"Thee other shores expect, and other tides,
Rivers, on whose grassy sides

Her deathless laurel-leaf, with which to bind
Thy flowing locks, already Fame provides;
Why then this burthen, better far declined?'

Speak, Muse! for me.-The fair one said who guides
My willing heart, and all my fancy's flights,
'This is the language, in which Love delights.'

From The Reason of Church-Government (1641).

But, because the spirit of man cannot demean itself lively in this body without some recreating intermission of labor and serious things, it were happy for the Commonwealth if our magistrates, as in those famous governments of old, would take into their care, not only the deciding of our contentious lawcases and brawls, but the managing of our public sports and festival pastimes; that they might be not such as were authorized a while since, the provocations of drunkenness and lust, but such as may inure and harden our bodies by martial exercises to all warlike skill and performance; and may civilize, adorn, and make discreet our minds by the learned and affable meeting of frequent academies, and the procurement of wise and artful recitations, sweetened with eloquent and graceful enticements to the love and practice of justice, temperance, and fortitude, instructing and bettering the nation at all opportunities, that the call of wisdom and virtue may be heard everywhere. . Whether this may not be not only in pulpits, but, after another persuasive method, at set and solemn paneguries, in theatres, porches, or what other place or way may win most upon the people to receive at once both recreation and instruction, let them in authority consult.1 From Tetrachordon (1645).

No mortal nature can endure, either in the actions of religion or study of wisdom, without some time slackening the cords of intense thought and labor; which lest we should think faulty, 1 Prose Works 2. 480.

God Himself conceals us not His own recreations before the world was built: 'I was,' saith the Eternal Wisdom, 'daily His delight, playing always before Him.' And to Him, indeed, wisdom is as a high tower of pleasure, but to us a steep hill, and we toiling ever about the bottom. He executes with ease the exploits of His omnipotence, as easy as with us it is to will; but no worthy enterprise can be done by us without continual plodding and wearisomeness to our faint and sensitive abilities. We cannot, therefore, always be contemplative, or pragmatical abroad, but have need of some delightful intermissions wherein the enlarged soul may leave off awhile her severe schooling and, like a glad youth in wandering vacancy, may keep her holidays to joy and harmless pastime.1

To Mr. Lawrence (1656).

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius reinspire

The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?

He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

To Cyriack Skinner (1656).

Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause,
Pronounced, and in his volumes taught our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench;
To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
In mirth that after no repenting draws;
Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,

1 Prose Works 3. 331.

And what the Swede intend, and what the French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

From Paradise Lost (1667).

Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed
Labor as to debar us when we need

Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,
Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food-
Love, not the lowest end of human life.
For not to irksome toil, but to delight,
He made us, and delight to reason joined.1

1 Paradise Lost 9. 235-43.

5.

MILTON ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE To Benedetto Buommattei, of Florence.1 Florence, September 10, 1638. By this work of yours, Benedetto Buommattei-the compilation of new institutes of your native tongue-now so far advanced that you are about to give it the finishing touch, you are entering on a path to renown shared with you by some intellects of the highest order, and have also, as I see, raised a hope and an opinion of yourself among your fellow-citizens, as of one that is to confer, by his own easy effort, either lucidity or richness, or, at least, polish and order, on what has been handed down by others. Under what extraordinary obligation you have laid your countrymen by this, they must be ungrateful if they do not perceive.

For whoever in a state knows how to form wisely the manners of men and to rule them at home and in war with excellent institutes, him in the first place, above others, I should esteem worthy of all honor; but next to him the man who strives to establish in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing received from a good age of the nation, and, as it were, to fortify the same round with a kind of wall, any attempt to overleap which ought to be prevented by a law only short of that of Romulus. Should we compare the two in respect of utility, it is the former alone that can make the social existence of the citizens just and holy, but it is the latter alone that can make it splendid and beautiful-which is the next thing to be wished. The one, as I believe, supplies a noble courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the territory; the other takes to himself the task of extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned detective police of ears and a light cavalry of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads upon the minds of men, and is a destructive intestine enemy to genius.

1 Translated by Masson.

Nor is it to be considered of small consequence what language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety in speaking it—a matter which oftener than once involved the salvation of Athens: nay, while it is Plato's opinion that, by a change in the manner and habit of dressing, serious commotions and mutations are portended in a commonwealth, I, for my part, would rather believe that the fall of that city and its low and obscure condition were consequent on the general vitiation of its usage in the matter of speech. For, let the words of a country be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but, by no light indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly-yawning race, with minds already long prepared for any amount of servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any state, did not flourish moderately at least as long as liking and care for its own language lasted.

Therefore, Benedetto, if only you proceed to perform vigorously this labor of yours for your native state, behold clearly, even from this, what a fair and solid affection you will necessarily win from your countrymen. All this I say, not because I suppose you to be ignorant of any of it, but because I persuade myself that you are much more intent on the consideration of what you yourself can do for your country than of what your country will, by the best right, owe to you. I will now speak of foreigners. For obliging them, if that is at your heart, most certainly at present an ample opportunity is offered since what one is there among them that, happening to be more blooming than the rest in genius or in pleasing and elegant manners, and so counting the Tuscan tongue among his chief delights, does not also consider that it ought to have a place for him in the solid part of his literature, especially if he has imbibed Greek and Latin either not at all or but in slight tincture? I, certainly, who have not wet merely the tips of my lips with both those tongues,