For never saw I mien, or face,
In which more plainly I could trace
Benignity and home-bred sense
Ripening in perfect innocence.
Here, scattered like a random seed,
Remote from men, thou dost not need
The embarrassed look of shy distress,
And maidenly shamefacedness:
Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear
The freedom of a mountaineer.
A face with gladness overspread!
Sweet looks, by human kindness bred
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays;
With no restraint, but such as springs
From quick and eager visitings
Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach
Of thy few words of English speech:
A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife
That gives thy gestures grace and life!
So have I, not unmoved in mind,
Seen birds of tempest-loving kind,
Thus beating up against the wind.

What hand but would a garland cull
For thee who art so beautiful!
O happy pleasure! here to dwell
Beside thee in some heathy dell;
Adopt your homely ways and dress,
A shepherd, thou a shepherdess!
But I could frame a wish for thee
More like a grave reality:
Thou art to me but as a wave

Of the wild sea: and I would have
Some claim upon thee, if I could,
Though but of common neighbourhood.
What joy to hear thee, and to see!
Thy elder brother I would be,
Thy father, anything to thee!

Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace
Hath led me to this lonely place.
Joy have I had; and going hence
I bear away my recompense.
In spots like these it is we prize
Our memory, feel that she hath eyes:
Then, why should I be loath to stir?
I feel this place was made for her;
To give new pleasure like the past,
Continued long as life shall last.
Nor am I loath, though pleased at heart,
Sweet Highland girl, from thee to part;
For I, methinks, till I grow old,
As fair before me shall behold,
As I do now, the cabin small,
The lake, the bay, the waterfall;
And thee, the spirit of them all!

WORDSWORTH.

THE POET'S DREAM.1 Snch sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunte. stream.

Milton's L'Allegro.

It was the minstrel's merry month of June;
Silent and sultry glowed the breezeless noon;
Along the flowers the bee went murmuring;
Life in its myriad forms was on the wing,
Broke through the green leaves with the quivering
beam,

Sung from the grove, and sparkled on the stream:
When-where yon beech-tree bike the summer ray-d
Wrapped in rich dreams of light-young MILTON ky.
For him the earth beneath, the heaven above,
Teemed with the earliest spring of joyous youth;
Sunshine and flowers-and vague and virgin Love,
Kindling his tenderest visions into truth,
While Poesy's sweet voice sung over all,
Making the common air most musical.

Alone he lay, and to the laughing beams
His long locks glittered in their golden streams;
Calm on his brow sate wisdom-yet the while
His lips wore love, and parted with a smile;
And beauty reigned along each faultless limb-
The lavish beauty of the olden day,

Ere with harsh toil our mortal mould grew dim-
When gods who sought for true love met him here,
And the veiled Dian lost her lonely sphere-
And her proud name of chaste, for him whose sleep
Drank in Elysium on the Latmos steep.
Nor without solemn dream, or vision bright,
The bard for whom Urauia left the shore-
The viewless shore where never sleeps the light,
Or falls the voice of music; and bequeathed
Such flowers as ne'er by Thracian well were wreathed-
And song more high than e'er on Chian Rock was
breathed.

1 Painter and poet have united in preserving a pretty anecdote of Milton's youth. A lady with her attendant walking in the forest found the poet asleep under a tree, and she was so charmed by his beauty that she pencilled a few admiring lines and placed the paper beside him. There are different versions of the incident, and by some it is said to have occurred during Milton's travels in Italy; but it is quite as likely to have hap. pened during his residence at his father's house at Horton in Buckinghamshire, where he spent the first five years after leaving Cambridge. At that period he was in the prime of youth, and was, according to all accounts, very handsome. His stature did not exceed the middle size, and was formed with perfect symmetry. Manso, Marquis of Villa and the patron of Tasso, received Milton at Naples with much enthusiasm, and has left an epigram in praise of the poet, which has been thus translated:

"So perfect thou, in mind. in form, and face, Thou'rt not of English but Angelic race." The poem given above is from one of Lord Lytton's early productions entitled Milton.

Dreams he of Nymph half hid in sparry cave,
Or Naiad rising from her mooned wave,
Or imaged idol earth has never known,
Shrined in his heart, and there adored alone;
Or such, perchance, as all divinely stole,
In later times, along his charmed soul;
When from his spirit's fire, and years beguiled
Away in hoarded passion-and the wild
Yet holy dreams of angel-visitings,

Mixed with the mortal's burning thoughts which leave
Ev'n heaven's pure shapes with all the woman warm;
When from such bright and blest imaginings
The inspiring seraph bade him mould the form,
And show the world the wonder-of his Eve?

Has this dull earth a being to compare
With those which genius kindles?-Can the sun
Show his young bard a living shape as fair
As those which haunt his sleep?-Yea, there is one
Brighter than aught which fancy forms most dear-
Brighter than love's wild dream; and lo! behold her
here!

She was a stranger from the southern sky,

And wandering from the friends with whom she roved
Along those classic gardens-chanced to stray
By the green beech tree where the minstrel lay.
Silent-in wonder's speechless trance-she stood,
With lifted hand, and lips apart-and eye
Gazing away the rich heart, as she viewed;
Darker than night her locks fell clustering
O'er her smooth brow, and the sweet Air just moved
Their vine-like beauty with his gentle wing;
The earliest bloom of youth's Idalian rose
Blushed through the Tuscan olive of her check-
(So through the lightest clouds does morning break)—
And there shone forth that hallowing soul which glows
Round beauty, like the circling light on high,
Which decks and makes the glory of the sky.
Breathless and motionless she stood awhile,
And drank deep draughts of passion-then a smile
Played on her lip-and, bending down, her hand
Traced on her tablet the wild thoughts which stole,
Like angel-strangers, o'er her raptured soul;
For she was of the poet's golden land,
Where thought finds happiest voice, and glides along
Into the silver rivers of sweet song.

O'er him she leant enamoured, and her sigh
Breathed near and nearer to his silent mouth,
Rich with the hoarded odours of the south.
So in her spiritual divinity

Young Psyche stood the sleeping Eros by;-
What time she to the couch had, daring, trod;
And-by the glad light-saw her bridegroom God!
-Did her locks touch his cheek? or did he feel
Her breath like music o'er his spirit steal?
I know not-but the spell of sleep was broke;
He started-faintly murmured-and awoke!
He woke as Moslems wake from death, to see
The Houris of their heaven; and reverently
He looked the transport of his soul's amaze:

VOL. I.

And their eyes met!-The deep-deep love supprest
For years, and treasured in each secret breast,
Wakened, and glowed, and centred in their gaze.
And their eyes met-one moment and no more!
Nursed in bright dreams of old romantic lore,
Of Eastern fairies gliding on the beam,
Or Grecian goddess haunting minstrel's dream;
He rose-and though no faintest voice might stir
His lips-he knelt adoringly to her,

And gazed his worship; but the spell was past,
And the boy's gesture broke the breathless charm,
And maiden shame, and woman's swift alarm,
Burningly o'er the Italian's soul was rushing;
And her lip trembled, and her pulse beat fast,
And with a thousand new-born feelings blushing-
She turned away-and with a step of air
She fled, and left him mute and spell-bound there.
BULWER

ON THE MORAL QUALITIES OF
MILTON.

The moral character of Milton was as strongly marked as his intellectual, and it may be expressed in one word, magnanimity. It was in harmony with his poetry. He had a passionate love of the higher, more commanding, and majestic virtues, and fed his youthful mind with meditations on the perfection of a human being. In a letter written to an Italian friend before his thirtieth year, and translated by Hayley, we have this vivid picture of his aspirations after virtue.

"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, wherever 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 appeared engaged in the successful pursuit of it."

His Comus was written in his twenty-sixth year, and on reading this exquisite work, our admiration is awakened, not so much by ob

11

serving how the whole spirit of poetry had descended on him at that early age, as by witnessing how his whole youthful soul was penetrated, awed, and lifted up by the austere charms, "the radiant light," the invincible power, the celestial peace of saintly virtue. He reverenced moral purity and elevation, not only for its own sake, but as the inspirer of intellect, and especially of the higher efforts of poetry. In his usual noble style, he says,

"I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing of high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy."

We learn from his works, that he used his multifarious reading, to build up within himself this reverence for virtue. Ancient history, the sublime musings of Plato, and the heroic self-abandonment of chivalry, joined their influences with prophets and apostles, in binding him "everlastingly in willing homage" to the great, the honourable, and the lovely in character. A remarkable passage to this effect, we quote from his account of his youth.

"I betook me among those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos, the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn;' "So that even these books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living, I cannot think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many incitements, as you have heard, to the love and steadfast observation of virtue."

All Milton's habits were expressive of a refined and self-denying character. When charged by his unprincipled slanderers with licentious habits, he thus gives an account of his morning hours.

"Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour, or to devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses,

or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught: then with usual and generous labours preserving the body's health and hardiness to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion, and our country's liberty, when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and cover their stations, rather than to see the ruin of our protestation, and the enforcement of a slavish life."

We have enlarged on the strictness and loftiness of Milton's virtue, not only from our interest in the subject, but that we may put to shame and silence those men who make genius an apology for vice, and take the sacred fire, kindled by God within them, to inflame men's passions, and to minister to a vile sensuality.

We see Milton's greatness of mind, in his fervent and constant attachment to liberty. Freedom in all its forms and branches was dear to him, but especially freedom of thought and speech, of conscience and worship, freedom to seek, profess, and propagate truth. The liberty of ordinary politicians, which protects men's outward rights, and removes restraints to the pursuit of property and outward good, fell very short of that for which Milton lived and was ready to die. The tyranny which he hated most was that which broke the intellectual and moral power of the community. The worst feature of the institutions which he assailed, was, that they fettered the mind. He felt within himself, that the human mind had a principle of perpetual growth, that it was essentially diffusive and made for progress, and he wished every chain broken, that it might run the race of truth and virtue with increasing ardour and success. This attachment to a spiritual and refined freedom, which never forsook him in the hottest controversies, contributed greatly to protect his genius, imagination, taste, and sensibility, from the withering and polluting influences of public station, and of the rage of parties. It threw a hue of poetry over politics, and gave a sublime reference to his service of the commonwealth. The fact that Milton, in that stormy day, and amidst the trials of public office, kept his high faculties undepraved, was a proof of no common greatness. Politics, however they make the intellect active, sagacious, and inventive, within a certain sphere, generally extinguish its thirst for universal truth, paralyze sentiment and imagination, corrupt the simplicity of the mind, destroy that confidence in human virtue, which lies at the foundation of philanthropy and generous sacrifices, and

delight to contemplate him in his retreat and last years. To the passing spectator, he seemed fallen and forsaken, and his blindness was reproached as a judgment from God. But though sightless, he lived in light. His inward eye

Before quitting the subject of Milton's devotion to liberty, it ought to be recorded, that he wrote his celebrated Defence of the People of England, after being distinctly forewarned by his physicians that the effect of this exertion would be the utter loss of sight. His reference to this part of his history, in a short poetical effusion, is too characteristic to be withheld. It is inscribed to Cyriac Skinner, the friend to whom he appears to have confided his lately discovered Treatise on Christian Doctrine."

imagination shed on it brighter beams than the sun. Heaven, and hell, and paradise were open to him. He visited past ages, and gathered round him ancient sages and heroes, prophets and apostles, brave knights and gifted bards. As he looked forward, ages of liberty dawned and rose to his view, and he felt that he was about to bequeath to them an inheritance of genius "which would not fade away," and was to live in the memory, reverence, and love of remotest generations.

We have enlarged on Milton's character, not only from the pleasure of paying that sacred debt which the mind owes to him who has

To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light their seeing have forgot, Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,

Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

Sonnet xxii.

We see Milton's magnanimity in the circumstances under which Paradise Lost was written. It was not in prosperity, in honour, and amidst triumphs, but in disappointment, desertion, and in what the world calls disgrace, that he composed that work. The cause with which he had identified himself had failed. His friends were scattered; liberty was trodden under foot; and her devoted champion was a by-word among the triumphant royalists. But it is the prerogative of true greatness, to glorify itself in adversity, and to meditate and execute vast enterprises in defeat. Milton, fallen in outward condition, afflicted with blindness, disappointed in his best hopes, applied himself with characteristic energy to the sublimest achievement of intellect, solacing himself with great thoughts, with splendid creations, and with a prophetic confidence, that however neglected in his own age, he was framing in his works a bond of union and fellowship with the illustrious spirits of a brighter day. We

hension that Milton has not yet reaped his due harvest of esteem and veneration. The envious mists, which the prejudices and bigotry of Johnson spread over his bright name, are not yet wholly scattered, though fast passing away. We wish not to disparage Johnson. We could find no pleasure in sacrificing one great man to the manes of another. But we owe it to Milton and to other illustrious names, to say, that Johnson has failed of the highest end of biography, which is to give immortality to virtue, and to call forth fervent admiration towards those who have shed splendour on past ages. We acquit Johnson, however, of intentional misrepresentation. He did not and could not appreciate Milton. We doubt whether two other minds, having so little in common as those of which we are now speaking, can be found in the higher walks of literature. Johnson was great in his own sphere, but that sphere was comparatively "of the earth;" whilst Milton's was only inferior to that of angels. It was customary in the day of Johnson's glory to call him a giant, to class him with a mighty but still an earth-born race. Milton we should rank among seraphs. Johnson's mind acted chiefly on man's actual condition, on the realities of life, on the springs of human action, on the passions which now agitate society, and he seems hardly to have dreamed of a higher state of the human mind than was then exhibited. Milton, on the other hand, burned with a deep yet calm love of moral grandeur and celestial purity. He thought not so much of what man is, as of what he might become. His own mind was a revelation to him of a higher condition of humanity,