by three drafts of the song At a Solemn Music, occupying pp. 4-5, and then, on pp. 6-7, by the two drafts of that Prose Letter to a Friend in which Milton gave his reasons for shrinking from the Church or any other profession (see ante, p. 105), it was argued by Mr. Sotheby that this arrangement of the pieces necessarily implies that the composition of the Arcades preceded that of the Prose Letter to a Friend, inasmuch as Milton could hardly have first written the Prose Letter on pp. 6-7 and then used pp. 1-3 of the same volume for a later composition. But, if so, we are shut up to the conclusion, Mr. Sotheby thought, that the Arcades must have been written as early as 1631, or at latest in 1632,-i.e. rather in the Cambridge period of Milton's literary life than in the Horton period. For does not one of the drafts of the Prose Letter incorporate Milton's Sonnet on having arrived at the age of twenty-three, while the other draft leaves a blank space for that Sonnet; and, as Milton arrived at the age of twenty-three exactly on the 9th of December 1631, does not that fact date the Sonnet, and consequently the Prose Letter to a Friend?——————Though this argument weighed with me at one time, reconsideration has robbed it of its plausibility. The 9th of December 1631 is certainly the date of the Sonnet; but it does not follow that it is the date also of the Prose Letter. The copy of the Sonnet in one of the drafts of the Prose Letter is a clean transcript, without correction or erasure; and the Prose Letter only quotes the Sonnet as conveniently expressing some of Milton's thoughts "some while since" on the subject of the letter, "because they come in not altogether unfitly." The words "some while since" certainly imply a not very long interval between the composition of the Sonnet and the writing of the Letter in which it is quoted; but they are quite consistent with the supposition that the Letter was written in 1633. If this is a correct supposition, then the Arcades and the Song At a Solemn Music might have been written a little earlier in the same year, and the arrangement of the three pieces in the Cambridge volume of MSS. is fully accounted for.- -On the whole, then, with our present lights, we may accept the year 1633 as the most probable date of the Arcades, remembering also, as not unimportant, the general conclusion respecting the Cambridge volume of Milton MSS. as a whole which that dating of the Arcades will involve. As it is the first piece in the volume, it will follow that, as has been already stated (ante, p. 107), it was in 1633 that Milton began the

use of that particular set of paper sheets for the reception of the drafts of such new things as he wrote in English verse, and consequently that all those others of the Minor English Poems of which there are drafts in the Cambridge volume are subsequent in date to 1633, or at least to that point of 1633 which the Arcades marks. Less obviously, but pretty surely, it will follow, on the other hand, that those of the Minor English Poems of which there are no drafts in the Cambridge volume may be taken, except in cases where there is distinct proof to the contrary, as having been composed before the Arcades and before 1633, the sheets on which they were originally written being now lost. What the few exceptions to this last rule are will be seen on referring to our list, at pp. 106-7, of the Minor English Poems not represented in the extant Cambridge drafts.--Were one obliged to shift the Arcades out of 1633, a shift forward into 1634, the year of Comus, would be more plausible than a shift backwards to a point so distant from Comus as 1632 or 1631. For, after all, the close connexion between the Arcades and the Comus is the main matter. So close is the connexion that the rest of this Introduction to the Arcades will be necessarily, in great part, an Introduction also to the Comus.

The lady before whom the masque was presented of which Arcades forms part was Alice, Countess-Dowager of Derby, who, in 1633, was about seventy-two years of age. The life of this lady had been one that would have made her venerable in the social and literary history of England, even had there not been this association of her later years with the youth of Milton. Born, about the year 1560, one of the daughters of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, Northamptonshire, from whom are descended the Earls Spencer and their branches,-she had been married in early life to Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, eldest son of the fourth Earl of Derby. One of her sisters, Elizabeth Spencer, was then, by marriage, Lady Carey, and another, Anne Spencer, was Lady Compton. The three sisters seem to have at that time been especially well known to the poet Spenser, who, indeed, claimed to be related to the Spencers of Althorpe. Spenser's Muiopotmos (1590) was dedicated to Lady Carey; his Mother Hubberd's Tale (1591) was dedicated to Lady Compton; and to the youngest of the three sisters, the one with whom we are at present concerned,-was dedicated in the same

year (1591) his Teares of the Muses, a poem of peculiar interest now, on account of its allusions to the state of English poetry when it was written, and to English poets then alive. In paying this honour to Alice, Lady Strange, Spenser had regard not only to her own accomplishments and his connexion with her family, but also to the reputation of her husband, Lord Strange. No nobleman of the day was of greater note in the world of letters than Lord Strange. He was himself a poet; among the dramatic companies of the time was one retained by him and known as "Lord Strange's Players"; and among his clients and panegyrists were Nash, Greene, and others of Shakespeare's seniors in the English Drama. All this is recognised in Spenser's dedication of the Teares of the Muses to Lady Strange. "Most brave and noble Lady," he says, "the things that make ye "so much honoured of the world as ye be are such as, without my "simple lines' testimony, are throughly known to all men: namely, "your excellent beauty, your virtuous behaviour, and your noble "match with that most honourable Lord, the very pattern of right "nobility. But the causes for which ye have thus deserved of me "to be honoured (if honour it be at all) are both your particular "bounties and also some private bonds of affinity which it hath "pleased your Ladyship to acknowledge. . . . Vouchsafe, noble "Lady, to accept this simple remembrance, though not worthy of "yourself, yet such as perhaps, by good acceptance thereof, you may "hereafter cull out a more meet and memorable evidence of your 'own excellent deserts." Some time after this dedication, to wit, in September 1593,-the lady so addressed rose still higher in the peerage by the accession of her husband to the Earldom of Derby on his father's death. Ferdinando, fifth Earl of Derby, however, enjoyed his new dignity but a few months. He died on the 16th of April 1594, in his thirty-sixth year, much regretted. From that day his widow was known as Alice, Countess-Dowager of Derby. The Earldom of Derby went to the next male heir; and the CountessDowager, with her three young daughters by her deceased husband, -Lady Anne Stanley, Lady Frances Stanley, and Lady Elizabeth Stanley,-lived on to form new alliances. Spenser, who had honoured her during her husband's life, continued to honour her in her widowhood. In his pastoral of Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (completed in 1595), the poet, having enumerated the chief "shepherds" or poets of the British Isle, and having proceeded

thence to a mention of some of the chief "shepherdesses" or "nymphs," introduces three of these ladies thus:

"Ne less praiseworthie are the sisters three,

The honour of the noble familie

Of which I meanest boast myself to be,
And most that unto them I am so nie,
Phyllis, Charillis, and sweet Amaryllis.
Phyllis the fair is eldest of the three;
The next to her is beautiful Charillis;

But the youngest is the highest in degree."

These three ladies are evidently the three married daughters of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, honoured some years before by dedications of Spenser's earlier poems to them respectively; and there is next to no doubt that Amaryllis, the youngest of them, and "the highest in degree," is the one to whom he had dedicated his Teares of the Muses, then Lady Strange, but now Countess - Dowager of Derby. Indeed, there are special allusions in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe to the widowed condition of this lady. Among the "shepherds" of the British Isle mentioned in the poem is one Amyntas," spoken of as having been, while he lived, a poet and a patron of poets, but as now unfortunately dead; and we chance to know that "Amyntas" was the pastoral name by which other writers of the day besides Spenser, such as Nash,-used to designate Lord Strange. Hence, when Spenser says,

66

Amyntas quite has gone and lies full low,
Having his Amaryllis left to mone,"

the identification of Amaryllis with the Countess-Dowager of Derby is complete. We can thus better understand the following lines, in which Spenser, having praised the two elder sisters, Phyllis and Charillis, goes on to praise the widowed Amaryllis :—

"But Amaryllis whether fortunate

Or else unfortunate may I aread,

That freed is from Cupid's yoke by fate,
Since which she doth new bands adventure dread?
Shepherd, whatever thou hast heard to be

In this or that praised diversely apart,

In her thou mayst them all assembled see,

And sealed up in the threasure of her heart."

In other words, Amaryllis, the youngest of the three sisters and “the

highest in degree," was the favourite of Spenser, and it was a speculation with him whether she would ever marry again. He seems to have thought it unlikely. Since the death of Amyntas she was dreading the "adventure of new bands."

The lady, however, did marry again. In 1600, when Spenser was no longer alive to approve or to regret, she contracted a second marriage with Sir Thomas Egerton,-then Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen Elizabeth, but afterwards (1603) Baron Ellesmere and Lord Chancellor to King James, and finally (1616) Viscount Brackley. This eminent lawyer and statesman had already been twice married, and was a man of about sixty years of age, with grown-up children, when he made his splendid match with the Countess-Dowager of Derby. They were not then strangers to each other, for he had been connected with the Derby family as their legal adviser while Lord Strange was alive. The match, though not one of juvenile affection, and though we hear of certain family differences which it involved, had advantages on both sides. On the one hand it brought an increase of fortune and influence to the grave Lord Keeper; and, on the other hand, the Countess-Dowager of Derby,-who, of course, retained that title in her new condition as the Lord Keeper's wife,was brought once again conspicuously into society by her husband's connexion with public affairs. In 1601 she and her husband jointly purchased the estate of Harefield in Middlesex,-a charming property, with a fine mansion upon it, on a spot of well-wooded hill and meadow, on the river Colne, about four miles from Uxbridge. Here, or in London, the Lord Keeper and his wife mainly resided, doing the honours of their position, and receiving in turn the recognitions due to persons of their rank. One very memorable incident in their life at Harefield was a visit paid them there by Queen Elizabeth, beginning on the 31st of July 1602, when all sorts of pageants were held for her Majesty's recreation. A long avenue of elms leading to the house was the scene of a kind of masque of welcome at the Queen's reception, and of another of leave-taking on her departure, and was ever afterwards known as "the Queen's Walk." Throughout the reign of James I. there were similar recognitions of the high social rank of the Chancellor and his noble wife, besides not a few of a literary character, in the shape of poems, or dedications of poems, to them. It was not only their own marriage, however,—a marriage which proved childless, that now connected the pair.