Nor you affect to scorn the Aonian quire, Arion's tuneful heir:-then wonder not A poet-child should be by you begot, My kindred blood is warm with kindred flame, With child and sire the same, though varied god. In answer to some malignant insinuations thrown out in after life by a political adversary, Milton, in his second defence to the people of England, presents with equal brevity and modesty a view of his early history. In this we find the following reference to his boyhood: "My father destined me from a child to the pursuits of literature; and my appetite for knowledge was so voracious, that, from twelve years of age, I hardly ever left my studies or went to bed before midnight. This primarily led to my loss of sight. My eyes were naturally weak, and I was subject to frequent head-aches, which, however, could not chill the ardour of my curiosity, or retard the progress of my improvement. My father had me daily instructed in the Grammarschool, and by other masters at home." Aubrey, also, in his MS. Life of Milton, preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, relates that, "when Milton went to schoole, and when he was very younge, he studied very hard, and sate up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock; and his father ordered the maid to sitt up for him." At the age of fifteen, that is, in the year 1623, Milton was admitted to St. Paul's School, and in the same year produced the first poems which have come down to our time; although, from the authority before quoted, we learn that he was a poet at ten years old, at which age his first portrait was executed by Cornelius Jansen. To those who are interested in tracing in "the child the father of the man," it will be delightful to examine these early productions; just as "the little rill near the source of one of the great American rivers is an interesting object to the traveller who is apprised, as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its banks, that this is the stream which runs so far, and which gradually swells into so vast a flood." The poems referred to are versions of the 114th and 136th Psalms. The former of these is inserted as being the shorter, and, perhaps, the more characteristic. afterward translated it into Greek verse. A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV. When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son And pass'd from Pharian fields to Canaan land, Milton In his seventeenth year he commenced his University career at Christ College, Cambridge. For this he was prepared by an extensive acquaintance with classical literature, and a knowledge of several modern languages acquired at St. Paul's School. But it was to the poets that he devoted his chief attention, and for the appreciation of them he modestly lays claim but to one, and that a very subordinate qualification, an exquisite nicety of ear. It was in this the first * Foster's Essay on a Man's writing Memoirs of himself. year of his college life that he wrote his elegy "On the death of a Fair Infant," which is too long for insertion, but which indicates a great advance upon his earlier productions in maturity of mind and in facility of management. It cannot be said of Milton that he ever set any author before him as a model. It is, however, evident that Ovid was the reigning favourite of the youthful poet, and, even amidst the multifarious learning which, as if by a necessity he could not control, crowded the productions of his after life, it is easy to trace the frequent reminiscences of his first love. At college he was particularly admired for his academical exercises, both in Latin and English verse. The former language he wrote through life with as much ease and force as if it had been his vernacular tongue. In his prose writings, indeed, he never affected a pedantic conformity to the classic models, though in Latin verse his resemblance to them was at once so close and so natural, that Mr. Macaulay justly applies to him a tasteful criticism on Cowley, that "he wore the garb but not the clothes of the ancients." In the year 1627 he produced a "vacation exercise in the College," of which Todd remarks that, written at the age of nineteen, it has been repeatedly and justly noticed as containing indications of the future bard, "whose genius was equal to a subject that carried him beyond the limits of the world." In the following lines the reader will discern the twilight that heralded the undeclining day of Comus, Il Penseroso, and the Paradise Lost. Addressing the personification of the English language, he writes: Yet I had rather, if I were to chuse, Such where the deep transported mind may soar Look in, and see each blissful deity; How he before the thunderous throne doth lie, Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings To the touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire, Two years afterwards he produced his "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity." A hypercritical analysis has detected some fancied faults in this exquisite poem. But if the writers referred to had recollected the age in which (not to say at which) it was written, or the canon of candour which a great poetical critic* of antiquity left for the guidance of his successors, they might, perhaps, have spared their ingenuity. It bears a stamp of premature, but conscious, majesty in every verse; while in the very music of such stanzas as the following, there reigns a spirit of silence which is charmingly appropriate, and irresistibly impressive : No war, or battle's sound, Was heard the world around: The idle spear and shield were high uphung; Unstain'd with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sov'ran Lord was by. * Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Aut humana parum cavit natura. Horace: De Arte Poetica. But peaceful was the night, His reign of peace upon the earth began: Whispering new joys to the wild ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. The stars, with deep amaze, Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze, Bending one way their precious influence; * The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetick cell. The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent: With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint In urns and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat. About the same time he produced the verses written at a "Solemn Musick," which have been made far better known to the present generation by the harmony of Handel than even by the fame of their author. The student who desires |