LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Gayley's Classic Myths in English Literature. Great Writers Series. Green's Short History of the English People. Rich's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. (2) JOHN MILTON. BORN in London, 1608, nine years after the birth of Cromwell and eight years before the death of Shakespeare. Took his Bachelor's degree in 1629 and his Master's degree in 1632 at Christ's College, Cambridge; Cromwell was at the same University, 1616-17. Wrote his most famous minor poems at his father's home at Horton in Buckinghamshire, 1632-8. Visited Italy, 1638-9. The next twenty years were devoted chiefly to serving the Commonwealth. Lost his eyesight about 1652. Paradise Lost did not appear till 1667. Milton died in 1674; two years later was produced Etheredge's The Man of Mode the first good English Comedy of Manners- - and the transition from the Puritan to the Restoration Period is complete. FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES — Diodati, Cyriack Skinner, Marvell; Vane, Cromwell. OTHER CONTEMPORARIES Galileo, Mazarin, Bunyan, Dryden. BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIFE AND TIMES. — Masson's Life of John Milton Narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical and Literary History of His Time. 6 vols. (Macmillan). For the advanced student this book is invaluable as a storehouse of material. Better for the beginner are the shorter lives by Pattison (E. M. L.) and by Garnett (Gt. Wr.) The former is useful on the literary side; the latter on the political and religious. Green's' Puritan England' (being the 8th chapter of his Short History) may also be consulted with much profit. TEXT.-Masson's (Macmillan). CRITICISM. Addison; Spectator, Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357, 363, 369. the fault of Addison's Miltonic criticism, once so celebrated [is that] it rests almost entirely upon convention.". Matthew Arnold. Macaulay; Essay on Milton. -Astonishing as a piece of rhetoric, but extremely superficial as criticism. DeQuincey; Essay on Johnson's Life of Milton. Chiefly a correction of Johnson's prejudiced view. Emerson; Essays from the North Am. Rev.; John Milton. Dwells on the heroic side of Milton's character. Bagehot; Literary Studies, Vol. I.; John Milton. Calls attention, not unjustly, to Milton's unlovely side, but is also appreciative and sympathetic. Lowell; Essay on Milton. Largely a criticism, in Lowell's inimitable style, of Masson's mountainous book and defective literary method. Contains, also, invaluable remarks on Milton's versification. Matthew Arnold; Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Milton. Also, Mixed Essays; A French Critic on Milton. The most sane and judicious estimate we have. Mark Pattison; The Sonnets of John Milton. (Appleton). L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO. INTRODUCTION. These two poems were probably written at Horton between 1632 and 1637. In them, Milton looks at Nature rather with the eyes of an Elizabethan of the Ben Jonson type than with those of a Wordsworthian. Man and the life of Man are what chiefly interest him; Nature is secondary and interesting only so far as it reflects the emotions of L'Allegro (The Cheerful Man) and Il Penseroso [Pensieroso] (The Thoughtful Man). The student, the classical scholar, the solitary thinker, the poet whose generous soul is open to every kind of beautiful impression-this is what we find here. We do not find such close observation of Nature, such accurate recording of natural phenomena and such spiritual interpretations of them as characterize a Shelley and a Wordsworth. Each of the poems describes a period of about twelve hours. In the Allegro it is from morn till evening; in the Penseroso from evening till morn. The student should notice the frequent and studied contrasts of thought and expression; after a careful comparative study of the two poems, let him ask himself which of them affords the deeper and truer insight into the soul of the man, John Milton. And why? L'ALLEGRO. 1-4. Notice the omission of the verb, the idea of action being implied in the adverb. Cerberus; the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the Underworld. Stygian; dark or gloomy, from Styx, one of the rivers bounding the Underworld; Cl. Myths, § 48. The story here referred to is not found in the Greek mythology. 6 5-10. uncouth; literally unknown,' hence foreign, strange, barbarous. brooding; wrapt in gloomy thought. literal meaning? Of what is Darkness jealous? What is the low-browed; compare Milton's peculiar use of brow,' as a verb, in Comus, 531-2; hard by the hilly crofts That brow this bottom glade. Cimmerian. Is the epithet 'dark' tautological? The famous lines in Odyssey XI. tell us of the mythical Cimmerii that, "Never on them does the shining sun look down but deadly night is |