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sification even in the conceits, which are many, we perceive strong and peculiar marks of genius. I think Milton has here given a very remarkable specimen of his ability to succeed in the Spenserian stanza: he moves with great ease and address amidst the embarrassment of a frequent return of rhyme."

Several other poems of Milton, both English and Latin, were written at college: from all these extraordinary compositions it appears that the tone, richness, and character of Milton's genius were always the same from the age of fifteen; and probably even much earlier: it was always mixed up with both classical and abstruse learning; and with an infusion from the poetry of the Bible. His Latin verses had less of the wild, the sublime, and the visionary than his English, which of course arose from the difference of his models, and the different characters of the respective languages. The feudal institutions, the enthusiasm and splendour of chivalry, and the superstitions of the dark ages had introduced a new school of poetry in Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Sackville, Spenser, and Shakspeare, more suited to Milton's genius; which yet he was deterred from introducing in compositions, where he endeavoured to rival the ancient classics. There is more of what would be by cold minds called sober thoughts, sentiments, and images in his Latin productions than in his vernacular; but there certainly is not the same raciness, vigour, and picturesqueness.

His Epistles to his friend Charles Deodate are, indeed, very beautiful: they relate his studies, his amusements, his feelings, his ambitions; but these have more of amiable virtue in them than of imaginative richness.

From one of these poems it comes out that he was rusticated from his college: the cause has been speculated upon with various comments and conclusions, according to the tempers and political and personal prejudices of the censors; but I have no doubt that Mr. Mitford's opinion is the correct one. Milton, with a haughty spirit, and a consciousness of his own great genius and learning, would not submit to academical discipline. The line

Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meoobviously means nothing but a repugnance to the observation of those petty formalities and rules which irritate and insult great minds: it is absurd to construe it to have been corporal punishment.

He retired to his father's villa at Horton, near Colebrook, in Middlesex, glad to quit the dulness of the reedy Cam; and gave himself up entirely to the literature of his own taste in his exile-except during occasional visits to the capital to enjoy the the theatres, and the conversation of his friends. His college was glad to have him back again, conscious of the honour he did them by his mighty gifts and acquirements of intellect. But at Horton he says of himself,

Tempora nam licet hic placidis dare libera Musis,
Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri.

Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri,

Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos.

Warton says, "Milton's Latin poems may be justly considered as legitimate classical compositions, and are never disgraced with such language and such imagery as Cowley's. Cowley's Latinity, dictated by an irregular and unrestrained imagination, presents a mode of diction, half Latin and half English. It is not so much that Cowley wanted a knowledge of the Latin style, but that he suffered that knowledge to be perverted and corrupted by false and extravagant thoughts. Milton was a more perfect scholar than Cowley, and his mind was more deeply tinctured with the excellences of ancient literature: he was a more just thinker, and therefore a more just writer: in a word, he had more taste, and more poetry, and consequently more propriety. If a fondness for the Italian writers has sometimes infected his English poetry with false ornaments, his Latin verses, both in diction and sentiment, are at least free from gross depravations.

"Some of Milton's Latin poems were written in his first year at Cambridge, when he was only seventeen: they must be allowed to be very correct and manly performances for a youth of that age; and, considered in that view, they discover an extraordinary copiousness and command of ancient fable and history. I cannot but add that Gray resembles Milton in many instances: among others, in their youth they were both strongly attached to the cultivation of Latin poetry."

Such was Milton's boyhood and youth; so predominant was his genius from the first. It was at Horton that Milton seems to have meditated

an Epic poem on King Arthur, or some other part of the old British story. See Epitaphium Damonis' (Deodatus), and 'Epistola ad Mansum.'

In his Elegia in adventum Veris,' written in his twentieth year, the poet tells us that his poetical powers revived with the spring.

Milton's early love of the theatre has been already mentioned; Warton also observes this, and refers to L'Allegro,' v. 131: but in another place the critic remarks, that his warmest poetical predilections were at last totally obliterated by civil and religious enthusiasm. Milton's writings afford a striking example of the strength and weakness of the same mind. Seduced by the gentle eloquence of fanaticism, he listened no more to the "wild and native wood-notes of Fancy's child." In his 'Iconoclastes' he censures King Charles for studying one, whom we well know was the closet companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare."

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Nothing could be farther than Milton was, in his own early poetry, from this sour puritanism. In his Ode at a Solemn Musick,' he addresses "the harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse," to "wed their divine sounds :"

And to our high-raised phantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure consent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne
To him that sits thereon,

With saintly shout and solemn jubilee ;
Where the bright Seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow;
And the cherubick host, in thousand quires,
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,

With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms

Singing everlastingly, &c.

Here is an anticipation of the Paradise Lost.' Again in his 'Address to his Native Language,' at a vacation exercise in the college, anno ætatis 19, he says,—

But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure,
And from thy wardrobe bring thy choicest treasure ;
Not those new-fangled toys and trimming slight,
Which takes our late fantasticks with delight;
But cull those richest robes and gayest attire,
Which deepest spirits and choicest wits desire.
Yet I had rather, if I were to choose,
Thy service in some graver subject use;

Such as may make thee search thy coffers round
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound;
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door
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
Immortal nectar to her kingly sire: &c.

"Here," Warton again observes," are strong indications of a young mind, anticipating the subject of the Paradise Lost,' if we substitute Christian for Pagan ideas. He was now deep in the Greek poets."

The style, the picturesqueness of language, the character of the imagery, which Milton adopted from the first, was peculiar to himself. I do not say that many of the words, and even images, might not be found scattered in preceding poets, as Spenser, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Joshua Sylvester's Du Bartas; but