French into English by John Lidgate, monk of Bury, and with the picture of Death leading all estates, painted round the cloyster."

But we are obliged to dispel so pleasing a delusion :— "In the year 1549, on the 10th of April, the chapel of Becket, by commandment of the Duke of Somerset, was begun to be pulled down, with the whole cloyster, the Daunce of Death, the tombs and monuments; so that nothing thereof was left but the bare plot of ground, which is since converted (says Stowe) into a garden for the petty canons." So that the "cloister's pale," i. e. boundary, only was still to be traversed in Milton's time.

We learn from Hume, that this desecration was to supply stones for the erection of the protector's palace in the Strand, called Somerset-house. (Hist. anno 1549.) It

was fearfully expiated in 1552.—J. B.

40 Ver. 157. High-embowed. Highly-vaulted, arcuatus, arched.-TODD.

41 Ver. 159. Storied. Storied, or painted with stories, that is, histories. In barbarous latinity, storia is sometimes used for historia. One of the arguments used by the puritans for breaking the painted glass in church windows, was because, by darkening the church, it obscured the new light of the gospel.-T. WARTON.

42 Ver. 167.

And

may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage.

It should be remarked, that Milton wishes to die in the character of the melancholy man.-T. WARTON.

43 Ver. 172. And every herb that sips the dew. It seems probable that Milton was a student in botany; for he speaks with great pleasure of the hopes he had formed of

being assisted in this study by his friend Charles Deodate, who was a physician. See 'Epitaph. Damon.' v. 150.— T. WARTON.

Of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,' I believe, opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to show how objects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or upon the same man as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified.

The cheerful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears the nightingale in the evening: the cheerful man sees the cock strut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, "not unseen," to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the singing milk-maid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower; then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks up to the distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant: thus he pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights himself at night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious ignorance. The pensive man, at one time, walks "unseen" to muse at midnight; and, at another, hears the solemn curfew if the weather drives him home, he sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or by a lonely lamp outwatches the north star, to discover the habitation of separate souls; and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or pathetic scenes of tragic and epic poetry. When the morning comes, a morning gloomy with rain and wind, he falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some music played by aerial performers.

Both Mirth and Melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the breast, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is therefore made of a philosophical friend, or of a pleasant companion. The seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle. The man of cheerfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what "tower'd cities" will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour, gay assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator, as, when the learned comedies of Jonson or the wild dramas of Shakspeare are exhibited, he attends the theatre: the pensive man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister, or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forsaken the

church.

Both his characters delight in music; but he seems to think that cheerful notes would have obtained from Pluto a complete dismission of Eurydice, of whom solemn sounds procured only a conditional release. For the old age of Cheerfulness he makes no provision; but Melancholy he conducts with great dignity to the close of life: his cheerfulness is without levity, and his pensiveness without asperity. Through these two poems the images are properly selected, and nicely distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently discriminated: I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently apart: no mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble efforts of imagination.— JOHNSON.

Of these two exquisite little poems, I think it clear that the last is the most taking; which is owing to the subject. The mind delights most in these solemn images, and a genius delights most to paint them.—HURD.

'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' may be called the two first descriptive poems in the English language: it is perhaps true, that the characters are not sufficiently kept

apart; but this circumstance has been productive of greater excellences. It has been remarked, “No mirth indeed can be found in his melancholy, but I am afraid I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." Milton's is the dignity of mirth: his cheerfulness is the cheerfulness of gravity: the objects he selects in his 'L'Allegro' are so far gay, as they do not naturally excite sadness: laughter and jollity are named only as personifications, and never exemplified: "Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles," are enumerated only in general terms. There is specifically no mirth in contemplating a fine landscape; and even his landscape, although it has flowery meads and flocks, wears a shade of pensiveness; and contains "russet lawns," "fallows gray," and "barren mountains," overhung with "labouring clouds:" its old turreted mansion, peeping from the trees, awakens only a train of solemn and romantic, perhaps melancholy reflection. Many a pensive man listens with delight to the "milk-maid singing blithe," to the "mower whetting his scythe,” and to a distant peal of village-bells. He chose such illustrations as minister matter for new poetry and genuine description: even his most brilliant imagery is mellowed with the sober hues of philosophic meditation. It was impossible for the author of 'Il Penseroso' to be more cheerful, or to paint mirth with levity that is, otherwise than in the colours of the higher poetry. Both poems are the result of the same feelings, and the same habits of thought.

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Dr. Johnson has remarked, that, in 'L'Allegro,' " no part of the gaiety is made to arise from the pleasures of the bottle." The truth is, that Milton means to describe the cheerfulness of the philosopher or the student, the amusements of a contemplative mind; and on this principle he seems unwilling to allow that Mirth is the offspring of Bacchus and Venus, deities who preside over sensual gratifications; but rather adopts the fiction of those more serious and sapient fablers, who suppose that her proper

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parents are Zephyr and Aurora; intimating, that his cheerful enjoyments are those of the temperate and innocent kind, of early hours and rural pleasures. That critic does not appear to have entered into the spirit, or to have comprehended the meaning, of our author's 'Allegro.'

No man was ever so disqualified to turn puritan as Milton in both these poems, he professes himself to be highly pleased with the choral church-music, with Gothic cloisters, the painted windows and vaulted ailes of a venerable cathedral, with tilts and tournaments, and with masques and pageantries. What very repugnant and unpoetical principles did he afterwards adopt! He helped to subvert monarchy, to destroy subordination, and to level all distinctions of rank: but this scheme was totally inconsistent with the splendours of society, with "throngs of knights and barons bold," with "store of ladies,” and "high triumphs," which belonged to a court. “Pomp, and feast, and revelry," the show of Hymen, "with mask and antique pageantry," were among the state and trappings of nobility, which, as an advocate for republicanism, he detested his system of worship, which renounced all outward solemnity, all that had ever any connexion with popery, tended to overthrow the "studious cloisters pale," and the "high-embowed roof; to remove the "storied windows richly dight," and to silence the "pealing organ" and the "full-voiced quire." The delights arising from these objects were to be sacrificed to the cold and philosophical spirit of Calvinism, which furnished no pleasures to the imagination.-T. WARTON.