When the world's up, and every swarm abroad,
Keep well thy temper; mix not with each clay;
Dispatch necessities; life hath a load
Which must be carri'd on, and safely may;
Yet keep those cares without thee; let the heart
Be God's alone, and choose the better part.

(From Silex Scintillans.)

From The Rainbow.'

Still young and fine! but what is still in view
We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new.
How bright wert thou when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burnisht flaming arch did first descry!
When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers, in one knot
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and fair,
Forms turn to musick, clouds to smiles and air:
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and sunshine! the sure tye
Of my Lord's hand, the object of his eye!
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distinct, and low, I can in thine see Him,
Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne,
And mindes the covenant 'twixt all and One.
(From Silex Scintillans.)

Monsieur Gombauld.

...

[From Olor Iscanus. Written after reading the romance Endymion, by the French Protestant poet J. O. de Gombauld (1570-1666), which was translated in 1637.)

I 'ave read thy soul's faire night-peece, and have seen
Th' amours and courtship of the silent queen;
Her stoln descents to earth, and what did move her
To juggle first with heav'n, then with a lover;
With Latmos' lowder rescue, and, alas!
To find her out, a hue and crie in brasse ;
Thy journal of deep mysteries, and sad
Nocturnall pilgrimage; with thy dreams clad
In fancies darker than thy cave; thy glasse
Of sleepie draughts; and as thy soul did passe
In her calm voyage, what discourse she heard
Of spirits, what dark groves and ill-shap'd guard
Ismena led thee through; with thy proud flight
O'r Periardes, and deep-musing night

Near fair Eurota,' banks; what solemn green
The neighbour shades weare; and what forms are seen
In their large bowers, with that sad path and seat
Which none but light-heel'd nymphs and fairies beat;
Their solitary life, and how exempt
From common frailty, the severe contempt
They have of man, their priviledge to live
A tree or fountain, and in that reprieve
What ages they consume: with the sad vale
Of Diophania; and the mournfull tale

Of th' bleeding, vocall myrtle: these and more,
Thy richer thoughts, we are upon the score
To thy rare fancy for. Nor doest thou fall
From thy first majesty, or ought at all
Betray consumption. Thy full vig'rous bayes
Wear the same green, and scorne the lene decayes
Of stile or matter; just so I have known

Some chrystal spring, that from the neighbour down
Deriv'd her birth, in gentle murmurs steal

To the next vale, and proudly there reveal

Her streams in lowder accents, adding still
More noise and waters to her channell, till
At last, swoln with increase, she glides along
The lawnes and meadows, in a wanton throng
Of frothy billows, and in one great name
Swallows the tributary brooks' drown'd fame.
Nor are they meere inventions, for we
In th' same peece find scatter'd philosophie
And hidden, disperst truths, that enfolded lye
In the dark shades of deep allegorie,
So neatly weav'd, like arras, they descrie
Fables with truth, fancy with mysterie.
So that thou hast, in this thy curious mould,
Cast that commended mixture wish'd of old,
Which shall these contemplations render far
Lesse mutable, and lasting as their star;
And while there is a people, or a sunne,
Endymion's storie with the moon shall runne.

From The Timber.'

Sure thou didst flourish once, and many springs, Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers, Passed ore thy head; many light hearts and wings Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.

And still a new succession sings and flies,

Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot Towards the old and still enduring skies,

While the low violet thrives at their root.

But thou beneath the sad and heavy line

Of death, doth waste all senseless, cold, and dark, Where not so much as dreams of light may shine, Nor any thought of greenness, leaf, or bark.

And yet as if some deep hate and dissent,
Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,
Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent
Before they come, and know'st how near they be.
Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breath
Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease;
But this thy strange resentment after death
Means onely those who broke, in life, thy peace.

So murthered man, when lovely life is done,
And his blood freez'd, keeps in the center still
Some secret sense, which makes the dead blood run
At his approach that did the body kill.

And is there any murth'rer worse than sin?
Or any storms more foul than a lewd life?
Or what resentient can work more within
Then true remorse, when with past sins at strife?

The Retreate.

Happy those early dayes, when I
Shin'd in my angell-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestiall thought;
When yet I had not walkt above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;

Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill
My perspective still as they pass:

Or else remove me hence unto that hill,
Where I shall need no glass.

(From Silex Scintillans.)

Childe-hood.

I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
Dazles at it as at eternity.

Were now that Chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my pow'r,
Quickly would I make my path ev'n,
And by meer playing go to Heaven.

Why should men love

A wolf more than a lamb or dove?
Or choose hell-fire and brimstone streams
Before bright stars and God's own beams?
Who kisseth thorns will hurt his face,
But flowers do both refresh and grace;
And sweetly living-fie on men!
Are, when dead, medicinal then ;
If seeing much should make staid eyes,
And long experience should make wise;
Since all that age doth teach is ill,
Why should I not love childe-hood still?
Why, if I see a rock or shelf,

Shall I from thence cast down my self?

Or by complying with the world,
From the same precipice be hurl'd?
Those observations are but foul,
Which make me wise to lose my soul.

And yet the practice worldlings call
Business, and weighty action all,
Checking the poor childe for his play,
But gravely cast themselves away.

Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span
Where weeping Virtue parts with man ;
Where love without lust dwells, and bends
What way we please without self-ends.
An age of mysteries! which he

Must live twice that would God's face see;
Which angels guard, and with it play,
Angels! which foul men drive away.

How do I study now, and scan
Thee more than ere I studyed man,
And onely see through a long night
Thy edges and thy bordering light
O for thy center and mid-day!
For sure that is the narrow way!'

The World.

I saw Eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;

And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres

Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.

The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain;

Neer him, his lute, his fancy, and his slights,
Wit's sour delights,

With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,
Yet his dear treasure,

All scatter'd lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flowr.

The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog, mov'd there so slow,

He did not stay, nor go;

Condemning thoughts—like sad eclipses—scowl Upon his soul,

And clouds of crying witnesses without

Pursued him with one shout.

Yet digg'd the mole, and lest his ways be found, Workt under ground,

Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see
That policie;

Churches and altars fed him; perjuries
Were gnats and flies;

It rain'd about him bloud and tears, but he
Drank them as free.

The fearfull miser on a heap of rust
Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust,

Yet would not place one peece alone, but lives
In fear of theeves.

Thousands there were as frantick as himself, And hugg'd each one his pelf;

The downright epicure plac'd heav'n in sense, And scorn'd pretence;

While others, slipt into a wide excesse,

Said little lesse ;

The weaker sort, slight, triviall wares inslave,
Who think them brave;

And poor despised Truth sate counting by
Their victory.

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing and weep, soar'd up into the ring;
But most would use no wing.

O fools-said I-thus to prefer dark night
Before true light!

To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shews the way,

The way which from this dead and dark abode
Leads up to God;

A way where you might tread the sun, and be More bright than he!

But as I did their madness so discusse

One whisper'd thus,

'This ring the Bridegroome did for none provide, But for His bride.'

There is an edition of Vaughan's complete works by Grosart (4 vols. 1868-71), one of Silex Scintillans and other sacred poems by Lyte (1847), and one of the Poems by E. K. Chambers (2 vols. 1896). See Dr John Brown's Hora Subseciva, F. T. Palgrave in Cymmrodorion (1891), Miss L. J. Guiney in the Atlantic Monthly of 1894 (reprinted in her Little English Gallery, 1894), and Professor Dowden's Puritan and Anglican (1901).

John Wilkins (1614-72), Bishop of Chester, was the son of an Oxford goldsmith, but was born near Daventry, in Northamptonshire; and he studied at New Inn Hall and Magdalen Hall in Oxford. As chaplain to Lord Say, Lord Berkeley, and the Court-Palatine of the Rhine, he found time for extensive studies in mathematics and physics; and having sided with the popular party

during the Civil War, he received the headship of Wadham College. He was one of a small knot of university men who used to meet for the cultivation of experimental philosophy as a diversion from the painful thoughts excited by public calamities, and who, after the Restoration, were incorporated by Charles II. under the title of the Royal Society. Having married a sister of Oliver Cromwell in 1656, he was enabled, by a dispensation from the Protector, to retain his office in Wadham College, notwithstanding a rule which made celibacy imperative; three years afterwards he became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. At the Restoration he was ejected from this office; but his politics being neither violent nor unaccommodating, he became preacher at Grey's Inn, rector of St Laurence Jewry, and Dean of Ripon ; and, by the favour of the Duke of Buckingham, was advanced in 1668 to the see of Chester. Bishop Burnet praised Wilkins 'as a man of as great mind, as true a judgment, as eminent virtues, and of as good a soul as any I ever knew. Though he married Cromwell's sister, yet he made no other use of that alliance but to do good offices, and to cover the University of Oxford from the sourness of Owen and Goodwin.' On the other hand, like his friend and son-in-law Tillotson and other moderate Churchmen, Wilkins was much disliked by the High-Church party; Tories thought him a trimmer, and Anthony Wood maliciously said 'there was nothing deficient in him but a constant mind and settled principles.' He wrote some theological and mathematical works, and in early life (1638) published The Discovery of a New World; or a Discourse tending to prove that 'tis probable there may be another Habitable World in the Moon: with [in the 3rd edition, 1640] a Discourse concerning the Possibility of a Passage thither. The principal part of the work is an earnest attempt to refute religious and other objections to the doctrine of a plurality of worlds. Only in the fourteenth and last chapter does he become a pioneer on the path Swift in satire and E. A. Poe and Jules Verne in pure creative fiction were also to adventure on, when he seriously supports the proposition that it is possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world, and, if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them.' He admits that this feat has in the present state of human knowledge an air of utter impossibility; yet from this no hostile inference ought to be drawn, seeing that many things formerly supposed impossible have actually been accomplished. 'If we do but consider,' says he, 'by what steps and leasure all arts do usually rise to their growth, we shall have no cause to doubt why this also may not hereafter be found out amongst other secrets. It hath constantly yet been the method of Providence not presently to shew us all, but to lead us on by degrees from the knowledge of one thing to

another. 'Twas a great while ere the planets were distinguished from the fixed stars; and some time after that ere the morning and evening stars were found to be the same. And in greater space, I doubt not but this also, and other as excellent mysteries, will be discovered.' Wilkins goes on to discuss the difficulties in the way of accomplishing the aerial journey. He disposes, in sufficiently airy fashion, of the obstacles presented by the natural heaviness of a man's body' and 'the extreme coldness and thinness of the ethereal air'-he held that there was air all the way; and having made it appear that even a swift journey to the moon would probably occupy a period of six months, even if a man could fly a thousand miles in a day (the distance being, as he computed, 179,712 miles), he naturally stumbles on the question, 'And how were it possible for any to tarry so long without diet or sleep?'

I suppose there could be no trusting to that fancy of Philo the Jew (mentioned before), who thinks that the musick of the spheres should supply the strength of food. Nor can we well conceive how a man should be able to carry so much luggage with him as might serve for his viaticum in so tedious a journey. But if he could, yet he must have some time to rest and sleep in. And I believe he shall scarce find any lodgings by the way. No inns to entertain passengers, nor any castles in the air-unless they be enchanted ones-to receive poor pilgrims or errant knights. And so, consequently, he cannot have any possible hopes of reaching thither.

He has, however, first to make the preliminary large postulate, 'Supposing a man could fly or by other means raise himself twenty miles upwards or thereabouts' above the vaporous atmosphere; then, he believes, he would be beyond the influence of the magnetical virtue of the earth and the force of gravity, and so 'it were possible for him to come unto the moon.' This is seriously argued at length --such was then the state of science. The difficulty as to sleep is a minor one: Seeing we do not then spend ourselves in any labour, we shall not, it may be, need the refreshment of sleep. But if we do, we cannot desire a softer bed than the air, where we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers.' The necessary supply of food still remains to be provided for:

And here 'tis considerable, that since our bodies will then be devoid of gravity, and other impediments of motion, we shall not at all spend ourselves in any labour, and so, consequently, not much need the reparation of diet; but may, perhaps, live altogether without it, as those creatures have done who, by reason of their sleeping for many days together, have not spent any spirits, and so not wanted any food, which is commonly related of serpents, crocodiles, bears, coockoes, swallows, and such-like. To this purpose Mendoza reckons up divers strange relations: as that of Epimenides, who is storied to have slept seventy-five years; and another of a rustic in Germany, who, being accidentally covered with a hayrick, slept there for all the autumn and the winter following without any nourishment.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty of all is, By what conveyance are we to get to the moon? and for this he is ready to invent a flying-machine :

If it be here inquired, what means there may be conjectured for our ascending beyond the sphere of the earth's magnetical vigor, I answer: I. 'Tis not perhaps impossible that a man may be able to fly by the application of wings to his own body; as angels are pictured, as Mercury and Dædalus are feigned, and as hath been attempted by divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople, as Busbequius relates. 2. If there be such a great ruck [the roc] in Madagascar as Marcus Polus the Venetian mentions, the feathers in whose wings are twelve foot long, which can swoop up a horse and his rider, or an elephant, as our kites do a mouse; why then, it is but teaching one of these to carry a man, and he may ride up thither, as Ganymede does upon an eagle. Or if neither of these ways will serve, yet do I seriously, and upon good grounds, affirm it possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and give such a motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. This engine may be contrived from the same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle.

The particulars of the machine he reserves for some other occasion. In 1640 Wilkins published, and appended to the new edition of the Discovery, a Discourse concerning a New Planet: tending to prove that 'tis probable our Earth is one of the Planets-one of the earliest defences of the Copernican system as developed by Galileo in 1632. In 1641 Wilkins discussed writing in cipher and shorthand and communication by signals, in a work entitled Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger: showing how a Man may with Privacy and Speed communicate his Thoughts to a Friend at any Distance. Here also he pointed out the indubitable advantages of a flying chariot,' if such a thing could be invented; and questioned the possibility of two friends at a distance communicating by help of 'needles touched by the same loadstone, indicating by sympathy the same letters on similar alphabets arranged on circular discs, with other possibilities of magnetical operations'—an unrealised dream of a future telegraph. In 1668 he produced a great treatise entitled An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, which was published by the Royal Society, and was based in the main on the Ars Signorum of George Dalgarno of Aberdeen (1626-87), long a schoolmaster in Oxford, and author of the Didascalocophus, or Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor. Wilkins was the deviser of one of the most ingenious of the impossible schemes for securing perpetual motion; and he wrote on natural theology, and published

sermons.

John Milton

stands high above all the poets of his age, and in the whole range of English poetry is second only to Shakespeare. He was born in London, 9th December 1608, at the 'Spread Eagle' in Bread Street, a house afterwards destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. His grandfather was Richard Milton of Stanton St Johns, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire, a zealous Catholic, who in the year 1601 was twice fined £60 for absenting himself from the parish church and refusing to conform. His son John, the poet's father, became a Protestant, was accordingly disinherited, and established himself in London as a scrivener, a lawyer who drew contracts and arranged loans. The father's firmness under trial and his sufferings for conscience' sake tinctured the temper of the son, who was a stern, unbending champion of religious freedom; and like his father, who carefully instructed him in the art, the poet loved music.

The younger Mil

ton was educated

written his grand Hymn on the Nativity, any one verse of which was sufficient to show that a new master's hand was touching the lyre of English poetry. It was not by any means his first venture in verse, for Milton ranks along with Cowley and Pope as one of the most precocious of English poets, his versions of two of the Psalms having been produced when he was fifteen years old. In 1632 he left the university, and found a new home with his father, who had retired from business and had purchased a small property at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. Here he lived nearly six years, studying the classical literatures, and here he wrote L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas. The Arcades formed

with great care. He had as private tutor a Scottish Presbyterian, Thomas Young, M.A. of St Andrews, and at twelve he was sent to St Paul's School, London. Thence he removed to Christ's College, Cambridge, being admitted a pensioner in February 1625. He was a severe student, of a nice and haughty temper, jealous of constraint or control; and he complained that the fields around Cambridge had no soft shades to attract the muse. How far his own temper was the cause of some unpleasant incidents in his college career must be matter of conjecture; but it seems indubitable that he was once chastised in some manner by his tutor, and that he had even to leave the university for a while. Though designed for the Church, he preferred a 'blameless silence' to what he considered 'servitude and forswearing.' At this time, in his twenty-first year, he had

Ludlow; his sons, Lord Brackley and Mr Thomas Egerton, and his daughter, Lady Alice Egerton, were benighted in passing through Haywood Forest in Herefordshire, on their way to Ludlow, and the lady was for a short time lost. The story was of course told to their father upon their arrival; and Milton wrote the masque on a moralised or spiritualised treatment of the incident, at the request of his friend Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas-night 1634, the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes all taking part in the representation. Masques, in which the dramatic element was subordinate to spectacle, pageant, and music, had long been popular, and in Ben Jonson's and Beaumont's hands had high merit; now the taste for them had declined, and by a curious fate, though Puritans had reviled masques as well as