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genius appeared as really in those sketches which he used to draw on his thumb-nail, as in his "Rake's Progress," or Marriage a la Mode." So Milton's sonnets are sonnets which Milton, and none but Milton, could have written. We see, in the compass of a crown-piece, his most peculiar qualities: his gravity, his severe and simple grandeur, his chaste and chary expression, his holy purpose, and the lofty and solitary character of his soul. His mind might be compared to a mountain river, which, having first torn its way through high rocks, then polishes the pebbles over which it rolls at their base.

""Tis the same wind unbinds the Alpine snow,

And comforts violets on their lowly beds."

We confess, however, that we are not much in love with the structure of the sonnet. Its principle, which is to include into fourteen lines one thought or sentiment, seems too artificial, and savours too much of the style of taste from which have sprung anagrams and acrostics, and the like ingenious follies. When a large thought is successfully squeezed into it, it reminds us irresistibly of a big head which has worked and wriggled its way into a narrow nightcap; and when a small thought is infused into it, it becomes almost invisible in the dilution.

We come next to that delightful class of Milton's poems, which we call pastorals, namely, " Arcades," "L'Allegro,' and "Il Penseroso." They breathe the sweetest spirit of English landscape. They are composed of every-day life, but of every-day life shown under a certain soft ideal strangeness, like a picture or a prospect, through which you look by inverting your head. Your wonder is, how he can thus elevate the tame beauties of English scenery, which are so tiny that they might be fitly tenanted by Lilliputians, and through which men stalk like monstrous giants. "L'Allegro" is an enumeration of agreeable. images and objects, pictured each by a single touch, and set to a light easy measure, which might accompany the

blithe song of the milkmaid and the sharp whetting of the mower's scythe. "Il Penseroso" is essentially the same scenery, shown as if in soft and pensive moonlight. Both, need we say, are exquisitely beautiful; but we think the object would have been better gained, could two poets, of different temperaments, have, in the manner of Virgil's shepherds, exchanged their strains of joy and pensiveness in alternate verses, or if Milton had personated both in this way. As the poems are, it is too obviously one mind describing its own peculiar sources of gratification in different moods. A modern poet might now, if he had genius enough, effect what we mean, by describing a contest between Horace and Dante, or Moore and Byron-the one singing the pleasures of pleasure, the other the darker delights which mingle even with misery, like strange, scattered, bewildered flowers, growing on the haggard rocks of hell!

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An acute critic, in an Edinburgh periodical, has undertaken the defence of "The Town" versus The Country" as the source of poetry-has called us, among others, to account for preferring the latter to the former—and has ventured to assert that, cæteris paribus, a poet residing in the town will describe rural scenery better than one living constantly in the country, and adduces Milton in proof. We admit, indeed, that there will be more freshness in the feeling of the Cockney, let loose upon the country in spring, be he poet or porter, just as there will be more freshness in the feeling of the countryman entering London for the first time, and gaping with unbounded wonder at every sign, and shop, and shopkeeper he sees. But we maintain, that those always write best on any subject who are best acquainted with it, who know it in all its shades and phases; and that such minute and personal knowledge can only be obtained by long residence in, or by frequent visits to, the country. We cannot conceive, with this writer, that the country is best seen in the town, any more than that

the town is best seen in the country. Bennevis is not visible from Edinburgh any more than Edinburgh from Bennevis. We can never compare the beggarly bit of blue sky seen from a corner of Goosedubs, Glasgow, with the "dread magnificence of heaven" broadly bending over Benlomond; nor the puddles running down the Wellgate of Dundee, after a night of rain, with the red roaring torrents from the hills, which meet at the sweet village of Comrie. And even the rainbow, when you see it at the end of a dirty street, loses caste, though not colour, and can hardly pass for a relation to that arch of God, which seems erected by the hands of angels, for the passage of the Divine footsteps between the ridges which confine the valley of Glencoe. And among our greatest descriptive poets, how many have resided in the country, either all their lives, or at least in their youth! Think of Virgil and Mantua, of Thomson and Ednam, of Burns and Mossgiel, of Shelley and Marlowe, of Byron and Lochnagar, of Coleridge and Nether Stowey, of Wilson and Elleray, of Scott and Abbotsford, of Wordsworth and Rydal Mount, and of Milton and Horton, where, assuredly, his finest rural pieces were composed; and say with Cowper, the Cowper of Olney, as we have said with him already—“ God made the country, and man made the town."

We pass to two pieces, which, though belonging to different styles of poetry, class themselves together by two circumstances their similar length, and their surpassing excellence the one being an elegy, and the other a hymn. The elegy is "Lycidas"-the hymn is on the "Nativity of Christ." To say that "Lycidas" is beautiful, is to say that a star or rose is beautiful. Conceive the finest and purest graces of the Pagan mythology culled and mingled, with modest yet daring hand, among the roses of Sharon and the lilies of the valley-conceive the waters of Castalia sprinkled on the flowers which grow in the garden of God --and you have a faint conception of what "Lycidas"

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means to do.

Stern but short-sighted critics have objected to this as an unhallowed junction. Milton knew better than his judges. He felt that, in the millennial field of poetry, the wolf and the lamb might lie down together; that everything at least that was beautiful might enter here. The Pagan mythology possessed this pass-word, and was admitted; and here truth and beauty accordingly met, and embraced each other. A museum, he felt, had not the severe laws of a temple. There, whatever was curious, interesting, or rare, might be admitted. Pan's pipe might lean upon the foot of the true Cross-Apollo's flute and David's lyre stand side by side-and the thunderbolts of Jove rest peacefully near the fiery chariot of Elijah.

name.

But what shall we say of his hymn? Out of the Hebrew Scriptures, it is (besides his own "Hymn of our First Parents," and Coleridge's "Hymn to Mont Blanc") the only one we remember worthy of the name. When you compare the ordinary swarm of church hymns to this, you begin to doubt whether the piety which prompted the one, and the piety which prompted the other, were of the same quality—whether they agreed in anything but the We have here no trash, as profane as it is fulsome, about "sweet Jesus! dear Jesus!"-no effusions of pious sentimentalism, like certain herbs, too sweet to be wholesome; but a strain which might have been sung by the angelic host on the plains of Bethlehem, and rehearsed by the shepherds in the ears of the Infant God. Like a belated member of that deputation of sages who came from the East to the manger at Bethlehem, does he spread out his treasures, and they are richer than frankincense, sweeter than myrrh, and more precious than gold. With awful reverence and joy, he turns aside to behold this great sight -the Eternal God dwelling in an infant! Here the fault (if fault it be) with which "Lycidas" has been charged is sternly avoided. From the Stable he repulses the heathen deities, feeling that the ground is holy. And yet, methinks,

Apollo would have desired to stay-would have lingered to the last moment-to hear execrations so sublime:

"The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arch'd roof in words, deceiving
Apollo from his shrine,

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
He feels from Judah's land

The dreadful Infant's hand:

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne.
Nor all the gods beside

Dare longer now abide,

Nor Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can, in his swaddling bands, control the damned crew." "Samson Agonistes" is perhaps the least poetical, but certainly by no means the least characteristic of his works. In style and imagery, it is bare as a skeleton, but you see it to be the skeleton of a Samson. It is the purest piece of literary sculpture in any language. It stands before you, like a statue, bloodless and blind. There can be no doubt that Milton chose Samson as a subject, from the resemblance in their destinies. Samson, like himself, was made blind in the cause of his country; and through him, as through a new channel, does Milton pour out his old complaint, but more here in anger than in sorrow. It had required as the Nile has seven mouths--so many vents to a grief so great and absolute as his. Consolation Samson has little, save in the prospect of vengeance, for the prospect of the resurrection-body had not fully dawned on his soul. He is, in short, a hard and Hebrew shape of Milton. Indeed, the poem might have been written by one who had been born blind, from its sparing natural imagery. He seems to spurn that bright and flowery world which has been shut against him, and to create, within his darkened