And holy Genii guard the rock,
Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock,
While on its rich ambitious head
An Eden, like HIS OWN, lies spread;
I view that oak the fancied glades among,
By which as MILTON lay, his evening ear,
From many a cloud that drop'd etherial dew,
Nigh sphered in Heaven, its native strains could

hear,

On which that ancient trump he reached was hung;
Thither oft his glory greeting,
From Waller's myrtle shades retreating,
With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue,
My trembling feet his guiding steps pursue;
In vain : Such bliss to one alone
Of all the sons of Soul was known;
And Heaven and Fancy, kindred Powers,
Have now o'erturn'd the' inspiring bowers,
Or curtain'd close such scene from every future view.

FROM

MASON'S ODE TO MEMORY.

RISE, hallow'd MILTON! rise, and say, How, at thy gloomy close of day; How, when 'depress'd by age, beset with wrongs;' When 'fallen on evil days and evil tongues :' When Darkness, brooding on thy sight, Exiled the sovereign lamp of light;

Say, what could then one cheering hope diffuse ? What friends were thine, save Memory and the

Muse?

Hence the rich spoils, thy studious youth
Caught from the stores of ancient Truth :

Hence all thy busy eye could pleased explore, When Rapture led thee to the Latian shore; Each scene, that Tiber's bank supply'd;

Each grace, that play'd on Arno's side; The tepid gales, through Tuscan glades that fly; The blue serene, that spreads Hesperia's sky; Were still thine own: thy ample mind Each charm received, retain'd, combined. And thence 'the nightly Visitant,' that came To touch thy bosom with her sacred flame, Recall'd the long-lost beams of grace; That whilom shot from Nature's face, When God, in Eden, o'er her youthful breast Spread with his own right hand Perfection's gor

geous vest.

FROM

DR. ROBERTS'

EPISTLE ON THE ENGLISH POETS.

ADDRESSED TO CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY, ESQ.

POET of other times! to thee I bow
With lowliest reverence. Oft thou takest my soul,
And waft'st it by thy potent harmony
To that empyreal mansion, where thine ear
Caught the soft warblings of a seraph's harp,
What time the nightly visitant unlock'd
The gates of Heaven, and to thy mental sight
Display'd celestial scenes. She from thy lyre
With indignation tore the tinkling bells,
And tuned it to sublimest argument.

FROM

COWPER'S TABLE TALK.

AGES elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry Nature lengths unknown before,
To give a MILTON birth, ask'd ages more.
Thus Genius rose and set at order'd times,
And shot a day-spring into distant climes,
Ennobling every region that he chose;
He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose;
And, tedious years of gothic darkness pass'd,
Emerged all splendor in our isle at last.
Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main,
Then show far off their shining plumes again.

FROM

THE SAME AUTHOR'S TASK, B. III.

PHILOSOPHY, baptized

In the pure fountain of eternal love,
Has eyes indeed; and, viewing all she sees
As meant to indicate a God to man,
Gives HIM his praise, and forfeits not her own..
Learning has borne such fruit in other days
On all her branches: Piety has found

Friends in the friends of science, and true prayer
Has flow'd from lips wet with Castalian dews.
Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage!
Sagacious reader of the works of God,
And in his word sagacious. Such too thine,
MILTON, whose genius had angelic wings,
And fed on manna..

THE VERSE *.

THE measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin: rhyme being no necessary adjunct, or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre ; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause, therefore, some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works : as have also long since our best English tragedies †; as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial, and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables,

* The first edition of Paradise Lost, in 1667, was without this apology for the verse. In 1668, when a new title-page was prefixed to the edition, it was added with the following address of the printer to the reader : "Courteous Reader, there was no Argument at first intended to the Book; but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem rimes not."

† Milton is here thought by Mr. Todd, to mean the tragedies of Shakspeare, which he commends in Il Penseroso as having " ennobled the buskin'd stage."

and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings; a fault avoided by the learned ancients, both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect (though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers), that it is rather to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.