QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Which of Jonson's poems is sweetest? Most graceful? Which of them praises the subject of the poem most eloquently? Quote passages.

2. What thought is developed in the sonnet on "Death"? What emotion runs through it? Compare the thought and feeling with those in Jonson's epitaphs; with those in Raleigh's "Epilogue" (page 112). Compare this poem as a sonnet type with the sonnets on pages 127-129. What characteristics of the Italian form do you find? Of the English? (See Explanatory Note 1, page 129.)

3. How does Fletcher's "melancholy" differ from the feeling today that goes by the same name? Is the description in the second stanza appropriate for his ferling? Quote passages to illustrate.

4. Describe each of Herrick's poems by an appropriate adjective, such as gay, pensive, etc. Quote lines particularly typical of the poet's mood. Are his feelings generally light and graceful, or deep and intense? Quote to illustrate. Compare his "Cherry-ripe" with Campion's poem of the same name (page 125).

5. Do the poems by Herbert, Carew, and Waller seem to differ in any respects from the Elizabethan lyrics you have read?

6. Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace are sometimes grouped together as "Cavalier Poets." How does Suckling's attitude toward a sweetheart differ from Herrick's (in "To Anthea," page 221)? Which is the manlier? What stanzas of Lovelace express a tender gallantry?

7. In Marvell's "Bermudas," what parts of the picture of the islands would no longer be true? How does the mood of this poem compare with that of Herbert or Herrick?

Milton and His Times. The life of Milton touched three periods in English history. When he was born, in 1608, Shakespeare was still writing plays filled with the last glow of Elizabethan romanticism. His middle years saw civil war, and he turned aside from poetry in order to contribute his aid to the cause of liberty. Before he completed his great epic, the Restoration had brought a period of cynical reaction from the high idealism of former years. When he died, in 1674, a new school of English literature was dominant, destined to rule for a century, and producing work that differed greatly from that which had gone before. These changing times were all reflected in Milton's work. The distinction of that work was recognized in his own time and has been recognized, in varying degrees, by all subsequent times. He is one of the great classics of our literature, and, besides, he was a great man. His life and his writings are inseparably connected.

MILTON'S FIRST PERIOD

Like Chaucer and Spenser, Milton was London born. His father was a scrivener, or law stationer, whose leisure was devoted to books and music. The child that was born on the ninth of December, 1608, came into a home filled with the atmosphere of poetry and learning, and from his earliest years he was encouraged in noble studies. To his father he wrote in later years his gratitude. Not only had he

was taught music, and learned to read the master works of English literature. His formal schooling was gained at St. Paul's. Even as a boy, we are told, "he sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night, and his father ordered the maid to sit up for him, and in those years composed many copies of verses which might well become a riper age.' At Christ's College, Cambridge, "he was a very good student and performed all his exercises . . . with very good applause." Yet he was human enough, and on one occasion, sent home for some infraction of the college rules, he wrote to a friend that he preferred independent study. mingled with the freedom of home life:

I have time now to give to the tranquil Muses. My books, my very life, claim me wholly. When I am weary, the pomp of the theater with its sweeping pall awaits me, and the garrulous stage invites me to its own applause. . . . But I do not stay indoors always; I do not let the spring slip by unused. I visit the neighboring parks, thick-set with elms, or the noble shade of some suburban place. There often one may see the virgin bands go

MILTON'S EARLY HOME IN LONDON past, stars breathing bland fires. Ah, how many times have I stood stupefied before the miracle of some gracious form, such as might give old Jove his youth again.

The Early Poems. The paragraph just quoted is an excellent commentary on "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," poems written a few years later, when he had returned from Cambridge and was living at his father's country place at Horton, near London. This was in 1632, and for five years Milton remained in studious retirement. He was unwilling to enter the church or to study law; a career as a writer seemed to his father too uncertain, but the father was wise enough not to force the youth to decide hastily. Already in Cambridge he had written several poems, one of them an ode "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," filled with lovely measures and also suggesting, in its theme of the expulsion of all pagan deities by the advent of Christ, something of the thought that was to permeate the great poems of his later years.

Besides "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," studies in the contrasted moods that visited him during this time of learned leisure, Milton wrote a masque named Comus, and a pastoral elegy, "Lycidas." Both were distinguished examples of work in

types of poetry long familiar. Ben Jonson, for example, had written many masques that were produced at court early in the seventeenth century. The masque differs from the drama in that it is mainly lyric, has little action, is presented by amateurs and not professional actors, and usually adapts some classical theme to the celebration of some great occasion, such as a state wedding. There was opportunity for the introduction of a considerable number of actors, ladies and gentlemen of the court, and dance and song increased the beauty of the performance, taking the place of the intricate plot of the usual dramatic story. These characteristics may be seen in Comus, which was written in 1634, in collaboration with the court musician, Henry Lawes, to celebrate the inauguration of the Earl of Bridgewater as the Lord Deputy of Wales. The parts of the lady and her brother were taken by members of the Bridgewater family. The story, which is slight, tells of the way in which the lady, lost in the woods, falls into the power of an enchanter. Her brothers search for her, and she is at last rescued, having been protected by her own purity. The noble lines in praise of chastity and the power of virtue, the noble insistence on the freedom of the mind

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind

show the ethical wholesomeness characteristic of all Milton's poetry, while the music of the verse proved, thus early, his authentic gift of song.

In "Lycidas," the last poem of the Horton period, we have the finest of English pastorals. The poem commemorates the death of a young Cambridge poet who was preparing for the church, and its theme is the power and sanctity of poetry in times when the church was worldly and corrupt. Following the old Greek tradition, Milton identifies the poet and the shepherd; with this symbolism he combines one suggested by the parable of the Good Shepherd in the Bible. This blending of classical and Christian elements is characteristic of Milton, and it is here expressed in language of such beauty that "Lycidas" has been called "the high-water mark of English poetry."

The Italian Journey. In a letter to an unknown friend, written during the Horton period, Milton speaks of his delay in entering upon his life-work. This, he says, is not due to lack of ambition; he has the "desire of honor and repute and immortal fame, seated in the breast of every true scholar," but in the parable of the talents he finds a teaching that advises full and careful preparation. He who follows that great commandment, he says,

does not press forward, as soon as many do, to undergo, but keeps off, with a sacred and religious advisement how best to undergo, not taking thought of being late, so it gives advantage to be more fit; for those that came latest lost nothing when the Master of the vineyard came to give each one his hire.

The same idea is expressed in his famous sonnet on his twenty-third year, in which he speaks of his late attainment of that "inward ripeness" that marks more "timelyhappy spirits":

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of
Heaven.

All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-master's eye.

Thus richly endowed by nature, a lover of learning and poetry, a lover also of the beautiful, he resolved to perfect his preparation by a period of study and travel in Italy. In 1638 he began his journey; he remained for a time in France, and then went on to the country of Dante and Petrarch and Galileo, the ancient home, too, of Vergil, patron of the poets of the Renaissance. Yielding to the spell of Italy's witchery, he wrote a series of love sonnets in Petrarch's language and style. A little later, as we learn from some Latin poems, he was meditating an epic about "the Trojan ships that passed along our Kentish coast,

and the colon

ists who settled at last in Armorica under British laws." He had long meditated some supreme poetical achievement; his first thought of a subject was that it should Ideal with Arthur and the founding of Britain, as Vergil had sung of Aeneas and the founding of Rome.

His studies were interrupted by the news of the approach of civil war at home. He promptly returned to England, thinking it ignoble to be traveling at ease in foreign lands while his countrymen were striking a blow for freedom.

IN THE SERVICE OF THE COMMONWEALTH

Milton's Poetry, 1640-1660. Milton's defense of English liberty was wrought with the pen, not with the sword. During the twenty years between his return from Italy and the Restoration he wrote little poetry excepting a few sonnets. These were autobiographical or were addressed to various leaders, or were on subjects connected with the struggle for liberty. In them he achieved the same distinction, in brief flights of song, that he had manifested in the longer poems of the Horton period. During this time, also, he meditated on his ambition to write a great English epic. A list of subjects, drawn up about 1641, shows that he was hesitating between a theme based on early British history and one drawn from the Bible. He also hesitated, for a time, between epic and tragedy.

But the attention that Milton could give to his poetry during those twenty years was slight. The years were filled with other activities. His meditations, carried on almost without consciousness, were far removed from the active business that filled his days. Still, the soil was being prepared. His mind, lying fallow, became mature and rich, and when the time at last came, he was ready. For a man prepares to accomplish a great work in two ways. One way is apparent and active; what he does leads step by step to the masterpiece. The other way is indirect, the result of gradual enrichment, a process carried on, seemingly, almost without his being aware.

His View of a Liberal Education. Soon after his return from Italy, Milton began teaching a few pupils. His own training, as we have seen, had been unusual, and he thought much upon the character of a liberal education. Some of his thoughts he put into a pamphlet On Education, issued in 1641. Here he defined a liberal education as "that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnani