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marriage with Mary Powell brought him on that special visit to the neighbourhood on the tradition of which commentators, neglecting dates, have built the supposition that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were written at Forest-hill. On the whole, the scenery of Horton accords quite as well with the scenery of the poems as any scenery round Oxford. "In the morning scene in the Allegro," as I have elsewhere remarked, "nearly all the details of the landscape are such as Horton 66 would furnish to this day; and, though other localities in Southern "England would furnish most of them quite as well, one or two might be claimed by Horton as not so common. The towers "and battlements'

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are almost evidently Windsor Castle; and a characteristic sound "of Horton to this day is that of 'the hounds and horn' from "Windsor Park when the royal huntsmen are out." The fact is, however, that, though the landscape of Horton may in a general way be conceived as the landscape of L'Allegro, and the same landscape by moonlight may pass in a general way for the landscape of Il Penseroso, there are features in the landscape of both poems which neither Horton nor any other one actual neighbourhood that may compete for the honour of the poems can possibly have yielded. Where, in the flat vicinity of Horton, or round Oxford, shall we find the

"Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest

of the Allegro? Or, if these mountains were found, what place, furnishing them, would furnish at the same time the Gothic cathedral required in the Penseroso

"The high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light"?

In short, it is a mistaken notion of the poems, and a somewhat crude notion, to suppose that they must contain a transcript of the scenery of any one place, even the place where they were written. That place (and we incline to think it was Horton) may have shed its influence into the poems; but the purpose of the poet was not to describe actual scenery, but to represent two moods, and to do so by

making each mood move, as it were, amid circumstances and adjuncts akin to it and nutritive of it. Hence the scenery is visionary scenery, made up of eclectic recollections from various spots blended into one ideal landscape. It is, indeed, the exquisite fitness with which circumstances are chosen or invented,—or, let us rather say, passively occurred to the poet,-in true poetic affinity with the two moods, that makes the poems so beautiful, and secures them, while the English language lasts, against the possibility of being forgotten.

The poems, we have said, are companion-pieces, and must be read together. Each describes an ideal day,-a day of twelve hours. But L'Allegro is the ideal day of the mind of an educated youth, like Milton himself, in a mood of light cheerfulness. And observe at what point that day begins. It begins at dawn. The first sound

cottage, or in the walk

sun.

heard is the song of the lark; the first sights seen round the rustic from it, are those of new-waked nature, and of labour fresh afield. Then the light broadens on to mid-day, and we have the reapers at their dinner or the haymakers busy in the And so, through the afternoon merry-makings, we are led to the evening sports and junkets and nut-brown ale round the cottage bench; after which, when the country-folks, old and young, have retired to rest, the imaginary youth of the poem, still in his mood of cheerfulness, may protract his more educated day by fit reading indoors, varied by sweet Lydian music. Contrast with all this the day of Il Penseroso. We see the same youth, but in a mood more serious, thoughtful, and melancholy. The season of the year, too, may be later. At all events, the ideal day now begins with the evening. It is the song of the nightingale that is first heard; lured by which the youth walks forth in moonlight, seeing all objects in their silver aspect, and listening to the sounds of nightfall. Such evening or nocturnal sights and sounds it is that befit the mood of melancholy. And then, indoors again we follow the thoughtful youth, to see him, in his chamber, where the embers glow on the hearth, sitting meditatively, disturbed by no sound, save (for it may be a town that he is now in) the drowsy voice of the passing bellman. Later still, or after midnight, we may fancy him in some high watchtower, communing, over his books, with old philosophers, or with poets of grave and tragic themes. In such solemn and weirdly phantasies let the whole night pass, and let the morning come, not gay, but sombre and cloudy, the winds rocking the trees, and the

rain-drops falling heavily from the eaves. At last, when the sun is up, the watcher, who has not slept, may sally forth; but it is to lose. himself in some forest of monumental oaks or pines, where sleep may overtake him recumbent by some waterfall. And always, ere he rejoins the mixed society of men, let him pay his due visit of worship to the Gothic cathedral near, and have his mind raised to its highest by the music of the pealing organ.

The studied antithesis of the two pieces has to be kept in mind in reading them. It needs only be added that Warton, Todd, and other commentators suppose that Milton may have been aided in his conception of the two poems, and in the composition of Il Penseroso, by some passages in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and in particular by a poem prefixed to that work, and entitled "The Author's Abstract of Melancholy, or a Dialogue between Pleasure and Pain." Here are four stanzas of the poem :

"When I go musing all alone,

Thinking of divers things foreknown,
When I build castles in the air,

Void of sorrow, void of fear,

Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.
All my joys to this are folly;
Nought so sweet as Melancholy.

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When to myself I act and smile,
With pleasing thoughts the time beguile,
By a brook-side or wood so green,
Unheard, unsought for, and unseen,
A thousand pleasures do me bless
And crown my soul with happiness.
All my joys besides are folly;
Nought so sweet as Melancholy.

*

Methinks I hear, methinks I see,
Sweet music, wondrous melody,
Towns, palaces, and cities fine;

Here now, then there, the world is mine;

Rare beauties, gallant ladies, shine,

Whate'er is lovely or divine.

All other joys to this are folly;

Nought so sweet as Melancholy.

Methinks I hear, methinks I see,
Ghosts, goblins, fiends: my phantasy

Presents a thousand ugly shapes,
Headless bears, black men, and apes;
Doleful outcries, fearful sights,

My sad and dismal soul affrights.

All my griefs to this are jolly,

None so damned as Melancholy."

Milton had, doubtless, read these stanzas, but the reader will judge for himself how far he may, in the present case, have been indebted to them. Very little indeed, I should say! The same may be said of his supposed obligation to the following song in Beaumont and Fletcher's drama of Nice Valor; which is itself, it will be noted, a kind of echo of Burton's stanzas :—

"Hence, all you vain delights,

As short as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly!
There's not in this life sweet,

If wise men were to see't,
But only melancholy.

O sweetest melancholy !

Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes;
A sigh that, piercing, mortifies ;
A look that's fastened to the ground;
A tongue chained up without a sound;
Fountain-heads, and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves;
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls.
A midnight bell, a parting groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon :
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley;

Nothing's so dainty-sweet as lovely melancholy."

It is quite possible that Milton may have had in his recollection other poems, by Withers or the like, in the same pensive strain, and in the simple measure which he had chosen for his two companion pieces. At all events, he had in recollection the pretty little poem by Marlowe, called The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, and beginning

"Come live with me and be my love,"

and Sir Walter Raleigh's answer to the same, called The Nymph's Reply. Those two little pieces had been popular favourites in England for forty years, and had been often imitated; and both

L'Allegro and Il Penseroso end with a refrain caught from them. Thus Marlowe's piece ends

"If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my love."

And L'Allegro ends

"These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live."

ARCADES.

(Editions of 1645 and 1673; and earlier draft, in Milton's own hand,
among the Cambridge MSS.)

"Part of an Entertainment presented to the Countess-Dowager of Derby at Harefield by some noble persons of her Family," are the words added by Milton himself to the title of the poem, to explain its nature. In other words, it is part, and only part, of a masque presented before a venerable lady at her country-seat by some members of her family who had chosen this way of showing their affection and respect for her. The rest of the masque has perished; only this fragment of it, supplied by Milton, remains.

About the date of the piece there is some room for doubt. From its intimate connexion with Comus, it has always, very properly, been associated with that poem; and the association has been extended to the particular of time. The date of Comus being certainly known to have been in 1634, and the Arcades being, as we shall see, an earlier and slighter thing done to oblige the same noble family for whom Comus was written, it has been thought best to assume that the interval between the two pieces must have been short, and so that the Arcades was written either somewhat earlier in 1634 than Comus, or in the immediately preceding year, 1633. Against this general and very natural conclusion the only argument of any consequence known to me is that which was urged by the late Mr. Leigh Sotheby in his beautiful folio of 1861 entitled "Ramblings in the Elucidation of the Autograph of Milton." The Arcades being the very first piece in the Cambridge volume of preserved Milton MSS., occupying pp. 1-3 of that volume, and being followed there

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