I am afraid I always meet fome melancholy in his mirth." Milton's is the dignity of mirth. His cheerfulnefs is the cheerfulne's of gravity. The objects he felects in his L' Allegro are fo far gay, as they do not naturally excite fadnefs. Laughter and jollity are named only as perfonifications, and never exemplified. Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, are enumerated only in general terms. There is fpecifically no mirth in contemplating a fine landfchape. And even his landfchape, although it has flowery meads and flocks, wears a fhade of penfivenefs; and contains ruffet lawns, fallows gray, and barren mountains, overhung with labouring clouds. Its old turretted manfion, peeping from, the trees, awakens only a train of folemn and romantick, perhaps melancholy, reflection. Many a penfive man liftens with delight. to the milk-maid finging blithe, to the mower whetting his feythe, and to a distant peal of village-bells. He chofe fuch illustrations as minister matter for true poetry, and genuine description. Even his moft brilliant imagery is mellowed with the fober hues of philofophick meditation. It was impoffible for the author of Il Penferofo to be more cheerful, or to paint mirth with levity; that is, otherwife than in the colours of the higher poetry. Both poems are the result of the fame feelings, and the fame habits of thought.

Doctor Johnfon has remarked, that, in L' Allegro, "no part of the gaiety is made to arife from the pleafures of the bottle.” The truth is, that Milton means to defcribe the cheerfulness of the philofopher or the ftudent, the amufements of a contemplative mind. And on this principle, he feems unwilling to allow, that Mirth is the offspring of Bacchus and Venus, deities, who prefide over fenfual gratifications; but rather adopts the fiction of thofe more ferious and fapient fablers, who fuppofe, that her proper parents are Zephyr and Aurora: intimating, that his cheerful enjoyments are thofe of the temperate and innocent kind, of early hours and rural pleafures. That critick does not appear to have entered into the fpirit, or to have comprehended the meaning, of our author's Allegro.

No man was ever fo difqualified to turn puritan as Milton. In both thefe poems, he profeffes himself to be highly pleafed with the choral church-mufick, with Gothick cloyfters, the painted windows and vaulted iles of a venerable cathedral, with tilts and tournaments, and with mafques and pageantries. What very repugnant and unpoetical principles did he afterwards

adopt! He helped to fubvert monarchy, to deftroy fubordination, and to level all diftinctions of rank. But this fcheme was totally inconfiftent with the fplendours of fociety, with throngs of knights and barons bold, with ftore of ladies, and high triumphs, which belonged to a court. Pomp, and feast, and revelry, the fhow of Hymen, with mask and antique pageantry, were among the state and trappings of nobility, which as an advocate for republicanism he detefted. His fyftem of worship, which renounced all outward folemnity, all that had ever any connection with popery, tended to overthrow the ftudious cloisters pale, and the high-embowed roof; to remove the storied windows richly dight, and to filence the pealing organ and the full-voiced quire. The delights arifing from these objects were to be facrificed to the cold and philofophical fpirit of Calvinifm, which furnished no pleasures to the imagination. T. WARTON.

1

PRELIMINARY NOTES

ON

ARCADES.

Harefield.

WE
are told by Norden, an accurate topographer who wrote
about the year 1590, in his Speculum Britanniæ, under Harefield
in Middlesex," There fir Edmond Anderson knight, lord chief
Iuftice of the common pleas, hath a faire house standing on the
edge of the hill. The riuer Colne paffing neare the fame, through
the pleasant meddowes and fweet paftures, ycalding both delight.
and profit." Spec. Brit. P. i. page 21. 1 viewed this houfe a
few years ago, when it was for the most part remaining in its
original state. It has fince been pulled down the Porter's
lodges on each fide the gateway, are converted into a commo-
dious dwelling-house. It is near Uxbridge: and Milton, when
he wrote Arcades, was ftill living with his father at Horton near
Colnebrook in the fame neighbourhood. He mentions the fingular
felicity he had in vain anticipated, in the fociety of his friend
Deodate, on the fhady banks of the river Colne. Epitaph.
Damon. v. 149.

"Imus, et arguta paulum recubamus in umbra,
"Aut ad aquas Colni, &c."

Amidft the fruitful and delightful fcenes of this river, the
Nymphs and Shepherds had no reason to regret, as in the Third
Song, the Arcadian "Ladon's lillied banks."

Unquestionably this Mafk was a much longer performance. Milton feems only to have written the poetical part, confifting of these three Songs and the recitative Soliloquy of the Genius. The reft was probably profe and machinery. In many of Jonfon's Mafques, the poet but rarely appears, amidst a cumbersome exhibition of heathen gods and mythology. Arcades was acted by perfons of Lady Derby's own family. The Genius fa v. 26.