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rality in her embrace, and solicitous, not to
agitate but, to amuse, exalt, and refine. He
has observed, however, with considerable
fidelity the practice of the Grecian drama-
tists; and when he unfolds the story of his
- scene in a speech delivered in the solitude of
a wild wood, (and this certainly is the most
reprehensible circumstance in the conduct
of his fable,) he is only guilty of the same
trespass against common sense, which his
favourite Euripides has frequently commit-
ted. The length and even poise of the
speeches in Comus are also formed on the
same model; and, when we recollect how
often the dialogue on the Athenian stage is
conducted through an entire scene in replies
and retorts consisting each of a single line,
we shall not be surprised at the same short
and equally measured conversation when it
occurs between Comus and the Lady.

It seems impossible for poetry to go beyond her excursions in "this wilderness of sweets." She treads sometimes on the very fearful and giddy edge of a precipice, and, while we admire her boldness, we are doubtful of her safety. In that exquisite passage

How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled,

At

if our rapture would suffer us to be sufficiently composed to consult our reason, we might, perhaps, justly question the propriety of the length to which the poet's fancy has carried him. Darkness may aptly be represented by the blackness of the raven, and the stillness of that darkness may be paralleled by an image borrowed from the object of another sense-by the softness of down; but it is surely a transgression, which stands in need of pardon, when, proceeding a step further, and accumulating personifications, we invest this raven-down with life and make it to smile. Another passage, which represents the effect of the Lady's singing with a different allusion, is not liable to any objection, and is altogether admirable:

At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound

Rose, like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes,
And stole upon the air.

Henry Lawes the musician, who composed the music for this poem, and who was himself no indifferent poet, acted the part of the attendant Spirit, and was designed, in that piece, under the character of Thyrsis

Whose artful strains have oft delay'd

The huddling brook to hear his madrigal.

He was retained as a domestic in the earl of

F

LIE

Bridgewater's family, where he was the mu-
sical instructor of the lady Alice. He was
the friend of Waller, and the theme of his
muse; but his most distinguishing honours
are derived from his connexion with Comus,
and its author. Of the former of these he
was the first publisher;' and by the latter he
was made an object of particular regard, of
high and specific panegyric. In his dedi-
cation of this first edition of Comus, to the
lord Brackley who had represented the elder
brother, Lawes speaks of the work as not
openly acknowledged by its author; and the
motto, undoubtedly prefixed to it by Milton
himself,

Eheu! quid volui misero mihi! floribus Austrum
Perditus:

Ah me! what phrenzy of my fever'd mind
Has bared my flowrets to the parching wind?

elegantly and happily intimates the sensibi-
lity of a young writer trembling on the edge
of the press, and fearful lest the tenderness
of his blossoms should be blighted by the
breath of the public.'

• In 1637.

s See Milton's xiii Sonnet.

From a letter of our author's to his friend, Alex. Gill, dated dec. 4, 1634, we find that in the same year in which the poet finished Comus, he made that version of the 114th Psalm into

TheLycidas was written, as there is reason to believe, at the solicitation of the author's old college, to commemorate the death of Mr. Edward King, one of its fellows, and a son of sir John King, Knt. secretary for Ireland în the reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles. This young man, whose vessel "foundered, as she was sailing from Chester to Ireland, in a calm sea and not far from land, was so highly esteemed by the whole University for his learning, piety, and talents, that his death was deplored as a public loss, and Cambridge invited her muses to celebrate and lament him. In the collection of poems, which was published on this occasion in 1638, Milton's Lycidas occupies the last, and, as it was no doubt intended to be, the most honourable place. Every honour which could be paid to its poetic excellence was inferior to its just demand: but we may reasonably wonder that a poem, breathing such hostility to the

Greek hexameters; which he afterwards published with his other poems. It was thrown off, as he tells his correspondent, without any thought, or intension of mind, and, as it were, with some sudden and strange impulse before day-light in his bed. "Nullo certè animi proposito, sed subito nescio quo impetu, ante lucis exortum, ad Græci carminis heroici legem, in lectulo ferè concinnabam." Epis. fam. 5.

"On August 10, 1637.

poem would extend our digression beyond its just length, and would not be consistent with our plan.-We have observed that the Comus came into the world unacknowledged by its author, and it is remarkable that the writer of the Lycidas was intimated only by the initials J. M. This great man seems to have felt an awe of the public, by which the herd of small writers are seldom depressed

For fools rush in, where Angels fear to tread.

sad the

ite gra

But if he published with diffidence, he wrote with boldness, and with the persuasion, resulting from the consciousness of power, of literary immortality. "After I had (he tells us) from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence of my father, (whom God recompense!) been exercised in the tongues, and some sciences as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether ought was imposed on me by them, that had the overlooking, or betaken to of my own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style by certain vital symptoms it had, was likely to live." In a letter, which from its date was

"Reasons of C. Govern. B. 2d. P.W. vol. i. 118.

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