fancy the old satirist was pointing at Shakspere com

mentators.

Burton lived before newspapers, and yet he had a very competent knowledge of what was going on in the world. I will conclude with a curious passage, which might, with few exceptions, have been written by one of our age of electric telegraphs: Though I still live a collegiate student, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastic life, secluded from those tumults and troubles of the world, in some high place above you all, as he said,-I hear and see what is done abroad,-how others run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and country,-a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act their parts, which methinks are diversely presented to me, as from a common theatre or scene. I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions ;-of towns taken, cities besieged, daily musters and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford: battles fought, so many slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies and seafights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarums. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, law-suits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays. Then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, death of princes, new discoveries, expeditions; now comical, then tragical matters. To-day we hear of new lords and offices created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives,

his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world; jollity, pride, perplexities and cares, simplicity and villainy, subtlety, knavery, candour, and integrity, mutually mixed and offering themselves.'

Who, at first sight, would imagine that this was written -Once upon a Time-in the seventeenth century?

alt over.

MILTON, THE LONDONER.

THE best successor of Milton has described the character of the great poet's mind in one celebrated line :--

6

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.'

It might at first seem, looking at the accuracy of this forcible image, that the name of Milton could not be properly associated with the state of society during the times in which he flourished. It is true that in the writings of Milton we have very few glimpses of the familiar life of his day; no set descriptions of scenes and characters; nothing that approaches in the slightest degree to the nature of anecdote; no playfulness, no humour. Wordsworth continues his apostrophe :

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea.'

ected with

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about 1627.

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The sprightlier dramatists have the voices of

'Shallow rivers, by whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.'

It is pleasant to sit in the sunshine and listen to the bub-
bling of the runnel over its pebbly bottom: but the times
of Milton were for the most part dark and stormy, and
with them the voice of the sea was in harmony. We can
learn, while listening to that voice, when there was calm
and when there was tempest. But Milton was not only
the great literary name of his period-he was a public man,
living in the heart of the mightiest struggle betwixt two
adverse principles that England ever encountered. Add to
this he was essentially a Londoner. He was born in Bread
Street; he died in Cripplegate. During a long life we
may trace him, from St. Paul's School, through a succession
of London residences which, taking their names with their
ordinary associations, sound as little poetical as can well
be imagined-St. Bride's Churchyard, Aldersgate Street,
Barbican, Holborn, Petty France, Bartholomew Close,
Jewin Street, Bunhill Fields. The houses which he in-
habited have been swept away; their pleasant gardens are
built over.
But the name of Milton is inseparably con-
nected with these prosaic realities. That name belongs
especially to London.

The Milton of nineteen has himself left us a picture of his
mind at this period. His first Latin elegy, addressed to
Charles Deodati, is supposed by Warton to have been written
about 1627. The writer was born in 1608. We shall tran-
scribe a few passages from Cowper's translation of this
elegy:-
'I well content, where Thames with influent tide

My native city laves, meantime reside:

Nor zeal nor duty now my steps impel

To reedy Cam, and my forbidden cell;
Nor aught of pleasure in those fields have I,
That, to the musing bard, all shade deny.
"T is time that I a pedant's threats disdain,
And fly from wrongs my soul will ne'er sustain.
If peaceful days in letter'd leisure spent,

Beneath my father's roof, be banishment,

Then call me banish'd; I will ne'er refuse

A name expressive of the lot I choose.

I would that, exiled to the Pontic shore,
Rome's hapless bard had suffered nothing more;
He then had equall'd even Homer's lays,
And, Virgil! thou hadst won but second praise.
For here I woo the Muse, with no control;

For here my books-my life-absorb me whole.'

His father's roof was in Bread Street, in the parish of Allhallows. The sign of the Spread Eagle, which hung over his father's door, was the armorial bearing of his family; but the sign indicated that the house was one of business, and the business of Milton's father was that of a scrivener. Here, in some retired back room, looking most probably into a pleasant little garden, was the youthful poet surrounded by his books, perfectly indifferent to the more profitable writing of bonds and agreements that was going forward in his father's office. It was Milton's happiness to possess a father who understood the genius of his son, and whose tastes were in unison with his own. In the young poet's beautiful verses, Ad Patrem, also translated by Cowper, he says,

thou never bad'st me tread

The beaten path, and broad, that leads right on

To opulence, nor didst condemn thy son

To the insipid clamours of the bar,

The laws voluminous, and ill observ'd.'

Of Milton's father, Aubrey says, 'He was an ingenious man, delighted in music, and composed many songs now in print, especially that of Oriana.' The poet thus addresses his father in reference to the same accomplishment:-

thyself

Art skilful to associate verse with airs
Harmonious, and to give the human voice
A thousand modulations, heir by right

Indisputable of Arion's fame.

Now say, what wonder is it, if a son

Of thine delight in verse; if, so conjoin'd
In close affinity, we sympathise

In social arts and kindred studies sweet?'