ceive therefore that he might be excluded from the favour of his superiors in the college, and even be exposed to their censures, without incurring the slightest loss of character, or sustaining the most trifling diminution of our esteem. In his "Second Defence," published twelve years after the "Apology for Sinectymnuus," he again asserts the purity of his college life: and affirms, in opposition to his adversary's calumnies, that he passed seven years at the University pure from every blemish, and in possession of the esteem of the good, till he took with applause his degree of master of arts; that he then retired to his father's house, and left behind him a memory, which was cherished with affection and respect by the greater part of the fellows of his college, who had always been assiduous in cultivating his regard. Here, therefore, we must finally rest; and, throwing from our fancies every idea which "Illic (Cantabrigiâ) disciplinis atq; artibus tradi solitis septennium studui; procul omni flagitio, bonis omnibus probatus usquedum magistri, quem vocant, gradum cum laude etium adeptus, non Italiam, quod impurus ille comminiscitur, profugi, sed sponte meâ domum me contuli, meiq; etiam desiderium apud collegii plerosq; socios, a quibus eram haud mediocriter cultus, reliqui.", Defen. secun. P.W. v. v. 230. can suggest our author as the object of positive punishment, (of any thing more, we mean, than of those impositions, perhaps, which are injoined for trivial omissions, and trespasses against the college forms,) we must decide that his morals at the University conciliated the general esteem, while his learning and his talents excited the general applause. Of his learning and his talents, indeed, he had exhibited, during this period, such decisive and brilliant proofs, as to place above question his uncommon acquisitions and powers, and, undoubtedly, to make him the centre of an extended circle of admiration. In the seven years of his academical life, however he might complain of “the rushy marshes and the naked banks of the Cam," as unfriendly to the Muses, he discovered that neither "soft shades," nor a retirement from "the murmur of the hoarse schools," were essentially necessary to his inspiration. In this space of time, his vigorous and ardent genius broke out in frequent flashes, and evidently disclosed the future author of Comus and of Paradise Lost. We have already noticed, on the testimony of Aubrey, which may be received as to the fact in question, that Milton was a poet when he was only ten years old; and his translation of the 136th psalm, which we still possess, sufficiently evinces his progress in poetic expression at the early age of fifteen. When we read in this small work of "the golden-tressed sun," of the moon shining among "her spangled sisters of the night;" of the Almighty smiting the first-born of Egypt with "his thunder-clasping hand," we are forced to acknowledge the buddings of the rising poet, the first shootings of the infant oak, which in later times was to overshadow the forest. At the age, to which we have now followed him, or from the commencement of his academic career, his genius rushed rapidly to its maturity; and, like the Neptune of his favourite Homer, he may be considered as having made only three majestic strides to the summit, on which he stands and beholds no superior. If we plant his first stepat the beautiful little poem on the death of his sister's child, his second may be regarded as fixed on his sublime, though unequal ode “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity;" and his third as reaching to his Comus. These compositions seem to be separated by nearly equal intervals, as well with respect to the time, as with reference to the power of their production. The last of these poems, with its bright companions, the Lycidas, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, does not belong to the period under our notice, and shall be attended to in its place; but it will be proper not to pass the two former without remark, as they tend to exhibit to us the march of a mighty genius. d In the first of them, " On the death of a fair Infant," written when our author was only seventeen, we find the boy-poet moving with grace and harmony under the shackles of rhyme, and managing a stanza, like the Spencerian but less bulky by two lines, with facility and effect. If he occasionally indulges in those conceits, which blemished all the poetry of that age, his thoughts are more frequently just, and he is sometimes tender and sometimes sublime. The personification of Winter in his " icc-ypearled car,” is conceived and expressed in the spirit of genuine poetry; and the 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 10th stanzas entertain us with a crowd of beauties, unneighboured by a thought, a line, or, scarcely, an expression, which we can be desirous of changing.-I shall cite the fifth stanza for its peculiar merit; and the sixth, d Our author's niece, a daughter of his sister, Mrs. Philips, as it seems to have suggested to Dryden one of those sublime ideas, with which he opens his noble ode on the death of Mrs. Anne Killegrew. V. Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead; Or that thy corse corrupts in Earth's dark womb; Hid from the world in a low-delved tomb. VI. Resolve me then, O soul most surely blest! (If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear) And why from us so quickly thou didst take thy flight? The seventh stanza is the most objectionable of the poem: in the first, and the second, the thought, which, at the first glance, might seem to require defence, is certainly correct; in the first, indeed, it is beautifully I subjoin the passage from Dryden's Ode. Whether adopted to some neighbouring star, Moved with the heaven's majestic pace: Thou tread'st with Seraphim the dread abyss, &c. |