ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her whole vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day when thou, the eternal and shortly expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth; where they undoubtedly that by their labours, counsels, and prayers have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in overmeasure for ever.

But they contrary that by the impairing and diminution of the true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire to high dignity, rule, and promotion here, after a shameful end in this life (which God grant them), shall be thrown down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where under the despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and down-trodden vassals of perdition. (From Of Reformation in England.)

Truth.

Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on; but when he ascended and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the god Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons! nor ever shall do till her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. (From Areopagitica.)

Of the Roman Power in Britain. Thus expired this great empire of the Romans; first in Britain, soon after in Italy itself; having borne chief sway in this island (though never thoroughly subdued, or all at once in subjection) if we reckon from the coming in of Julius to the taking of Rome by Alaric, in which year Honorius wrote those letters of discharge into Britain, the space of four hundred and sixty-two years. And with the empire fell also what before in this western world was chiefly Roman-learning, valour, eloquence, history, civility, and even language itself—all these together, as it were with equal pace, diminishing and decaying. Henceforth we are to steer by another sort

of authors, near enough to the times they write, as in their own country, if that would serve, in time not much belated, some of equal age, in expression barbarous; and to say how judicious I suspend awhile. This we must expect; in civil matters to find them dubious relaters, and still to the best advantage of what they term Mother Church, meaning indeed themselves; in most other matters of religion blind, astonished, and strook with superstition as with a planet; in one word, monks. Yet these guides, where can be had no better, must be followed; in gross it may be true enough; in circumstance each man as his judgment gives him may reserve his faith or bestow it. (From History of England.)

From the beginning the reception of Milton in France was hesitating, doubtful, and fluctuating. Voltaire in some measure felt the grandeur of Paradise Lost, and translated some of it, rather freely. But he was naturally unable to appreciate Milton : Pococurante in Candide probably only exaggerates Voltaire's own opinion when he refers to Paradise Lost as an 'obscure, eccentric, and disgusting poem,' and speaks of Milton as 'a barbarian who constructed a long commentary on the book of Genesis in harsh verse.' Certainly this view was not confined to Voltaire's Pococurante, though the second French translator of the Paradise Lost was the son of the great Racine. But after the Revolution Milton was made a hero. The Romanticists enrolled him amongst the greatest of poets. The translation by the venerable Jacques Delille was well received though utterly feeble; Chateaubriand, an enthusiastic admirer, produced an impossible attempt at a literal translation; a less unsatisfactory rendering appeared in 1838. Taine's elaborate appreciation again attracted interest in France to Milton; and Sainte-Beuve gave a wider acceptance to Taine's estimate of 'England's most splendid and most complex poetic genius.' 'Vast knowledge, close logic, and grand passion; these are his marks.' 'He was not born for the drama, but for the ode. He does not create souls, but constructs arguments and experiences emotions.' 'Milton's landscapes are a school of virtue.'

In Germany, as might have been expected, Milton's reception was friendlier from the first, though there too he found unsympathetic critics; Paradise Lost gave a great impulse to German poetry, and like and dislike of Milton were for long the notes of the two great German critical schools. Paradise Lost was twice translated into German in the seventeenth century, three times in the eighteenth century, and no less than six times in the nineteenth. Gottsched and the Leipzig school advocated in the early eighteenth century a humble adherence to French standards of taste, an almost slavish imitation of French models; Bodmer and the Zurich or Swiss school stood up for Nature, for poetic power and depth rather than formal correctness and elegance, for religious subjects as the greatest, for rhymelessness and blank verse, and for Milton. Bodmer was himself one of the translators of Paradise Lost (1732); and on the whole

Bodmer and the Swiss school triumphed in a controversy somewhat analogous to that of Classicism and Romanticism in the following century, a controversy that in a way foreshadowed the great literary struggle at the close of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. And the triumph of the Swiss school prepared the way for the 'seraphic school' and for Klopstock, and secured the enthusiastic welcome given in Germany to the 'German Milton.' But except in the first flush of that enthusiasm, even German critics agreed that Klopstock at his best never rises to Milton's height, and that the Messias stands on an altogether lower plane, both of thought and expression. Herder and Lessing, it should be added, were fully conscious of Milton's poetic greatness.

Gottsched, in defence of his thesis, eagerly welcomed the unfavourable comments made in England-some of them by Milton's embittered political enemies, who saw in the poet mainly the hateful defender of the king's assassins. Gottsched imported into Germany Lauder's charge against Milton of having shamelessly plagiarised from various modern writers of Latin verse.

William Lauder, a wooden-legged Edinburgh graduate, a competent Latinist but an unsuccessful candidate for scholastic posts, settled in London as a literary hack. In 1747, in the Gentleman's Magazine, he made his famous charge against Milton, alleging Paradise Lost to be largely composed of translations from the Adamus Exsul of Grotius; the Poemata Sacra (1633) of Ramsay, an Edinburgh minister; from Masenius, Staphorstius, Taubmann, and other even less-known authors; finally (1753), he extended the list of authors whom Milton had plundered to ninety-seven ! But long ere his frenzy rose so high, Lauder's friends, including Samuel Johnson, had been convinced that the passages he cited from these authors were, very many of them at least, not in the actual, works named, which had been fraudulently garbled for his own purposes by the malevolent critic. Lauder had himself—as he ultimately confessed to Johnson -foisted into the quotations given as from the authors named passages which he had copied verbatim from William Hog's Latin version of Paradise Lost (published 1690). Lauder died in

1771.

On the other hand, it is perfectly known and recognised that Milton, an omnivorous reader, was influenced to some extent both in idea and expression by poetic predecessors, as well as by commentators on Scripture and systematic theologians; yet the comparisons of parallel passages only serve, on the whole, to show Milton's vast superiority. Bishop Ponet's translation (1549) of a Latin tragedy (no longer extant) by the Italian refugee Ochino seems to have left its mark on Milton's memory; there are obvious parallels noted by Dunster (1800) and others between Milton and Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas (see above at Sylvester, page 346); Gosse (1879) and Edmundson insisted on

Milton's debt to the Dutch Vondel's Latin play Lucifer (1654), and so too the German critic Aug. Müller (1891). But none of the passages cited in the least diminish Milton's credit as a great poet, great both in creation and in expression. Nor would it prove Milton less original if the ingenious suggestion were true that the debates in Heaven reflect Milton's knowledge of actual debates in the Long Parliament or the Westminster Assembly; or that Belial may possibly be an uncompli mentary sketch of Sir Harry Vane, or some other of the contemporary personages whom the poet distrusted.

Probably no English author but Shakespeare has had accorded to him in as full measure as Milton the homage of constant quotation-often by the vulgar little read in poetry and all-unconscious whence their pet phrases come. How constantly does one hear cited not merely short passages or parts of passages like :

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)

To scorn delights and live laborious days; but single lines or fragments such as 'Peace hath her victories not less renowned than war ;'' Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven ;''The mind can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven ;' 'More is meant than meets the ear;' 'Not to know me argues yourself unknown;' 'Hence, loathed melancholy;' 'Trip on the light fantastic toe;' 'Death the gate of life;' 'Laughter holding both his sides;' 'Fallen on evil days;' 'Smoothing the rugged brow of night;' "The world was all before them;' 'Fit audience find though few ;' 'To temper justice with mercy;' 'To make darkness visible;' 'Heaven in her eye;' 'Confusion worse confounded;' 'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.' Many of these phrases have passed from Milton into current speech; some appear in curious combinations and permutations, and, like the last, are persistently misquoted; and some have through too frequent citation in unsuitable connections been degraded into a kind of irritating slang.

Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, wrote a Life of the poet, as did Toland, Symonds, Mitford, and Todd; but all biographies were superseded by the magistral Life by Professor Masson (6 vols. 1859-80; index vol. 1894), a stupendous monument of learned industry and scholarly research. The German Life by Alfred Stern, Milton und seine Zeit (Leip., 2 vols. 1877-78), is also exceptionally rich in material; and there is a great essay by Von Treitschke (1886). In spite of its prejudices, Dr Samuel Johnson's sketch retains its literary interest; and there are short Lives by Mark Pattison (1880) and Dr Garnett (1889). There are studies of his life and works by Professor W. P. Trent (1899) and Professor Walter Raleigh (1900); and see Professor Dowden's Puritan and Anglican (1901). Mr Robert Bridges has written a special treatise on the versification of Milton's later poems (1893). The standard edition of Milton's poems is that of Professor Masson (3 vols. 1874 new ed. 1890), who published also two one-volume editions. Beeching's (1900) attaches much significance to Milton's own spellings as affecting the prosody and even the meaning (mee, yee, for me, ye, indicating emphasis). Earlier editions were the famous one by Bentley (1732), and those by Boydell (1794), Todd (1801), Sir E. Brydges (1835), and James Montgomery (1843)., Bradshaw's Aldine edition appeared in 1697. There have been editions of the prose works in 1697, by Toland (1698; republished in 1738 and 1755),

Symmons (1806), Fletcher (1833), Mitford (1851), and St John (Bohn, 4 vols. 1848-53). Macaulay's criticism in the Essays is characteristically brilliant. In 1690-94 Hog (Hogæus) rendered most of Milton's poems into Latin; and there are Latin versions of Paradise Lost by Joseph Trapp (1741) and William Dobson (1750). The English translation of the first Defensio usually cited is that by Joseph Washington (about 1690); of the second, that by Dr Fellowes (1806); and there is another by Archdeacon Wrangham (1816). G. Jenny has written an interesting book (1890) on the influence of Milton on German literature in the eighteenth century. The portrait given on page 687, less familiar than those from the engravings by Faithorne, is from the painting by the Dutch painter Van der Plaas (1647-1704), now in the National Portrait Gallery.

Andrew Marvell was born in the village of Winestead, in the south-east angle of Yorkshire, on 31st March 1621. His father, also Andrew Marvell (c. 1586-1641), was rector of Winestead, which living he resigned in 1624 for the mastership of Hull grammar-school. A romantic story is told of the circumstances attending the elder Marvell's death. A young lady from the opposite side of the Humber had visited him on the occasion of the baptism of one of his children. She was to return next day, and though the weather proved tempestuous, insisted on fulfilling the promise she had made to her mother. Mr Marvell accompanied her; but having a presentiment of danger, he threw his cane ashore from the boat, saying to the spectators that in case he should perish the cane was to be given to his son, with the injunction that he should remember his father. His fears were but too truly verified; the boat went down in the storm, and the party perished. The mother of the young lady, it is added, provided for the orphan son of the drowned minister, and at her death left him her fortune. Young Marvell studied in 1633-41 at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then travelled for four years in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain. A letter from Milton to Secretary Bradshaw was in 1823 discovered in the State-Paper Office, in which the poet recommends Marvell as a person well fitted to assist himself in his office of Latin secretary, he being a good scholar and lately engaged by Lord Fairfax to give some instruction in the languages to his daughter. The letter is dated 21st February 1653. Marvell, however, was not engaged as Milton's assistant till 1657; meanwhile he was tutor at Eton to a ward of Cromwell's, and there got to know John Hales. In January 1659 he took his seat in Richard Cromwell's Parliament as member for Hull. He was not, like Waller, an eloquent speaker, but his consistency and integrity made him highly esteemed and respected. He maintained a close correspondence with his constituents, and his letters fill four hundred printed pages. His constituents, in return, occasionally sent him a stout cask of ale; and he was one of the last paid members, receiving in session 6s. 8d. per diem. In 1663-65 he went as a secretary of embassy to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Charles II. delighted in his society, and believing, like Sir Robert Walpole, that every man had his price, he sent Lord Danby, his treasurer, to wait upon Marvell, with an offer of a place at court and

an immediate present of a thousand pounds. The inflexible member resisted his offers, and it is said humorously illustrated his independence by calling his servant to witness that he had dined for three days successively on a shoulder of mutton. The story adds-but the whole seems highly improbable -that when the treasurer was gone Marvell was forced to send to a friend to borrow a guinea. The patriot preserved his integrity to the last, and satirised the profligacy and arbitrary measures of the court with much wit and pungency. He died 18th August 1678, at the time of the Popish Plot, not without suspicion of poison, but really the victim of a tertian ague, unskilfully treated by an ignorant, obstinate doctor. The town of Hull voted

£50 to erect a monument to Marvell's memory, but the court interfered and forbade the votive tribute.

Marvell's prose writings were exceedingly popular in their day, but, written for temporary purposes, they have mostly gone out of date with the events that produced them. In 1672-73 he attacked Dr (afterwards Bishop) Parker in a piece entitled The Rehearsal Transprosed, in which he vindicates the fair fame of Milton, who, he says, 'was and is a man of as great learning and sharpness of wit as any man.' This controversy has won him a part as interlocutor in one of the most vigorous of Landor's Imaginary Conversations, where he is made to slay the Bishop over again, and to say far finer things about Milton than he had said in his own works. One of Marvell's treatises, An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England (1677), was considered so formidable that a reward was offered for the dis

A

covery of the author and printer. As in the case of Milton and other Puritans, the energy and independence of Marvell in theological controversy verged upon freethinking and rationalism. Short Historical Essay concerning General Councils, appended to one of his controversial tracts, is so free in its criticism of the mode of securing agreement at the Council of Nice that it looks very like a polemic against the dogmas there formulated and so forced on the Christian Church. And one is not surprised to find that this essay was republished in the interests of the eighteenth-century Deists. Ample evidence of that vein of sportive humour and raillery on national manners and absurdities, afterwards so effectively employed by Addison, Steele, Arbuthnot, and Swift, may be found in Marvell. He wrote with great liveliness, point, and vigour, though he was often coarse and personal. His poetry was, in his own time, an embellishment to his character of patriot and controversialist rather than a substantive ground of honour and distinction; yet even Sainte- Beuve (whose attention was called to him by Matthew Arnold) greeted in him a worthy though not co-equal rival of Milton, a more martial and less purely Christian champion of the same Christian and patriotic English renaissance. Only a lovable man could have written his verses on The Emigrants in the Bermudas. His poem on The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn is a triumph of grace and pathos. 'Music the mosaic of the air,' from his Music's Empire, illustrates a tendency to occasional conceits; 'Only human eyes can weep,' from Eyes and Tears, shows suggestive (if not strictly accurate) observation and phrasing. A different aspect of his genius, recalling the frank and half-pagan sensuousness of another party and an earlier age than his own, is seen in the lines To his Coy Mistress, and in those entitled The Garden. The former, perhaps his very finest verses, are too much like some of Donne's warmer amoretti for quotation in full; yet this specimen of them must at least be quoted :

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near,
And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

The luscious stanzas on The Garden-a superior English rendering of a Latin exercise of Marvell's own-are not extravagantly praised by Palgrave as ' a test of any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of poetry,' although the affinity which they display is not so much with Shelley's airy raptures as with the luxuriant fancies of Keats.

The Emigrants in the Bermudas.
Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song:
'What should we do but sing his praise
That led us through the watery maze

Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where he the huge sea-monsters wracks,
That lift the deep upon their backs;
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms and prelates' rage.
He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits thro' the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shews.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet.
But apples, plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice!
With cedars chosen by his hand
From Lebanon he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar,
Proclaim the ambergrease on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
O let our voice his praise exalt,
Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
Which then perhaps rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay.'
Thus sang they in the English boat
An holy and a chearful note,
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn.

The wanton troopers riding by
Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men! They cannot thrive
Who killed thee. Thou ne'er didst, alive,
Them any harm; alas! nor could
Thy death yet do them any good.
I'm sure I never wished them ill,
Nor do I for all this, nor will:
But, if my simple prayers may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will join my tears
Rather than fail. But O my fears!
It cannot die so. Heaven's King

Keeps register of every thing,
And nothing may we use in vain ;
Even beasts must be with justice slain;
Else men are made their deodands.
Though they should wash their guilty hands
In this warm life-blood, which doth part
From thine, and wound me to the heart,
Yet could they not be clean; their stain
Is dyed in such a purple grain.
There is not such another in
The world to offer for their sin.

Inconstant Sylvio, when yet

I had not found him counterfeit, One morning, I remember well, Tied in this silver chain and bell,

Gave it to me: nay, and I know What he said then, I'm sure I do.

Said he 'Look how your huntsman here
Hath taught a fawn to hunt his deer.'
But Sylvio soon had me beguiled:
This waxed tame, while he grew wild,
And quite regardless of my smart,
Left me his fawn, but took his heart.

Thenceforth I set myself to play
My solitary time away
With this; and very well content
Could so mine idle life have spent ;
For it was full of sport, and light
Of foot and heart, and did invite
Me to its game: it seemed to bless
Itself in me; how could I less
Than love it? Oh, I cannot be
Unkind to a beast that loveth me!
Had it lived long, I do not know
Whether it too might have done so
As Sylvio did; his gifts might be
Perhaps as false, or more, than he.
But I am sure, for aught that I
Could in so short a time espy,
Thy love was far more better than
The love of false and cruel man.

With sweetest milk and sugar first
I it at mine own fingers nursed;
And as it grew so every day,

It waxed more white and sweet than they.
It had so sweet a breath! and oft

I blushed to see its foot more soft,
And white, shall I say than my hand?
Nay, any lady's of the land!

It was a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet.
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race;
And when't had left me far away,
"Twould stay, and run again, and stay ;
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.

I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;

And all the spring-time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I

Have sought it oft, where it should lie ;
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes;
For in the flaxen lilies' shade,

It like a bank of lilies laid.
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips even seemed to bleed;
And then to me 'twould boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill ;
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.

Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within.

From 'A Poem upon the Death of His Late
Highness, the Lord Protector.'

He without noise still travelled to his end,
As silent suns to meet the night descend;
The stars that for him fought had only power
Left to determine now his fatal hour,
Which, since they might not hinder, yet they cast
To choose it worthy of his glories past.
No part of time but bare his mark away
Of honour-all the year was Cromwell s day!
But this of all the most auspicious found,
Twice had in open field him victor crowned,
When up the armed mountains of Dunbar

He marched, and through deep Severn, ending war :
What day should him eternize but the same
That had before immortalized his name?
That so whoe'er would at his death have joyed

In their own griefs might find themselves employed,
But those that sadly his departure grieved,
Yet joyed, remembering what he once achieved.
And the last minute his victorious ghost
Gave chase to Ligny on the Belgic coast:
Here ended all his mortal toils; he laid
And slept in peace under the laurel shade.

I saw him dead: a leaden slumber lies,
And mortal sleep, over those wakeful eyes;
Those gentle rays under the lids were fled,
Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed;
That port, which so majestic was and strong,
Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along;
All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan,
How much another thing, no more that man!
O human glory vain! O death! O wings!
O worthless world! O transitory things!
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed,
That still, though dead, greater than death, he laid,
And in his altered face you something feign
That threatens Death he yet will live again!

The Character of Holland.

[A satire on Holland as supporting the cause of the pretender Charles II., then an exile there.]

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,

Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea

Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,

They, with mad labour, fished the land to shore:
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth as if 't had been of ambergreese;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;