admire him as a man. He wrote his great poems in an age when literature reflected the license that followed in natural reaction from the severe rule of the Puritans. Never was literature so degraded as in that age, when the reigning poets, from the laureate down, put common decency to the blush, cried out upon everything sacred, and believed neither in honor nor virtue among men or women. Amid all these Milton shone like a star, living the life of an ascetic, and, by the practice of a noble temperance, preparing himself to sing his grand epic. Thus he stands apart from and above his contemporaries, a noble, self-centered man, who, in an age of license, sang only to the highest ideals and in praise of the loftiest virtue.

"Love virtue. She alone is free.

She can teach you how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.”

TALK XXXI.

ON MILTON'S CONTEMPORARIES: MARVELL, COWLEY AND

BUTLER.

MILTON was the great poet of his century; there is no other man of the time worthy to rank beside him, either among Puritans or Cavaliers. His place in literature is all the more distinctive, because he was a Puritan, and nearly all the other poets of the time were royalists, devoted to the king's cause. There is one other writer who was in sympathy with Milton, who deserves to be mentioned near him. This is Andrew Marvell, who, although a Puritan, was a moderate man, who knew how to find the middle path, in which tolerance and common sense usually walk together.

Born 1620.
Died 1678.

Marvell lived in Lincolnshire, a county which was famous for Puritans, and sent so many emigrants to America in the early settlement of New England. After Charles II was restored to the throne, Marvell was sent to represent his native town in parliament, and held the seat in firm opposition to the vices of the rulers. He was a man so wise and witty that the king could not help admiring him, and once sent his lord of the treasury to see if he could not be won over to the royal side. Marvell received his guest hospitably, but gave him mutton for dinner on three successive days. And when the courtier at last offered him place and money to change his politics, the staunch old roundhead told him plainly, that since he could dine contentedly every day on a shoulder of mutton, the king could offer him no inducement to change his colors.

Marvell's writings are principally political satires, witty in his time, but not interesting now. He has, however, a few poems that from their sentiment have been able to outlive his age, and I select one of the shortest. It is on Eyes and Tears, and is, as you will notice, in the style of the metaphysical poets, with its talk about "watery lines and plummets," and the sun "distilling the world with chemic ray." In spite of this, there are some pretty thoughts in the verses, and the last dozen lines I think are very beautiful.

EYES AND TEARS.

"How wisely Nature did decree

With the same eyes to weep and see,
That, having viewed the object vain,
They might be ready to complain!
And since the self-deluding sight,
In a false angle takes each height,
These tears, which better measure all,
Like watery lines and plummets fall.
Two tears, which sorrow long did weigh
Within the scales of either eye,
And then paid out in equal poise,
Are the true price of all my joys.
What in the world most fair appears,

Yea, even laughter turns to tears,
And all the jewels that we prize
Melt in these pendants of the eyes.
I have through every garden been
Amongst the red, the white, the green,
And yet from all those flowers I saw
No honey, but these tears could draw.
So the all-seeing sun each day
Distils the world with chemic ray,
But finds the essence only showers,
Which straight in pity back he pours.
Yet happy they whom grief doth bless,
That weep the more and see the less,
And to preserve their sight more true
Bathe still their eyes in their own dew.
So Magdalen in tears more wise
Dissolves those captivating eyes
Whose liquid chains could flowing meet
To fetter her Redeemer's feet.

The incense is to Heaven dear
Not as a perfume, but a tear.
And stars show lovely in the night,
But as they seem the tears of light,
Ope, then, my eyes your double sluice,
And practice so your noblest use,
For others, too, can see, or sleep,

But only human eyes car weep."

af

Another noted poet of this age is Abraham Cowley, a trusted servant and secretary of Charles I, and terwards devoted to his son, Charles II, who seems

Born 1618.
Died 1667.

to have neglected the poet during his life, and to have contented himself with saying of him after his death, "Mr. Cowley has not left behind him a better man in England."

Milton prized Cowley highly, and thought him one of the greatest among poets; but he is not so much valued now. Much better than his verses I like his prose essays, of which he wrote a dozen or more. The theme of nearly all his essays is a praise of country life-a life without ambition of

cares, led among green fields and still waters. The titles or the essays indicate this. They are on Solitude, Gardens, Agriculture, Liberty, and kindred subjects. It seemed as if in all he wrote, Cowley felt the tediousness and hollowness of a life at court, and longed to be free from it. In his essay on Agriculture he praises above all lives that of the farmer, and in his essay on Greatness he praises a simple house and simple fare above all the luxury of court. His essay on Liberty contains as grand a definition of Freedom as has ever been given. He says, "The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government. The liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and his country."

In the last of his life Cowley did attain to a little estate in the country about which he had written so much and had so longed for. He did not live very long to enjoy it, and had suffered so many disappointments before getting it, that he was not altogether happy in the realization of his wishes. After a few years of retreat, he died suddenly of cold caught from getting overheated with working in the harvest among his laborers.

Cowley was a versatile writer both in prose and verse. In poetry he has one long epic of which the Hebrew King, David, is the hero. He also wrote several plays; but of all his poetry I like much best his shorter pieces. He was very familiar with the Greek and Latin poets, and put many of their verses into so free a translation that they have the merit of an original. His Songs from Anacreon are specimens of this easy and free rendering.

Cowley began to write very early, and tells us in one of his essays, titled "Myself," that he wrote verses at thirteen. He says here: "How this love of poetry came to be produced in me so early is a hard question. I believe I can tell the particular little chance which filled my head first with such chimes of verse as have never since left ringing

there; for I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlor (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, monsters and giants, and brave houses which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had very little to do with all this), and by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhymes and the dance of the numbers, I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet almost immediately."

I think I cannot give you a more characteristic specimen of Cowley, as showing the bent of his mind as well as his easy style, than by quoting a story which he borrowed from one of the Latin authors, and which is added to one of his essays in praise of a country life. It is The Country Mouse:

66

At the large foot of a fair hollow tree,

Close to ploughed ground, seated commodiously,
His ancient and hereditary house,

There dwelt a good, substantial country mouse;
Frugal, and grave, and careful of the main,
Yet one who once did nobly entertain
A city mouse, well-coated, sleek, and gay,
A mouse of high degree, who lost his way,
Wantonly walking forth to take the air,
And arrived early and alighted there
For a day's lodging; the good, hearty host
(The ancient plenty of his hall to boast),
Did all the stores produce that might excite,
With various tastes, the courtier's appetite-
Fitches and beans, peason, and oats, and wheat,
And a large chestnut, the delicious meat
Which Jove himself—were he a mouse-would eat;
And for a hautgout* there was mixed with these
A rind of bacon, and the coat of cheese,
The precious relics which at harvest, he

*Richness-pronounced ho-goo.