Behind him cast; the broad circumference

Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,

Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe."

Thus does Milton appropriate the wealth of past literature, secure of being able to recoin it with his own image and superscription. The accumulated learning which might have choked the native fire of a feebler spirit was but nourishment to his. The polished stones and shining jewels of his superb mosaic are often borrowed, but its plan and pattern are his own.

One of the greatest charms of "Paradise Lost is the incomparable metre, which, after Coleridge and Tennyson have done their utmost, remains without equal in our language for the combination of majesty and music. It is true that this majesty is to a certain extent inherent in the subject, and that the poet who could rival it would scarcely be well advised to exert his power to the full unless his theme also rivalled the magnificence of Milton's. Milton, on his part, would have been quite content to have written such blank verse as Wordsworth's "Yew Trees," or as the exordium of "Alastor," or as most of Coleridge's idylls, had his subject been less than epical. The organ-like solemnity of his verbal music is obtained partly by extreme attention to variety of pause, but chiefly, as Wordsworth told Klopstock, and as Mr. Addington Symonds points out more at length, by the period, not the individual line, being ma de the metrical unit, "so that each line in a period shal

carry its proper burden of sound, but the burden shall
be differently distributed in the successive verses."
Hence lines which taken singly seem almost unmetrical,
in combination with their associates appear indis-
pensable parts of the general harmony. Mr. Symonds
gives some striking instances. Milton's versification is
that of a learned poet, profound in thought and burdened
with the further care of ordering his thoughts: it is
therefore only suited to sublimity of a solemn or
meditative cast, and most unsuitable to render the
unstudied sublimity of Homer. Perhaps no passage
is better adapted to display its dignity, complicated
artifice, perpetual retarding movement, concerted
harmony, and grave but ravishing sweetness than
the description of the coming on of Night in the
Fourth Book :-
:-

"Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus that led
The stary host rose brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."

How exquisite the indication of the pauseless continuity of the nightingale's song by the transition from. short sentences, cut up by commas and semicolons, to the "linked sweetness long drawn out" of "She all night

long her amorous descant sung"!

The poem is full of similar felicities, none perhaps more noteworthy than the sequence of monosyllables that paints the enormous bulk of the prostrate Satan :

"So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay.”

It is a most interesting subject for inquiry from what sources, other than the Scriptures, Milton drew aid in the composition of "Paradise Lost." The most striking counterpart is Calderon, to whom he owed as little as Calderon can have owed to him. "El Magico Prodigioso," already cited as affording a remarkable parallel to "Comus," though performed in 1637, was not printed until 1663, when "Paradise Lost" was already completed. The two great religious poets have naturally conceived the Evil One much in the same manner, and Calderon's Lucifer,

"Like the red outline of beginning Adam,"

might well have passed as the original draft of Milton's Satan :

"In myself I am

A world of happiness and misery;
This I have lost, and that I must lament
For ever. In my attributes I stood
So high and so heroically great,

In lineage so supreme, and with a genius
Which penetrated with a glance the world
Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,

A King-whom I may call the King of Kings,
Because all others tremble in their pride

'We cannot agree with Mr. Edmundson that Milton was in any respect indebted to Vondel's "Adam's Banishment," published in 1664.

Before the terrors of his countenance

In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems
Of living light-call them the stars of heaven-
Named me his counsellor. But the high praise
Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose
In mighty competition, to ascend

His seat, and place my foot triumphantly
Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know
The depth to which ambition falls. For mad
Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now
Repentance of the irrevocable deed.
Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory
Of not to be subdued, before the shame
Of reconciling me with him who reigns
By coward cession. Nor was I alone,
Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone.

And there was hope, and there may still be hope;
For many suffrages among his vassals

Hailed me their lord and king, and many still

Are mine, and many more perchance shall be.'

A striking proof that resemblance does not necessarily imply plagiarism. Milton's affinity to Calderon has been overlooked by his commentators; but four luminaries have been named from which he is alleged to have drawn, however sparingly, in his golden urn-Caedmon, the Adamus Exul of Grotius, the Adamo of the Italian dramatist Andreini, and the Lucifer of the Dutch poet Vondel. Caedmon, first printed in 1655, it is but barely possible that he should have known, and ere he could have known him the conception of "Paradise Lost" was firmly implanted in his mind. External evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the Italian drama, we can easily believe

with Hayley that "his fancy caught fire from that spirited, though irregular and fantastic composition." Vondel's Lucifer--whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of Satan-was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have been studying Dutch, but when the plan of "Paradise Lost" must have been substantially formed. There can, nevertheless, be no question of the frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel's Lucifer and "Paradise Lost," but between his Samson and "Samson Agonistes." Milton's indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his lightning-speech," Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," was a thunderbolt condensed from a brace of Vondel's clumsy Alexandrines, which Beddoes renders thus :

"And rather the first prince at an inferior court

Than in the blessed light the second or still less."

Mr. Gosse followed up the inquiry, which eventually became the subject of a monograph by Mr. George Edmundson ("Milton and Vondel," 1885). That Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel's works translated aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet. Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject. Je l'aurais bien pris sans toi. When, as in the instance above quoted, he borrows any