"Thence to the city once I thought to go,

But somewhat in my mind this thought had thrown,
It was a place wherein I was not known;
And therefore went into these homely towns
Sweetly environed with the daisied downs."

There she addressed a miller, a tailor, and a weaver, who denied all knowledge of her. "We cannot help you, though your stay may wrong us." So Truth at last came, in her travels, to the Vale of Woe. This also the poet describes with careful allegory, and the description ends the Fourth Song of his Pastorals.

In the Fifth Song, which is the last of the First Book, published in 1613, we hear how on a hillock, in the Vale of Woe, a craggy island about which springs made a crystal ring, Truth found the fair Idra (England). Idra had lived in happy state, the fairest darling of Oceanus.

But as a snowy swan, who many a day

On Tamar's swelling breasts hath had his play,
For further pleasure doth assay to swim
My native Tavy, or the sandy Plim;
And on the panting billows bravely rides,

Whilst country lasses walking on the sides

Admire her beauty, and with clapping hands

Would force her leave the stream and tread the sands,
When she regardless swims to the other edge
Until an envious briar or tangling sedge
Despoils her plumes; or else a sharpened beam
Pierceth her breast, and on the bloody stream
She pants for life: so whilome rode this maid
On streams of worldly bliss, more rich arrayed

With earth's delight than thought could put in ure
To glut the senses of an epicure.

Whilst neighbouring kings upon their frontiers stood
And offered for her dowre huge seas of blood:
And perjured Geryon1 to win her rent
The Indian rocks for gold, and bootless spent
Almost his patrimony for her sake,

Yet nothing like respected as the Drake
That scoured her channels and destroyed the weed
Which spoilt her sister's nets, and fishes breed.
At last her truest love she threw upon

A royal youth, whose like, whose paragon,
Heaven never lent the earth: so great a spirit
The world could not contain, nor kingdoms merit:
And therefore Jove did with the saints enthrone him,
And left his lady nought but tears to moan him.

The lament is for King James's son Prince Henry, who died on the 6th of November, 1612. He loved the poets, and was mourned by them. Idra's lament becomes now a funeral song for him, "No grave befits him but the hearts of men." This is the close of her Threnody:

When last he sickened, then we first began
To tread the Labyrinth of Woe about;
And by degrees we further inward ran,
Having his thread of life to guide us out.
But Destiny no sooner saw us enter
Sad Sorrow's Maze, immuréd up in night
(Where nothing dwells

But cries and yells

Thrown from the hearts of men deprived of light), When we were almost come into the centre,

Fate, cruelly to bar our joys returning,

Cut off our thread, and left us all in mourning.

Truth, Spenser's Una in another form, tells Fida how she was drawn to the sad Idra when her song had ceased.

Now silence locked the organs of that voice
Whereat each merry sylvan wont rejoice,
When with a bended knee to her I came,
And did impart my grief and hated name.
But first a pardon begged if that my cause
So much constrained me as to break the laws
Of her wished sequestration, or asked bread
To save a life from her whose life was dead.
But lawless famine, self-consuming hunger,
Alas, compelled me. Had I stayed longer
My weakened limbs had been my want's forced meed,
And I had fed on that I could not feed.
When she, compassionate, to my sad moan
Did lend a sigh, and stole it from her own,
And, woful lady, wrecked on hapless shelf,
Yielded me comfort who had none herself;
Told how she knew me well, since I had been
As chiefest consort of the Faerie Queene;

O happy Queene! For ever, ever praise
Dwell on thy tomb; the period of all days
Only seal up thy fame; and as thy birth
Enriched thy temples on the fading earth,
So have thy virtues crowned thy blessed soul
Where the first Mover, with His word's control

1 Geryon. The King of Spain. Name taken from the "Faerie Queene."

As with a girdle the huge ocean binds;
Gathers into His fist the nimble winds;
Stops the bright courser in his hot career;
Commands the moon twelve courses in a year;
Live then with Him in endless bliss, while we
Admire all virtues in admiring thee.

Thou, thou the fautress of the learned well;
Thou nursing mother of God's Israel;
Thou, for whose loving truth the heaven rains
Sweet mel and manna on our flowery plains;
Thou, by whose hand the sacred Trine did bring
Us out of bonds from bloody Bonnering.?
Ye suckling babes, for ever bless that name
Released your burning in your mother's flame!
Thrice blessed maiden, by whose hand was given
Free liberty to taste the food of heaven.
Never forget her, Albion's lovely daughters,
Which led you to the springs of living waters!
And if my Muse her glory fail to sing,
May to my mouth my tongue for ever cling!"

Herewith, at hand, taking her horn of plenty
Filled with the choice of every orchards' dainty,
As pears, plums, apples, the sweet raspberry,
The quince, the apricot, the blushing cherry,
The mulberry, his black from Thisbe taking,
The clustered filbert, grapes oft merry-making,
This fruitful horn the immortal ladies filled
With all the pleasures that rough forests yield,
And gave Idya, with a farther blessing,
That thence, as from a garden without dressing,
She these should ever have, and never want
Store from an orchard without tree or plant.
With a right willing hand she gave me hence,
The stomach's comforter, the pleasant quince,
And for the chiefest cherisher she lent
The royal thistle's milky nourishment.

In the reign of James I., under whom the thistle was joined to the rose, it was more pertinent than impertinent perhaps for the genius of the nation to feed starved Truth with "the royal thistle's milky nourishment," though the diet might appear less fit for Una than for her ass.

Evening falls while Aletheia tells her tale to Fida; she leaves, therefore, to another time the telling of the manner of her transformation to a hind. Aletheia and Fida, passing to a palace on a hill, are watched and followed by Riot, who has disgorged the flesh of the hind. By the way he entered, Remembrance was portress, Remorse kept the postern key. Remorse grasped his heart, as she grasped her own, with glowing pincers, fettered him, racked him, and then sent him up a hill by the right-hand path, Repentance way, where the left-hand path led through horrors by the dwelling of Despair. The book ends with the coming of Riot into the house of Repentance, where fair Metanoia (change of mind) transformed his brutish shape to youth and beauty. Then he-no longer Riot, but Amintas now-was clad in seemly wise, not gaudily, but so that "his clothes received their grace from him," and led through a

1 Fautress, foundress.

2 Bonnering. Persecution of the Reformers under Bonner in Queen Mary's reign.

garden, wherein he met "Fida, ever to kind Remond dear," who showed where Aletheia lay. Amintas then met Aletheia with a kiss of love, " a truer love the Muses never sung," and the celebration of this ends the first part of "Britannia's Pastorals," the pure strain of a young poet of twenty. In this Fifth Song, William Browne had written:

Here could I spend that spring of Poesie
Which not twice ten suns have bestowed on me,
And tell the world the Muse's love appears
In nonaged youth as in the length of years.

Though somewhat artless in the shaping of his story, led also by the love of Spenser and by fellowship with Spenser's deep religious earnestness to overweight his pastoral theme with allegory in the manner of the "Faerie Queene," William Browne sang his own song. If Spenser stirred the music in him, as in Cowley and in Keats, his music was no more than in Cowley and Keats the echo of another poet's singing. This young poet won the applause of Selden. Michael Drayton welcomed the young shepherd who sang on the sacred downs of the Muses as one who, if possible, could redeem them "now made the way of the unworthiest clowns." "So may'st thou thrive," wrote Drayton of William Browne,

So may'st thou thrive among the learned press
As thou, young shepherd, art beloved by me.

Ben Jonson wrote to the young poet:

Some men of books or friends not speaking right
May hurt them more with praise than foes with spite.
But I have seen thy work, and I know thee;
And, if thou list thyself, what thou canst be.
For though but early in these paths thou tread,
I find thee write most worthy to be read.

The rest was counsel on the right economy of power.

William Browne married Tymothy, daughter of Sir Thomas Eversfield, of Den, near Horsham, and had two sons who died in their infancy. His elegy on Prince Henry, who died in November, 1612, had been first printed with an elegy on the same theme by Christopher Brooke in 1613. It was revised when put into the mouth of Idya in "Britannia's Pastorals." William Browne published his "Shepheard's Pipe" in 1614. A masque on the subject of Circe and Ulysses was written by William Browne to be presented to the gentlemen of the Inner Temple on the 13th of January, 1615 (New Style). In 1624 Browne was at Exeter Collere again, acting as tutor to the eldest son of the Earl of Carnarvon, In that year he took his M.A. degree, and in the following year, 1625, published a new edition of "Britannia's Pastorals." In 1640 he was living in retirement at Dorking, and he may have been the William Browne who was buried at Tavistock in March, 1643.

JOHN MILTON, AGED 10.1

After a Picture in possession of Edgar Disney, Esq. Engraved in Professor Masson's "Life of Milton."

CHAPTER XIII.

MILTON'S "PARADISE LOST."

HE poems written during the first period of Milton's life as a writer, and the prose writings of his second period, have been illustrated in other volumes of this Library. We turn now to "Paradise Lost." In the days when he confined his INITIAL from Milton's "Eikono- genius to pastoral verse, klastes" (1649). Milton, not counting himself to have attained, was seeking strength, and with an epic in view, pressed on toward the mark of his high calling. When, at the age of twenty-nine, he was preparing for the foreign journey that was to aid in the ripening

1 This cut has been copied, with permission, from an engraving illustrating Professor Masson's "Life of John Milton: narrated in connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time." Professor Masson's large work is a study which in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of our time has a place of abiding honour for its uncompromising thoroughness, and for a criti cal insight sharpened by the fellow-feeling which can sometimes make it possible for one man to interpret the life of another. Real students must be unreservedly grateful for such aid as they get from the years of patient labour and thought spent upon this "Life of Milton."

"Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," in "English Religion," pages 370-373; "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," in "Shorter Poems," pages 309-313; "Sonnets," in the same volume, pages 330, 331; "Comus," in "English Plays," pages 309-313; "Areopagitica," in "Shorter Prose Works," pages 132-149; "Paradise Regained has also been described in "English Religion," pages 317-323; and "Samson Agonistes," in "English Plays," page 350.

of power, Milton wrote to his old schoolfellow and bosom friend, Charles Diodati, "As to other points, what God may have determined for me I know not; but this I know, that if He ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, He has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and night, the idea of perfection. Hence, whenever I find a man despising the false estimates of the vulgar, and daring to aspire in sentiment, language, and conduct to what the highest wisdom, through every age, has taught us as most excellent, to him I unite myself by a sort of necessary attachment; and if I am so influenced by nature or destiny, that by no exertion or labours of my own I may exalt myself to this summit of worth and honour, yet no powers of heaven or earth will hinder me from looking with reverence and affection upon those who have thoroughly attained this glory, or appear engaged in the successful pursuit of it. You inquire with a kind of solicitude even into my thoughts. Hear, then, Diodati, but let me whisper in your ear, that I may not blush at my reply: I think (so help me, Heaven) of immortality. You inquire also what I am about. I nurse my wings and meditate a flight; but my Pegasus rises as yet on very slender pinions. Let us be humbly wise."

After his return from his foreign journey, when Milton found that his friend Diodati had died during his absence, and poured tender laments over his grave in the "Epitaphium Damonis," written at the age of thirty-one, there rose blended with the lament a passage of the higher hope that he had shared with solved to write an epic on King Arthur. I quote his dead friend. Not many days before, he had reCowper's translation of the passage:

Twelve evenings since, as in poetic dream
I meditating sat some statelier theme,

The reeds no sooner touched my lips, though new
And unassayed before, than wide they flew,
Bursting their waxen bands, nor could sustain
The deep-toned music of the solemn strain;
And I am vain perhaps, but I will tell
How proud a theme I chuse-ye groves, farewell!
Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare,
My thoughts are all now due to other care.
Of Brutus,3 Dardan chief, my song shall be,
How with his barks he ploughed the British sea,
First from Rutupia's towering headland seen,
And of his consort's reign, fair Imogen;
Of Brennus and Belinus, brothers bold,
And of Arviragus; and how of old
Our hardy sires the Armorican controlled;
And of the wife of Gorlois, who, surprised
By Uther, in her husband's form disguised
(Such was the force of Merlin's art), became
Pregnant with Arthur of heroic fame.
These themes I now revolve; and oh, if Fate
Proportion to these themes my lengthened date,
Adieu, my shepherd's reed-yon pine-tree bough
Shall be thy future home; there dangle thou

* See Chapter II, of this volume, Layamon's "Brut."

Forgotten and disused, unless ere long
Thou change thy Latian for a British song.
A British? Even so-the powers of man
Are bounded; little is the most he can;
And it shall well suffice me, and shall be
Fame, and proud recompense enough for me,
If Usa, golden-haired, my verse may learn,
If Alyn 2 bending o'er his crystal urn,

Swift whirling Abra,3 Trent's o'ershadowed stream,
Thames, lovelier far than all in my esteem,
Tamar's ore-tinctured flood, and, after these,
The wave-worn shores of utmost Orcades." 4

In a year Milton had changed his plans. The epic and the dramatic were the two forms of the higher poetry into which he hoped to rise out of the pas toral. Among plays planned in those earlier days on the model of the old Greek drama was one upon

"Paradise Lost." Then came the civil wars and the Commonwealth, with the withdrawal of Milton's energy from personal aims as a poet to increasing labours for his country. Thus in the period of his middle life, from 1641 to 1660, from about the age of thirty-two to the age of fifty-two, Milton was writing prose.

JOHN MILTON, AGED 43.

From Cipriani's Drawing of a Bust then in possession of the Rev. Dr. Disney. Engraved in Symmons's "Life of Milton" (1810).

When the restoration of the Stuarts left Milton free to resume his singing robes, he was the stronger for the twenty years of self-denial during which, he said, he wrote as it were with the left hand, and his right hand then found its appointed work. After he had become blind, under the Commonwealth, the theme of his epic shaped itself within his mind. In 1665 Milton had written "Paradise Lost."

There was a young Quaker named Thomas Ellwood, who had spent some time with Milton as a reader, and who read the MS. of "Paradise Lost"

in 1665. Ellwood became a man of mark in the Society of Friends, and died in 1713, leaving an autobiography that was soon afterwards published. It includes some interesting notes of his relations with John Milton. Ellwood was born in 1639, the son of a country squire and Justice of the Peace, at Crowell in Oxfordshire. His elder brother had a costly education, but he was himself taken from school when he was young. Family friendship with Isaac Penington, who was one of the most earnest members of the newly-formed Society of Friends, brought young Thomas Ellwood as a visitor into PenThe result was that he himself ington's house. became a Quaker, and suffered much home persecution for the change. Of the general persecution suffered by the Quakers of his day, Ellwood's history youth aspired to higher attainments, and expressed of his life gives much curious illustration. The his aspiration in this rhyme:

When he was twenty-two years old, Thomas Ellwood became acquainted with John Milton, and this is his own account of the beginning of their friendly intercourse :

I mentioned before, that when I was a boy, I had made some good progress in learning, and lost it all again before I came to be a man; nor was I rightly sensible of my loss therein, until I came amongst the Quakers. But then I both saw my loss, and lamented it; and applied myself with utmost diligence, at all leisure times, to recover it; so false I found that charge to be, which in those times was cast as a reproach upon the Quakers, that they despised and decried all human learning, because they denied it to be essentially necessary to a gospel ministry, which was one of the controversies of those times.

But though I toiled hard, and spared no pains to regain what once I had been master of, yet I found it a matter of so great difficulty, that I was ready to say as the noble eunuch to Philip in another case, "How can I, unless I had some man to guide me?"

This I had formerly complained of to my especial friend Isaac Penington, but now more earnestly, which put him upon considering, and contriving a means for my assistance.

He had an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions.

This person, having filled a publick station in the former times, lived now a private and retired life in London, and having wholly lost his sight, kept always a man to read to him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to improve in his learning.

Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Penington with Dr. Paget, and of Dr. Paget with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not as a servant to him (which at that time he needed not), nor to be in the house with him, but only to have the liberty of coming to his house at certain

hours when I would, and to read to him what books he should appoint me, which was all the favour I desired.

But this being a matter which would require some time to bring it about, I, in the mean while, returned to my father's house in Oxfordshire.

I had before received direction, by letters from my eldest sister (written by my father's command) to put off what cattle he had left about his house, and to discharge his servants; which I had done at the time called Michaelmas before. So that all that winter, when I was at home, I lived like an hermit all alone, having a pretty large house, and nobody in it but myself, at nights especially; but an elderly woman, whose father had been an old servant to the family, came every morning and made my bed, and did what else I had occasion for her to do, till I fell ill of the smallpox, and then I had her with me, and the nurse. But now, understanding by letter from my sister, that my father did not intend to return to settle there, I made off those provisions which were in the house, that they might not be spoiled when I was gone; and because they were what I should have spent, if I had tarried there, I took the money made of them to myself, for my support at London, if the project succeeded for my going thither.

This done, I committed the care of the house to a tenant of my father's, who lived in the town, and taking my leave of Crowell, went up to my sure friend Isaac Penington again. Where understanding that the mediation used for my admittance to John Milton, had succeeded so well, that I might come when I would, I hastened to London, and in the first place went to wait upon him.

He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Penington, who recommended me; to both whom he bore a good respect. And having inquired divers things of me, with respect to my former progression in learning, he dismissed me, to provide myself of such accommodations as might be most suitable to my future studies.

I went therefore and took myself a lodging as near to his house (which was then in Jewin Street) as conveniently as I could, and from thenceforward went every day in the afternoon, except on the first-days of the week, and sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him in such books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to hear me read.

At my first sitting to read to him, observing that I used the English pronunciation, he told me, if I would have the benefit of the Latin tongue, not only to read and understand Latin authors, but to converse with foreigners, either abroad or at home, I must learn the foreign pronunciation. To this I consenting, he instructed me how to sound the vowels; so different from the common pronunciation used by the English, who speak Anglice their Latin, that (with some few other variations in sounding some consonants, in particular cases; as C before E or I, like Ch. Sc before I, like Sh. &c.) the Latin thus spoken, seemed as different from that which was delivered as the English generally speak it, as if it were another language.

I had before, during my retired life at my father's, by unwearied diligence and industry, so far recovered the rules of grammar (in which I had once been very ready) that I could both read a Latin author, and after a sort hammer out his meaning. But this change of pronunciation proved a new difficulty to me. It was now harder to me to read, than it was before to understand when read. But

Improbus.

Labor omnia vincit

Incessant pains

The end obtains.

And so did I. Which made my reading the more acceptable to my master. He, on the other hand, perceiving with what earnest desire I pursued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could. For, having a curious ear, he understood by my tone, when I understood what I read, and when I did not; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages

to me.

Thus went I on for about six weeks time, reading to him in the afternoons; and exercising myself with my own books, in my chamber in the forenoons, I was sensible of an improvement.

But, alas! I had fixed my studies in a wrong place. London and I could never agree for health; my lungs, as I suppose, were too tender to bear the sulphurous air of that city, so that I soon began to droop; and in less than two months time, I was fain to leave both my studies and the city, and return into the country to preserve life; and much ado I had to get thither.

I chose to go down to Wycombe, and to John Rance's house there; both as he was a physician, and his wife an honest, hearty, discreet, and grave matron, whom I had a very good esteem of, and who I knew had a good regard for me.

There I lay ill a considerable time, and to that degree of weakness, that scarce any who saw me, expected my life. But the Lord was both gracious to me in my illness, and was pleased to raise me up again, that I might serve him in my generation.

As soon as I had recovered so much strength as to be fit to travel, I obtained of my father (who was then at his house in Crowell, to dispose of some things he had there, and who in my illness had come to see me) so much money as would clear all charges in the house, for both physick, food, and attendance; and having fully discharged all, I took leave of my friends in that family, and in the town, and returned to my studies at London.

I was very kindly received by my master, who had conceived so good an opinion of me, that my conversation, I found, was acceptable to him, and he seemed heartily glad of my recovery and return; and into our old method of study we fell again, I reading to him, and he explaining to me, as occasion required.

But, as if learning had been a forbidden fruit to me, scarce was I well settled in my work, before I met with another diversion, which turned me quite out of my work.

Ellwood was seized with other worshippers at a Quakers' meeting, and imprisoned in Bridewell. The story of the persecutions, although full of interest, does not concern us here. We pass to the year 1665, when the Plague raged in London, and many who were able to do so left the City. Of this time Ellwood writes:

Some little time before I went to Aylesbury prison, I was desired by my quondam master, Milton, to take an house for him in the neighbourhood where I dwelt, that he might go out of the city, for the safety of himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended to have waited on him, and seen him well settled in it, but was prevented by that imprison

ment.

But now being released, and returned home, I soon made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country.