not-as is but too much the case nowadays-given to the world immediately after they had been composed, but were, for the most part, retained in the poet's desk for many years, and were not published till the time when his judgement was in its full maturity and vigour. In our eyes they are, we may say, all beauty and perfection, bating that compliance with the false taste of the age, to be discerned in some of the earlier pieces, but from which he speedily emancipated himself. The other apparent faults all vanish when we obey that primary but too often neglected law of criticism, of placing ourselves, as far as possible, in the position of the poet, and bring to our mind the opinions that prevailed, and the meaning that words bore in his time. All then that we propose to do is to offer such illustrations of the various pieces as will enable the reader to enter into their meaning, and enjoy their manifold beauties. The explanation of particular terms and passages must of course be reserved for the annotations on the respective poems. We will here notice them in the order in which they appear to have been written.

PARAPHRASES OF PSALMS CXIV. AND CXXXVI.

These paraphrases, as the poet himself informs us, were executed "at fifteen years old," i. e. in his sixteenth year, and therefore while he was at St. Paul's School. The versification is vigorous and elegant, and the ideas which he has introduced are correct and poetical. Warton has noticed with praise the expressions, "the goldentressed sun, ," "God's thunder-clasping hand," and "above the reach of mortal eye." At a subsequent period, namely while residing at Horton, Milton translated the former of these psalms also into Greek.

ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT,

DYING OF A COUGH.

This ode, Milton's earliest attempt at original poetic composition, as far as is known to us, was written in the winter of 1625, about the time that he had completed his seventeenth year. The occasion was the death of an infant daughter (see the last stanza) of his sister Mrs. Phillips, born probably in the preceding autumn, and who died, as it would appear, of the hooping-cough. It is very remarkable that this beautiful poem was not included in the collection of his verses which he published in 1645. That this was not owing to its want of merit in the eyes of its parent is manifest, for it appeared in the edition of 1673-nearly half a century after it had been composed. We do not suspect that this originated in an over-rigorous adherence to the rule Nonumque prematur in annum; the probability is that he had given his sister the only copy he had made of it, and that he did not recollect it when he was preparing his poems for publication.

In this juvenile production, we meet with that mixture of classic mythology with Christian ideas which prevailed all over Europe till late in the eighteenth century, and which is not yet quite gone out of use in the poetry of the South. It probably originated with Dante and his contemporaries in their attacks on the Church of Rome, in symbol and allegory; and as the gods of Greece and Rome came very generally to be regarded as personifications, the practice was far less absurd than it might appear to be on a superficial view. Besides, the constant study of the Classics in those times gave a reality in the minds of readers to everything that they contained, of

which we cannot in these days form an adequate conception; but without which, we must be unable to enter fully into the spirit and enjoy the beauties of those poets who wrote under the influence of such feelings and sentiments. The most remarkable instance, we may here observe, of this confusion of heathen and Christian ideas, is that beautiful poem the Lusiadas, in which, though the author assures us that he uses the deities of classic mythology only in a figurative and allegoric sense, still, when we do our utmost to place ourselves in his condition, and regard them with complacency, we find success almost unattainable.

Milton commences by representing the subject of his verse under the figure of a flower, and he supposes that Winter, envious of the success of Aquilo (i. e. Boreas), his charioteer, in carrying off Orithyia, resolved to purvey himself a wife in like fashion. Mounting then his " “icypearled" car, he wandered through the air till he espied this fair one; but unaware of the effect of his "cold, kind" embrace, he "unhoused her virgin soul from her fair biding-place." The poet consoles her by recalling to mind the parallel fate of Hyacinthus; but he cannot persuade himself that she is really dead, and he prays her to inform him whether she has become a dweller of the Empyrean or of the Elysian Fields, and what was the cause of her so speedy departure. He asks if she was a star fallen from the sky, which Jove had restored to its place, or a goddess who had fled to conceal herself on earth during a late attack of "Earth's sons on the "sheeny Heaven;" was she Astræa, or Mercy," that sweet-smiling youth," or the matron "white-robed" Truth, or any other of "that heavenly brood," or finally, one of the "gold-winged" host of angels come down to

show to mankind "what creatures heaven doth breed"? In the close, he consoles the mother for her loss, and assures her, that if she bears it patiently, God will give her another offspring, that will make her name live "till the world's last end". -an assurance verified at least by this poem.

The language of this ode is exquisitely poetic, and the imagery and sentiments give evidence of the first faint dawn of the Paradise Lost. The measure is the poet's own formation; for, adopting the seven-lined stanza used by Chaucer in his Troilus and Cressida and some of his other poems, and by Sackville in his Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates, he changed the last line from the original form of five feet to one of six feet, as in the Spenserian stanza. It is very remarkable that the very same thing was done by Phineas Fletcher in his Purple Island; and, as this poem was not published till 1633, it is quite evident that Milton could not have imitated the structure of its verse.*

In the edition of 1673 the eighth stanza is printed in the following manner :

"Or wert thou that just Maid who once before
Forsook the hated earth, O! tell me sooth,

And cam'st again to visit us once more?
Or wert thou that sweet-smiling Youth!

Or that cown'd Matron sage, white-robed truth?

Or any other of that heav'nly brood

Let down in cloudie throne to do the world some good?"

It will be seen at once that the fourth line is short by a foot, and it can hardly be doubted that the missing word is Mercy, which we have no hesitation in restoring to the text, though Warton was more scrupulous, when it was suggested to him by a gentleman named Heskin;

There is however a difference, for in Fletcher's stanza the last three lines form a triplet.

for in the Ode on the Nativity (st. xv.), Truth, Justice, and Mercy are placed together, and the last, as here, occupies the middle station; Mercy and Truth are also associated in the Scriptures, see Ps. xxv. 10, Prov. xxvi. 6. The error may have originated in the following manner. The compositor omitted Mercy, and as Justice is merely called "that just maid," and "truth," in this edition, begins with a small letter, the person who read the proof -for it is hardly possible it could have been read to Milton himself—may have supposed that "sweet-smiling youth" was the whole, his eye not noting the measure.

The additional poems in this edition-which otherwise follows that of 1645 even in its errors of punctuation-do not seem to have been read with any care; for in the very next line, we may observe that crowned is printed cowned. We may see by this, as we will show more fully hereafter, how little value should be attached to the phrase "the author's own edition."

The reader may perhaps feel a curiosity to know why Milton should have made Mercy a youth, while Truth and Justice are females. The reason probably is, that the young poet may have observed that mercy in Hebrew is a masculine, while truth is a feminine noun, and he thence thought they should be thus personified. He may also have had in view the eighty-fifth Psalm, where it is said, "Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed," and have forgotten that it is the masculine, not the feminine, form of the word expressing righteousness that is used.

AT A VACATION EXERCISE, ETC.

These verses, though written in the poet's twentieth year (anno ætatis xix.), i. e. in 1628, were not printed