In 1638 he left England for a long journey on the Continent. He spent most of his time in Italy, where he exchanged verses and compliments with the poets and cultivated gentlemen of the country, until the news of the approaching civil war called him back to England. "I thought it disgraceful," he says, "while my fellow-countrymen were fighting for liberty, that I should be travelling abroad for pleasure." On his return he plunged into the political and religious contests of the time, abandoning poetry, except for a few sonnets, for twenty years. He wrote pamphlets on church reform, on education, and on the freedom of the press. He married Mary Powell in 1643, but she left him a month after the wedding, and refused to return for two years, when she suddenly appeared before him and begged his forgiveMilton defended the execution of Charles I and served as Latin Secretary to the Republican Council of State. After Cromwell's death he strove to uphold the Commonwealth, but the tide of public feeling was too strong for him. The Stuarts came back to the throne in 1660, and Milton was forced for a time to go into hiding. Two of his pamphlets were burned by the public hangman, and there was talk of excepting him from the general act of indemnity.

ness.

The danger soon passed, however, and for the rest of his days Milton lived the life of a retired scholar. As early as 1652 he had become totally blind, owing to the way in which from his youth up he had abused his eyes in study and composition. But his blindness did not prevent him from pursuing his favorite studies, nor from resuming the career of a poet, which he had so long abandoned. He had, it is true, much to contend with; he was not only blind, but he suffered much from gout, and his daughters proved to be anything but loving children, selling his books, combining to cheat him in the matter of marketing, and openly expressing the wish that he were dead. Yet he seems not to have been unhappy. Young friends gathered round him to take the place of his disobedient children, and there was no man in England better fitted to be company to himself than John Milton. He was accustomed to rise early, to listen to a chapter from the Hebrew Bible, to study, and to dictate to an amanuensis

through the morning. In the afternoon he walked in his garden, talked with friends, listened to music, made a supper of "olives or some light thing," and after a single pipe went to bed at nine. Often, it is said, he composed verses during the night and called on a daughter to take them down from his dictation. In this period of his life his greatest work, Paradise Lost, was composed, along with Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

Milton holds a peculiar place in English literature. He was at once the last of the Elizabethans, and the first and greatest of Puritan poets. In his character the Elizabethan love of music and poetry and beauty is united with a lofty purity, a hatred of sin, and an unshaken love of liberty such as the Elizabethans never knew. His early poems show the first of these characteristics, his later work, especially Samson Agonistes, the latter. Paradise Lost, one of the greatest poems of all time, has been fitly called the "Epic of Puritanism."

L'ALLEGRO

HENCE, loathéd Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born

In Stygian cave forlorn

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

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

There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, ✓
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,

To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore: .

1Ο

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Or whether (as some sager sing)

The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing, -
As he met her once a-Maying,
There, on beds of violets blue,

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,

Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,

Nods and Becks and wreathéd Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,

And love to live in dimple sleek;

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee

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The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; ~
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,

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In unreprovéd pleasures free;

To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,

And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine; -

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While the cock, with lively din,

Scatters the rear of darkness thin;

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And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:

Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Róbed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

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60

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Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,

Whilst the landskip round it measures: ~

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Russet lawns, and fallows grey,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees -
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two agéd oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met
Are at their savoury dinner set

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Of herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;

Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes, with secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,

And jocund rebecks sound

To many a youth and many a maid
Dancing in the checkered shade,

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And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,

Till the livelong daylight fail:

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar's lantern led,

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat -
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend, -
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,

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Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus, done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,,

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And the busy hum of men,