vourite charmed the ears of the good queen, the poet Sidney, pencil in hand, was sketching the vision of the fair Rosamond. Her majesty then commanded it should be read, and when she heard it, pronounced it very clever; but as it was a real impromptu, not one of those born long before, and was written for a particular audience, as a picture is painted for a particular light, we think it but justice to the celebrated author not to draw his lines from the venerable antiquity in which they rest even if we had the MS. copy; but we have not, which at once finishes the business. After the reading, they deliberated on the next that should succeed Rosamond. The enchanter, still of opinion that they need not leave England when beauty was the object in question, proposed the famous Countess of Salisbury-who gave rise to the institution of the Garter. The idea was approved of by the queen, and particularly agreeable to the courtiers, as they wished to see if the cause were worthy of the effect-i.e. the leg of the garter; but her majesty declared that she should particularly like a second sight of her lovely resemblance, the fair Rosamond. The doctor vowed that the affair was next to impracticable in the order of conjuration-the recall of a phantom not depending on the powers submitted to the first enchantments. But the more he declared against it the more the queen insisted, until he was obliged, at last, to submit, but with the information, that if Rosamond should return, it would not be by the way in which she had entered or retired already, and that they had best take care of themselves, as he could answer for no one. The queen, as we have elsewhere observed, knew not what fear was; and the two courtiers were now a little reassured on the subject of apparitions. The doctor then set about accomNever had conplishing the queen's wishes. juration cost him so much trouble, and after a thousand grimaces and contortions-neither pretty nor polite-he flung his book into the middle of the gallery, went three times round it on his hands and feet, then made the tree against the wall, head down and heels up; but nothing appearing, he had recourse to the last and most powerful of his spells-what that was must remain for ever a mystery, for certain reasons; but he wound it up by three times summoning, with a sonorous voice, "Rosamond! Rosamond! Rosamond!" At the last of these magic cries the grand window burst open with the sudden crash of a tempest, and through it descended the lovely Rosamond into the middle of the room. The doctor was in a cold sweat, and while he dried himself, the queen, who thought her fair visitant a thousand times the fairer for the additional difficulty in procuring this second sight, for once let her prudence sleep, and, in a transport of enthusiasm, stepping out of her circle with open arms, cried out, "My dear likeness!" No sooner was the word out than a violent clap of thunder shook the whole palace; a black vapour filled the gallery, and a train of little fantastic lightnings serpentined to the right and left in the dazzled eyes of the company. When the obscurity was a little dissipated, they saw the magician, with his four limbs in air, foaming like a wild boar-his cap here, his wig there; in short, by no means an object of either the sublime or beautiful. But though he came off the worst, yet no one in the adventure escaped quite clear, except Rosamond. The lightning burned away my lord of Essex's right brow; Sir Sidney lost the left moustachio; her majesty's head-dress smelt villanously of the sulphur, and her hoop-petticoat was so puckered up with the scorching, that it was ordered to be preserved among the royal draperies, as a warning, to all maids of honour to come, against curiosity. COUNT ANTHONY HAMILTON. TO A HIGHLAND GIRL AT INVERSNEYDE, UPON LOCHLOMOND. Sweet Highland girl, a very shower With earnest feeling I shall pray For never saw I mien, or face, In which more plainly I could trace Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach What hand but would a garland cull Of the wild sea: and I would have Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace As I do now, the cabin small, WORDSWORTH. THE POET'S DREAM Such sights as youthful poets dream It was the minstrel's merry month of June; Sung from the grove, and sparkled on the stream: Alone he lay, and to the laughing beams Ere with harsh toil our mortal mould grew dim- Nor without solemn dream, or vision bright, 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, The poem given above is from one of Lord Lytton's early productions entitled Milton. Dreams he of Nymph half hid in sparry cave, Mixed with the mortal's burning thoughts which leave Has this dull earth a being to compare As those which haunt his sleep?-Yea, there is one She was a stranger from the southern sky, And wandering from the friends with whom she roved O'er him she leant enamoured, and her sigh Young Psyche stood the sleeping Eros by ;- VOL. I. And their eyes met!-The deep-deep love supprest And gazed his worship; but the spell was past, ON THE MORAL QUALITIES OF 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. The 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. 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 end in cold and prudent selfishness. Milton passed through a revolution which, in its last stages and issue, was peculiarly fitted to damp enthusiasm, to scatter the visions of hope, and to infuse doubts of the reality of virtuous principle; and yet the ardour, and moral feeling, and enthusiasm of his youth came forth unhurt, and even exalted, from the trial. 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." 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 ranged through universal nature, and his 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 Idebt which the mind owes to him who has Cyriac, this three-years-day, these eyes, though clear quickened and delighted it, but from an appre To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light their seeing have forgot, Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year, Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 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, |