THE genesis of "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," perhaps the best known and most heartily admired of all Milton's compositions, is involved in considerable obscurity. They were not printed before 1645, and they do not exist for us in the celebrated bound volume of Milton's Mss. in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, which contains the drafts of all the English poems written between 1633, probably, and 1645; we are therefore compelled, in the absence of other data, to rely upon inferences and internal evidence in determining their time and place of writing. The consensus of critical opinion gives 1632-33 as the time, and Horton as the place. Professor Masson assigns them to the latter half of 1632. There are, however, reasons to make one think that they should probably be placed earlier. The autumn of 1632 seems to be

selected because Horton is usually assumed as the place of composition, and Milton went to reside there in July, 1632. He would naturally, argue the critics, be so impressed with the charms of the spot that he would turn to verse, and "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," and the "Song on May Morning," which we have assigned to the Cambridge period, would be the outcome. But there is no proof that the poems were not written at Cambridge or in London as reminiscential tributes to the pleasures of a vacation spent in the country; and we know from a Latin prolusion or oration delivered, Masson thinks, either in the latter half of 1631 or the first part of 1632, that Milton spent "the last past summer amid rural scenes and sequestered glades," and that he recalled "the supreme delight he had with the Muses." This vacation of 1631 may have been spent at Horton, for there is no proof that the elder Milton had not then acquired that property, and the young poet may have written his poems under the elms that so fascinated him, or have composed them on his return to college.

I incline to the former supposition. As we shall see, he was unquestionably supplied with hints for both his poems by Burton's "Anatomy," surely a likely book for such a student as Milton to take with him on a vacation.

Again, no one can read the " Prolusion on Early Rising," almost certainly Milton's, without thinking that much of the raw material of the two poems was in his brain and being expressed during his university life; nor can one read the other prolusions without seeing that Orpheus, the music of the spheres, and Platonism were much in his thoughts. Besides, about 1630, the date of the "Epitaph on Shakspere," Milton was evidently to some extent occupied with his great forerunner, whose genius is honored in the poems, and a year later he was experimenting with the octosyllabic couplet in the "Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester." Finally, it was about this time that he was seriously weighing the reasons pro and con with regard to his choice of a profession, and it might naturally occur to him to contrast in poetic form the pleasures of the more or less worldly and the

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more or less secluded, studious, and devoted life. He had made his choice by the autumn of 1632, and had therefore less cause for such poetical expression.

A minute analysis of the style and metre of the poems tends to confirm the view expressed above. It is obviously a transitional style when compared with that of the "Nativity Ode," and other earlier pieces. Scriptural ideas and subjects are occupying his mind less, and he has progressed toward a freer handling of his themes. He has become interested in contemporary English poetry, and while showing the influence of the classics, is not mastered by them. All this would indicate that the poems were written after 1631, though, as we have just seen, it is not unlikely that having in that year handled the octosyllabic couplet successfully, he should shortly be tempted to try it again. We thus have 1631 as a terminus a quo; 1633-1634, the years of "Arcades" and "Comus," are a terminus ad quem for the following strictly metrical reasons. The lyrical portions of "Arcades" and "Comus" appear to be less spontaneous

and more mature than "L'Allegro" and its companion poem. The metrical art displayed

is more elaborate and self-conscious, and when one looks closer, as, for example, when one compares the invocation to Mirth in "L'Allegro" with the similar passage in "Comus" (11. 102-122), one is struck with the fact that the verses of the anti-masque have lost the blithe sensuousness of the former poem, that thought is struggling with feeling, and that the lyric style of the poet is approaching its culmination in the elaborate and highly sustained art that has made "Lycidas" matchless. We conclude, therefore, that "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" are nearer to the " Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester" than they are to "Arcades"; and if any one should argue that the mature sentiment of the poems and their vigorous expression indicate a later, not an earlier, date, it must suffice to reply that youth takes itself more seriously than age, and that there is no sentiment or thought in either poem that Milton might not well have had as a student at Cambridge.

It has been stated already that Milton was