JOHN MILTON.

1608-1674.

THE history of Milton's wives, and his checkered experience of married life, is well known; but the story of his early loves, if he had any, is irrevocably lost. Everybody has read the romantic anecdote of the young Italian lady of rank, who, travelling in England when he was a student at Cambridge, found him one day asleep under a tree, and, alighting from her carriage, was so much struck by his beauty that she wrote in pencil a madrigal of Guarini, “Occhi stelle mortali,” which she slipped into his hand, and then pursued her journey. When he awoke he read the lines with amazement, and learning the way in which he came by them, conceived such a passion for the fair unknown, that he afterwards journeyed to Italy in search of her. A similar story is told of him in Rome, the scene being shifted to the suburbs of that city, and the date changed to correspond with the period of his visit thither, but it is as mythical as the former one. There is not a word of truth in either. That Milton did travelin Italy, where he met one or two ladies who interested him, is certain; but study, and not love, was the cause of his journey. The first of his Italian heroines, if I may call them such, was the celebrated singer, Leonora Baroni, whom he met at Rome, in the palace of Cardinal Barberini, where he had frequent opportunities of hearing her sing. He celebrated her musical talents in three Latin epigrams, which contain nothing that can be twisted into a declaration of love. Of the second lady, to whom he wrote four Italian sonnets, nothing is known. He is supposed by his latest biographer, Mr. Masson, to have met her in, or near, Bologna, in the spring of 1639. She was for a long time thought to have been a German lady, the word Rheno in the second line of one of the sonnets being interpreted to mean the German Rhine; but Mr. Masson shows that such an interpretation is unnecessary, there being a river Rheno near Bologna, in which city she probably resided. The "deceased wife" of the last sonnet was Milton's second wife, Catharine Woodcock. She married the poet in 1656, the fourth year of his blindness, and died in childbed within a year after her marriage. His touching tribute to her memory was written shortly after her death.

I have used Cowper's version of the Italian sonnets. It is an elegant one, and, bating the mistake of the Rheno for the Rhine, sufficiently faithful for poetical purposes.

Fair Lady! whose harmonious name the Rhine, Through all his grassy vales, delights to hear, Base were indeed the wretch who could forbear To love a spirit elegant as thine,

That manifests a sweetness all divine,

Nor knows a thousand winning acts to spare, And graces, which Love's bow and arrows are, Tempering thy virtues in a softer shine. When gracefully thou speak'st, or singest gay,

Such strains as might the senseless forest move, Ah then-turn each his eyes and ears away,

Who feels himself unworthy of thy love!
Grace can alone preserve him ere the dart
Of fond desire yet reach his inmost heart.

As on a hill-top rude, when closing day

Embrowns the scene, some pastoral maiden fair
Waters a lovely foreign plant with care,
Borne from its native genial airs away,
That scarcely can its tender bud display;

So, on my tongue these accents, new and rare,
Are flowers exotic, which Love waters there.

While thus, O sweetly scornful! I essay
Thy praise in verse to British ears unknown,

And Thames exchange for Arno's fair domain;
So Love has willed, and ofttimes Love has shown
That what he wills, he never wills in vain.
O that this hard and sterile breast might be
To Him, who plants from Heaven, a soil as free!

TO CHARLES DEODATI.

Charles, and I say it wondering, thou must know
That I, who once assumed a scornful air,
And scoffed at Love, am fallen in his snare,
(Full many an upright man has fallen so):

Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow

Of golden locks, or damask cheeks; more rare
The heartfelt beauties of my foreign fair;
A mien majestic, with dark brows that show
The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind;

Words exquisite, of idioms more than one,
And song, whose fascinating power might bind,

And from her sphere draw down the labouring moon;

With such fire-darting eyes that, should I fill

My ears with wax, she would enchant me still.

Lady! It cannot be but that thine eyes

Must be my sun, such radiance they display,
And strike me e'en as Phoebus him whose way

Through horrid Libya's sandy desert lies.
Meantime, on that side steamy vapours rise

Where most I suffer. Of what kind are they,
New as to me they are, I can not say,
But deem them, in the lover's language-sighs.
Some, though with pain, my bosom close conceals,
Which, if in part escaping thence, they tend
To soften thine, thy coldness soon congeals.

While others to my tearful eyes ascend,
Whence my sad nights in showers are ever drowned,
Till
my Aurora comes,
her brow with roses bound.

Enamoured, artless, young, on foreign ground,
Uncertain whither from myself to fly;

To thee, dear Lady, with an humble sigh
Let me devote my heart, which I have found
By certain proofs, not few, intrepid, sound,

Good, and addicted to conceptions high:

When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky,

It rests in adamant self-wrapt around,

As safe from envy, and from outrage rude,

From hopes and fears that vulgar minds abuse,

As fond of genius, and fixed fortitude,

Of the resounding lyre, and every Muse. Weak you will find it in one only part, Now pierced by Love's immedicable dart.

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, washed 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 veiled, 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.

THOMAS CAREW.

1589-1639

CELIA.

CELIA was a real person, but her name is unknown. Carew is said to have fallen in love with her in his youth, and his love not being returned, to have gone to France after leaving the university, to shake off his melancholy. We learn from one of his poems that she demanded her letters back, and from another that she married. Her husband probably died before Carew, for one of the poet's companions bantered him for having a widow for his mistress. Carew stood high in the good graces of his contemporaries. Davenant complimented him and his poetry by telling him there would be triumphs in King's street, when he died, than in days of Parliament.

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"Thy wit's chief virtue is become its vice;

For every beauty thou hast raised so high,
That now coarse faces carry such a price,
As must undo a lover that should buy."

"He was a person of a pleasant and facetious wit," says my Lord Clarendon, “and made many poems (especially in the amorous way), which for the sharpness of the fancy, and the elegance of the language in which that fancy was spread, were at least equal if not superior, to any of that time." "Carew's sonnets," says Oldys, 66 were more in request than any poet's of his time; that is between 1630 and 1640. They were many of them set to music by the two famous composers, Henry and William Lawes, and other eminent masters, and sung at court in their masques." They were first published in 1640.

SONG.

TO ONE THAT DESIRED TO KNOW MY MISTRESS.

Seek not to know my love, for she
Hath vowed her constant faith to me;