173. Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain.]

This resembles what Cornelius Nepos says of Cicero, that his prudence seemed to be a kind of divination, for he foretold every thing that happened afterwards like a prophet. et facile existimari possit, prudentiam quodammodo esse divinationem. Non enim Cicero ea solum, quæ vivo se acciderunt, futura prædixit, sed etiam quæ nunc usu veniunt, cecinit, ut vates. Vita Attici, cap. 16. This ending is certainly very fine, but though Mr. Thyer thinks it perfect and complete, yet others have been of opinion that something more might still be added, and I have seen in Mr. Richardson's book some lines of Mr. John Hughes.

There let Time's creeping winter

shed

His reverend snow around my head;
And while I feel by fast degrees
My sluggard blood wax chill and
freeze,

Let thought unveil to my fix'd eye
A scene of deep eternity,
Till life dissolving at the view,
I wake and find the vision true.

179. But this addition was not made by Hughes, as I apprehend, from any peculiar predilection for Milton's poem. Hughes was a frequent and professed writer of cantatas, masks, operas, odes, and songs for music. In particular, before the introduction of Italian operas on

the English stage, he wrote six cantatas, composed by Pepusch, which were designed as an essay or specimen, the first in its kind, for compositions in English after the Italian manner. He was also employed in fitting old pieces for music. In the year 1711, Sir Richard Steele, and Mr. Clayton a composer, established concerts in York-buildings; and there is a letter dated that year, written by Steele to Hughes, in which they desire him to "alter "this poem [Dryden's Alexan"der's Feast] for music, pre"serving as many of Dryden's verses as you can. It is to be

performed by a voice well "skilled in recitative: but you "understand all these matters "much better than Yours, &c." [See ibid. p. xv. xvii. and p. 127. and vol. ii. p. 71.] The two projectors, we may probably suppose, were busy in examining for words to be set to music, for collections of published poetry their concerts; and stumbled in their search on one or both of Milton's two poems. These they requested Hughes, an old and skilful practitioner in that sort of business, to alter and adapt for musical composition. What he had done for Dryden, he might be desired to do for Milton. This seems to be the history of Hughes's supplemental lines. Hughes, however, has an expression from Comus, in his Thought on a Garden, written 1704. Poems, vol. i. p. 171. v. 3.

"To walke amongst orchards, 66 gardens, bowres, and artificiall "wildernesses, green thickets, " arches, groves, rillets, foun"tains, and such like pleasant "places, like that Antiochian "Daphne, pooles, betwixt "wood and water, in a faire "meadow by a river side, to "disport in some pleasant plaine, "to run up a steepe hill, or sit "in a shadie seat, must needes "be a delectable recreation."To see some pageant or sight go by, as at coronations, weddings, and such like solemni"ties; to see an ambassadour,

mumming, stage-playes, howsoever they bee heavily cen"sured by some severe Catos,

yet if opportunely and soberly "used, may justly be approved. "To read, walke, and see "mappes and pictures, statues, "old coynes of severall sortes, "in a fayre gallerie, artificiall

workes, &c. Whosoever he is "therefore, that is overrunne "with solitarinesse, or carried

away with a pleasing melancholy "and vaine conceits,-I can pre"scribe him no better remedie "than this of study." He winds up his system of studious recreation with a recommendation of the sciences of morality, astronomy, botany, &c. "To see a "well-cut herball, all hearbs, "trees, flowers, plants, expressed "in their proper colours to the life, &c." P. ii. s. 2. p. 224234. edit. 1624.

"

the stage, he did not mention the twin-bards, when he celebrates the learned sock of Jonson, and the wood-notes wild of Shakespeare.

L'Allegro and Il Penseroso may be called the two first descriptive poems in the English language. It is perhaps true, that the characters are not sufficiently kept apart. But this circumstance has been productive of greater excellencies. It has been remarked, "No mirth indeed can be found "in his melancholy, but I am "afraid I always meet some me"lancholy in his mirth." Milton's is the dignity of mirth. His cheerfulness is the cheerfulness of gravity. The objects he selects in his L'Allegro are so far gay, as they do not naturally excite sadness. Laughter and jollity are named only as personifications, and never exemplified. Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, are enumerated only in general terms. There is specifically no mirth in contemplating a fine landscape. And even his landscape, although it has flowery meads and flocks, wears a shade of pensiveness; and contains russet lawns, fallows grey, and barren mountains, overhung with labouring clouds. Its old turretted mansion peeping from the trees, awakens only a train of solemn and romantic, perhaps melancholy, reflection. Many a pensive man listens with delight to the milk-maid singing blithe, to the mower whetting his scythe, and to a distant peal of villagebells. He chose such illustrations as minister matter for true poetry, and genuine description. Even his most brilliant imagery is mellowed with the sober hues

of philosophic meditation. It was impossible for the author of I Penseroso to be more cheerful, or to paint mirth with levity; that is, otherwise than in the colours of the higher poetry. Both poems are the result of the same feelings, and the same habits of thought. See note on L'All. v. 146.

Doctor Johnson has remarked, that in L'Allegro, "no part of "the gaiety is made to arise from "the pleasures of the bottle." The truth is, that Milton means to describe the cheerfulness of the philosopher or the student, the amusements of a contemplative mind. And on this principle, he seems unwilling to allow, that Mirth is the offspring of Bacchus and Venus, deities who preside over sensual gratifications; but rather adopts the fiction of those more serious and sapient fablers, who suppose, that her proper parents are Zephyr and Aurora: intimating, that his cheerful enjoyments are those of the temperate and innocent kind, of early hours and rural pleasures. That critic does not appear to have entered into the spirit, or to have comprehended the meaning, of our author's Allegro.

No man was ever so disqualified to turn puritan as Milton. In both these poems, he professes himself to be highly pleased with the choral church-music, with Gothic cloisters, the painted windows and vaulted isles of a venerable cathedral, with tilts and tournaments, and with masques and pageantries. What very repugnant and unpoetical principles did he afterwards adopt! He helped to subvert monarchy, to destroy subordination, and to

level all distinctions of rank. But this scheme was totally inconsistent with the splendours of society, with throngs of knights and barons bold, with store of ladies, and high triumphs, which belonged to a court. Pomp, and feast, and revelry, the show of Hymen, with mask and antique pageantry, were among the state and trappings of nobility, which he detested as an advocate for republicanism. His system of worship, which renounced all

outward solemnity, all that had ever any connection with popery, tended to overthrow the studious cloisters pale, and the high embowed roof; to remove the storied windows richly dight, and to silence the pealing organ and the full-voiced quire. The delights arising from these objects were to be sacrificed to the cold and philosophical spirit of Calvinism, which furnished no pleas sures to the imagination.