A MAN there was who had lived a merry life
Till in the end he took to him a wife,
One that no image was, for she could speak,
And now and then her husband's costrel break;
This drove the poor man to a discontent,
And oft and many times did he repent
That e'er he changed his former quiet state;
But 'las! repentance then did come too late,
No cure he finds to heal this malady,
But makes a virtue of necessity.
The common cure for care to every man,
A pot of nappy ale, where he began

To fortify his brains 'gainst all should come,
'Mongst which the clamour of his wife's loud tongue.
This habit grafted in him grew so strong,
That when he was from ale an hour seem'd long,
So well he liked the potion. On a time,
Having staid long at pot-for rule or line
Limits no drunkard-even from morn to night,
He hasted home apace by the moonlight,
Where as he went what phantasies were bred,
I do not know, in his distemper'd head,

But a strange ghost appear'd and forced him stay,
With which perplext he thus began to say:
"Good spirit if thou be, I need no charm,
For well I know thou wilt not do me harm;
And if the devil, sure thou shouldst not hurt:
I wed thy sister, and am plagued for't."

The spirit, well approving what he said,
Dissolved to air and quickly vanished.

[* There is, perhaps, no work in English which illustrates more fully and amusingly the manners, occupations, and opinions of the time when it was written than Brathwaite's Strappado; but it is a strange, undigested and ill-arranged collection of poems, of various kinds and of different degrees of merit, some of them composed considerably before the rest, but few without claims to notice. The principal part consists of satires and epigrams, although the author purposely confounds the distinction between the two:

I call't an Epigram which is a Satire.

He never scruples to use the plainest terms, and though he seldom inserts names, he spares neither rank nor condition.-COLLIER, Bridge. Cat. p. 32.]

If the memory of Milton has been outraged by Dr. Johnson's hostility, the writings of Blackburne, Hayley, and, above all, of Symmons, may be deemed sufficient to have satisfied the poet's injured shade. The apologies for Milton have indeed been rather full to superfluity than defective. Dr. Johnson's triumphant regret at the supposed whipping of our great poet at the university, is not more amusing than the alarm of his favourable biographers at the idea of admitting it to be true. From all that has been written on the subject, it is perfectly clear that Milton committed no offence at college which could deserve an ignominious punishment. Admitting Aubrey's authority for the anecdote, and his authority is not very high, it points out the punishment not as a public infliction, but as the personal act of his tutor, who resented or imagined some unkindnesses.

The youthful history of Milton, in despite of this anecdote, presents him in an exalted and amiable light. His father, a man of no ordinary attainments, and so accomplished a musician* as to rank honourably among the composers of his age, intended him for the ministry of the church, and furnished him with a private tutor, who probably seconded his views; but the piety that was early instilled into the poet's mind grew up, with the size of his intellect, into views of religious independence that would not have suited any definite ecclesiastical pale; and if Milton had become a preacher, he must have founded a church of his own. Whilst a boy, the intensity of his studies laid the seeds of his future blindness; and at that period the Latin verses addressed to his father attest not only the prematurity of his attainments, but the endearing strength of his affections.

The few years which he spent at his father's house, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, after leaving the university, and before setting out on his travels, were perhaps the happiest in his life. In the beautiful scenery of that spot, disinclined to any profession by his universal capacity, and thirst for literature, he devoted himself to study, and wrote the most exquisite of his minor poems. Such a mind, in the opening prime of its genius, enjoying rural leisure and romantic walks, and luxuriating in the production of Comus and the

* Milton was early instructed in music. As a poet he speaks like one habituated to inspiration under its influence, and seems to have attached considerable importance to the science in his system of education.

Arcades, presents an inspiring idea of human beatitude.

When turned of thirty he went to Italy, the most accomplished Englishman that ever visited her classical shores. The attentions that were there shown to him are well known. We find him at the same time, though a stranger and a heretic, boldly expressing his opinions within the verge of the Vatican. There, also, if poetry ever deigns to receive assistance from the younger art, his imagination may have derived at least congenial impressions from the frescoes of Michael Angelo, and the pictures of Raphael; and those impressions he may have possibly recalled in the formation of his great poem, when his eyes were shut upon the world, and when he looked inwardly for "godlike shapes and forms."

In the eventful year after his return from the Continent, the fate of Episcopacy, which was yet undecided, seemed to depend chiefly on the influence which the respective parties could exercise upon the public mind, through the medium of the press, which was now set at liberty by the ordinance of the Long Parliament. Milton's strength led him foremost on his own side of the controversy; he defended the five ministers, whose book was entitled Smectymnuust, against the learning and eloquence of Bishop Hall and Archbishop Usher, and became, in literary warfare, the bulwark of his party. It is performing this and similar services, which Dr. Johnson calls Milton's vapouring away his patriotism in keeping a private boarding-house; and such are the slender performances at which that critic proposes that we should indulge in some degree of merriment. Assuredly, if Milton wielded the pen instead of the sword, in public dispute, his enemies had no reason to regard the former weapon as either idle or impotent in his hand. An invitation to laugh on such an occasion, may remind us of what Sternhold and Hopkins denominate "awful mirth;" for of all topics which an enemy to Milton's principles could select, his impotence in maintaining them is the most unpropitious to merriment.

The most difficult passage of his life for his biographers to comment upon with entire satisfaction, is his continued acceptance of Cromwell's wages after Cromwell had become a tyrant. It would be uncandid to deny, that his fear of the return of the Stuarts, the symptoms of his havin

From the initial letters of their names.

been seldom at the usurper's court, and the circumstance of his having given him advice to spare the liberties of the people, form some apology for this negative adherence. But if the people, according to his own ideas, were capable of liberty after Cromwell's death, they were equally so before it; and a renunciation of his profits under the despot would have been a nobler and fuller sacri

fice to public principles, than any advice. From ordinary men this was more than could be expected; but Milton prescribed to others such austerity of duty, that, in proportion to the altitude of his character, the world, which looked to him for example, had a right to expect his practical virtue to be severe.

UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright,
That erst with music and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful shepherd's ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along,
Through the soft silence of the list'ning night;
Now mourn, and if sad share with us to bear
Your fiery essence can distil no tear,
Burn in your sighs, and borrow

Seas wept from our deep sorrow:

He who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere
Enter'd the world, now bleeds to give us ease;
Alas, how soon our sin
Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize !

O more exceeding love, or law more just?
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For we by rightful doom remediless
Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above
High throned in secret bliss, for us frail dust
Emptied his glory, even to nakedness ;

And that great covenant which we still transgress
Entirely satisfied,

And the full wrath beside

Of vengeful justice bore for our excess,

And seals obedience first with wounding smart

This day, but, O! ere long

Huge pangs and strong

Will pierce more near his heart.

SONG

ON MAY MORNING.

Now the bright morning Star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.

Hail, bounteous May! that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing! Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATICK POET WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE*.

WHAT needs my Shakspeare for his honour'd bones
The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb would wish to die.

SONNET TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

O NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill, While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May. Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,

First heard before the shallow cuckow's bill, Portend success in love; O if Jove's will Have link'd that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh ; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:

Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

[* We have copied this title at full length from the poem as it was first printed: "It is true," says Sir Walter Scott, 'that Milton descended to upbraid the unfortunate Charles I., that the chosen companion of his private hours was one William Shakspeare, a player." (Life of Dryden, p. 9.) Nothing is more untrue, and we quote the passage: "The poets, and some English, have been so mindful of decorum, as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the king [Charles L.] might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of these, his solitudes, William Shakspeare, who introduces the person of Richard III." &c. speaking such stuff, he goes on to say, as the king has written, and deep dissemblers indulge in. What is there in this disrespectful to the "sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child," of his juvenile verses?]

SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide; 'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied,' I fondly ask? but Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, [state, And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait.'

Eolian charms, and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;
High actions and high passions best describing;
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

SONNET ON HIS DECEASED WIFE.

METHOUGHT I Saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old Law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind :
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight.

But, O! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

ATHENS.

FROM BOOK IV. OF PARADISE REGAINED.

LOOK once more ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west behold
Where on the Ægean shore a city stands
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil,
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess.
City or suburban, studious walks and shades ;
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next :

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,

SAMSON BEWAILING HIS BLINDNESS AND CAPTIVITY.

(Attendant leading him.)

FROM SAMSON AGONISTES.

A LITTLE Onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade;
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
Daily in the common prison else enjoin'd me,
Where I a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air imprison'd also, close and damp,
Unwholesome draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.-
This day a solemn feast the people hold

To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works; unwillingly this rest
Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind,
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burn'd,
As in a fiery column, charioting

His godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit reveal'd to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding order'd and prescribed
As of a person separate to God,

Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
Betray'd, captived, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze ;
To grind in brazen fetters under task
With this heaven-gifted strength? O glorious
Put to the labour of a beast, debased [strength
Lower than bond-slave! Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him