"Befriend me, Night! best patroness of grief,
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flatter'd fancy to belief,

That heaven and earth are colour'd with my woe;
My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

The leaves should all be black whereon I write,
And letters where my tears have wash'd a wannish white."

Were ever tears shed, either in writing or reading such frigid lines as these? If they sprang into the eye, they would freeze before they fell; but, hark!—the next stanza! and you will say, "that strain was of a higher mood."

"See, see the chariot and those rushing wheels,
That whirl'd the prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirit some transporting cherub feels;

To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,

-Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit!"

In Paradise Lost there is not a flight more well-begun, but here the youthful poet flagged upon the wing, and, to the relique of eight verses, is appended the following affecting note:-"This subject being above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, he left it unfinished."

The little poem (twenty-eight lines only,) At a Solemn Music, is magnificently conceived, and exquisitely finished throughout. Milton had taken extraordinary pains with this piece, of which there are extant three draughts in his own handwriting, containing seven considerable, and many minor variations, including the excision of no less than ten lines the chippings and dust of a diamond, in the process of polishing it to perfection! Thus had he early learned the precious "art to blot ;" and resolutely he exercised it, proving, by this single example, if he had left no other, that what at first appears excellent, and is so, may

be made more excellent by not sparing even darling thoughts and beautiful, when they are rather expletive than essential.

Lycidas is a monody, in which the author bewails the death of a youthful friend, who had been drowned at sea. It is constructed of irregular stanzas, and, though equal in ornate diction and picturesque illustration to anything from the same pen, it is so difficult to read, even with the eye, that it is probably less perused than any other of Milton's masterpieces, though from none are a few peculiar passages more frequently quoted. Who could ever be weary of dwelling, with composure of delight verging on entrancement, on such lines as close this noble rhapsody:"Weep no more, woeful shepherds! weep no more,

For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor ;

So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and, with new-spangled ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:

-So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of Him that walk'd the waves;
Where other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops and sweet societies,
That sing, and, singing, in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes."

The contrasted poems of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, the cheerful and the thoughtful man,. are unrivalled in their kind, and as perfect as counterpart descriptions can be of natural scenery, artificial structures, and human feelings, under the influence of seasons and circumstances, abroad and at home, by day and by night, which affect different minds differently, or the same mind differently in different moods, through the medium of the

B

bodily senses. While the landscapes furnish delectable subjects for the pencil of the painter, the images, allegorical as well as real, are so happily fitted for the chisel of the sculptor, that, were it the taste of those who erect stately mansions in our days, to adorn them with "cornice or frieze, with bossy sculpture graven," as temples and palaces were of old, the series of figures and groups in each of these models of diversified excellence would want only the hand of a Canova or a Chantrey, inspired by the Euphrosyne of the bard himself in the one case, and his "pensive Nun, devout and pure," in the other, to put the poetry of Milton into marble, and give the marble more than life by making it rival the song in endurance as well as in beauty and sublimity. Music, the music of Handel, the Milton of that sister art, which, next to his own, the poet himself loved best, has already been "married to (the) immortal verse" of these harmonious twins. Illustrative of one remarkable feature of our author's genius, a passage from each of these, disclosing his enthusiastic passion for "the concord of sweet sounds," may, in this place, be opportunely quoted, out of numerous allusions to the subject occurring in all his writings. Here are exemplified the different kinds of music, and their respective influences on the merry and the meditative man.

"And ever against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus' self may heave his head,

From golden slumbers on a bed

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."

«Hide me from day's garish eye,

From L'ALLEGRO.

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 enchantment 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