rality in her embrace, and solicitous, not to It seems impossible for poetry to go beyond her excursions in "this wilderness of sweets." She treads sometimes on the very fearful and giddy edge of a precipice, and, while we admire her boldness, we are doubtful of her safety. In that exquisite passage How sweetly did they float upon the wings At if our rapture would suffer us to be sufficiently composed to consult our reason, we might, perhaps, justly question the propriety of the length to which the poet's fancy has carried him. Darkness may aptly be represented by the blackness of the raven, and the stillness of that darkness may be paralleled by an image borrowed from the object of another sense-by the softness of down; but it is surely a transgression, which stands in need of pardon, when, proceeding a step further, and accumulating personifications, we invest this raven-down with life and make it to smile. Another passage, which represents the effect of the Lady's singing with a different allusion, is not liable to any objection, and is altogether admirable: At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound Rose, like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes, Henry Lawes the musician, who composed the music for this poem, and who was himself no indifferent poet, acted the part of the attendant Spirit, and was designed, in that piece, under the character of Thyrsis Whose artful strains have oft delay'd The huddling brook to hear his madrigal. He was retained as a domestic in the earl of F LIE Bridgewater's family, where he was the mu- Eheu! quid volui misero mihi! floribus Austrum Ah me! what phrenzy of my fever'd mind elegantly and happily intimates the sensibi- ་ • In 1637. s See Milton's xiii Sonnet. From a letter of our author's to his friend, Alex. Gill, dated dec. 4, 1634, we find that in the same year in which the poet finished Comus, he made that version of the 114th Psalm into TheLycidas was written, as there is reason to believe, at the solicitation of the author's old college, to commemorate the death of Mr. Edward King, one of its fellows, and a son of sir John King, Knt. secretary for Ireland în the reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles. This young man, whose vessel "foundered, as she was sailing from Chester to Ireland, in a calm sea and not far from land, was so highly esteemed by the whole University for his learning, piety, and talents, that his death was deplored as a public loss, and Cambridge invited her muses to celebrate and lament him. In the collection of poems, which was published on this occasion in 1638, Milton's Lycidas occupies the last, and, as it was no doubt intended to be, the most honourable place. Every honour which could be paid to its poetic excellence was inferior to its just demand: but we may reasonably wonder that a poem, breathing such hostility to the Greek hexameters; which he afterwards published with his other poems. It was thrown off, as he tells his correspondent, without any thought, or intension of mind, and, as it were, with some sudden and strange impulse before day-light in his bed. "Nullo certè animi proposito, sed subito nescio quo impetu, ante lucis exortum, ad Græci carminis heroici legem, in lectulo ferè concinnabam." Epis. fam. 5. "On August 10, 1637. poem would extend our digression beyond its just length, and would not be consistent with our plan.-We have observed that the Comus came into the world unacknowledged by its author, and it is remarkable that the writer of the Lycidas was intimated only by the initials J. M. This great man seems to have felt an awe of the public, by which the herd of small writers are seldom depressed For fools rush in, where Angels fear to tread. sad the ite gra But if he published with diffidence, he wrote with boldness, and with the persuasion, resulting from the consciousness of power, of literary immortality. "After I had (he tells us) from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence of my father, (whom God recompense!) been exercised in the tongues, and some sciences as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether ought was imposed on me by them, that had the overlooking, or betaken to of my own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style by certain vital symptoms it had, was likely to live." In a letter, which from its date was "Reasons of C. Govern. B. 2d. P.W. vol. i. 118. |