Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again.

Plenty he sow'd below, and cast about him light! Thou slack'nest all my nerves of industry,

They look'd up to that Heaven in vain, That bounteous Heaven, which God did not re- "Teach me not then, O thou fallacious Muse! strain

"The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more Thine, thine is all the barrenness; if thou

Say, from what golden quivers of the sky
Do all thy winged arrows fly?
Swiftness and Power by birth are thine:

From thy great sire they came, thy sire, the Word
Divine.

"Tis, I believe, this archery to show,

That so much cost in colors thou,
And skill in painting, dost bestow

Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly bow.

Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,

Thy race is finish'd when begun;
Let a post-angel start with thee,

And thou the goal of Earth shalt reach as soon as he.

Thou in the Moon's bright chariot, proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey!
And all the year dost with thee bring

Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal

spring.

Thou, Scythian-like, dost round thy lands above
The Sun's gilt tents for ever move,
And still, as thou in pomp dost go,

The shining pageants of the world attend thy
show.

Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scorn
The humble glow-worms to adorn,
And with those living spangles gild

(O greatness without pride!) the bushes of the
field.

Night, and her ugly subjects, thou dost fright,
And Sleep, the lazy owl of night;
Asham'd, and fearful to appear,

The ghosts, and monster-spirits, that did presume

A body's privilege to assume,
Vanish again invisibly,

And bodies gain again their visibility.

All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries;

Thou the rich dye on them bestow'st,

Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou

go'st.

A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;
A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;
The virgin-lilies, in their white,

Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.

The violet, Spring's little infant, stands

Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands.
On the fair tulip thou dost doat;

Thou cloth'st it in a gay and party-color'd coat.

With flame condens'd thou do'st thy jewels fix,

And solid colors in it mix:
Flora herself envies to see

Flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she.

Ah, goddess! would thou could'st thy hand withhold

And be less liberal to gold!
Did'st thou less value to it give,

Of how much care, alas! might'st thou poor man
relieve!

To me the Sun is more delightful far,
And all fair days much fairer are.
But few, ah! wondrous few, there be,
Who do not gold prefer, O goddess! ev'n to thee

They screen their horrid shapes with the black Through the soft ways of Heaven, and air, and sea

hemisphere.

Which open all their pores to thee,
Like a clear river thou dost glide,

nels slide.

With them there hastes, and wildly takes th'alarm, And with thy living stream through the close chan

Of painted dreams a busy swarm:
At the first opening of thine eye

The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.

The guilty serpents, and obscener beasts,

Creep, conscious, to their secret rests:
Nature to thee does reverence pay,

Ill omens and ill sights removes out of thy way.

At thy appearance, Grief itself is said

To shake his wings, and rouse his head:
And cloudy Care has often took

A gentle beamy smile, reflected from thy look.

At thy appearance, Fear itself grows bold;
Thy sun-shine melts away his cold.
Encouraged at the sight of thee,

But, where firm bodies thy free course oppose,
Gently thy source the land o'erflows;
Takes there possession, and does make

Of colors mingled light, a thick and standing lake.

But the vast ocean of unbounded day,

In th' empyrean Heaven does stay.
Thy rivers, lakes, and springs, below,
From thence took first their rise, thither at last

must flow.

AGAINST HOPE.

HOPE! whose weak being ruin'd is,

To the cheek color comes, and firmness to the Alike, if it succeed, and if it miss;

knee.

Ev'n Lust, the master of a harden'd face,
Blushes, if thou be'st in the place,
To Darkness' curtains he retires;

In sympathizing night he rolls his smoky fires.

When, goddess! thou lift'st up thy waken'd head,
Out of the morning's purple bed,
Thy quire of birds about thee play,

And all the joyful world salutes the rising day.

Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound :
Vain shadow! which does 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 taster of delight,
[quite!
Who, whilst thou should'st but taste, devour'st it

(15)

JOHN MILTON.

JOHN MILTON, a poet of the first rank in eminence, poem, of great elegance. He left Italy by the way was descended from an ancient family, settled at of Geneva, where he contracted an acquaintance Milton, in Oxfordshire. His father, whose deser- with two learned divines, John Diodati and Frederic tion of the Roman Catholic faith was the cause of Spanheim; and he returned through France, having his disinheritance, settled in London as a scrivener, been absent about a year and three months. and marrying a woman of good family, had two On his arrival, Milton found the nation agitated sons and a daughter. John, the eldest son, was by civil and religious disputes, which threatened a born in Bread-street, on December 9, 1608. He crisis; and as he had expressed himself impatient to received the rudiments of learning from a domestic be present on the theatre of contention, it has been tutor, Thomas Young, afterwards chaplain to the thought extraordinary that he did not immediately English merchants at Hamburg, whose merits are place himself in some active station. But his turn gratefully commemorated by his pupil, in a Latin was not military; his fortune precluded a seat in elegy. At a proper age he was sent to St. Paul's parliament; the pulpit he had declined; and for the school, and there began to distinguish himself by bar he had made no preparation. His taste and his intense application to study, as well as by his habits were altogether literary; for the present,

poetical talents. In his sixteenth year he was removed to Christ's college, Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner, under the tuition of Mr. W. Chappel.

therefore, he fixed himself in the metropolis, and undertook the education of his sister's two sons, of the name of Philips. Soon after, he was applied to by several parents to admit their children to the benefit of his tuition. He therefore took a com

Of his course of studies in the university little is known; but it appears, from several exercises pre- modious house in Aldersgate-street, and opened an served in his works, that he had acquired extraor-academy. Disapproving the plan of education in dinary skill in writing Latin verses, which are of a the public schools and universities, he deviated from purer taste than any preceding compositions of the it as widely as possible. He put into the hands kind by English scholars. He took the degrees of his scholars, instead of the common classics, such both of Bachelor and Master of Arts; the latter in Greek and Latin authors as treated on the arts and 1632, when he left Cambridge. He renounced his sciences, and on philosophy; thus expecting to inoriginal intention of entering the church, for which stil the knowledge of things with that of words. We he has given as a reason, that, "coming to some are not informed of the result of his plan; but it maturity of years, he had perceived what tyranny will appear singular that one who had himself drunk had invaded it;" which denotes a man early habituated to think and act for himself.

so deeply at the muse's fount, should withhold the draught from others. We learn, however, that he performed the task of instruction with great assiduity. Milton did not long suffer himself to lie under the reproach of having neglected the public cause

He now returned to his father, who had retired from business to a residence at Horton, in Buckinghamshire; and he there passed five years in the study of the best Roman and Grecian authors, and in his private pursuits; and, in 1641, he publishin the composition of some of his finest miscella- ed four treatises relative to church government, in neous poems. This was the period of his Allegro which he gave the preponderance to the Presbyand Penseroso, his Comus and Lycidas. That his terian form above the Episcopalian. Resuming the learning and talents had at this time attracted con- same controversy in the following year, he numsiderable notice, appears from an application made bered among his antagonists such men as Bishop to him from the Bridgewater family, which pro- Hall and Archbishop Usher. His father, who had duced his admirable masque of "Comus," perform- been disturbed by the king's troops, now came to ed in 1634, at Ludlow Castle, before the Earl of live with him; and the necessity of a female head Bridgewater, then Lord President of Wales; and of such a house, caused Milton, in 1643, to form a also by his "Arcades," part of an entertainment connexion with the daughter of Richard Powell, presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby, at Esq., a magistrate of Oxfordshire. This was, in Harefield, by some of her family.

several respects, an unhappy marriage; for his father

In 1638, he obtained his father's leave to improve in-law was a zealous royalist, and his wife had achimself by foreign travel, and set out for the con- customed herself to the jovial hospitality of that tinent. Passing through France, he proceeded to party. She had not, therefore, passed above a Italy, and spent a considerable time in that seat of month in her husband's house, when, having prothe arts and of literature. At Naples he was kindly cured an invitation from her father, she went to pass received by Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had the summer in his mansion. Milton's invitations long before deserved the gratitude of poets by his for her return were treated with contempt; upon patronage of Tasso; and, in return for a laudatory which, regarding her conduct as a desertion which listich of Manso, Milton addressed to him a Latin broke the nuptial contract, he determined to punish