be conjectured, but nothing is known; his nephews, whose education had cost him such anxious care, though not undutiful in their personal relations with him, were sources of uneasiness from their own misadventures, and might have been even more so as sinister omens of the ways in which the rising generation was to walk. The fruits of their bringing up upon the egregious Lucretius and Manilius were apparently "Satyr against Hypocrites," i.e., Puritans; "Mysteries of Love and Eloquence;" "Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment," which last brought the Council down upon John Phillips as a propagator of immorality. In his nephews Milton might have seen, though we may be sure he did not see, how fatally the austerity of the Commonwealth had alienated those who would soon determine whether the Commonwealth should exist. Unconscious of the "engine at the door," he could spend happy social hours with attached friendsAndrew Marvell, his assistant in the secretaryship and poetical satellite; his old pupil Cyriack Skinner; Lady Ranelagh; Oldenburg, the Bremen envoy, destined to fame as Secretary of the Royal Society and the correspondent of Spinoza; and a choice band of "enthusiastic young men who accounted it a privilege to read to him, or act as his amanuenses, or hear him talk." A sonnet inscribed to one of these, Henry Lawrence, gives a pleasing picture of the British Homer in his Horatian. hour "" Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise." CHAPTER VI. 'Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds HESE lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more TH applicable to the slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation. In most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep. In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest. After two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius. rather than Thamyris and Mæonides. Yet the material of his immortal poem must have gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so soon have been transmuted into song. It can hardly be doubted that his cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life. Remanded thus to solemn medi tation, he would gradually rise to the height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing, as always hitherto, the impulse of others. We cannot tell what influence finally launched this high-piled avalanche of thrice-sifted snow. The time is better ascertained. Aubrey refers it to 1658, the last year of Oliver's Protectorate. As Cromwell's death virtually closed Milton's official labours, a Genie, overshadowing land and sea, arose from the shattered vase of the Latin Secretaryship. Nothing is more interesting than to observe the first gropings of genius in pursuit of its aim. Ample insight, as regards Milton, is afforded by the precious manuscripts given to Trinity College, Cambridge, by Sir Henry Newton Puckering (we know not how he got them), and preserved by the pious care of Charles Mason and Sir Thomas Clarke. By the portion of the MSS. relating to Milton's drafts of projected poems, which date about 1640-1642, we see that the form of his work was to have been dramatic, and that, in respect of subject, the swift mind was divided between Scripture and British History. No fewer than ninety-nine possible themes-sixty-one Scriptural, and thirty-eight historical or legendary-are jotted down by him. Four of these relate to "Paradise Lost." Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are "Sodom" (the plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently im 66 practicable, is interesting as a counterpart of "Comus"), "Samson Marrying," "Ahab," "John the Baptist," "Christus Patiens," "Vortigern," "Alfred the Great," "Harold," "Athirco" (a very striking subject from a Scotch legend), and "Macbeth," where Duncan's ghost was to have appeared instead of Banquo's, and seemingly taken a share in the action. "Arthur," so much in his mind when he wrote the "Epitaphium Damonis," does not appear at all. Two of the drafts of "Paradise Lost” are mere lists of dramatis persona, but the others indicate the shape which the conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a religious drama on the pattern of the medieval mystery or miracle play. Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion, "the Angel causes to pass before his eyes a masque of all the evils of this life and world," a conception traceable in the eleventh book of "Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the exordium of his tragedy. Of the |