Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regain'd Eurydice "

From L'ALLEGRO.

Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee, with honied thigh,

That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,

With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep;

And let some strange, mysterious dream

Wave at his wings, in airy stream

Of lively portraiture display'd,

Softly on my eyelids laid.

-And, as I wake, sweet music breathe

Above, about, or underneath,

Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters' pale,
And love the high-embower'd roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light:
There, let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes."

From IL PENSEROSO.

Which is the sweeter of these two modes of enchant ment by the charms of music,-the one involuntarily exhilarating, the other deliciously soothing, yet transporting -it would be difficult to determine. Most readers who are sensible to such refined emotions as verse, like this can communicate, will choose to make the experiment for themselves, and, perhaps, repeat the trial till it shall seem

less and less possible to say, whether the awakening or the entrancing strain be most delightful.

Arcades is the title of a brief domestic interlude of song and recitation, performed at Harefield, before the Countess Dowager of Derby, by some noble persons of her family, who appeared on the scene in pastoral dresses. The speech of "the Genius of the Wood," giving an account of his offices and occupations, is admirably in the character which he assumes.

The first published verses of Milton were an epitaph On the admirable dramatic poet, Shakspeare, commencing thus:

"What needs my Shakspeare for his honour'd bones,

The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or, that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?”

It is remarkable that, while our author was himself meditating "to build the lofty rhyme," and frame a work more stately, and not less enduring than "a star-ypointing pyra. mid," his minor productions, whereon he exercised and perfected his skill for that great undertaking, on materials the most precious, and wrought into the most exquisite symmetry, he left strewn about, here and there, for chance publication, without so much as giving his name, when he allowed them to escape into print. Even at the stage of prime manhood, when his Muse, in her halcyon days, had brought forth Comus

"That happy miracle of her rare birth,"

he abandoned it, as the ostrich trusts her young in the wilderness, to be disclosed to the world by his friend, Henry Lawes, who composed the accompanying music, when it was performed with lordly pomp at Ludlow Castle; the principal actors being three children of the noble family o' John, Earl of Bridgewater, on whose misadventure, in a

neighbouring wood, the romantic fable is founded. In point of fine fancy, rich embellishment, diction of unsurpassable beauty, and high toned moral sentiment, this masque may be pronounced the most perfect of Milton's compositions. But, to be enjoyed, it must be read as a poem, for the sake of these excellencies, and not as a drama representing anything probable or possible in human life, under any imaginable circumstances, even admitting the preternatural machinery which the poet has introduced to exalt a simple incident into tragic dignity. For, were Comus and his crew, Sabrina and her nymphs, as real as the lady herself, the elder and the younger brother, but especially the attendant spirit, would not have discoursed so learnedly, nor acted so dilatorily (though each may have felt all that each is made to express,) in a crisis of such agonizing suspense and imminent peril to the captured lady, after they knew her situation. With this drawback (if it be one, except in reference to a stage exhibition,) Comus may claim the eulogium which a critic of the purest taste, the late Dr. Aikin, has passed upon it. He says:-"The poem possesses great beauty of versification, varying from the gayest Anacreontics to the most majestic and sonorous heroics. On the whole, if an example were required of a work made up of the very essence of poetry, perhaps none of equal length, in any language, could be produced, answering this character in so high a degree as the Masque of Comus." It may be added, that here Milton first tried his hand in blank verse, and proved himself master of the whole diapason of rhythmical tones and cadences, through all their implications. Two or three brief extracts, without comment, will test the quality of the philosophy, as wel as the poetry of this work:

"Virtue could see to do what virtue would,

By her own radiant light, though sun and mooi
Were in the flat sea sunk. And wisdom's selt

Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,

Where, with her best nurse, contemplation,

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That, in the various bustle of resort,

Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impaired.
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.

"How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose;
But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

Of malice, or of sorcery, or that power
Which erring men call chance, this I hold firm:
Virtue may be assail'd, but never hurt;
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthrall'd;
Yea, even that which mischief meant most harm,
Shall, in the happy trial, prove most glory;
But evil on itself shall back recoil,

And mix no more with goodness; when, at last,
Gather'd like scum, and settled to itself,
It shall be in eternal restless change
Self-fel and self-consumed: if this fail,
The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble."

Is not this Plato himself speaking in English, as pure and beautiful, almost, as his own fine Greek?

Our author's Sonnets are of very unequal, and some of very indifferent merit, though the principal fault of the least excellent is the uncouth intertexture of the lines, the ruggedness of the rhythm, and, in some instances, the barbarity of the rhymes. The first is addressed to the nightingale, his favourite bird. Her he has celebrated in

every one of his finest poems, and often in strains which, if the chauntress herself could have heard and understood, she would surely, like her sister in Strada's fable, have endeavoured to rival, t... she broke her heart in the conflict, and fell dead upon the poet's harp-strings. Among the best of these sonnets, that On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson is (in the beautiful phrase of Coleridge) "beautiful exceedingly ;"-the canonization in verse of a glorified saint. That On the late Massacre in Piedmont contains a tremendous malediction on the persecutors of those mountaineer-martyrs,

-

"who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones."

Nor must the sonnet on his blindness be overlooked. Though severely simple in style, and remarkably abrupt in the cadences, it is, in quiet grandeur of sentiment, one of the noblest records of human feeling at once subdued and sublimed by resignation to the divine will. Milton is never more himself than when he speaks of himself. Here we are let into the inmost sanctuary of his mind, and hearken, as it were, to the invisible spirit there communing with itself, amidst the darkness of external nature, till light from heaven, suddenly breaking in upon him, reveals God in his "kingly state," obeyed equally by those who do and those who suffer his will.

"thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait"

In many of his works, both prose and verse, Milton had avowed his purpose to give, to contemporaries and generations to come, an heroic poem; but he was "long choosing and beginning late." The delay was of no disadvantage, for the choice which he had almost made, even in middle life would hardly have proved a wise one. La