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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley
+by Samuel Johnson
+(#6 in our series by Samuel Johnson)
+
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+Title: Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5098]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 24, 2002]
+[Most recently updated: April 24, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LIVES OF THE POETS: WALLER, ETC ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
+1891 Cassell and Co. edition.
+
+
+
+LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS:  WALLER, MILTON, COWLEY
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+   Introduction
+   Waller
+   Milton
+   Cowley
+
+
+
+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
+pounds 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 Angliae:' 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 Erythraeus
+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 reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,
+   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,
+   Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
+Si sit hoc exilium patrias adiisse penates,
+   Et vacuum curis otia greta sequi,
+Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso,
+   Laetus 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.
+
+
+[Greek text]
+
+
+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 foedior 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 Coelum."  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
+tuae virtuti cedimus cuncti, nemine vel obloquente, nisi qui
+aequales inaequalis ipse honores sibi quaerit, aut digniori
+concessos invidet, aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate
+hominum magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi consentaneum, esse in
+civitate nihil aequius, nihil utilius, quam potiri rerum
+dignissimum.   Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cromuelle, ea tu civis
+maximus, et gloriosissimus, dux publici consilii, exercituum
+fortissimorum imperator, pater patriae gessisti.  Sic tu spontanea
+bonorum omnium et animitus missa voce salutaris.
+
+Caesar, 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
+Quae 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, } with the Serpent     Chorus of Angels.
+Eve,  }                      Lucifer.
+Conscience.                  Adam.
+Death.                       Eve.
+Labour,     }                Conscience.
+Sickness,   }                Labour,     }
+Discontent, } Mutes.         Sickness,   }
+Ignorance,  }                Discontent, } Mutes
+with others;}                Ignorance,  }
+Faith.                       Fear,       }
+Hope.                        Death,      }
+Charity.                     Faith.
+                             Hope.
+                             Charity.
+
+PARADISE LOST.
+
+The Persons.
+
+Moses, [Greek text], 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,   } debating what should become of man, if he fall.
+Wisdom,  }
+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,    } comfort him and instruct him.
+Charity, }
+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 aestrum, 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
+pounds; 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 Logicae 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 Phoebus, Neptune and AEolus, 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 aerial 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 [Greek text], 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 Pandaemonium, 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 AEschylus, 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 [Greek
+text], 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 phoenix 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 bath 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 AEtna simul; restringite flammas
+   O lacrimae, 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 Nemaean 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 Nemaean 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 psr 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 Nemaean 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 "Musae Anglicanae."  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 "AEneid" 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 AEneas, 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:
+
+
+Ha 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 coesura, 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.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LIVES OF THE POETS: WALLER, ETC. ***
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