do good and avoid evil.
+
+    Οτι ποι ὲν μεγάροισι κακόντ’ άγαθόντε τέτυκται
+
+Of institutions we may judge by their effects.  From this wonder-working
+academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for
+knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History of
+Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps none of
+my readers has ever heard.
+
+That in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he laboured
+with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting.  One part of his
+method deserves general imitation.  He was careful to instruct his
+scholars in religion.  Every Sunday was spent upon theology, of which he
+dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that were then
+fashionable in the Dutch universities.
+
+He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now and
+then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with
+some gay gentlemen of Gray’s Inn.
+
+He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent his
+breath to blow the flames of contention.  In 1641 he published a treatise
+of Reformation in two books, against the Established Church, being
+willing to help the Puritans, who were, he says, “inferior to the
+Prelates in learning.”
+
+Hall, Bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in defence
+of Episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers, of whose names the
+first letters made the celebrated word _Smectymnuus_, gave their answer.
+Of this answer a confutation was attempted by the learned Usher; and to
+the confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, “Of Prelatical
+Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by
+virtue of those Testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some
+late Treatises, one whereof goes under the Name of James, Lord Bishop of
+Armagh.”
+
+I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of
+Usher, that he had now adopted the Puritanical savageness of manners.
+His next work was, “The Reason of Church Government urged against
+Prelacy,” by Mr. John Milton, 1642.  In this book he discovers, not with
+ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of
+his own powers, and promises to undertake something, he yet knows not
+what, that may be of use and honour to his country.  “This,” says he, “is
+not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can
+enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His seraphim, with
+the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He
+pleases.  To this must be added, industrious and select reading, steady
+observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs
+till which in some measure be compassed, I refuse not to sustain this
+expectation.”  From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and
+rational, might be expected the “Paradise Lost.”
+
+He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question.
+To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was “vomited out of the
+university,” he answers in general terms: “The fellows of the college
+wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees,
+as the manner is, signified many times how much better it would content
+them that I should stay.—As for the common approbation or dislike of that
+place, as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself the more
+for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to obtain with me.  Of
+small practice were the physician who could not judge by what she and her
+sister have of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly
+keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is
+queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but before it will be well with
+her, she must vomit with strong physic.  The university, in the time of
+her better health, and my younger judgment, I never greatly admired, but
+now much less.”
+
+This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured.
+He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and the train of his
+thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives an
+account of his own purity: “That if I be justly charged,” says he, “with
+this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold shame.”
+
+The style of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his
+antagonist.  This roughness he justifies by great examples, in a long
+digression.  Sometimes he tries to be humorous: “Lest I should take him
+for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one
+who serves not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will
+bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half-a-dozen
+phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of
+convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped
+narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of
+thumb-ring posies.—And thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of
+himself.”  Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy
+seriousness is yet more offensive.  Such is his malignity, “that hell
+grows darker at his frown.”
+
+His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his
+house, and his school increased.  At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth
+year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace
+in Oxfordshire.  He brought her to town with him, and expected all the
+advantages of a conjugal life.  The lady, however, seems not much to have
+delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Philips
+relates, “having for a month led a philosophic life, after having been
+used at home to a great house, and much company and joviality, her
+friends, possibly by her own desire, made earnest suit to have her
+company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, upon a
+promise of her return at Michaelmas.”
+
+Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies, and
+now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in
+one of his sonnets.  At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no
+inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband’s habitation,
+and therefore very willingly forgot her promise.  He sent her a letter,
+but had no answer; he sent more with the same success.  It could be
+alleged that letters miscarry; he therefore despatched a messenger, being
+by this time too angry to go himself.  His messenger was sent back with
+some contempt.  The family of the lady were Cavaliers.
+
+In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton’s, less
+provocation than this might have raised violent resentment.  Milton soon
+determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those who
+could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published (in 1644)
+“The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,” which was followed by the
+“Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,” and the next year his
+“Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the four chief Places of Scripture which
+treat of Marriage.”
+
+This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who,
+then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the
+author should be called before the Lords; “but that house,” says Wood,
+“whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his accusers, did soon
+dismiss him.”
+
+There seems not to have been much written against him, nor anything by
+any writer of eminence.  The antagonist that appeared is styled by him,
+“A Serving Man turned Solicitor.”  Howel, in his Letters, mentions the
+new doctrine with contempt; and it was, I suppose, thought more worthy of
+derision than of confutation.  He complains of this neglect in two
+sonnets, of which the first is contemptible, and the second not
+excellent.
+
+From this time it is observed that he became an enemy to the
+Presbyterians, whom he had favoured before.  He that changes his party by
+his humour is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest;
+he loves himself rather than truth.
+
+His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting
+sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his
+doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments,
+the daughter of one Doctor Davis, who was, however, not ready to comply,
+they resolved to endeavour a reunion.  He went sometimes to the house of
+one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and
+at one of his usual visits was surprised to see his wife come from
+another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees.  He resisted her
+entreaties for a while; “but partly,” says Philips, “his own generous
+nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger
+or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides,
+soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a fair league of peace.”  It
+were injurious to omit that Milton afterwards received her father and her
+brothers in his own house, when they were distressed, with other
+Royalists.
+
+He published about the same time his “Areopagitica, a speech of Mr. John
+Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing.”  The danger of such
+unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem
+in the science of government, which human understanding seems hitherto
+unable to solve.  If nothing may be published but what civil authority
+shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of
+truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his prospects, there
+can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse
+discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptic in theology may
+teach his follies, there can be no religion.  The remedy against these
+evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every society
+may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions which that
+society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush
+the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave
+the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards
+censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our
+laws we can hang a thief.
+
+But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic poetry was never
+long out of his thoughts.
+
+About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems
+appeared, in which the “Allegro,” and “Penseroso,” with some others, were
+first published.
+
+He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars;
+but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted
+refuge for a while, occupied his rooms.  In time, however, they went
+away; “and the house again,” says Philips, “now looked like a house of
+the Muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great.  Possibly
+his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the
+occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster;
+whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school, to teach
+all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing to impart his
+learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who
+were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings nor his way of
+teaching savoured in the least of pedantry.”
+
+Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and
+what might be confessed without disgrace.  Milton was not a man who could
+become mean by a mean employment.  This, however, his warmest friends
+seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate.  He did not
+sell literature to all comers at an open shop; he was a chamber-milliner,
+and measured his commodities only to his friends.
+
+Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation,
+tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character
+again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: “He is much
+mistaken,” he says, “if there was not about this time a design of making
+him an adjutant-general in Sir William Waller’s army.  But the
+new-modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design.”  An event
+cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only
+“designed, about some time,” if a man “be not much mistaken.”  Milton
+shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken,
+somebody at some time designed him for a soldier.
+
+About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645), he removed to a
+smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln’s Inn
+Fields.  He is not known to have published anything afterwards till the
+king’s death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the Presbyterians,
+he wrote a treatise to justify it, “and to compose the minds of the
+people.”
+
+He made some remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the
+Irish rebels.  While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did only
+what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch the
+influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions,
+first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; if objections, by
+being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced conviction, he
+yet shared—only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no less
+sincere than his opponents.  But, as faction seldom leaves a man honest,
+however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having interpolated the
+book called “Icon Basilike,” which the council of state, to whom he was
+now made Latin Secretary, employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer
+taken from Sidney’s “Arcadia,” and imputing it to the king, whom he
+charges, in his “Iconoclastes,” with the use of this prayer, as with a
+heavy come, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened
+the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is venerable or great:
+“Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing
+deity—as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the
+grave bishop that attended him, as a special relic of his saintly
+exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen
+woman praying to a heathen god?”
+
+The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold the regicides
+took away; so that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; and
+Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined to
+think them the forgers.  The use of it by adaptation was innocent, and
+they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of their
+malice could contrive what they wanted to accuse.
+
+King Charles the Second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed
+Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of
+his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was
+reported, a hundred Jacobuses.  Salmasius was a man of skill in
+languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism,
+almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive
+praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he
+probably had not much considered the principles of society or the right
+of government, undertook the employment without distrust of his own
+qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1649
+published “Defensio Regis.”
+
+To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he
+performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable to
+decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst.  In my
+opinion, Milton’s periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he
+delights himself with teasing his adversary as much as with confuting
+him.  He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he
+considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmasius, which,
+whoever entered, left half his virility behind him.  Salmasius was a
+Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a scold.  _Tu es Gallus_, says
+Milton, _et_, _ut aiunt_, _nimium gallinaceus_.  But his supreme pleasure
+is to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, with vicious Latin.
+He opens his book with telling that he has used _Persona_, which,
+according to Milton, signifies only a _Mask_, in a sense not known to the
+Romans, by applying it as we apply _Person_.  But as Nemesis is always on
+the watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism
+by an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when for one of those
+supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and I think some one before him, has
+remarked, “_propino te grammatistis tuis vapulandum_.”  From _vapulo_,
+which has a passive sense, _vapulandus_ can never be derived.  No man
+forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink
+into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.
+
+Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of sight;
+but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was supplied by
+zeal.  He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book was much
+read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily gains
+attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his king,
+could hardly want an audience.
+
+That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity,
+or read with equal eagerness, is very credible.  He taught only the stale
+doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had
+been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant of literature, that
+almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a
+new name, not yet considered as any one’s rival.  If Christina, as is
+said, commended the defence of the people, her purpose must be to torment
+Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her civil station, nor her
+natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by
+birth a queen, and by temper despotic.
+
+That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton’s book, treated with
+neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man, so long accustomed to
+admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently
+offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which however he
+was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of
+attendants scarce less than regal.
+
+He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published by
+his son in the year of the Restoration.  In the beginning, being probably
+most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his use of the
+word _persona_; but, if I remember right, he misses a better authority
+than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his fourth satire:
+
+    —Quid agis cum dira et fœdior omni
+    Crimine _persona_ est?
+
+As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel,
+Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened
+Salmasius’s life, and both perhaps with more malignity than reason.
+Salmasius died at the Spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and, as controvertists are
+commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered
+with the credit of destroying him.
+
+Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he
+had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title of
+Protector, but with kingly and more than kingly power.  That his
+authority was lawful, never was pretended; he himself founded his right
+only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of public
+employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy, but, continuing to
+exercise his office under a manifest usurpation, betrayed to his power
+that liberty which he had defended.  Nothing can be more just than that
+rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had justified the murder of
+his king, for some acts which seemed to him unlawful, should now sell his
+services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was evident that he
+could do nothing lawful.
+
+He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect was
+such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin
+secretary, or continue his controversies.  His mind was too eager to be
+diverted, and too strong to be subdued.
+
+About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three
+daughters.  As he probably did not much love her, he did not long
+continue the appearance of lamenting her; but after a short time married
+Catharine, the daughter of one Captain Woodcock, of Hackney, a woman
+doubtless educated in opinions like his own.  She died, within a year, of
+childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband honoured
+her memory with a poor sonnet.
+
+The first reply to Milton’s “Defensio Populi” was published in 1651,
+called “Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis
+Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni) defensionem destructivam Regis et Populi.”
+Of this the author was not known; but Milton and his nephew Philips,
+under whose name he published an answer so much corrected by him, that it
+might be called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, knowing him no
+friend to regicides, thought themselves at liberty to treat him as if
+they had known what they only suspected.
+
+Next year appeared “Regii Sanguinis clamor ad Cœlum.”  Of this the author
+was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but
+Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication,
+was treated as the writer by Milton, in his “Defensio Secunda,” and
+overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under
+the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true
+author.  Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton’s pride operated
+against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing that
+Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of mistake.
+
+In this second Defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely
+satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness of
+his flattery, _Deserimur_, _Cromuelle tu solus superes_, _ad te summa
+nostrarum rerum_, _rediit_, _in te solo consistit_, _insuperabili tuæ
+virtuti cedimus cuncti_, _nemine vel obloquente_, _nisi qui æquales
+inæqualis ipse honores sibi quærit_, _aut digniori concessos invidet_,
+_aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo
+gratum_, _vel rationi consentaneum_, _esse in civitate nihil æquius_,
+_nihil utilius_, _quam potiri rerum dignissimum_.   _Eum te agnoscunt
+omnes_, _Cromuelle_, _ea tu civis maximus_, _et gloriosissimus_, _dux
+publici consilii_, _exercituum fortissimorum imperator_, _pater patriæ
+gessisti_.  _Sic tu spontanea bonorum omnium et animitus missa voce
+salutaris_.
+
+Cæsar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile
+or more elegant flattery.  A translation may show its servility; but its
+elegance is less attainable.  Having exposed the unskilfulness or
+selfishness of the former government, “We were left,” says Milton, “to
+ourselves: the whole national interest fell into our hands, and subsists
+only in your abilities.  To your virtue, overpowering and resistless,
+every man gives way, except some who, without equal qualifications,
+aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of merit greater than
+their own, or who have yet to learn, that in the coalition of human
+society nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason,
+than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power.  Such, sir,
+are you by general confession; such are the things achieved by you, the
+greatest and most glorious of our countrymen, the director of our public
+councils, the leader of unconquered armies, the father of your country;
+for by that title doss every good man hail you with sincere and voluntary
+praise.”
+
+Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to
+defend himself.  He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he
+declares in his title to be justly called the author of the “Regii
+Sanguinis Clamor.”  In this there is no want of vehemence nor eloquence,
+nor does he forget his wonted wit.  _Morus es_? _an Momus_? _an uterque
+idem est_?  He then remembers that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree,
+and hints at the known transformation:
+
+    —Poma alba ferebat
+    Quæ post nigra tulit Morus.
+
+With this piece ended his controversies; and he from this time gave
+himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.
+
+As secretary to the Protector he is supposed to have written the
+Declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain.  His agency was
+considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was
+artfully suspended, the delay was publicly imputed to Mr. Milton’s
+indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder
+that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind.
+
+Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from
+external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes,
+and to have resumed three great works which he had planned for his future
+employment—an epic poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of
+the Latin tongue.
+
+To collect a dictionary seems a work of all others least practicable in a
+state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute
+inspection and collation.  Nor would Milton probably have begun it, after
+he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, he continued
+it, says Philips, “almost to his dying day; but the papers were so
+discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the press.”
+The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed at Cambridge, had the use
+of those collections in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards
+is not known.
+
+To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be
+consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more skilful
+and attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was probably the
+difficulty of consulting and comparing that stopped Milton’s narrative at
+the Conquest—a period at which affairs were not very intricate, nor
+authors very numerous.
+
+For the subject of his epic poem, after much deliberation, long choosing,
+and beginning late, he fixed upon “Paradise Lost,” a design so
+comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success.  He had once
+designed to celebrate King Arthur, as he hints in his verses to Mansus;
+but “Arthur was reserved,” says Fenton, “to another destiny.”
+
+It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript, and
+to be seen in a library at Cambridge, that he had digested his thoughts
+on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were anciently called
+Mysteries; and Philips had seen what he terms part of a tragedy,
+beginning with the first ten lines of Satan’s address to the Sun.  These
+mysteries consist of allegorical persons, such as Justice, Mercy, Faith.
+Of the tragedy or mystery of “Paradise Lost” there are two plans
+
+          _The Persons_.                      _The Persons_.
+
+Michael.                            Moses.
+
+Chorus of Angels.                   Divine Justice, Wisdom
+
+Heavenly Love.                      Heavenly Love.
+
+Lucifer.                            The Evening Star, Hesperus.
+
+Adam, Eve, with the Serpent         Chorus of Angels.
+
+Conscience.                         Lucifer.
+
+Death.                              Adam.
+
+Labour, }                           Eve.
+
+Sickness, }                         Conscience.
+
+Discontent, } Mutes.                Labour, }
+
+Ignorance, }                        Sickness, }
+
+with others; }                      Discontent, } Mutes
+
+Faith.                              Ignorance, }
+
+Hope.                               Fear, }
+
+Charity.                            Death, }
+
+                                    Faith.
+
+                                    Hope.
+
+                                    Charity.
+
+PARADISE LOST.
+
+
+                              _The Persons_.
+
+Moses, προλογίζει, recounting how he assumed his true body; that it
+corrupts not, because it is with God in the mount; declares the like of
+Enoch and Elijah; besides the purity of the place, that certain pure
+winds, dews, and clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to
+the sight of God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence,
+by reason of their sin.
+
+Justice, Mercy, Wisdom } debating what should become of man, if he fall.
+
+Chorus of Angels singing a hymn of the Creation.
+
+
+ACT II.
+
+
+Heavenly Love.
+
+Evening Star.
+
+Chorus sing the marriage-song, and describe Paradise.
+
+
+ACT III.
+
+
+Lucifer contriving Adam’s ruin.
+
+Chorus fears for Adam, and relates Lucifer’s rebellion and fall.
+
+
+ACT IV.
+
+
+Adam, Eve } fallen.
+
+Conscience cites them to God’s examination.
+
+Chorus bewails, and tells the good Adam has lost.
+
+
+ACT V.
+
+
+Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.
+
+— — presented by an angel with Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Famine,
+Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, Fear, Death } Mutes.
+
+To whom he gives their names.  Likewise Winter, Heat, Tempest, etc.
+
+Faith, Hope, Charity, comfort him and instruct him.
+
+Chorus briefly concludes.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Such was his first design, which could have produced only an allegory or
+mystery.  The following sketch seems to have attained more maturity.
+
+
+
+ADAM UNPARADISED.
+
+
+The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering; showing, since this
+globe was created, his frequency as much on earth as in heaven; describes
+Paradise.  Next the Chorus, showing the reason of his coming to keep his
+watch in Paradise, after Lucifer’s rebellion, by command from God; and
+withal expressing his desire to see and know more concerning this
+excellent new creature, man.  The angel Gabriel, as by his name
+signifying a prince of power, tracing Paradise with a more free office,
+passes by the station of the Chorus, and, desired by them, relates what
+he knew of man; as the creation of Eve, with their love and marriage.
+After this, Lucifer appears; after his overthrow, bemoans himself, seeks
+revenge on man.  The Chorus prepare resistance on his first approach.  At
+last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he departs: whereat the
+Chorus sings of the battle and victory in Heaven, against him and his
+accomplices: as before, after the first act, was sung a hymn of the
+creation.  Here again may appear Lucifer, relating and exulting in what
+he had done to the destruction of man.  Man next, and Eve, having by this
+time been seduced by the serpent, appears confusedly covered with leaves.
+Conscience in a shape accuses him; Justice cites him to the place whither
+Jehovah called for him.  In the meanwhile, the Chorus entertains the
+stage, and is informed by some angel the manner of the fall.  Here the
+Chorus bewails Adam’s fall; Adam then and Eve return; accuse one another;
+but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife; is stubborn in his
+offence.  Justice appears, reasons with him, convinces him.  The Chorus
+admonishes Adam, and bids him beware of Lucifer’s example of impenitence.
+The angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise; but before causes to
+pass before his eyes, in shapes, a mask of all the evils of this life and
+world.  He is humbled, relents, despairs; at last appears Mercy, comforts
+him, promises the Messiah; then calls in Faith, Hope, and
+Charity;—instructs him; he repents, gives God the glory, submits to his
+penalty.  The Chorus briefly concludes.  Compare this with the former
+draft.
+
+These are very imperfect rudiments of “Paradise Lost;” but it is pleasant
+to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with latent
+possibilities of excellence; nor could there be any more delightful
+entertainment than to trace their gradual growth and expansion, and to
+observe how they are sometimes suddenly advanced by accidental hints, and
+sometimes slowly improved by steady meditation.
+
+Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot
+obstruct, and therefore he naturally solaced his solitude by the
+indulgence of his fancy, and the melody of his numbers.  He had done what
+he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence; he had made
+himself acquainted with “seemly arts and affairs;” his comprehension was
+extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual
+treasures.  He was skilful in many languages, and had, by reading and
+composition, attained the full mastery of his own.  He would have wanted
+little help from books, had he retained the power of perusing them.
+
+But while his greater designs were advancing, having now, like many other
+authors, caught the love of publication, he amused himself, as he could,
+with little productions.  He sent to the press (1658) a manuscript of
+Raleigh, called “The Cabinet Council;” and next year gratified his
+malevolence to the clergy, by a “Treatise of Civil Power in
+Ecclesiastical Cases, and the Means of removing Hirelings out of the
+Church.”
+
+Oliver was now dead; Richard constrained to resign; the system of
+extemporary government, which had been held together only by force,
+naturally fell into fragments when that force was taken away; and Milton
+saw himself and his cause in equal danger.  But he had still hope of
+doing something.  He wrote letters, which Toland has published, to such
+men as he thought friends to the new commonwealth; and even in the year
+of the Restoration he “bated no jot of heart or hope,” but was
+fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, might be
+settled by a pamphlet, called “A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free
+Commonwealth;” which was, however, enough considered to be both seriously
+and ludicrously answered.
+
+The obstinate enthusiasm of the commonwealth-men was very remarkable.
+When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few associates
+as fantastical as himself, used to meet, with all the gravity of
+political importance, to settle an equal government by rotation; and
+Milton, kicking when he could strike no longer, was foolish enough to
+publish, a few weeks before the Restoration, Notes upon a Sermon preached
+by one Griffiths, entitled, “The Fear of God and the King.”  To these
+notes an answer was written by L’Estrange, in a pamphlet petulantly
+called “No Blind Guides.”
+
+But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do, the
+king was now about to be restored with the irresistible approbation of
+the people, he was therefore no longer secretary, and was consequently
+obliged to quit the house which he held by his office; the importance of
+his writings, thought it convenient to seek some shelter, and hid himself
+for a time in Bartholomew Close, by West Smithfield.
+
+I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously paid to this
+great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is
+historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any
+place that he honoured by his presence.
+
+The king, with lenity of which the world has had perhaps no other
+example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father’s
+wrongs; and promised to admit into the Act of Oblivion all except those
+whom the Parliament should except; and the Parliament doomed none to
+capital punishment but the wretches who had immediately co-operated in
+the murder of the king.  Milton was certainly not one of them; he had
+only justified what they had done.
+
+This justification was indeed sufficiently offensive; and (June 16) an
+order was issued to seize Milton’s “Defence,” and Goodwin’s “Obstructors
+of Justice,” another book of the same tendency, and burn them by the
+common hangman.  The attorney-general was ordered to prosecute the
+authors; but Milton was not seized, nor perhaps very diligently pursued.
+
+Not long after (August 19) the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled
+by an Act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation of
+elegance, rather called an Act of Oblivion than of Grace.  Goodwin was
+named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any public trust; but of
+Milton there was no exception.
+
+Of this tenderness shown to Milton the curiosity of mankind has not
+forborne to inquire the reason.  Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this
+is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple’s observation, who says,
+“that whenever Burnet’s narrations are examined, he appears to be
+mistaken.”
+
+Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be
+therefore by design that he was included in the general oblivion.  He is
+said to have had friends in the House, such as Marvel, Morrice, and Sir
+Thomas Clarges: and undoubtedly a man like him must have had influence.
+A very particular story of his escape is told by Richardson in his
+Memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered by Betterton, who
+might have heard it from Davenant.  In the war between the King and
+Parliament, Davenant was made prisoner and condemned to die; but was
+spared at the request of Milton.  When the turn of success brought Milton
+into the like danger, Davenant repaid the benefit by appearing in his
+favour.  Here is a reciprocation of generosity and gratitude so pleasing,
+that the tale makes its own way to credit.  But if help were wanted, I
+know not where to find it.  The danger of Davenant is certain from his
+own relation; but of his escape there is no account.  Betterton’s
+narration can be traced no higher; it is not known that he hid it from
+Davenant.  We are told that the benefit exchanged was life for life; but
+it seems not certain that Milton’s life ever was in danger.  Goodwin, who
+had committed the same kind of crime, escaped with incapacitation; and,
+as exclusion from public trust is a punishment which the power of
+Government can commonly inflict without the help of a particular law, it
+required no great interest to exempt Milton from a censure little more
+than verbal.  Something may be reasonably ascribed to veneration and
+compassion; to veneration of his abilities, and compassion for his
+distresses, which made it fit to forgive his malice for his learning.  He
+was now poor and blind; and who would pursue with violence an illustrious
+enemy, depressed by fortune and disarmed by nature?
+
+The publication of the “Act of Oblivion” put him in the same condition
+with his fellow-subjects.  He was, however, upon some pretence now not
+known, in the custody of the serjeant in December; and when he was
+released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he and the serjeant were
+called before the House.  He was now safe within the shade of oblivion,
+and knew himself to be as much out of the power of a griping officer as
+any other man.  How the question was determined is not known.  Milton
+would hardly have contended but that he knew himself to have right on his
+side.
+
+He then removed to Jewin Street, near Aldersgate Street, and, being blind
+and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestic companion and attendant; and
+therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married Elizabeth Minshul,
+of a gentleman’s family in Cheshire, probably without a fortune.  All his
+wives were virgins; for he has declared that he thought it gross and
+indelicate to be a second husband: upon what other principles his choice
+was made cannot now be known; but marriage afforded not much of his
+happiness.  The first wife left him in disgust, and was brought back only
+by terror; the second, indeed, seems to have been more a favourite, but
+her life was short.  The third, as Philips relates, oppressed his
+children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his death.
+
+Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered
+the continuance of his employment, and, being pressed by his wife to
+accept it, answered, “You, like other women, want to ride in your coach;
+my wish is to live and die an honest man.”  If he considered the Latin
+secretary as exercising any of the powers of government, he that had
+shared authority, either with the Parliament or Cromwell, might have
+forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty; and if he thought the office
+purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained it under
+the King.  But this tale has too little evidence to deserve a
+disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most
+common topics of falsehood.
+
+He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to
+disturb the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical
+opinions, and from this time devoted himself to poetry and literature.
+Of his zeal for learning in all its parts, he gave a proof by publishing,
+the next year (1661), “Accidence commenced Grammar;” a little book which
+has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been lately
+defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing
+“Paradise Lost,” could descend from his elevation to rescue children from
+the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons
+unnecessarily repeated.
+
+About this time, Elwood the Quaker, being recommended to him as one who
+would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conversation, attended
+him every afternoon except on Sundays.  Milton, who, in his letter to
+Hartlib, had declared, that “to read Latin with an English mouth is as
+ill a hearing as Law French,” required that Elwood should learn and
+practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he
+would talk with foreigners.  This seems to have been a task troublesome
+without use.  There is little reason for preferring the Italian
+pronunciation to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach it
+to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home.  He who
+travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every
+native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and
+if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity
+to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries.  Elwood
+complied with the directions, and improved himself by his attendance; for
+he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew by his voice when he
+read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and “open the most
+difficult passages.”
+
+In a short time he took a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill
+Fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton’s removals
+and habitations.  He lived longer in this place than any other.
+
+He was now busied by “Paradise Lost.”  Whence he drew the original design
+has been variously conjectured by men who cannot bear to think themselves
+ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence nor sagacity can
+discover.  Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy.  Voltaire tells a
+wild and unauthorised story of a farce seen by Milton in Italy which
+opened thus: “Let the Rainbow be the Fiddlestick of the Fiddle of
+Heaven.”  It has been already shown, that the first conception was a
+tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a dramatic work which he is
+supposed to have began to reduce to its present form about the time
+(1655) when he finished his dispute with the defenders of the king.
+
+He long had promised to adorn his native country by some great
+performance, while he had yet perhaps no settled design, and was
+stimulated only by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey
+of his attainments, and the consciousness of his powers.  What he should
+undertake it was difficult to determine.  He was “long choosing, and
+began late.”
+
+While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies and
+affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted;
+and perhaps he did little more in that busy time than construct the
+narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images
+and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, such
+hints as books or meditation would supply.  Nothing particular is known
+of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, having
+every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon
+expedients.
+
+Being driven from all public stations, he is yet too great not to be
+traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found by Mr.
+Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting before his door in a
+grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh
+air; and so, as in his own room, receiving the visits of people of
+distinguished parts as well as quality.  His visitors of high quality
+must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might reasonably court
+the conversation of a man so generally illustrious, that foreigners are
+reported, by Wood, to have visited the house in Bread Street where he was
+born.
+
+According to another account, he was seen in a small house, neatly enough
+dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty green; pale
+but not cadaverous, with chalkstones in his hands.  He said that, if it
+were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable.
+
+In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common
+exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an
+organ.
+
+He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the
+progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he was
+obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would
+conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at
+least for part of the time, no regular attendant.  This gave opportunity
+to observations and reports.
+
+Mr. Philips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance in
+the composure of “Paradise Lost,” “which I have a particular reason,”
+says he, “to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very
+beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in
+parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, being written
+by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the
+orthography and pointing), having, as the Summer came on, not been showed
+any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was
+answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal
+equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was
+never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so
+that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have
+spent half his time therein.”
+
+Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion Philips has
+mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his Elegies, declares, that
+with the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his poetical
+force, _redeunt in carmina vires_.  To this it is answered, that Philips
+could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added, that
+Milton might find different times of the year favourable to different
+parts of life.  Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that “such a work
+should be suspended for six months, or for one.  It may go on faster or
+slower, but it must go on.”  By what necessity it must continually go on,
+or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, it is not easy to
+discover.
+
+This dependence of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and
+periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided
+as the fumes of vain imagination.  _Sapiens dominabitur astris_.  The
+author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little help
+from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted.  But while this notion
+has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it supposes.
+Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; _possunt quia posse
+videntur_.  When success seems attainable, diligence is enforced; but
+when it is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a cross wind, or
+a cloudy sky, the day is given up without resistance; for who can contend
+with the course of nature?
+
+From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free.  There
+prevailed in his time an opinion, that the world was in its decay, and
+that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of
+nature.  It was suspected that the whole creation languished, that
+neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors,
+and that everything was daily sinking by gradual diminution.  Milton
+appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is
+not without some fear that his book is to be written in “an age too late”
+for heroic poesy.
+
+Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception
+among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to
+particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a
+degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit.  From this
+fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he feared
+lest the _climate_ of his country might be _too cold_ for flights of
+imagination.
+
+Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another, not more
+reasonable, might easily find its way.  He that could fear lest his
+genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might
+consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and believe
+his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.
+
+His submission to the seasons was at least more reasonable than his dread
+of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must operate
+uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could be
+performed by the writer, less likewise would content the judges of his
+work.  Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still have
+risen into eminence by producing something which “they should not
+willingly let die.”  However inferior to the heroes who were born in
+better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the
+hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity.  He might
+still be the giant of the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind.
+
+Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have
+little account, and there was perhaps little to be told.  Richardson, who
+seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers always a
+wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates that “he would
+sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and on a
+sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with an _impetus_ or
+_æstrum_, and his daughter was immediately called to secure what came.
+At other times he would dictate perhaps forty lines in a breath, and then
+reduce them to half the number.”
+
+These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient and
+involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some
+appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly
+caught by the lovers of a wonder.  Yet something of this inequality
+happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental.  The
+mechanic cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal
+dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when _his hand is out_.  By
+Mr. Richardson’s relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be
+claimed.  That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter
+“to secure what came,” may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be
+known that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have
+been obliged, as it is universally confessed, to have employed any casual
+visitor in disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed
+the office.
+
+The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors; and,
+though doubtless true of every fertile and copious mind, seems to have
+been gratuitously transferred to Milton.
+
+What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed
+much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose before his mind was
+disturbed with common business; and that he poured out with great fluency
+his “unpremeditated verse.”  Versification, free, like this, from the
+distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and
+habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would come
+at his command.
+
+At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written,
+cannot often be known.  The beginning of the third book shows that he had
+lost his sight, and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of
+the king had clouded him with discountenance; and that he was offended by
+the licentious festivity of the Restoration.  There are no other internal
+notes of time.  Milton, being now cleared from all effects of his
+disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of living
+in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection; but this,
+which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was perhaps more
+than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for no sooner is he safe,
+than he finds himself in danger, “fallen on evil days and evil tongues,
+and with darkness and with danger compassed round.”  This darkness, had
+his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but
+to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust.  He was fallen
+indeed on “evil days;” the time was come in which regicides could no
+longer boast their wickedness.  But of “evil tongues” for Milton to
+complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton,
+whose warmest advocates must allow that he never spared any asperity of
+reproach or brutality of insolence.
+
+But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to
+recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous,
+through the whole remaining part of his life.  He pursued his studies or
+his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult.  Such is the
+reverence paid to great abilities, however misused; they, who
+contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget
+the reviler of his king.
+
+When the plague (1665) raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont,
+in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a
+complete copy of “Paradise Lost,” and, having perused it, said to him,
+“Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say
+upon Paradise Found?”
+
+Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to
+Bunhill Fields, and designed the publication of his poem.  A licence was
+necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the
+Archbishop of Canterbury.  He seems, however, to have been treated with
+tenderness; for, though objections were made to particular passages, and
+among them to the simile of the sun eclipsed in the first book, yet the
+licence was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel
+Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to
+receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the
+first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number
+of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same sale of the
+third.  None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen
+hundred copies.
+
+The first edition was ten books, in a small quarto.  The titles were
+varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the
+books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.
+
+The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment, for which
+the receipt was signed April 26, 1669.  The second edition was not given
+till 1674; it was printed in small octave; and the number of books was
+increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and some
+other small improvements were made.  The third edition was published in
+1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all her
+claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given
+December 21, 1680.  Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole
+right to Brabazon Aylmer for £25; and Aylmer sold to Jacob Tonson half,
+August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price considerably
+enlarged.  In the history of “Paradise Lost” a deduction thus minute will
+rather gratify than fatigue.
+
+The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always
+mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of
+literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered,
+about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception.  But has the
+case been truly stated?  Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on
+an evil that was never felt?
+
+That in the reigns of Charles and James the “Paradise Lost” received no
+public acclamations is readily confessed.  Wit and literature were on the
+side of the court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture
+to praise the defender of the regicides?  All that he himself could think
+his due, from “evil tongues” in “evil days,” was that reverential silence
+which was generously preserved.  But it cannot be inferred that his poem
+was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired.
+
+The sale, if it be considered, will justify the public.  Those who have
+no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt
+their conclusions.  The call for books was not, in Milton’s age, what it
+is at present.  To read was not then a general amusement; neither
+traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.
+The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house
+supplied with a closet of knowledge.  Those, indeed, who professed
+learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that
+middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and who
+buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then
+comparatively small.  To prove the paucity of readers, it may be
+sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to
+1664—that is, forty-one years—with only two editions of the works of
+Shakespeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies.
+
+The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so
+much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and
+disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.
+The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were
+supplied at first the nation did not afford.  Only three thousand were
+sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its
+admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now
+given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the
+means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by
+that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its
+ranks.  But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the
+Revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and “Paradise Lost” broke
+into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.
+
+Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed
+the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its
+way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence.  I
+cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at
+all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and
+waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the
+impartiality of a future generation.
+
+In the meantime he continued his studies, and supplied the want of sight
+by a very odd expedient, of which Phillips gives the following account:—
+
+Mr. Philips tells us, “that though our author had daily about him one or
+other to read, some persons of man’s estate, who, of their own accord,
+greedily catched at the opportunity of being his readers, that they might
+as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him by the
+benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent by their
+parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest daughter by reason
+of her bodily infirmity and difficult utterance of speech (which, to say
+truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her), the other two
+were condemned to the performance of reading and exactly pronouncing of
+all the languages of whatever book he should, at one time or other, think
+fit to peruse, viz., the Hebrew (and I think the Syriac), the Greek, the
+Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French.  All which sorts of books to be
+confined to read, without understanding one word, must needs be a trial
+of patience almost beyond endurance.  Yet it was endured by both for a
+long time, though the irksomeness of this employment could not be always
+concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of uneasiness; so
+that at length they were all, even the eldest also, sent out to learn
+some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture, that are proper for
+women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver.”
+
+In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets before
+our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the father are
+most to be lamented.  A language not understood can never be so read as
+to give pleasure, and very seldom so as to convey meaning.  If few men
+would have had resolution, to write books with such embarrassments, few
+likewise would have wanted ability to find some better expedient.
+
+Three years after his “Paradise Lost” (1667) he published his “History of
+England,” comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and
+continued to the Norman Invasion.  Why he should have given the first
+part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected,
+it is difficult to conjecture.  The style is harsh; but it has something
+of rough vigour, which perhaps may often strike, though it cannot please.
+
+On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and before he could
+transmit it to the press tore out several parts.  Some censures of the
+Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern
+clergy; and a character of the Long Parliament, and Assembly of Divines,
+was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the Earl of Anglesea,
+and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted in its
+proper place.
+
+The same year were printed “Paradise Regained;” and “Samson Agonistes,” a
+tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by the
+author for the stage.  As these poems were published by another
+bookseller, it has been asked whether Simmons was discouraged from
+receiving them by the slow sale of the former.  Why a writer changed his
+bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover.
+Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume
+in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to
+repent his purchase.
+
+When Milton showed “Paradise Regained” to Elwood, “This,” said he, “is
+owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at
+Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of.”
+
+His last poetical offspring was his favourite.  He could not, as Elwood
+relates, endure to hear “Paradise Lost” preferred to “Paradise Regained.”
+Many causes may vitiate a writer’s judgment of his own works.  On that
+which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is
+unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been
+produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight, as a proof
+of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever
+it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.  Milton, however it
+happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself.
+
+To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that
+entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind of
+humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to literature.
+The epic poet, the controvertist, the politician, having already
+descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments, now, in the
+last years of his life, composed a book of logic for the initiation of
+students in philosophy; and published (1672) “Artis Logicæ plenior
+Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata;” that is, “A new Scheme of
+Logic, according to the method of Ramus.”  I know not whether, even in
+this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the
+universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old
+philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.
+
+His polemical disposition again revived.  He had now been safe so long
+that he forgot his fears, and published a “Treatise of True Religion,
+Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the Best Means to Prevent the Growth of
+Popery.”
+
+But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of the
+Church of England and an appeal to the Thirty-nine Articles.  His
+principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the
+Scriptures; and he extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are,
+profess to derive them from the sacred books.  The Papists appeal to
+other testimonies, and are therefore, in his opinion, not to be permitted
+the liberty of either public or private worship; for though they plead
+conscience, “we have no warrant,” he says, “to regard conscience which is
+not grounded in Scripture.”
+
+Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may perhaps be delighted with
+his wit.  The term “Roman Catholic is,” he says, “one of the Pope’s
+Bulls; it is particular universal, or Catholic schismatic.”
+
+He has, however, something better.  As the best preservative against
+Popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the Scriptures, a duty from
+which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves excused.
+
+He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.
+
+In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take
+delight in publication, a collection of “Familiar Epistles in Latin;” to
+which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical
+exercises, which perhaps he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to
+his memory the days of youth; but for which nothing but veneration for
+his name could now procure a reader.
+
+When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had
+been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature.  He
+died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the 10th of November, 1674,
+at his house in Bunhill Fields; and was buried next his father in the
+chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate.  His funeral was very splendidly and
+numerously attended.
+
+Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our
+time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey “To the Author of
+‘Paradise Lost,’” by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more
+words upon himself than upon Milton.
+
+When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said to
+be _soli Miltono secundus_, was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then Dean of
+Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his
+opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to
+devotion.  Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the inscription,
+permitted its reception.  “And such has been the change of public
+opinion,” said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account, “that I have
+seen erected in the church a statue of that man, whose name I once knew
+considered as a pollution of its walls.”
+
+Milton has the reputation of having been in his youth eminently
+beautiful, so as to have been called the lady of his college.  His hair,
+which was of a light brown, parted at the fore-top, and hung down upon
+his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam.  He
+was, however, not of the heroic stature, but rather below the middle
+size, according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having narrowly
+escaped from being “short and thick.”  He was vigorous and active, and
+delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he is related to have
+been eminently skilful.  His weapon was, I believe, not the rapier, but
+the back-sword, of which he recommends the use in his book on education.
+
+His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous
+fencer, they must have been once quick.
+
+His domestic habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe
+student.  He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without
+excess in quantity, and in his earlier years without delicacy of choice.
+In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed his hours,
+and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer and five in the winter.
+The course of his day was best known after he was blind.  When he first
+rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then studied till
+twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined, then played on
+the organ, and sang, or heard another sing, then studied till six; then
+entertained his visitors till eight; then supped, and, after a pipe of
+tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.
+
+So is his life described; but this even tenour appears attainable only in
+colleges.  He that lives in the world will sometimes have the succession
+of his practice broken and confused.  Visitors, of whom Milton is
+represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay unseasonably;
+business, of which every man has some, must be done when others will do
+it.
+
+When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his
+bedside; perhaps at this time his daughters were employed.  He composed
+much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an
+elbow-chair, with his leg thrown over the arm.  Fortune appears not to
+have had much of his care.  In the civil wars, he lent his personal
+estate to the Parliament; but when, after the contest was decided, he
+solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but “sharp rebuke;”
+and, having tired both himself and his friends, was given up to poverty
+and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he was to do greater
+service.  He was then made Latin Secretary, with two hundred pounds a
+year; and had a thousand pounds for his “Defence of the People.”  His
+widow, who, after his death, retired to Nantwich, in Cheshire, and died
+about 1729, is said to have reported that he lost two thousand pounds by
+entrusting it to a scrivener; and that, in the general depredation upon
+the Church, he had grasped an estate of about sixty pounds a year
+belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other sharers of the plunder
+of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to return.  Two thousand pounds
+which he had placed in the Excise Office were also lost.  There is yet no
+reason to believe that he was ever reduced to indigence.  His wants,
+being few, were competently supplied.  He sold his library before his
+death, and left his family fifteen hundred pounds, on which his widow
+laid hold, and only gave one hundred to each of his daughters.
+
+His literature was unquestionably great.  He read all the languages which
+are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two
+dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish.  In Latin his skill
+was such as places him in the first rank of writers and critics; and he
+appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence.  The books in
+which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most
+delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid’s
+“Metamorphoses” and Euripides.  His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock’s
+kindness, now in my hands: the margin is sometimes noted; but I have
+found nothing remarkable.
+
+Of the English poets he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and
+Cowley.  Spenser was apparently his favourite; Shakespeare he may easily
+be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not
+have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were different from
+his own, would have had much of his approbation.  His character of
+Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist, but
+no poet.
+
+His theological opinions are said to have been first Calvinistical; and
+afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Presbyterians, to have
+tended towards Arminianism.  In the mixed questions of theology and
+government, he never thinks that he can recede far enough from Popery, or
+Prelacy; but what Baudius says of Erasmus seems applicable to him,
+“_Magis habuit quod fugeret_, _quam quod sequeretur_.”  He had determined
+rather what to condemn, than what to approve.  He has not associated
+himself with any denomination of Protestants: we know rather what he was
+not than what he was.  He was not of the Church of Rome; he was not of
+the Church of England.
+
+To be of no Church is dangerous.  Religion, of which the rewards are
+distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by
+degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by
+external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary
+influence of example.  Milton, who appears to have had a full conviction
+of the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures
+with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical
+peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the
+immediate and occasional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any
+visible worship.  In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of
+prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting public prayers,
+he omitted all.
+
+Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition which
+ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and
+justify their conduct to themselves.  Prayer certainly was not thought
+superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying
+acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their fall.
+That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies and
+meditations were an habitual prayer.  The neglect of it in his family was
+probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to
+correct; but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his
+reformation.
+
+His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly Republican;
+for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than that “a
+popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy
+would set up an ordinary commonwealth.”  It is surely very shallow policy
+that supposes money to be the chief good; and even this, without
+considering that the support and expense of a court is, for the most
+part, only a particular kind of traffic, for which money is circulated,
+without any national impoverishment.
+
+Milton’s Republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of
+greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient of
+control, and pride disdainful of superiority.  He hated monarchs in the
+State, and prelates in the Church; for he hated all whom he was required
+to obey.  It is to be suspected that his predominant desire was to
+destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of
+liberty as repugnance to authority.
+
+It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not
+most liberally grant it.  What we know of Milton’s character, in domestic
+relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary.  His family consisted of
+women; and there appears in his books something like a Turkish contempt
+of females, as subordinate and inferior beings.  That his own daughters
+might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a mean and
+penurious education.  He thought woman made only for obedience, and man
+only for rebellion.
+
+Of his family some account may be expected.  His sister, first married to
+Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband,
+who succeeded him in the Crown office.  She had, by her first husband,
+Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and by her second,
+two daughters.
+
+His brother, Sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine, and
+a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the Crown office, and left a
+daughter living in 1749 in Grosvenor Street.
+
+Milton had children only by his first wife: Anne, Mary, and Deborah.
+Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first
+child.  Mary died single.  Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in
+Spitalfields, and lived seventy-six years, to August, 1727.  This is the
+daughter of whom public mention has been made.  She could repeat the
+first lines of Homer, the “Metamorphoses,” and some of Euripides, by
+having often read them.  Yet here incredulity is ready to make a stand.
+Many repetitions are necessary to fix in memory lines not understood; and
+why should Milton wish or want to hear them so often?  These lines were
+at the beginning of the poems.  Of a book written in a language not
+understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the end; and as
+those that understand it know commonly the beginning best, its rehearsal
+will seldom be necessary.  It is not likely that Milton required any
+passage to be so much repeated as that his daughter could learn it; nor
+likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at all; nor that the
+daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal sounds, would
+voluntarily commit them to memory.
+
+To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some
+establishment, but died soon after.  Queen Caroline sent her fifty
+guineas.  She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had
+any children, except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth.  Caleb
+went to Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom
+nothing now is known.  Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in
+Spitalfields, and had seven children, who all died.  She kept a petty
+grocer’s or chandler’s shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock
+Lane, near Shoreditch Church.  She knew little of her grandfather, and
+that little was not good.  She told of his harshness to his daughters,
+and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition to other
+accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in his diet.
+
+In 1750, April 5th, _Comus_ was played for her benefit.  She had so
+little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what
+was intended when a benefit was offered her.  The profits of the night
+were only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a
+large contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is
+to be praised as often as he is named.  Of this sum one hundred pounds
+were placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband
+in whose name it should be entered; and the rest augmented their little
+stock, with which they removed to Islington.  This was the greatest
+benefaction that “Paradise Lost” ever procured the author’s descendants;
+and to this he who has now attempted to relate his Life, had the honour
+of contributing a Prologue.
+
+In the examination of Milton’s poetical works, I shall pay so much regard
+to time as to begin with his juvenile productions.  For his early pieces
+he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable; what he has
+once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the public an
+unfinished poem which he broke off because he was “nothing satisfied with
+what he had done,” supposing his readers less nice than himself.  These
+preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English.  Of
+the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critic; but I have heard them
+commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit.  The Latin
+pieces are lusciously elegant: but the delight which they afford is
+rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity
+of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of
+invention or vigour of sentiment.  They are not all of equal value; the
+elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason
+might have been spared.
+
+The English poems, though they make no promises of “Paradise Lost,” have
+this evidence of genius—that they have a cast original and unborrowed.
+But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from the verses
+of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often
+distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are new,
+but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be laboriously
+sought, and violently applied.
+
+That in the early parts of his life he wrote with much care appears from
+his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many of his
+smaller works are found as they were first written, with the subsequent
+corrections.  Such relics show how excellence is acquired; what we hope
+ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
+
+Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes force their
+own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail
+upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular.  All that
+short compositions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance.  Milton
+never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked
+the milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a “Lion” that had
+no skill in “dandling the Kid.”
+
+One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is “Lycidas;” of
+which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers
+unpleasing.  What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the
+sentiments and images.  It is not to be considered as the effusion of
+real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure
+opinions.  Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls
+upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough “satyrs” and “fauns with
+cloven heel.”  Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.
+
+In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art,
+for there is nothing new.  Its form is that of a pastoral; easy, vulgar,
+and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply are long ago
+exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction
+on the mind.  When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they studied together, it
+is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours,
+and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be
+excited by these lines?—
+
+    We drove afield, and both together heard
+    What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,
+    Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.
+
+We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks to
+batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be
+allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is
+never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found.
+
+Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities;
+Jove and Phœbus, Neptune and Æolus, with a long train of mythological
+imagery, such as a college easily supplies.  Nothing can less display
+knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has
+lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any judge
+of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is become
+of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell.  He who thus grieves will
+excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.
+
+This poem has yet a grosser fault.  With these trifling fictions are
+mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be
+polluted with such irreverent combinations.  The shepherd likewise is now
+a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a
+superintendent of a Christian flock.  Such equivocations are always
+unskilful; but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety,
+of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been conscious.
+
+Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze drives
+away the eye from nice examination.  Surely no man could have fancied
+that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the author.
+
+Of the two pieces, “L’Allegro” and “il Penseroso,” I believe, opinion is
+uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure.  The
+author’s design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to show how
+objects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the operation
+of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or upon the
+same man as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among the
+successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes hold
+on those by which it may be gratified.
+
+The _cheerful_ man hears the lark in the morning; the _pensive_ man hears
+the nightingale in the evening.  The _cheerful_ man sees the cock strut,
+and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, _not unseen_,
+to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the singing
+milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower; then casts
+his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks up to the
+distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant; thus he pursues
+real gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights himself at
+night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious ignorance.
+
+The _pensive_ man at one time walks _unseen_ to muse at midnight, and at
+another hears the sullen curfew.  If the weather drives him home, he sits
+in a room lighted only by “glowing embers;” or by a lonely lamp
+outwatches the North Star, to discover the habitation of separate souls,
+and varies the Shades of meditation by contemplating the magnificent or
+pathetic scenes of tragic and epic poetry.  When the morning comes—a
+morning gloomy with rain and wind—he walks into the dark, trackless
+woods, falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy
+enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some music played by
+aërial performers.
+
+Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the breast,
+that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is therefore
+made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion.  The seriousness
+does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the gaiety from
+the pleasures of the bottle.
+
+The man of _cheerfulness_, having exhausted the country, tries what
+“towered cities” will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour, gay
+assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator, as,
+when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild dramas of Shakespeare,
+are exhibited, he attends the theatre.
+
+The _pensive_ man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister,
+or frequents the cathedral.  Milton probably had not yet forsaken the
+Church.
+
+Both his characters delight in music; but he seems to think that cheerful
+notes would have obtained from Pluto a complete dismission of Eurydice,
+of whom solemn sounds procured only a conditional release.
+
+For the old age of Cheerfulness he makes no provision: but Melancholy he
+conducts with great dignity to the close of life.  His Cheerfulness is
+without levity, and his Pensiveness without asperity.
+
+Through these two poems the images are properly selected and nicely
+distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently
+discriminated.  I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently
+apart.  No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid
+that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth.  They are two noble
+efforts of imagination.
+
+The greatest of his juvenile performances is the “Mask of _Comus_,” in
+which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of “Paradise
+Lost.”  Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction,
+and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which he
+never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.
+
+Nor does _Comus_ afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits
+likewise his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed
+in the praise and defence of virtue.  A work more truly poetical is
+rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish
+almost every period with lavish decoration.  As a series of lines,
+therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with
+which the votaries have received it.
+
+As a drama it is deficient.  The action is not probable.  A mask, in
+those parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must indeed be
+given up to all the freaks of imagination, but so far as the action is
+merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be said of the
+conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue in
+a pathless wilderness, wander both away together in search of berries too
+far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to all the sadness
+and danger of solitude.  This, however, is a defect over-balanced by its
+convenience.
+
+What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the wild
+wood by the attendant Spirit is addressed to the audience; a mode of
+communication so contrary to the nature of dramatic representation, that
+no precedents can support it.
+
+The discourse of the Spirit is too long; an objection that may be made to
+almost all the following speeches; they have not the sprightliness of a
+dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather declamations
+deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral question.  The
+auditor therefore listens as to a lecture, without passion, without
+anxiety.
+
+The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend
+Milton’s morals as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are so
+general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment, and
+take no dangerous hold on the fancy.
+
+The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant but tedious.
+The song must owe much to the voice if it ever can delight.  At last the
+Brothers enter with too much tranquillity; and, when they have feared
+lest their Sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is not in
+danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the younger
+finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.
+
+Then descends the Spirit in form of a shepherd; and the Brother, instead
+of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and inquires his
+business in that place.  It is remarkable, that at this interview the
+Brother is taken with a short fit of rhyming, The Spirit relates that the
+Lady is in the power of Comus; the Brother moralises again; and the
+Spirit makes a long narration, of no use because it is false, and
+therefore unsuitable to a good being.
+
+In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are
+generous; but there is something wanting to allure attention.
+
+The dispute between the Lady and Comus is the most animated and affecting
+scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker reciprocation of
+objections and replies to invite attention, and detain it.
+
+The songs are vigorous and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their
+diction, and not very musical in their numbers.
+
+Throughout the whole the figures are too bold, and the language too
+luxuriant for dialogue.  It is a drama in the epic style, inelegantly
+splendid, and tediously instructive.
+
+The sonnets were written in different parts of Milton’s life, upon
+different occasions.  They deserve not any particular criticism; for of
+the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and perhaps only the
+eighth and twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender commendation.
+The fabric of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian language, has
+never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of termination,
+requires the rhymes to be often changed.
+
+Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety; a greater
+work calls for greater care.  I am now to examine “Paradise Lost;” a poem
+which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and
+with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the
+human mind.
+
+By the general consent of critics the first praise of genius is due to
+the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the
+powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions.  Poetry is the
+art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of
+reason.  Epic poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the
+most pleasing precepts, and therefore relates some great event in the
+most affecting manner.  History must supply the writer with the rudiments
+of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, must
+animate by dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospection and
+anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different
+shades, of vice and virtue; from policy, and the practice of life, he has
+to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the
+passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with
+illustrations and images.  To put those materials to poetical use, is
+required an imagination capable of painting nature and realising fiction.
+Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension of his
+language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the colours
+of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the
+varieties of metrical modulation.
+
+Bossu is of opinion, that the poet’s first work is to find a _moral_,
+which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish.  This seems to
+have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems is
+incidental and consequent; in Milton’s only it is essential and
+intrinsic.  His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous: “to
+vindicate the ways of God to man;” to show the reasonableness of
+religion, and the necessity of obedience to the Divine Law.
+
+To convey this moral there must be a _fable_, a narration artfully
+constructed, so as to excite curiosity and surprise expectation.  In this
+part of his work Milton must be confessed to have equalled every other
+poet.  He has involved in his account of the Fall of Man the events which
+preceded and those that were to follow it: he has interwoven the whole
+system of theology with such propriety, that every part appears to be
+necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the sake of
+quickening the progress of the main action.
+
+The subject of an epic poem is naturally an event of great importance.
+That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a colony,
+or the foundation of an empire.  His subject is the fate of worlds, the
+revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against the Supreme King,
+raised by the highest order of created beings; the overthrow of their
+host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation of a new race of
+reasonable creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their
+forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace.
+
+Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated
+dignity.  Before the greatness displayed in Milton’s poem, all other
+greatness shrinks away.  The weakest of his agents are the highest and
+noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose
+actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude or deviation of will,
+depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all the
+future inhabitants of the globe.
+
+Of the other agents in the poem, the chief are such as it is irreverence
+to name on slight occasions.  The rest were lower powers—
+
+       Of which the least could wield
+    Those elements, and arm him with the force
+    Of all their regions;
+
+powers, which only the control of Omnipotence restrains from laying
+creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and
+confusion.  To display the motives and actions of beings thus superior,
+so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent
+them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.
+
+In the examination of epic poems much speculation is commonly employed
+upon the _characters_.  The characters in the “Paradise Lost,” which
+admit of examination, are those of angels and of man; of angels good and
+evil; of man in his innocent and sinful state.
+
+Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy
+condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and lofty,
+and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature.  Abdiel and
+Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident requires; the
+solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted.
+
+Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified.  To Satan, as
+Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit “the most exalted and
+most depraved being.”  Milton has been censured by Clarke, for the
+impiety which sometimes breaks from Satan’s mouth; for there are
+thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can
+justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass, however
+transiently, through his own mind.  To make Satan speak as a rebel,
+without any such expression as might taint the reader’s imagination, was
+indeed one of the great difficulties in Milton’s undertaking; and I
+cannot but think that he has extricated himself with great happiness.
+There is in Satan’s speeches little that can give pain to a pious ear.
+The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that of obedience.  The
+malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy; but his
+expressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive than as they
+are wicked.
+
+The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously
+discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character
+of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact
+consistency.
+
+To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments as
+innocence can generate and utter.  Their love is pure benevolence and
+mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence
+without toil.  Their addresses to their Maker have little more than the
+voice of admiration and gratitude.  Fruition left them nothing to ask;
+and innocence left them nothing to fear.
+
+But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and
+stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and
+dread their Creator as the avenger of their transgression.  At last they
+seek shelter in His mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in
+supplication.  Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is
+diligently sustained.
+
+Of the _probable_ and the _marvellous_, two parts of a vulgar epic poem
+which immerge the critic in deep consideration, the “Paradise Lost”
+requires little to be said.  It contains the history of a miracle, of
+creation and redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of the
+Supreme Being; the probable therefore is marvellous, and the marvellous
+is probable.  The substance of the narrative is truth; and, as truth
+allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superior to rule.  To the
+accidental or adventitious parts, as to everything human, some slight
+exceptions may be made; but the main fabric is immovably supported.
+
+It is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature of
+its subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and
+perpetually interesting.  All mankind will, through all ages, bear the
+same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil
+which extend to themselves.
+
+Of the _machinery_, so called from Θεòς ὰπò μηχανης, by which is meant
+the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another fertile topic
+of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because everything is done
+under the immediate and visible direction of Heaven; but the rule is so
+far observed, that no part of the action could have been accomplished by
+any other means.
+
+Of _episodes_, I think there are only two—contained in Raphael’s relation
+of the war in Heaven, and Michael’s prophetic account of the changes to
+happen in this world.  Both are closely connected with the great action;
+one was necessary to Adam as a warning, the other as a consolation.
+
+To the completeness or _integrity_ of the design nothing can be objected;
+it has distinctly and clearly what Aristotle requires—a beginning, a
+middle, and an end.  There is perhaps no poem, of the same length, from
+which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation.  Here are no
+funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield.  The short
+digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books,
+might doubtless be spared, but superfluities so beautiful who would take
+away? or who does not wish that the author of the “Iliad” had gratified
+succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself?  Perhaps no passages
+are more attentively read than those extrinsic paragraphs; and, since the
+end of poetry is pleasure, that cannot be unpoetical with which all are
+pleased.
+
+The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly _one_, whether
+the poem can be properly termed _heroic_, and who is the hero, are raised
+by such readers as draw their principles of judgment rather from books
+than from reason.  Milton, though he entitled “Paradise Lost” only a
+“poem,” yet calls it himself “heroic song.”  Dryden petulantly and
+indecently denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but there
+is no reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except established
+practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together.  Cato
+is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan’s authority will not be suffered by
+Quintilian to decide.  However, if success be necessary, Adam’s deceiver
+was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his Maker’s favour, and
+therefore may securely resume his human rank.
+
+After the scheme and fabric of the poem, must be considered its component
+parts, the sentiments and the diction.
+
+The _sentiments_, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to
+characters, are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.
+
+Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of
+prudence, occur seldom.  Such is the original formation of this poem,
+that, as it admits no human manners till the Fall, it can give little
+assistance to human conduct.  Its end is to raise the thoughts above
+sublunary cares or pleasures.  Yet the praise of that fortitude, with
+which Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of
+multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael’s reproof of
+Adam’s curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned by
+Adam, may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet has
+delivered.
+
+The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress are such
+as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid
+and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study and
+unlimited curiosity.  The heat of Milton’s mind may be said to sublimate
+his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled
+with its grosser parts.
+
+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.
+
+But he could not be always in other worlds; he must sometimes revisit
+earth, and tell of things visible and known.  When he cannot raise wonder
+by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.
+
+Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination.  But his
+images and descriptions of the scenes or operations of nature do not seem
+to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness,
+raciness, and energy of immediate observation.  He saw nature, as Dryden
+expresses it, “through the spectacles of books;” and on most occasions
+calls learning to his assistance.  The garden of Eden brings to his mind
+the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers.  Satan makes
+his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean rocks,
+or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned Charybdis
+on the larboard.  The mythological allusions have been justly censured,
+as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they contribute
+variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise of the memory
+and the fancy.
+
+His similes are less numerous, and more various, than those of his
+predecessors.  But he does not confine himself within the limits of
+rigorous comparison: his great excellence is amplitude; and he expands
+the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion required.
+Thus, comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he crowds the
+imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the wonders
+which the telescope discovers.
+
+Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel
+those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his
+acquaintance with the sacred writings.  The ancient epic poets, wanting
+the light of Revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue; their
+principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable.  The reader
+may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive
+fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away
+few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.
+
+From the Italian writers it appears that the advantages of even Christian
+knowledge may be possessed in vain.  Ariosto’s pravity is generally
+known; and, though the “Deliverance of Jerusalem” may be considered as a
+sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing of moral instruction.
+
+In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity of manners,
+except when the train of the narration requires the introduction of the
+rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled to acknowledge their
+subjection to God, in such a manner as excites reverence and confirms
+piety.
+
+Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of
+mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and
+amiable after it for repentance and submission.  In the first state their
+affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime without
+presumption.  When they have sinned, they show how discord begins in
+mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how
+confidence of the Divine favour is forfeited by sin, and how hope of
+pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer.  A state of innocence we
+can only conceive, if indeed, in our present misery, it be possible to
+conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen and
+offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to practise.
+
+The poet, whatever be done, is always great.  Our progenitors in their
+first state conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had degraded
+them, they had not in their humiliation “the port of mean suitors;” and
+they rise again to reverential regard, when we find that their prayers
+were heard.
+
+As human passions did not enter the world before the Fall, there is in
+the “Paradise Lost” little opportunity for the pathetic; but what little
+there is has not been lost.  That passion, which is peculiar to rational
+nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and
+the horrors attending the sense of the Divine displeasure, are very
+justly described and forcibly impressed.  But the passions are moved only
+on one occasion; sublimity is the general and prevailing quality in this
+poem; sublimity variously modified—sometimes descriptive, sometimes
+argumentative.
+
+The defects and faults of “Paradise Lost”—for faults and defects every
+work of man must have—it is the business of impartial criticism to
+discover.  As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, I have not made
+long quotations, because of selecting beauties there had been no end, I
+shall in the same general manner mention that which seems to deserve
+censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing passages,
+which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish in some degree
+the honour of our country?
+
+The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal
+inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps better skilled in grammar and
+poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he
+imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author’s blindness
+obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought
+it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he in private allowed
+it to be false.
+
+The plan of “Paradise Lost” has this inconvenience, that it comprises
+neither human actions nor human manners.  The man and woman who act and
+suffer are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know.  The
+reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged—beholds no
+condition in which he can by any effort of imagination place himself; he
+has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.
+
+We all, indeed, feel the effects of Adam’s disobedience; we all sin like
+Adam, and like him must all bewail our offences; we have restless and
+insidious enemies in the fallen angels, and in the blessed spirits we
+have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind we hope to be
+included; in the description of heaven and hell we are surely interested,
+as we are all to reside hereafter either in the regions of horror or
+bliss.
+
+But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to
+our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar
+conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of
+life.  Being therefore not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the
+mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected,
+cannot surprise.
+
+Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with
+reverence, except when stated hours require their association; and from
+others we shrink with horror, or admit them only as salutary inflictions,
+as counterpoises to our interests and passions.  Such images rather
+obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.
+
+Pleasure and terror are indeed the genuine sources of poetry; but
+poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can at least
+conceive, and poetical terrors such as human strength and fortitude may
+combat.  The good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of
+wit; the mind sinks under them in passive helplessness, content with calm
+belief and humble adoration.
+
+Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed
+to the mind by a new train of intermediate images.  This Milton has
+undertaken and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar to
+himself.  Whoever considers the few radical positions which the
+Scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetic operation he
+expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety,
+restrained as he was by religious reverence from licentiousness of
+fiction.
+
+Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius—of a great
+accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest and fancy to combine
+them: Milton was able to select from nature or from story, from an
+ancient fable or from modern science, whatever could illustrate or adorn
+his thoughts.  An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,
+fermented by study and exalted by imagination.
+
+It has been therefore said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one of his
+encomiasts, that in reading “Paradise Lost” we read a book of universal
+knowledge.
+
+But original deficiency cannot be supplied.  The want of human interest
+is always felt.  “Paradise Lost” is one of the books which the reader
+admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again.  None ever wished it
+longer than it is.  Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure.  We
+read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look
+elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.
+
+Another inconvenience of Milton’s design is, that it requires the
+description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits.  He saw
+that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show angels
+acting but by instruments of action; he therefore invested them with form
+and matter.  This, being necessary, was therefore defensible; and he
+should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping
+immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his
+thoughts.  But he has unhappily perplexed his poetry with his philosophy.
+His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit, and
+sometimes animated body.  When Satan walks with his lance upon the
+“burning marl,” he has a body; when, in his passage between hell and the
+new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacuity, and is supported by
+a gust of rising vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad, he
+seems to be more spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when he
+“starts up in his own shape,” he has at least a determined form; and when
+he is brought before Gabriel, he has “a spear and a shield,” which he had
+the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the contending angels
+are evidently material.
+
+The vulgar inhabitants of Pandæmonium, being “incorporeal spirits,” are
+“at large, though without number,” in a limited space: yet in the battle,
+when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them, “crushed
+in upon their substance, now grown gross by sinning.”  This likewise
+happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the “sooner for
+their arms, for unarmed they might easily as spirits have evaded by
+contraction or remove.”  Even as spirits they are hardly spiritual: for
+“contraction” and “remove” are images of matter; but if they could have
+escaped without their armour, they might have escaped from it, and left
+only the empty cover to be battered.  Uriel, when he rides on a sunbeam,
+is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of the prowess of Adam.
+
+The confusion of spirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration of
+the war of heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book in which it is
+related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected
+as knowledge is increased.
+
+After the operation of immaterial agents, which cannot be explained, may
+be considered that of allegorical persons which have no real existence.
+To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and
+animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry.  But
+such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their
+natural office, and retire.  Thus Fame tells a tale, and Victory hovers
+over a general, or perches on a standard; but Fame and Victory can do no
+more.  To give them any real employment, or ascribe to them any material
+agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by
+ascribing effects to nonentity.  In the “Prometheus” of Æschylus, we see
+Violence and Strength, and in the “Alcestis” of Euripides we see Death,
+brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no
+precedents can justify absurdity.
+
+Milton’s allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty.  Sin is indeed
+the mother of Death, and may be allowed to be the portress of hell; but
+when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and
+when Death offers him battle, the allegory is broken.  That Sin and Death
+should have shown the way to hell, might have been allowed; but they
+cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the
+difficulty of Satan’s passage is described as real and sensible, and the
+bridge ought to be only figurative.  The hell assigned to the rebellious
+spirits is described as not less local than the residence of man.  It is
+placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of
+harmony and order by a chaotic waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but Sin
+and Death worked up a “mole of aggravated soil” cemented with
+_asphaltus_, a work too bulky for ideal architects.
+
+This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the
+poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author’s opinion of its
+beauty.
+
+To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made.  Satan is
+with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is
+suffered to go away unmolested.  The creation of man is represented as
+the consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the
+rebels; yet Satan mentions it as a report “rife in Heaven” before his
+departure.
+
+To find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and
+something of anticipation perhaps is now and then discovered.  Adam’s
+discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-created
+being.  I know not whether his answer to the angel’s reproof for
+curiosity does not want something of propriety; it is the speech of a man
+acquainted with many other men.  Some philosophical notions, especially
+when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted.  The angel,
+in a comparison, speaks of “timorous deer,” before deer were yet
+timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.
+
+Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations.  This is
+only to say, that all the parts are not equal.  In every work, one part
+must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must
+have transitions.  It is no more to be required that wit should always be
+blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon.  In a great work
+there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the
+world a succession of day and night.  Milton, when he has expatiated in
+the sky, may be allowed sometimes to revisit earth; for what other author
+ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long?
+
+Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed
+often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions,
+his desire of imitating Ariosto’s levity has disgraced his work with the
+Paradise of Fools; a fiction not in itself ill-imagined, but too
+ludicrous for its place.
+
+His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations,
+which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his
+unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary to
+mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured; and at
+last bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely deserve
+the attention of a critic.
+
+Such are the faults of that wonderful performance “Paradise Lost;” which
+he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as
+nice but as dull, as less to be censured for want of candour than pitied
+for want of sensibility.
+
+Of “Paradise Regained,” the general judgment seems now to be right, that
+it is in many parts elegant, and everywhere instructive.  It was not to
+be supposed that the writer of “Paradise Lost” could ever write without
+great effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom.  The basis of
+“Paradise Regained” is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please
+like a union of the narrative and dramatic powers.  Had this poem been
+written not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and
+received universal praise.
+
+If “Paradise Regained” has been too much depreciated, “Samson Agonistes”
+has, in requital, been too much admired.  It could only be by long
+prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the
+ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions
+of the French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence in
+the reputation of Milton that a drama can be praised in which the
+intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor
+retard the catastrophe.
+
+In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, many just
+sentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the
+attention which a well connected plan produces.
+
+Milton would not have excelled in dramatic writing; he knew human nature
+only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the
+combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions.  He
+had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in
+the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must
+confer.
+
+Through all his greater works there prevails a uniform peculiarity of
+_diction_, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance
+to that of any former writer; and which is so far removed from common
+use, that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds
+himself surprised by a new language.
+
+This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton,
+imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur
+of his ideas.  “Our language,” says Addison, “sank under him.”  But the
+truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a
+perverse and pedantic principle.  He was desirous to use English words
+with a foreign idiom.  This, in all his prose, is discovered and
+condemned; for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the
+beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of
+his poetry, that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels
+himself in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks
+in admiration.
+
+Milton’s style was not modified by his subject; what is shown with
+greater extent in “Paradise Lost” may be found in “Comus.”  One source of
+his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; the
+disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps
+sometimes combined with other tongues.  Of him, at last, may be said what
+Jonson says of Spenser, that “he wrote no language,” but has formed what
+Butler calls a “Babylonish dialect,” in itself harsh and barbarous, but
+made by exalted genius and extensive learning the vehicle of so much
+instruction and so much pleasure, that, like other lovers, we find grace
+in its deformity.
+
+Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of
+copiousness and variety.  He was master of his language in its full
+extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that
+from his book alone the Art of English Poetry might be learned.
+
+After his diction something must be said of his _versification_.  The
+_measure_, he says, “is the English heroic verse without rhyme.”  Of this
+mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own
+country.  The Earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil’s
+books without rhyme; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had
+appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation
+to Raleigh’s wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh
+himself.  These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much
+influenced Milton, who more probably took his hint from Trissino’s
+“Italia Liberata;” and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was
+desirous of persuading himself that it is better.
+
+“Rhyme,” he says, and says truly, “is no necessary adjunct of true
+poetry.”  But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or music
+is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the music of metre that
+poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages
+melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short
+syllables, metre is sufficient.  But one language cannot communicate its
+rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is
+necessary.  The music of the English heroic lines strikes the ear so
+faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every line
+co-operate together; this co-operation can only be obtained by the
+preservation of every verse unmingled with another as a distinct system
+of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the
+artifice of rhyme.  The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers
+of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of
+a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of
+Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or
+begin.  “Blank verse,” said an ingenious critic, “seems to be verse only
+to the eye.”
+
+Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often
+please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared but where the subject is able
+to support itself.  Blank verse makes some approach to that which is
+called the “lapidary style;” has neither the easiness of prose, nor the
+melody of numbers, and therefore tires by long continuance.  Of the
+Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one
+is popular; what reason could urge in its defence has been confuted by
+the ear.
+
+But, whatever be the advantages of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to
+wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be
+other than it is; yet like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than
+imitated.  He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank
+verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
+
+The highest praise of genius is original invention.  Milton cannot be
+said to have contrived the structure of an epic poem, and therefore owes
+reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations
+must be indebted for the art of poetical narration, for the texture of
+the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and
+all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention.  But, of all the
+borrowers from Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted.  He was
+naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
+disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the
+thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them.  From
+his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is in
+his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be
+gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of
+support.  His great works were performed under discountenance and in
+blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for
+whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems,
+only because it is not the first.
+
+
+
+
+COWLEY.
+
+
+THE Life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has
+been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination and
+elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of
+literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has
+produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the
+character, not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail,
+that scarcely anything is distinctly known, but all is shown confused and
+enlarged through the mist of panegyric.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in the year one thousand sir hundred and
+eighteen.  His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals
+under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not
+have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the
+register of St. Dunstan’s parish gives reason to suspect that his father
+was a sectary.  Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and
+consequently left him to the care of his mother: whom Wood represents as
+struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as she
+lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded by seeing her son
+eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking his
+prosperity.  We know at least, from Sprat’s account, that he always
+acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude.
+
+In the window of his mother’s apartment lay Spenser’s “Fairy Queen,” in
+which he very early took delight to read, till by feeling the charms of
+verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet.  Such are the
+accidents which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten,
+produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity for some
+certain science or employment, which is commonly called Genius.  The true
+Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some
+particular direction.  Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the
+present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of
+Richardson’s treatise.
+
+By his mother’s solicitation he was admitted into Westminster school,
+where he was soon distinguished.  He was wont, says Sprat, to relate,
+“that he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers
+never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar.”
+
+This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.
+It is surely very difficult to tell anything as it was heard, when Sprat
+could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the book
+to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation.  A memory
+admitting some things, and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion
+that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the
+appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by
+nature for literary politeness.  But in the author’s own honest relation,
+the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such “an enemy to all constraint,
+that his master never could prevail on him to learn the rules without
+book.”  He does not tell that he could not learn the rules; but that,
+being able to perform his exercises without them, and being an “enemy to
+constraint,” he spared himself the labour.
+
+Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope might be said “to lisp
+in numbers;” and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of
+language, but of comprehension of things, as to more tardy minds seems
+scarcely credible.  But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no
+doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written, but printed in
+his thirteenth year; containing, with other poetical compositions, “The
+tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe,” written when he was ten years
+old; and “Constantia and Philetus,” written two years after.
+
+While he was yet at school he produced a comedy called “Love’s Riddle,”
+though it was not published till he had been some time at Cambridge.
+This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with
+the living world, and therefore the time at which it was composed adds
+little to the wonders of Cowley’s minority.
+
+In 1636 he was removed to Cambridge, where he continued his studies with
+great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was yet a
+young student, the greater part of his “Davideis;” a work of which the
+materials could not have been collected without the study of many years,
+but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity.
+
+Two years after his settlement at Cambridge, he published “Love’s
+Riddle,” with a poetical dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby, of whose
+acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and
+“Naufragium Joculare,” a comedy written in Latin, but without due
+attention to the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere
+prose.  It was printed, with a dedication in verse to Dr. Comber, master
+of the college; but having neither the facility of a popular, nor the
+accuracy of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected.
+
+At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince passed through Cambridge
+in his way to York, he was entertained with the representation of “The
+Guardian,” a comedy which Cowley says was neither written nor acted, but
+rough-drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars.  That this comedy was
+printed during his absence from his country he appears to have considered
+as injurious to his reputation; though, during the suppression of the
+theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with sufficient approbation.
+
+In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the
+Parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John’s
+College in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire,
+called “The Puritan and Papist,” which was only inserted in the last
+collection of his works; and so distinguished himself by the warmth of
+his loyalty, and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the
+kindness and confidence of those who attended the king, and amongst
+others of Lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it was
+extended.
+
+About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, he followed
+the Queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the Lord Jermyn,
+afterwards Earl of St. Albans, and was employed in such correspondence as
+the royal cause required, and particularly in ciphering and deciphering
+the letters that passed between the king and queen; an employment of the
+highest confidence and honour.  So wide was his province of intelligence,
+that for several years it filled all his days and two or three nights in
+the week.
+
+In the year 1647, his “Mistress” was published; for he imagined, as he
+declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that “poets are scarcely
+thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging
+themselves to be true to love.”
+
+This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the
+fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful
+homage to his Laura refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled
+Europe with love and poetry.  But the basis of all excellence is truth:
+he that professes love ought to feel its power.  Petrarch was a real
+lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness.  Of Cowley, we are
+told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, that, whatever he
+may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by
+which his heart was divided, he in reality was in love but once, and then
+never had resolution to tell his passion.
+
+This consideration cannot but abate in some measure the reader’s esteem
+for the works and the author.  To love excellence is natural; it is
+natural likewise for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an
+elaborate display of his own qualifications.  The desire of pleasing has
+in different men produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but
+it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an airy
+“nothing,” and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned
+from his master Pindar to call “the dream of a shadow.”
+
+It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the
+bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment.  No
+man needs to be so burdened with life as to squander it in voluntary
+dreams of fictitious occurrences.  The man that sits down to suppose
+himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an
+elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never
+within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of
+his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw; complains of
+jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and
+sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory for
+images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope or the gloominess of despair;
+and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis sometimes in flowers fading
+as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her virtues.
+
+At Paris, as secretary to Lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting
+things of real importance with real men and real women, and at that time
+did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry.  Some of his
+letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington, from April to
+December, in 1650, are preserved in “Miscellanea Aulica,” a collection of
+papers published by Brown.  These letters, being written like those of
+other men whose minds are more on things than words, contribute no
+otherwise to his reputation, than as they show him to have been above the
+affectation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known that the business
+of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetoric.
+
+One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice.  Speaking of the
+Scotch treaty then in agitation:
+
+“The Scotch treaty,” says he, “is the only thing now in which we are
+vitally concerned; I am one of the last hopers, and yet cannot now
+abstain from believing that an agreement will be made; all people upon
+the place incline to that opinion.  The Scotch will moderate something of
+the rigour of their demands; the mutual necessity of an accord is
+visible; the king is persuaded of it.  And to tell you the truth (which I
+take to be an argument above all the rest), Virgil has told me something
+to that purpose.”
+
+This expression, from a secretary of the present time, would be
+considered as merely ludicrous, or at most as an ostentatious display of
+scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with
+superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted on
+this great occasion the Virgilian lots, and to have given some credit to
+the answer of his oracle.
+
+Some years afterwards, “business,” says Sprat, “passed of course into
+other hands;” and Cowley, being no longer useful at Paris, was in 1656
+sent back into England, that, “under pretence of privacy and retirement,
+he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this
+nation.”
+
+Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of the
+usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and being
+examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed
+without the security of a thousand pounds given by Dr. Scarborough.
+
+This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems to
+have inserted something suppressed in subsequent editions, which was
+interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty.  In this preface he
+declares, that “his desire had been for some days past, and did still
+very vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American
+plantations, and to forsake this world for ever.”
+
+From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers
+brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him, and
+indeed it does not seem to have lessened his reputation.  His wish for
+retirement we can easily believe to be undissembled; a man harassed in
+one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course of business
+that employed all his days and half his nights, in ciphering and
+deciphering, comes to his own country and steps into a prison, will be
+willing enough to retire to some place of quiet and of safety.  Yet let
+neither our reverence for a genius, nor our pity for a sufferer, dispose
+us to forget, that, if his activity was virtue, his retreat was
+cowardice.
+
+He then took upon him the character of physician, still, according to
+Sprat, with intention “to dissemble the main design of his coming over;”
+and, as Mr. Wood relates, “complying with the men then in power (which
+was much taken notice of by the royal party), he obtained an order to be
+created doctor of physic; which being done to his mind (whereby he gained
+the ill-will of some of his friends), he went into France again, having
+made a copy of verses on Oliver’s death.”
+
+This is no favourable representation; yet even in this not much wrong can
+be discovered.  How far he complied with the men in power is to be
+inquired before he can be blamed.  It is not said that he told them any
+secrets, or assisted them by intelligence or any other act.  If he only
+promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands he was might free him from
+confinement, he did what no law of society prohibits.
+
+The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power of his
+enemy, may, without any breach of his integrity, regain his liberty, or
+preserve his life, by a promise of neutrality: for the stipulation gives
+the enemy nothing which he had not before.  The neutrality of a captive
+may be always secured by his imprisonment or death.  He that is at the
+disposal of another may not promise to aid him in any injurious act,
+because no power can compel active obedience.  He may engage to do
+nothing, but not to do ill.
+
+There is reason to think that Cowley promised little.  It does not appear
+that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without
+security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made
+him think himself secure, for, at that dissolution of government which
+followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed
+his former station, and stayed till the restoration.
+
+“He continued,” says his biographer, “under these bonds till the general
+deliverance;” it is therefore to be supposed that he did not go to
+France, and act again for the king, without the consent of his bondsman:
+that he did not show his loyalty at the hazard of his friend, but by his
+friend’s permission.
+
+Of the verses on Oliver’s death, in which Wood’s narrative seems to imply
+something encomiastic, there has been no appearance.  There is a
+discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses intermixed, but
+such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of
+usurpation.
+
+A doctor of physic, however, he was made at Oxford in December, 1657; and
+in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account has been
+published by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental
+philosophers with the title of Doctor Cowley.
+
+There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice: but his
+preparatory studies have contributed something to the honour of his
+country.  Considering botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into
+Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a favourite study
+affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany in the mind
+of Cowley turned into poetry.  He composed, in Latin, several books on
+plants, of which the first and second display the qualities of herbs, in
+elegiac verse; the third and fourth, the beauties of flowers, in various
+measures; and the fifth and sixth, the use of trees, in heroic numbers.
+
+At the same time were produced, from the same university, the two great
+poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles,
+but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry; in which the English,
+till their works and May’s poem appeared, seemed unable to contest the
+palm with any other of the lettered nations.
+
+If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared (for May I
+hold to be superior to both), the advantage seems to lie on the side of
+Cowley.  Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the
+ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity or
+elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.
+
+At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and with
+consciousness, not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of
+great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that he
+might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a song of triumph.  But
+this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were inevitably
+disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed.  He had
+been promised, by both Charles the First and Second, the mastership of
+the Savoy; “but he lost it,” says Wood, “by certain persons, enemies to
+the Muses.”
+
+The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having by such
+alteration as he thought proper, fitted his old comedy of “The Guardian”
+for the stage, he produced it under the title of “The Cutter of Coleman
+Street.”  It was treated on the stage with great severity, and was
+afterwards censured as a satire on the king’s party.
+
+Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related to
+Mr. Dennis, “that, when they told Cowley how little favour had been shown
+him, he received the news of his ill success, not with so much firmness
+as might have been expected from so great a man.”
+
+What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered, cannot
+be known.  He that misses his end will never be as much pleased as he
+that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to
+himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man perhaps has
+a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw the
+whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and shame,
+by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.
+
+For the rejection of this play it is difficult now to find the reason: it
+certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and
+exciting merriment.  From the charge of disaffection he exculpates
+himself in his preface, by observing how unlikely it is, that, having
+followed the royal family through all their distresses, “he should choose
+the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them.”  It appears,
+however, from the theatrical register of Downes the prompter, to have
+been popularly considered as a satire on the royalists.
+
+That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his pretensions
+and his discontent in an ode called “The Complaint;” in which he styles
+himself the _melancholy_ Cowley.  This met with the usual fortune of
+complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity.
+
+These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in some
+stanzas, written about that time on the choice of a laureate; a mode of
+satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling, perhaps
+every generation of poets has been teased.
+
+    Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court,
+       Making apologies for his bad play;
+    Every one gave him so good a report,
+       That Apollo gave heed to all he could say:
+
+    Nor would he have had, ’tis thought, a rebuke,
+       Unless he had done some notable folly;
+    Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
+       Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.
+
+His vehement desire of retirement now came again upon him.  “Not
+finding,” says the morose Wood, “that preferment conferred upon him which
+he expected, while others for their money carried away most places, he
+retired discontented into Surrey.”
+
+“He was now,” says the courtly Sprat, “weary of the vexations and
+formalities of an active condition.  He had been perplexed with a long
+compliance to foreign manners.  He was satiated with the arts of a court;
+which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet
+nothing could make it quiet.  Those were the reasons that moved him to
+follow the violent inclination of his own mind, which, in the greatest
+throng of his former business, had still called upon him, and represented
+to him the true delights of solitary studies, of temperate pleasures, and
+a moderate revenue below the malice and flatteries of fortune.”
+
+So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shown!  But
+actions are visible, though motives are secret.  Cowley certainly
+retired; first to Barn Elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey.  He
+seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the _hum of men_.  He
+thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence of
+mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America, wisely
+went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find his
+way back when solitude should grow tedious.  His retreat was at first but
+slenderly accommodated; yet he soon obtained, by the interest of the Earl
+of St. Alban’s, and the Duke of Buckingham, such lease of the queen’s
+lands as afforded him an ample income.
+
+By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if he
+now was happy.  Let them peruse one of his letters accidentally preserved
+by Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that may hereafter
+pant for solitude.
+
+                            “TO DR. THOMAS SPRAT,
+
+                                              “_Chertsey_, _May_ 21, 1665.
+
+    “The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a
+    defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days.  And, two
+    after, had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable
+    to move or turn myself in my bed.  This is my personal fortune here
+    to begin with.  And, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and
+    have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my
+    neighbours.  What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows;
+    if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging.  Another
+    misfortune has been, and stranger than all the rest, that you have
+    broke your word with me and failed to come, even though you told Mr.
+    Bois that you would.  This is what they call _monstri simile_.  I do
+    hope to recover my late hurt so far within five or six days (though
+    it be uncertain yet whether I shall ever recover it) as to walk about
+    again.  And then, methinks, you and I and the dean might be very
+    merry upon St. Ann’s Hill.  You might very conveniently come hither
+    the way of Hampton Town, lying there one night.  I write this in
+    pain, and can say no more: _verbum sapienti_.”
+
+He did not long enjoy the pleasure or suffer the uneasiness of solitude;
+for he died at the Porch-house in Chertsey, in 1667 [28th July], in the
+forty-ninth year of his age.
+
+He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser; and King Charles
+pronounced, “That Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better man in
+England.”  He is represented by Dr. Sprat as the most amiable of mankind;
+and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, as it has never been
+contradicted by envy or by faction.
+
+Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the
+narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of civil war were yet
+recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated, was obliged
+to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and to leave
+curiosity often unsatisfied.  What he did not tell cannot, however, now
+be known; I must therefore recommend the perusal of his work, to which my
+narration can be considered only as a slender supplement.
+
+Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead
+of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the minds of
+men, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too
+much praised, and too much neglected at another.
+
+Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man,
+has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different
+forms.  About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of
+writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a
+criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some
+account.
+
+The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning
+was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme,
+instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such
+verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the
+modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by
+counting the syllables.
+
+If the father of criticism had rightly denominated poetry τéχνη μιμητικὴ,
+_an imitative art_, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their
+right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated
+anything; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms
+of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.
+
+Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits.  Dryden
+confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne
+in wit; but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.
+
+If wit be well described by Pope, as being “that which has been often
+thought, but was never before so well expressed,” they certainly never
+attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in
+their thoughts, and were careless of their diction.  But Pope’s account
+of wit is undoubtedly erroneous; he depresses it below its natural
+dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of
+language.
+
+If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as
+wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is,
+upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which
+he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the
+metaphysical poets have seldom risen.  Their thoughts are often new, but
+seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the
+reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently
+by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.
+
+But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more
+rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of _discordia
+concors_; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult
+resemblances in things apparently unlike.  Of wit, thus defined, they
+have more than enough.  The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by
+violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations,
+comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety
+surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought,
+and though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
+
+From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred that
+they were not successful in representing or moving the affections.  As
+they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, they
+had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to
+conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they
+never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but
+wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as beings
+looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as epicurean
+deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of
+life, without interest and without emotion.  Their courtship was void of
+fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow.  Their wish was only to say
+what they hoped had been never said before.
+
+Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic; for they
+never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once
+fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden
+astonishment, and the second rational admiration.  Sublimity is produced
+by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion.  Great thoughts are always
+general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in
+descriptions not descending to minuteness.  It is with great propriety
+that subtlety, which in its original import means exility of particles,
+is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction.  Those
+writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of
+greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
+Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into
+fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and
+laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the scenes of life,
+than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide
+effulgence of a summer noon.
+
+What they wanted, however, of the sublime they endeavoured to supply by
+hyperbole; their amplifications had no limits; they left not only reason
+but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused
+magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be
+imagined.
+
+Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost; if
+they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise
+sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far
+fetched, they were often worth the carriage.  To write on their plan, it
+was at least necessary to read and think.  No man could be born a
+metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions
+copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by
+traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and
+volubility of syllables.
+
+In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised
+either by recollection or inquiry; something already learned is to be
+retrieved, or something new is to be examined.  If their greatness seldom
+elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is not
+always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are
+employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity has
+thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found
+buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know
+their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity and
+polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety
+though less copiousness of sentiment.
+
+This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and his
+followers, had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of very
+extensive and various knowledge, and by Jonson, whose manner resembled
+that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of his
+sentiments.
+
+When their reputation was high, they had undoubtedly more imitators than
+time has left behind.  Their immediate successors, of whom any
+remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham, Cowley,
+Clieveland, and Milton.  Denham and Waller sought another way to fame, by
+improving the harmony of our members.  Milton tried the metaphysic style
+only in his lines upon Hobson the carrier.  Cowley adopted it, and
+excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment and more music.
+Suckling neither improved versification nor abounded in conceits.  The
+fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach
+it, and Milton disdained it.
+
+Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have
+therefore collected instances of the modes of writing by which this
+species of poets (for poets they were called by themselves and their
+admirers) was eminently distinguished.
+
+As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being admired
+than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of
+learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry.  Thus,
+Cowley on Knowledge:
+
+    The sacred tree ’midst the fair orchard grew;
+       The phœnix truth did on it rest,
+       And built his perfumed nest,
+    That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic show.
+       Each leaf did learned notions give,
+       And the apples were demonstrative;
+    So clear their colour and divine,
+    The very shads they cast did other lights outshine.
+
+On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:
+
+    Love was with thy life entwined,
+    Close as heat with fire is join’d;
+    A powerful brand prescribed the date
+    Of thine, like Meleager’s fate.
+    Th’ antiperistasis of age
+    More enflam’d thy amorous rage.
+
+In the following verses we have an allusion to a rabbinical opinion
+concerning manna:
+
+    Variety I ask not: give me one
+    To live perpetually upon.
+    The person Love does to us fit,
+    Like manna, has the taste of all in it.
+
+Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastic verses:
+
+       In everything there naturally grows
+    A balsamum to keep it fresh and new,
+       If ’twere not injured by extrinsic blows:
+    Your youth and beauty are this balm in you.
+       But you, of learning and religion,
+    And virtue and such ingredients, have made
+       A mithridate, whose operation
+    Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.
+
+Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have
+something in them too scholastic, they are not inelegant:
+
+    This twilight of two years, not past nor next,
+       Some emblem is of me, or I of this,
+    Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,
+       Whose what and where in disputation is,
+       If I should call me anything, should miss.
+    I sum the years and me, and find me not
+       Debtor to th’ old, nor creditor to th’ new.
+    That cannot say, my thanks I have forget,
+       Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true
+       This bravery is, since these times show’d me you.—DONNE.
+
+Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne’s reflection upon man as a
+microcosm:
+
+    If men be worlds, there is in every one
+    Something to answer in some proportion;
+    All the world’s riches; and in good men, this
+    Virtue, our form’s form, and our soul’s soul, is
+
+Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural,
+all their books are full.
+
+To a lady, who wrote posies for rings:
+
+    They, who above do various circles find,
+    Say, like a ring, th’ equator Heaven does bind
+    When Heaven shall be adorned by thee,
+    (Which then more Heaven than ’tis will be)
+    ’Tis thou must write the poesy there,
+       For it wanteth one as yet,
+    Then the sun pass through’t twice a year,
+       The sun, which is esteem’d the god of wit.—COWLEY.
+
+The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy are
+by Cowley, with still more perplexity applied to love:
+
+    Five years ago (says story) I loved you,
+    For which you call me most inconstant now;
+    Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man;
+    For I am not the same that I was then:
+    No flesh is now the same ’twas then in me,
+    And that my mind is changed yourself may see.
+    The same thoughts to retain still, and intents
+    Were more inconstant far; for accidents
+    Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,
+    If from one subject they t’ another move;
+    My members then the father members were,
+    From whence these take their birth, which now are here
+    If then this body love what th’ other did,
+    ’Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.
+
+The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to
+travels through different countries:
+
+    Hast thou not found each woman’s breast
+       (The land where thou hast travelled)
+    Either by savages possest,
+       Or wild, and uninhabited?
+    What joy could’st take, or what repose,
+    In countries so uncivilis’d as those?
+    Lust, the scorching dog-star, here
+       Rages with immoderate heat;
+    Whilst Pride, the ragged northern bear,
+       In others makes the cold too great.
+    And where these are temperate known,
+    The soil’s all barren sand, or rocky stone.—COWLEY.
+
+A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt:
+
+    The fate of Egypt I sustain,
+    And never feel the dew of rain,
+    From clouds which in the head appear;
+    But all my too-much moisture ewe
+    To overflowings of the heart below.—COWLEY.
+
+The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury
+and rites of sacrifice:
+
+    And yet this death of mine, I fear,
+    Will ominous to her appear:
+       When, sound in every other part,
+    Her sacrifice is found without an heart.
+       For the last tempest of my death
+    Shall sigh out that too, with my breath.
+
+That the chaos was harmonised, has been recited of old; but whence the
+different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover:
+
+    Th’ ungovern’d parts no correspondence knew;
+    An artless war from thwarting motions grew;
+    Till they to number and fixed rules were brought.
+    Water and air he for the tenor chose,
+    Earth made the base; the treble flame arose.—COWLEY.
+
+The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has
+extended them into worlds.  If the lines are not easily understood, they
+may be read again:
+
+             On a round ball
+       A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
+       An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
+    And quickly make that which was nothing, all.
+          So doth each tear,
+          Which thee doth wear,
+    A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
+    Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
+    This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.
+
+On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out “Confusion
+worse confounded.”
+
+    Hers lies a she sun, and a he moon here,
+       She gives the best light to his sphere,
+       Or each is both, and all, and so,
+    They unto one another nothing owe.—DONNE.
+
+Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?
+
+    Though God be our true glass through which we see
+    All, since the being of all things is He,
+    Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
+    Things in proportion fit, by perspective
+    Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
+    Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
+
+Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote
+ideas could be brought together?
+
+    Since ’tis my doom, love’s undershrieve,
+          Why this reprieve?
+    Why doth my she advowson fly
+          Incumbency?
+    To sell thyself dust thou intend
+          By candles end,
+    And hold the contract thus in doubt,
+          Life’s taper out?
+    Think but how soon the market fails,
+    Your sex lives faster than the males;
+    And if to measure age’s span,
+    The sober Julian were th’ account of man,
+    Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.—CLEVELAND.
+
+Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:
+
+    By every wind that comes this way,
+       Send me at least a sigh or two,
+    Such and so many I’ll repay
+       As shall themselves make winds to get to you.—COWLEY.
+
+    In tears I’ll waste these eyes,
+    By love so vainly fed:
+    So lust of old the deluge punished.—COWLEY.
+
+    All arm’d in brass, the richest dress of war,
+    (A dismal glorious sight!) he shone afar.
+    The sun himself started with sudden fright,
+    To see his beams return so dismal bright.—COWLEY.
+
+A universal consternation:
+
+    His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
+    Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
+    Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.
+    Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;
+    Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
+    Silence and horror fill the place around;
+    Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.—COWLEY.
+
+Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.
+
+Of his mistress bathing:
+
+    The fish around her crowded, as they do
+    To the false light that treacherous fishers show,
+    And all with as much ease might taken be,
+       As she at first took me;
+       For ne’er did light so clear
+       Among the waves appear,
+    Though every night the sun himself set there.—COWLEY.
+
+The poetical effect of a lover’s name upon glass:
+
+       My name engraved herein
+    Both contribute my firmness to this glass:
+       Which, ever since that charm, hath been
+    As hard as that which graved it was.—DONNE.
+
+Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling.  On an inconstant
+woman:
+
+    He enjoys the calmy sunshine now,
+       And no breath stirring hears,
+    In the clear heaven of thy brow
+       No smallest cloud appears.
+    He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,
+       And trusts the faithless April of thy May.—COWLEY.
+
+Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:
+
+       Nothing yet in thee is seen,
+       But when a genial heat warms thee within,
+       A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
+       Hers buds an L, and there a B,
+       Here sprouts a V, and there a T,
+    And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.—COWLEY.
+
+As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their
+allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they
+compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.
+
+Physic and chirurgery for a lover:
+
+       Gently, ah gently, madam, touch
+    The wound, which you yourself have made;
+       That pain must needs be very much
+    Which makes me of your hand afraid.
+       Cordials of pity give me now,
+    For I too weak of purgings grow.—COWLEY.
+
+The world and a clock
+
+    Mahol th’ inferior world’s fantastic face
+    Through all the turns of matter’s maze did trace;
+    Great Nature’s well-set clock in pieces took;
+    On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
+    Of life and motion, and with equal art
+    Made up the whole again of every part.—COWLEY.
+
+A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its
+due honour, Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun:
+
+    The moderate value of our guiltless ore
+    Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
+    Yet why should hallow’d vestal’s sacred shrine
+    Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
+    These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
+    Than a few embers, for a deity.
+    Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
+    No sun, but warm’s devotion at our fire:
+    He’d leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
+    Our profound Vulcan ’bove that waggoner.
+    For wants he heat, or light? or would have store
+    Of both? ’tis here: and what can suns give more?
+    Nay, what’s the sun but, in a different name,
+    A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame?
+    Then let this truth reciprocally run,
+    The sun’s heaven’s coalery, and coals our sun.
+
+Death, a voyage:
+
+          No family
+    E’er rigg’d a soul for Heaven’s discovery,
+    With whom more venturers might boldly dare
+    Venture their stakes with him in joy to share.—DONNE.
+
+Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as
+no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.
+
+A lover neither dead nor alive:
+
+    Then down I laid my head
+    Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
+    And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.
+
+       Ah, sottish soul, said I,
+       When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
+       Fool to resume her broken chain,
+       And row her galley here again!
+       Fool, to that body to return
+    Where it condemned and destined is to burn!
+    Once dead, how can it be,
+    Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
+    That thou should’st come to live it o’er again in me?—COWLEY.
+
+A lover’s heart, a hand grenado:
+
+    Woe to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
+       Into the self same room;
+       ’Twill tear and blow up all within,
+    Like a grenade shot into a magazine.
+    Then shall Love keep the ashes and torn parts,
+       Of both our broken hearts;
+       Shalt out of both one new one make;
+    From hers th’ allay, from mine the metal take.—COWLEY.
+
+The poetical propagation of light:
+
+    The prince’s favour is diffused o’er all,
+    From which all fortunes names, and natures fall:
+    Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride’s bright eyes,
+       At every glance a constellation flies,
+    And sows the court with stars, and doth prevent
+       In light and power, the all-ey’d firmament:
+    First her eye kindles other ladies’ eyes,
+       Then from their beams their jewels’ lustres rise;
+    And from their jewels torches do take fire,
+    And all is warmth, and light, and good desire.—DONNE.
+
+They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of
+dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often
+gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their
+thoughts.
+
+That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality is by Cowley
+thus expressed:
+
+    Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand
+    Than woman can be placed by Nature’s hand;
+    And I must needs, I’m sure, a loser be,
+    To change thee as thou’rt there, for very thee.
+
+That prayer and labour should co-operate are thus taught by Donne:
+
+    In none but us are such mix’d engines found,
+    As hands of double office; for the ground
+    We till with them; and them to heaven we raise
+    Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays,
+    Doth but one half, that’s none.
+
+By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procrastination, is
+thus illustrated:
+
+       That which I should have begun
+    In my youth’s morning, now late must be done;
+    And I, as giddy travellers must do,
+    Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost
+    Light and strength, dark and tired, must then ride post.
+
+All that man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is
+comprehended by Donne in the following lines:
+
+    Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie
+    After enabled but to suck and cry.
+    Think, when ’twas grown to most, ’twas a poor inn,
+    A province pack’d up in two yards of skin,
+    And that usurp’d, or threaten’d with a rage
+    Of sicknesses or their true mother, age.
+    But think that death hath now enfranchised thee;
+    Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;
+    Think, that a rusty piece discharged is flown
+    In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
+    And freely flies: this to thy soul allow,
+    Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch’d but now.
+
+They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting.  Cowley thus apostrophises
+beauty:
+
+       Thou tyrant which leav’st no man free!
+    Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be!
+    Thou murtherer, which has kill’d, and devil, which would’st damn me!
+
+Thus he addresses his mistress:
+
+    Thou who, in many a propriety,
+    So truly art the sun to me,
+    Add one more likeness, which I’m sure you can,
+    And let me and my sun beget a man.
+
+Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:
+
+    Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been
+    So much as of original sin,
+    Such charms thy beauty wears, as might
+    Desires in dying confest saints excite.
+       Thou with strange adultery
+    Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
+       Awake all men do lust for thee,
+    And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
+
+The true taste of tears:
+
+    Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,
+       And take my tears, which are love’s wine,
+    And try your mistress’ tears at home;
+       For all are false, that taste not just like mine.—DONNE.
+
+This is yet more indelicate:
+
+    As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
+    As that which from chas’d musk-cat’s pores doth trill,
+    As th’ almighty balm of th’ early east;
+    Such are the sweet drops of my mistress’ breast.
+    And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
+    They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets:
+    Rank, sweaty froth thy mistress’ brow defiles.—DONNE.
+
+Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be
+pathetic:
+
+    As men in hell are from diseases free,
+    So from all other ills am I,
+    Free from their known formality:
+    But all pains eminently lie in thee.—COWLEY.
+
+They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which
+they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were
+popular.  Bacon remarks, that some falsehoods are continued by tradition,
+because they supply commodious allusions.
+
+    It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke:
+    In vain it something would have spoke;
+    The love within too strong for’t was,
+    Like poison put into a Venice-glass.—COWLEY.
+
+In forming descriptions, they looked out not for images, but for
+conceits.  Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to
+adorn.  Dryden’s Night is well known; Donne’s is as follows:
+
+    Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
+    Time’s dead low-water; when all minds divest
+    To-morrow’s business; when the labourers have
+    Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
+    Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
+    Now when the client, whose last hearing is
+    To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
+    Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them the
+    Again by death, although sad watch he keep;
+    Doth practise dying by a little sleep:
+    Thou at this midnight seest me.
+
+It must be, however, confessed of these writers, that if they are upon
+common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle; yet, where
+scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and
+acuteness may justly be admired.  What Cowley has written upon Hope shows
+an unequalled fertility of invention:
+
+       Hops, whose weak being mind is,
+       Alike if it succeed and if it miss;
+    Whom good or ill does equally confound,
+    And both the horns of fate’s dilemma wound;
+       Vain shadow! which dust vanish quite,
+       Both at full noon and perfect night!
+       The stars have not a possibility
+       Of blessing thee;
+    If things then from their end we happy call
+    ’Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
+       Hope, thou bold tester of delight,
+       Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour’st it quite!
+       Thou bring’st us an estate, yet leav’st us poor
+       By clogging it with legacies before!
+       The joys, which we entire should wed,
+       Come deflowr’d virgins to our bed;
+    Good fortunes without gain imported be,
+       Such mighty custom’s paid to thee:
+    For joy, like wine kept close, does better taste
+    If it take air before its spirits waste.
+
+To the following comparison of a man that travels, and his wife that
+stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether
+absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim:
+
+    Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
+       Though I must go, endure not yet
+    A breach, but an expansion,
+       Like gold to airy thinness beat.
+    If they be two, they are two so
+       As stiff twin compasses are two;
+    Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
+       To move, but doth if th’ other do.
+    And, though it in the centre sit,
+       Yet, when the other far doth roam,
+    It leans and hearkens after it,
+       And grows erect as that comes home.
+    Such wilt thou be to me, who must
+       Like th’ other foot obliquely run.
+    Thy firmness makes my circle just,
+       And makes me end where I begun.—DONNE.
+
+In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or
+vicious, is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of
+something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight, by
+their desire of exciting admiration.
+
+Having thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation of the style
+and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine
+particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race,
+and undoubtedly the best.
+
+His Miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, written some
+as they were dictated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were called
+forth by different occasions; with great variety of style and sentiment,
+from burlesque levity to awful grandeur.  Such an assemblage of
+diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded.  To choose
+the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts of
+criticism.  I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many
+readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes,
+which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a kingdom.  I will,
+however, venture to recommend Cowley’s first piece, which ought to be
+inscribed “To my Muse,” for want of which the second couplet is without
+reference.  When the title is added, there wills till remain a defect;
+for every piece ought to contain in itself whatever is necessary to make
+it intelligible.  Pope has some epitaphs without names; which are
+therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the present, but hardly
+appropriated.
+
+The “Ode on Wit” is almost without a rival.  It was about the time of
+Cowley that _wit_, which had been till then used for _intellection_, in
+contradistinction to _will_, took the meaning, whatever it be, which it
+now bears.
+
+Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts,
+none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley
+condemns exuberance of wit:—
+
+    Yet ’tis not to adorn and gild each part,
+       That shows more cost than art.
+    Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear;
+       Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
+    Several lights will not be seen,
+       If there be nothing else between.
+    Men doubt, because they stand so thick i’ th’ sky,
+    If those be stars which paint the galaxy.
+
+In his verses to Lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to
+praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley’s compositions, some
+striking thoughts, but they are not well wrought.  His “Elegy on Sir
+Henry Wotton” is vigorous and happy; the series of thoughts is easy and
+natural; and the conclusion, though a little weakened by the intrusion of
+Alexander, is elegant and forcible.
+
+It may be remarked, that in this elegy, and in most of his encomiastic
+poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes.
+
+In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little
+passion; a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious
+privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called
+forth to action can display.  He knew how to distinguish, and how to
+commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes to make us
+weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how
+his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire.  It is the
+odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true.  The bay-leaf
+crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not
+assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that
+could attend to such minuteness of physiology.  But the power of Cowley
+is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding.
+
+The “Chronicle” is a composition unrivalled and alone: such gaiety of
+fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, such a
+succession of images, and such a dance of words, it is in vain to expect
+except from Cowley.  His strength always appears in his agility; his
+volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an elastic
+mind.  His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the moralist, the
+politician, and the critic, mingle their influence even in this airy
+frolic of genius.  To such a performance Suckling could have brought the
+gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have supplied the knowledge,
+but not the gaiety.
+
+The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun, and happily
+concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived and
+happily expressed.  Cowley’s critical abilities have not been
+sufficiently observed: the few decisions and remarks, which his prefaces
+and his notes on the “Davideis” supply, were at that time accessions to
+English literature, and show such skill as raises our wish for more
+examples.
+
+The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the
+familiar descending to the burlesque.
+
+His two metrical disquisitions _for_ and _against_ Reason are no mean
+specimens of metaphysical poetry.  The stanzas against knowledge produce
+little conviction.  In those which are intended to exalt the human
+faculties, Reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not
+of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation.  In the verses
+_for_ Reason is a passage which Bentley, in the only English verses which
+he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the
+inferiority of an imitator.
+
+    The Holy Book like the eighth sphere doth shine
+       With thousand lights of truth divine,
+    So numberless the stars, that to our eye
+       It makes all but one galaxy.
+    Yet Reason must assist too; for, in seas
+       So vast and dangerous as these,
+    Our course by stars above we cannot know
+       Without the compass too below.
+
+After this says Bentley:
+
+    Who travels in religious jars,
+       Truth mix’d with error, shade with rays
+    Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars,
+       In ocean wide or sinks or strays.
+
+Cowley seems to have had what Milton is believed to have wanted, the
+skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has therefore
+closed his Miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw, which apparently
+excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are beauties
+which common authors may justly think not only above their attainment,
+but above their ambition.
+
+To the Miscellanies succeed the Anacreontics, or paraphrastical
+translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under the
+name of Anacreon.  Of those songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety, in
+which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but the
+enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing than a
+faithful representation, having retained their sprightliness, but lost
+their simplicity.  The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has
+admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly
+made more amiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly
+declare their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom
+courtesy and ignorance are content to style the learned.
+
+These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any
+other of Cowley’s works.  The diction shows nothing of the mould of time,
+and the sentiments are at no great distance from our present habitudes of
+thought.  Real mirth must always be natural, and nature is uniform.  Men
+have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed the
+same way.
+
+Levity of thought naturally produces familiarity of language, and the
+familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of comedy
+when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from
+age to age with equal pleasure.  The artifices of inversion by which the
+established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new
+words, or new meanings of words, are introduced, is practised, not by
+those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be admired.
+
+The Anacreontics, therefore, of Cowley, give now all the pleasure which
+they ever gave.  If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing more
+than for another, his power seems to have been greatest in the familiar
+and the festive.
+
+The next class of his poems is called “The Mistress,” of which it is not
+necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure.  They
+have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same proportion.
+They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copiousness of
+learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the
+writer’s knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly
+surprised into some improvement.  But, considered as the verses of a
+lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them.  They are
+neither courtly nor pathetic, have neither gallantry nor fondness.  His
+praises are too far sought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love,
+or to excite it; every stanza is crowded with darts and flames, with
+wounds and death, with mingled souls and with broken hearts.
+
+The principal artifice by which “The Mistress” is filled with conceits is
+very copiously displayed by Addison.  Love is by Cowley, as by other
+poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true
+of real fire is said of love, or figurative fire, the same word in the
+same sentence retaining both significations.  Thus “observing the cold
+regard of his mistress’s eyes, and at the same time their power of
+producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of ice.
+Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, he
+concludes the torrid zone to be habitable.  Upon the dying of a tree, on
+which he had cut his loves, he observes that his flames had burnt up and
+withered the tree.”
+
+These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists of
+thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other.
+Addison’s representation is sufficiently indulgent: that confusion of
+images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural it soon grows
+wearisome.  Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it;
+but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown in
+modern Italy.  Thus Sannazaro:
+
+    Aspice quam variis distringar Lesbia curis!
+       Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor:
+    Sum Nilus, sumque Ætna simul; restringite flammas
+       O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.
+
+One of the severe theologians of that time censured him as having
+published a book of profane and lascivious verses.  From the charge of
+profaneness, the constant tenor of his life, which seems to have been
+eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which
+discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the
+accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his works will
+sufficiently evince.
+
+Cowley’s “Mistress” has no power of seduction: she “plays round the head,
+but comes not at the heart.”  Her beauty and absence, her kindness and
+cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of
+emotion.  His poetical accounts of the virtues of plants, and colours of
+flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity.  The compositions
+are such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire
+by a philosophical rhymer who had only heard of another sex; for they
+turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but
+as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and
+sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always
+condemn as unnatural.
+
+The Pindaric Odes are now to be considered; a species of composition,
+which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in his list of the lost
+inventions of antiquity, and which he has made a bold and vigorous
+attempt to recover.
+
+The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympic and Nemæan Ode is by
+himself sufficiently explained.  His endeavour was, not to show precisely
+what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking.  He was therefore not at
+all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his sentiments; nothing
+was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written.
+
+Of the Olympic Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in
+elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength.  The connection is
+supplied with great perspicuity; and the thoughts, which to a reader of
+less skill seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any
+abruption.  Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may
+be very properly consulted as a commentary.
+
+The spirit of Pindar is indeed not everywhere equally preserved.  The
+following pretty lines are not such as his “deep mouth” was used to pour:
+
+       Great Rhea’s son,
+    If in Olympus’ top, where thou
+    Sitt’st to behold thy sacred show,
+    If in Alpheus’ silver flight,
+    If in my verse thou take delight,
+    My verse, great Rhea’s son, which is
+    Lofty as that and smooth as this.
+
+In the Nemæan Ode, the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe,
+whatever is said of the original new moon, her tender forehead and her
+horns, is superadded by his paraphrast, who has many other plays of words
+and fancy unsuitable to the original, as,
+
+       The table, free for ev’ry guest,
+       No doubt will thee admit,
+    And feast more upon thee, than thou on it
+
+He sometimes extends his author’s thoughts without improving them.  In
+the Olympionic an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley spends
+three lines in swearing by the Castalian Stream.  We are told of Theron’s
+bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in
+rhyming prose:
+
+    But in this thankless world the giver
+    Is envied even by the receiver;
+    ’Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion
+    Rather to hide than own the obligation:
+    Nay, ’tis much worse than so;
+    It now an artifice does grow
+    Wrongs and injuries to do,
+    Lest men should think we owe.
+
+It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit,
+when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction,
+could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.
+
+In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he
+sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindaric; and, if some deficiencies of
+language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard
+were to his contemporaries:
+
+       Begin the song, and strike the living lyre:
+    Lo how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted quire,
+       All hand in hand do decently advance,
+    And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance;
+    While the dance lasts, how long soe’er it be,
+    My music’s voice shall bear it company;
+       Till all gentle notes be drown’d
+    In the last trumpet’s dreadful sound.
+
+After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with
+lines like these:
+
+       But stop, my Muse—
+    Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,
+    Which does to rage begin—
+    —’Tis an unruly and hard-mouth’d horse—
+    ’Twill no unskilful touch endure,
+    But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.
+
+The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphysical
+race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their last ramifications, by
+which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things the
+parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming
+dignity becomes ridiculous.  Thus all the power of description is
+destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration, and the force of metaphors is
+lost, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the
+original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the
+illustration is drawn than that to which it is applied.
+
+Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode entitled the “Muse,”
+who goes to “take the air” in an intellectual chariot, to which he
+harnesses Fancy and Judgment, Wit and Eloquence, Memory and Invention;
+how he distinguished Wit from Fancy, or how Memory could properly
+contribute to Motion, he has not explained: we are however content to
+suppose that he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the
+Muse begin her career; but there is yet more to be done.
+
+    Let the _postillion_ Nature mount, and let
+    The _coachman_ Art be set;
+    And let the airy _footmen_, running all beside,
+    Make a long row of goodly pride;
+    Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences,
+    In a well-worded dress,
+    And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies,
+    In all their gaudy _liveries_.
+
+Every mind is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I
+cannot refuse myself the four next lines:
+
+    Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,
+       And bid it to put on;
+       For long though cheerful is the way,
+    And life, alas! allows but one ill winter’s day.
+
+In the same ode, celebrating the power of the Muse, he gives her
+prescience, or, in poetical language, the foresight of events hatching in
+futurity; but, once having an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to show
+us that he knows what an egg contains:
+
+    Thou into the close nests of Time dost peep,
+       And there with piercing eye
+    Through the firm shell and the thick white float spy
+       Years to come a-forming lie,
+    Close in their sacred fecundine asleep.
+
+The same thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically
+expressed by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of
+Cowley:
+
+    Omnibus mundi Dominator horis
+    Aptat urgendas per inane pennas,
+    Pars adhuc nido latet, et futuros
+          Crescit in annos.
+
+Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind
+of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require
+still more ignoble epithets.  A slaughter in the Red Sea “new dyes the
+water’s name;” and England, during the Civil War, was “Albion no more,
+nor to be named from white.”  It is surely by some fascination not easily
+surmounted, that a writer, professing to revive “the noblest and highest
+writing in verse,” makes this address to the new year:
+
+    Nay, if thou lov’st me, gentle year,
+    Let not so much as love be there,
+    Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,
+       Although I fear
+    There’s of this caution little need,
+       Yet, gentle year, take heed
+       How thou dost make
+       Such a mistake;
+    Such love I mean alone
+    As by thy cruel predecessors has been shown:
+    For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,
+    I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.
+
+The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior—
+
+       Ye critics, say,
+    How poor to this was Pindar’s style!
+
+Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Isthmian or Nemæan songs what
+Antiquity what disposed them to expect, will at least see that they are
+ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine that, if this
+be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival.
+
+To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley’s sentiments must be added
+the uncertainty and looseness of his measures.  He takes the liberty of
+using in any place a verse of any length, from two syllables to twelve.
+The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very little harmony to a
+modern ear; yet by examining the syllables we perceive them to be
+regular, and have reason enough for supposing that the ancient audiences
+were delighted with the sound.  The imitator ought therefore to have
+adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting; to have
+preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to have supplied
+smoothness of transition and continuity of thought.
+
+It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the “irregularity of numbers is the very
+thing” which makes “that kind of poesy fit for all manner of subjects.”
+But he should have remembered, that what is fit for everything can fit
+nothing well.  The great pleasure of verse arises from the known measure
+of the lines, and uniform structure of the stanzas, by which the voice is
+regulated, and the memory relieved.
+
+If the Pindaric style be, what Cowley thinks it, “the highest and noblest
+kind of writing in verse,” it can be adapted only to high and noble
+subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the critic,
+or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in verse
+which, according to Sprat, “is chiefly to be preferred for its near
+affinity to prose.”
+
+This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of
+the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately
+overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the
+pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like
+Pindar.  The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to
+break into the Latin: a poem on the Sheldonian Theatre, in which all
+kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the “Musæ
+Anglicanæ.”  Pindarism prevailed about half a century; but at last died
+gradually away, and other imitations supply its place.
+
+The Pindaric Odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical
+reputation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure;
+and surely though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many
+parts deserve at least that admiration which is due to great
+comprehension of knowledge, and great fertility of fancy.  The thoughts
+are often new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is
+disgraced by the littleness of another; and total negligence of language
+gives the noblest conceptions the appearance of a fabric august in the
+plan, but mean in the materials.  Yet surely those verses are not without
+a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that no man
+but Cowley could have written them.
+
+The “Davideis” now remains to be considered; a poem which the author
+designed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he makes no scruple
+of declaring, because the “Æneid” had that number; but he had leisure or
+perseverance only to write the third part.  Epic poems have been left
+unfinished by Virgil, Statius, Spenser, and Cowley.  That we have not the
+whole “Davideis” is, however, not much to be regretted; for in this
+undertaking Cowley is, tacitly at least, confessed to have miscarried.
+There are not many examples of so great a work produced by an author
+generally read, and generally praised, that has crept through a century
+with so little regard.  Whatever is said of Cowley, is meant of his other
+works.  Of the “Davideis” no mention is made; it never appears in books,
+nor emerges in conversation.  By the “Spectator” it has been once quoted;
+by Rymer it has once been praised; and by Dryden, in “Mac Flecknoe,” it
+has once been imitated; nor do I recollect much other notice from its
+publication till now in the whole succession of English literature.
+
+Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found
+partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of the
+work.
+
+Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and an
+imagination overawed and controlled.  We have been accustomed to
+acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentic narrative, and
+to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence as suppresses
+curiosity.  We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when
+he stops.  All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that
+which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion seems not only
+useless, but in some degree profane.
+
+Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of Divine Power
+are above the power of human genius to dignify.  The miracle of creation,
+however it may teem with images, is best described with little diffusion
+of language: “He spake the word, and they were made.”
+
+We are told that Saul “was troubled with an evil spirit;” from this
+Cowley takes an opportunity of describing hell, and telling the history
+of Lucifer, who was, he says,
+
+    Once general of a gilded host of sprites,
+    Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights;
+    But down like lightning, which him struck, he came
+    And roar’d at his first plunge into the flame.
+
+Lucifer makes a speech to the inferior agents of mischief, in which there
+is something of heathenism, and therefore of impropriety; and, to give
+efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing his breast with his long
+tail: Envy, after a pause, steps out, and among other declarations of her
+zeal utters these lines:
+
+    Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,
+    And thunder echo to the trembling sky;
+    Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height,
+    As shall the fire’s proud element affright,
+    Th’ old drudging sun, from his long-beaten way,
+    Shall at thy voice start, and misguide the day.
+    The jocund orbs shall break their measured pace,
+    And stubborn poles change their allotted place.
+    Heaven’s gilded troops shall flutter here and there,
+    Leaving their boasting songs tuned to a sphere.
+
+Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an allegorical
+being.
+
+It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that fancy and
+fiction lose their effect; the whole system of life, while the theocracy
+was yet visible, has an appearance so different from all other scenes of
+human action, that the reader of the sacred volume habitually considers
+it as the peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of mankind,
+that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; so that it is difficult
+even for imagination to place us in the state of them whose story is
+related, and by consequence their joys and griefs are not easily adopted,
+nor can the attention be often interested in anything that befalls them.
+
+To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical
+embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile
+impatience, or attract curiosity.  Nothing can be more disgusting than a
+narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are all that the
+“Davideis” supplies.
+
+One of the great sources of poetical delight is description, or the power
+of presenting pictures to the mind.  Cowley gives inferences instead of
+images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what
+thoughts the sight might have suggested.  When Virgil describes the stone
+which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and
+weight:
+
+    Saxum circumspicit ingens,
+    Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat
+    Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.
+
+Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,
+
+    I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
+    At once his murther and his monument.
+
+Of the sword taken from Goliath, he says,
+
+    A sword so great, that it was only fit
+    To cut off his great head that came with it.
+
+Other poets describe Death by some of its common appearances.  Cowley
+says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps real or fabulous,
+
+    ’Twixt his right ribs deep pierced the furious blade,
+    And open’d wide those secret vessels where
+    Life’s light goes out, when first they let in air.
+
+But he has allusions vulgar as well as learned in a visionary succession
+of kings:
+
+    Joas at first does bright and glorious show,
+    In life’s fresh morn his fame does early crow.
+
+Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
+
+    His forces seem’d no army, but a crowd
+    Heartless, unarm’d, disorderly, and loud,
+
+he gives them a fit of the ague.
+
+The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends by
+exaggeration as much as by diminution:
+
+    The king was placed alone, and o’er his head
+    A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.
+
+Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
+
+    Where the sun’s fruitful beams give metals birth,
+    Where he the growth of fatal gold does see,
+    Gold, which alone more influence has than he.
+
+In one passage he starts a sudden question to the confusion of
+philosophy:
+
+    Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,
+    Why does that twining plant the oak embrace;
+    The oak for courtship most of all unfit,
+    And rough as are the winds that fight with it?
+
+His expressions have sometimes a degree of meanness that surpasses
+expectation:
+
+    Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you’re in,
+    The story of your gallant friend begin.
+
+In a simile descriptive of the morning:
+
+    As glimmering stars just at th’ approach of day,
+    Cashier’d by troops, at last all drop away.
+
+The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
+
+    He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
+    That e’er the mid-day sun pierced through with light;
+    Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
+    Wash’d from the morning beauties’ deepest red:
+    An harmless flatt’ring meteor shone for hair,
+    And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
+    He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
+    Where the most sprightly azure pleased the eyes;
+    This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
+    Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
+    Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,
+    The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.
+
+This is a just specimen of Cowley’s imagery; what might in general
+expressions be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by
+branching it into small parts.  That Gabriel was invested with the
+softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and
+been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of
+conception; but Cowley could not let us go till he had related where
+Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then
+his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.
+
+Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his
+natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued
+till it is tedious:
+
+    I’ th’ library a few choice authors stood,
+    Yet ’twas well stored, for that small store was good;
+    Writing, man’s spiritual physic, was not then
+    Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
+    Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;
+    The common prostitute she lately grew,
+    And with the spurious brood loads now the press;
+    Laborious effects of idleness.
+
+As the “Davideis” affords only four books, though intended to consist of
+twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as Epic poems commonly
+supply.  The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shown by the
+third part.  The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known.  Of
+characters either not yet introduced, or shown but upon few occasions,
+the full extent and the nice discriminations cannot be ascertained.  The
+fable is plainly implex, formed rather from the “Odyssey” than the
+“Iliad;” and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the
+skill of a man acquainted with the beet models.  The past is recalled by
+narration, and the future anticipated by vision: but he has been so
+lavish of his poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could
+fill eight books more without practising again the same modes of
+disposing his matter; and perhaps the perception of this growing
+incumbrance inclined him to stop.  By this abruption, posterity lost more
+instruction than delight.  If the continuation of the “Davideis” can be
+missed, it is for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the
+notes in which it had been explained.
+
+Had not his characters been depraved like every other part by improper
+decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise.  He gives Saul
+both the body and mind of a hero:
+
+    His way once chose, he forward threat outright.
+    Nor turned aside for danger or delight.
+
+And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michal are
+very justly conceived and strongly painted.
+
+Rymer has declared the “Davideis” superior to the “Jerusalem” of Tasso,
+“which,” says he, “the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged
+from pedantry.”  If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which is
+derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the
+general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley
+certainly errs, by introducing pedantry, far more frequently than Tasso.
+I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of
+Cowley’s work to Tasso’s is only that they both exhibit the agency of
+celestial and infernal spirits, in which, however, they differ widely;
+for Cowley supposes them commonly to operate upon the mind by suggestion;
+Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by external
+agency.
+
+Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only the
+description of Heaven, in which the different manner of the two writers
+is sufficiently discernible.  Cowley’s is scarcely description, unless it
+be possible to describe by negatives; for he tells us only what there is
+not in heaven.  Tasso endeavours to represent the splendours and
+pleasures of the regions of happiness.  Tasso affords images, and Cowley
+sentiments.  It happens, however, that Tasso’s description affords some
+reason for Rymer’s censure.  He says of the Supreme Being:
+
+    Hà sotto i piedi e fato e la natura
+    Ministri humili, e’l moto, e ch’il misura.
+
+The second line has in it more of pedantry than perhaps can be found in
+any other stanza of the poem.
+
+In the perusal of the “Davideis,” as of all Cowley’s works, we find wit
+and learning unprofitably squandered.  Attention has no relief; the
+affections are never moved; we are sometimes surprised, but never
+delighted; and find much to admire, but little to approve.  Still,
+however, it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, and
+replenished by study.
+
+In the general review of Cowley’s poetry it will be found that he wrote
+with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much
+thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetic, and rarely
+sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or
+profound.
+
+It is said by Denham in his elegy,
+
+    To him no author was unknown,
+    Yet what he writ was all his own.
+
+This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of
+Cowley, than perhaps of any other poet.—He read much, and yet borrowed
+little.
+
+His character of writing was indeed not his own; he unhappily adopted
+that which was predominant.  He saw a certain way to present praise; and,
+not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to
+delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself
+with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright
+and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.
+
+He was in his own time considered as of unrivalled excellence.  Clarendon
+represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him;
+and Milton is said to have declared that the three greatest English poets
+were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.
+
+His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his own.
+Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his copiousness
+of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable rushed into
+his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a commodious idea
+merely because another had used it: his known wealth was so great that be
+might have borrowed without loss of credit, in his elegy on Sir Henry
+Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance to the noble epigram of
+Grotius on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied
+from it, though they are copied by no servile hand.
+
+One passage in his “Mistress” is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that
+he probably would not have written it had it not mingled with his own
+thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:
+
+    Although I think thou never found wilt be,
+       Yet I’m resolved to search for thee;
+       The search itself rewards the pains.
+    So, though the chymic his great secret miss
+    (For neither it in Art or Nature is),
+       Yet things well worth his toil he gains:
+       And does his charge and labour pay
+    With good unsought experiments by the way.—COWLEY.
+
+    Some that have deeper digg’d Love’s mine than I,
+    Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
+       I have loved, and got, and told;
+    But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
+    I should not find that hidden mystery;
+       Oh, ’tis imposture all!
+    And as no chymic yet th’ elixir got,
+       But glorifies his pregnant pot,
+       If by the way to him befal
+    Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
+       So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
+       But get a winter-seeming summer’s night.
+
+Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.
+
+It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledged his
+obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson: but I have found no
+traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been his
+purpose.; and from Donne ~he may have learnt that familiarity with
+religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which
+readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would
+not be borne in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent,
+is more delicate.
+
+Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense
+him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him.  He says of
+Goliath:
+
+    His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,
+    Which Nature meant some tall ship’s mast should be.
+
+Milton of Satan:
+
+    His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
+    Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
+    Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,
+    He walked with.
+
+His diction was in his own time censured as negligent.  He seems not to
+have known, or not to have considered, that words being arbitrary must
+owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only,
+which custom has given them.  Language is the dress of thought; and as
+the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and obscured
+by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rustics or mechanics;
+so the most heroic sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most
+splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words
+used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths,
+and contaminated by inelegant applications.
+
+Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an
+intrinsic and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold
+which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser matter,
+that only a chemist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined
+and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish it; and
+both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of their
+extraction.
+
+The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to
+the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further
+knowledge is not often sought.  Whatever professes to benefit by
+pleasing, must please at once.  The pleasures of the mind imply something
+sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise.  What is
+perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of
+improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.
+
+Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without
+care.  He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase:
+he has no elegance either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were
+rather to impress sentences upon the understanding, than images on the
+fancy: he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar
+propriety of nice adaptation.
+
+It seems to follow from the necessity of the subject, rather than the
+care of the writer, that the diction of his heroic poem is less familiar
+than that of his slightest writings.  He has given not the same numbers,
+but the same diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.
+
+His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and if what
+he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they are
+ill-read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are
+commonly harsh to modern ears.  He has indeed many noble lines, such as
+the feeble care of Waller never could produce.  The bulk of his thoughts
+sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but
+his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly down
+to his general carelessness, and avoids with very little care either
+meanness or asperity.
+
+His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
+
+    One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
+    Torn up with ’t.
+
+His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like
+unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of
+the line.
+
+His combination of different measures is sometimes dissonant and
+unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide
+easily into the latter.
+
+The words “do” and “did,” which so much degrade in present estimation the
+line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little censured or
+avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least to
+our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament to
+see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of
+language:
+
+    Where honour or where conscience _does_ not bind
+       No other law shall shackle me;
+       Slave to myself I ne’er will be;
+    Nor shall my future actions be confined
+       By my own present mind.
+    Who by resolves and vows engaged _does_ stand
+       For days, that yet belong to fate,
+    _Does_ like an unthrift mortgage his estate,
+       Before it falls into his hand;
+       The bondman of the cloister so,
+    All that he _does_ receive _does_ always owe.
+    And still as Time comes in, it goes away,
+       Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
+       Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell!
+    Which his hour’s work as well as hours _does_ tell:
+    Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
+
+His heroic lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are
+sometimes sweet and sonorous.
+
+He says of the Messiah,
+
+    Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
+    _And reach to worlds that must not yet be found_.
+
+In another place, of David,
+
+    Yet bid him go securely, when he sends;
+    ’_Tis Saul that is his foe_, _and we his friends_.
+    _The man who has his God_, _no aid can lack_;
+    _And we who bid him go_, _will bring him back_.
+
+Yet amidst his negligence he sometimes attempted an improved and
+scientific versification; of which it will be best to give his own
+account subjoined to this line:
+
+            Nor can the glory contain itself in th’ endless space.
+
+    “I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of
+    readers, that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose,
+    long, and, as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature
+    of the thing which it describes, which I would have observed in
+    divers other places of this poem, that else will pass as very
+    careless verses: as before,
+
+         _And over-runs the neighb’ring fields with violent course_.
+
+    “In the second book:
+
+             _Down a precipice deep_, _dowse he casts them all_—
+
+    “And,
+
+               _And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care_.
+
+    “In the third,
+
+            _Brass was his helmet_, _his boots brass_, _and o’er_
+               _His breast a thick plate strong brass he wore_.
+
+    “In the fourth,
+
+          _Like some fair pine o’er-looking all the ignobler wood_.
+
+    “And,
+
+             _Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong_.
+
+    “And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few.  The thing is,
+    that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that,
+    out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be
+    represented.  This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind
+    themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught
+    I can find.  The Latins (_qui musas colunt severiores_) sometimes did
+    it; and their prince, Virgil, always: in whom the examples are
+    innumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is
+    superfluous to collect them.”
+
+I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the
+representation or resemblance that he purposes.  Verse can imitate only
+sound and motion.  A “boundless” verse, a “headlong” verse, and a verse
+of “brass” or of “strong brass,” seem to comprise very incongruous and
+unsociable ideas.  What there is peculiar in the sound of the line
+expressing “loose care,” I cannot discover; nor why the “pine” is
+“taller” in an Alexandrine than in ten syllables.
+
+But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of
+representative versification, which perhaps no other English line can
+equal:
+
+    Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:
+    He, who defers this work from day to day,
+    Does on a river’s bank expecting stay
+    Till the whole stream that stopp’d him shall be gone,
+    _Which runs_, _and_, _as it runs_, _for ever shall run on_.
+
+Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines at
+pleasure with the common heroic of ten syllables, and from him Dryden
+borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious.  He considered
+the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestic, and has therefore
+deviated into that measure when he supposes the voice heard of the
+Supreme Being.
+
+The author of the “Davideis” is commended by Dryden for having written it
+in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for an
+heroic poem; but this seems to have been known before by May and Sandys,
+the translators of the “Pharsalia” and the “Metamorphoses.”
+
+In the “Davideis” are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the
+author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended to
+complete them; that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably concluded,
+because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman poet; because
+Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of recitation;
+because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all that can be
+done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a _cœsura_, and a full
+stop, will equally effect.
+
+Of triplets in his “Davideis” he makes no use, and perhaps did not at
+first think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed his
+mind, for in the verses on the government of Cromwell he inserts them
+liberally with great happiness.
+
+After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them
+must not be forgotten.  What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that
+no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may
+be applied to these compositions.  No author ever kept his verse and his
+prose at a greater distance from each other.  His thoughts are natural,
+and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet
+obtained its due commendation.  Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured;
+but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.
+
+It has been observed by Felton, in his Essay on the Classics, that Cowley
+was beloved by every Muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled the
+ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.
+
+It may be affirmed, without any encomiastic fervour, that he brought to
+his poetic labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are
+embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was
+the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater
+ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for
+sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who
+freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at
+a distance, walked by his side; and that, if he left versification yet
+improvable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of
+excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.
+
+
+
+
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