emerge from any careful study of his works, but as this can be expected of but few in our fast-reading age, it is fortunate that they emerge also from many a quotable passage. Where in English, or any other literature, we may well ask, can the strength and nobility that emerge from this paragraph be matched or even approximated? —

“Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty measures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day, when thou, the eternal and shortly expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and distributing national honors and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all

earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth; when they undoubtedly, that by their labors, counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with. joy and bliss, in over measure for ever."1

For such prose what words of mortal praise are adequate? Organ-music the critics call it -the prose of a poet rather than strictly poetic prose sublime, magnificent, unrivalled — all these phrases and epithets have been applied to it, and justly—but I can compare it only with something I never heard save through Milton's own mouth in "Paradise Lost," the speech of Raphael, the archangel of God..

1" Of Reformation in England," Book II., next to last paragraph.

CHAPTER VII

THE SONNETS

ALTHOUGH the entire sonnet-work of Milton is not equal in value to that of Shakspere, or perhaps even to that of Wordsworth, if the latter's failures be overlooked, there are reasons for maintaining that he is the most masterly of all English sonneteers. For melodious sweetness, for power to analyze and express every phase of the passion of love Shakspere, with his exquisite quatorzains, is unsurpassed; but Milton is equally so in his command of the stricter sonnet forms, in his ability to extract noble music out of them, and in his adherence to the canon that the sonnet is a short poem adapted to an occasional subject. In other words, Milton uses the sonnet more regularly and at the same time more nobly than any other English poet does, yet he has also shown his originality by imparting a special movement of

his own to the stanza by omitting the pause after the eighth line that is necessary to the strict Petrarchan form. Furthermore, it is to be observed that none of Milton's sonnets is poor, that at least two-thirds are great, and that two, if not more, are grand-as grand perhaps as a short poem can ever be. It is almost needless to say that these two sonnets are the XVIIIth, "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont," and the XIXth, "On his Blindness."

Counting the Italian sonnets and the elongated sonnet colla coda, "On the New Forcers of Conscience," we have just twenty-four pieces, to which the Italian canzone may be added as a twenty-fifth. They were written at odd times. from 1630 to 1658, the first ten (or eleven, counting the canzone), as usually printed, appearing in the edition of 1645, the remainder adorning that of 1673, save numbers XV., XVI., XVII., and XXII., which were suppressed for political reasons until 1694, when Edward Phillips gave them to the world along with the life of his uncle. Their occasional composition is plain proof that Milton used them as a means of giving a brief relief to his overcharged emotions, espe

cially during the twenty busy years when he was cut off from elaborate poetical labors.

The first eight pieces, counting the canzone, are obviously to be classed as juvenilia so far as anything of Milton's can be thus classed. The first, "To the Nightingale" (1630?), is characterized mainly by charm, and hardly deserves Mr. Pattison's censure for the "conceit ' that it contains. Any poet might have used the tradition about the cuckoo and the nightingale without danger of becoming a Marinist. But we must not forget to be grateful to Mr. Pattison for calling attention to the contrast Milton offers to most previous (and subsequent) sonneteers by his noble directness of phrase, his total avoidance of quip and quirk. This straightforward quality, both of expression and of feeling, is fully apparent in the second sonnet, "On His Being arrived at the Age of Twenty-three" (1631), which is as nobly autobiographical as any of the famous prose.

passages.

The five Italian sonnets and the canzone probably date from the continental journey and the shadowy Bolognese love affair. They are