Such poetry ought to be better known for its intrinsic merits, but students of Milton should examine each of the poems carefully on account of the light it throws on the progress of Milton's metrical art. As Professor Masson has observed, they are proof that the poet was at this time engaged in making metrical experiments. The first two are a mixture of couplets and quatrains with one displaced rhyme; the last consists of two fourteen-lined stanzas that correspond with one another, but are exceedingly irregular in their internal structure. The most important point, however, is that in all three there is a combination of short and long lines that points forward to "Lycidas,” and proves that Milton was varying the metrical experiments he had been making from his earliest youth. As late as "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," in which he had experimented with a combination of trimeters and pentameters as a fitting proem for the lighter octosyllabics that were to follow, his experiments were mainly, if not entirely, along English lines; after his residence at Horton had increased his reading of the Italian poets, his verse began to show their influence, except in "Comus" and "Arcades," for which he had better models nearer home, although even in the former it may be perhaps detected. This is, of course, quite a technical matter, but it throws light upon Milton's bold yet painstaking character as an artist, and it may be used as a partial test in determining the dates of his unassigned compositions. 66 CHAPTER IV "" MILTON had had some little experience in writing masques before he reached in "Comus" the supreme success possible in this form of composition, and he must have seen and read not a few. Although we cannot determine the exact date of "Arcades," it is reasonably certain that it preceded "Comus," and that it may be assigned to 1633. It formed only "part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby at Harefield," but we may be sure that it was a part as important as it was beautiful, and that the poet's 'prentice hand was strengthened by writing it. He seems to have been induced thus to honor a lady whose praises Spenser had previously sung by the well-known musician, Henry Lawes, to whom he afterward dedicated a fine sonnet. Lawes (1595-1662) was the chief English composer of his time, and must have known the Milton family for some years. His talents won him a position at court, and the friendship of the leading poets of the time, whose songs he set to music, receiving in return their poetical encomiums. He probably gained more money, however, by furnishing music for the then fashionable masques, so we find him collaborating in the performance of Shirley's "Triumph of Peace," and composing single-handed the music of Carew's "Coelum Britannicum." He was also music tutor to the children of the Earl and Countess of Bridgewater, which seems to explain his assumed connection with "Arcades." These children would take part in the proposed entertainment to their grandmother, and would ask their instructor's help. He, knowing Milton well, would apply to him for the necessary verses, rather than to professional masquewriters, who would probably not care to undertake such a slight piece of work. Milton's success was so conspicuous that when another and more elaborate entertainment was contemplated by the Bridgewater family, Lawes would H again apply to him for poetical assistance. This is a simple, if meagre, account of the way the young Puritan poet was enlisted in the service of the distinguished Cavalier family, for Warton's statement that Milton's father Iwas the Earl's tenant at Horton has not been substantiated. With regard to the poetical merits of "Arcades" there can scarcely be two opinions. The speech of the Genius of the Wood, in heroic couplets, is a triumph of style, and the three songs have a lightness of touch that is rare in Milton's lyric work. The compliments that had to be paid the Dowager are turned with as much grace as if the Puritan had been an Elizabethan of the prime. Indeed Shakspere himself has hardly surpassed the exquisite song beginning "O'er the smooth enamelled green," while he surely would have praised, though he need not have envied, such a divinely harmonious passage as the following: "But else in deep of night, when drowsiness |