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To bait me with this foul derision?

Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us-oh! and is all forgot?

All school-day's friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our neelds1 created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion;
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and winds,2
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition;

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:
So with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
And will you rend our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly:

Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.

MUSIC.

Lorenzo and Jessica speak.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music,
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica; look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;

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(4) Sleeps-There is an exquisite propriety and beauty in the metaphorical use of the word" sleeps" in this passage.

(5) Patines-from the Latin patina, a plate or dish-a bright round object.

(6) There's not, &c.-This and the two following lines refer to the fanciful notion of the music of the spheres.

(7) Still quiring-continually singing as in a choir.

But whilst this muddy vesture1 of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.-
Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn:
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.

Jes. I'm never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive;3
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud-
Which is the hot condition of their blood

If they perchance but hear a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand;
Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze,

By the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

IMAGINATION.

LOVERS and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

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Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

(1) This muddy vesture, &c.-In allusion to the Platonic doctrine that the body is the earthly prison of the soul.

(2) Come, ho, &c.—This is addressed to some musicians.

(3) Attentive-i.e. to the music, entirely absorbed by its influence.

(4) "Midsummer Night's Dream," Act v., scene 1.

(5) Seething-boiling, heated.

(6) Are of imagination, &c.-Are altogether made up, or filled with imagination. This sense appears to be justified by another passage in which Shakspere writes "Love is a spirit all compact of fire."

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

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MILTON.

PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF HIS LIFE.-John Milton-emphatically the Sublime Poet-was born in Bread Street, London, on the 9th of December, 1608. He was early distinguished for his love of learning, so that in the beginning of his sixteenth year he left St. Paul's School, where his education had been carried on several years, and entered Christ's College, Cambridge. On leaving college, he returned to his father's house, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, and here for five years he pursued a course of unremitting study, which comprehended, it is said, all the Greek and Roman classics. Here too he wrote "Comus," "Lycidas," L'Allegro," and "Il Penseroso." In the year 1638, he visited the continent, and was introduced at Paris to the famous Hugo Grotius, at that time ambassador from Christina, Queen of Sweden, to the French court; at Naples to Manso, Marquis of Villa, the friend and patron of Tasso; and at Florence, to the renowned Galileo, "a prisoner to the Inquisition," to use Milton's own words, "for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." On his return to England, after an absence of fifteen months, he settled in London, and devoted himself to the instruction of youth. He soon, however, became involved in the political agitation of the times, and was ultimately appointed Latin Secretary to the Council of State, which office he held for several years. It was during this period that he entirely lost his sight. On the restoration of Charles II., in 1660, he was included in the act of indemnity, and devoted the retirement now afforded him to composing-it cannot be called writing, since it was all dictated by the blind bard-the noblest epic poem of that or any other age-the "Paradise Lost," which was published in 1667, when he was in his sixtieth year. He died with great

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calmness, on the 8th of November, 1674, and was buried in the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate.

In reference to the tone of his mind during his later years, an eminent modern writer thus speaks:-"The strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was, when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes; such it continued to be, when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die!"

66

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PRINCIPAL WORKS.-Besides Comus,' Lycidas," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and "Paradise Lost," already mentioned, Milton wrote " Paradise Regained," "Samson Agonistes," and many miscellaneous poems and sonnets. He also wrote in Latin prose the two famous "Defences of the People of England;" and in English "A Tractate on Education;" "Areopagitica, A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing;" "History of England to the Conquest;" and many other works both political and literary.

CHARACTERISTIC SPIRIT AND STYLE.-In speaking of the intellectual qualities of Milton, we may observe, that the very splendour of his poetic fame has tended to obscure or conceal the extent of his mind, and the variety of its energies and attainments. To many, he seems only a poet, when in truth he was a profound scholar, a man of vast compass of thought, imbued thoroughly with all ancient and modern learning, and able to master, to mould, to impregnate with his own intellectual power, his great and various acquisitions. He had not learned the superficial doctrines of a later day-that poetry flourishes most in an uncultivated soil, and that imagination shapes its brightest visions from the mists of a superstitious age; and he had no dread of accumulating knowledge, lest it should oppress and smother his genius. He was conscious of that within him which could quicken all knowledge, and wield it with ease and might; which could give freshness to old truths, and harmony to discordant thoughts; which could bind together by living ties and mysterious affinities the most remote discoveries, and rear fabrics of glory and beauty from the rude

(1) Macaulay. "Edinburgh Review," vol. xlii., p. 323.

materials which other minds had collected. Milton had that universality which marks the highest order of intellect. Though accustomed almost from infancy to drink at the fountains of classi cal literature, he had nothing of the pedantry and fastidiousness which disdains all other draughts. His healthy mind delighted in genius, on whatever soil or in whatever age it burst forth and poured out its fulness. He understood too well the rights, the dignity, and pride of creative imagination, to lay on it the laws of the Greek or Roman school. Parnassus was not to him the only holy ground of genius. He felt that poetry was as a universal presence. Great minds were everywhere his kindred. He felt the enchantment of oriental fiction, surrendered himself to the strange creations of ́Araby the Blest,' and delighted still more in the romantic spirit of chivalry, and in the tales of wonder in which it was embodied. Accordingly, his poetry reminds us of the ocean, which adds to its own boundlessness contributions from all regions under heaven. Nor was it only in the department of imagination that his acquisitions were vast. He travelled over the whole field of knowledge as far as it had then been explored. His various philological attainments were used to put him in possession of the wisdom stored in all countries where the intellect had been cultivated."1

"In Milton there may be traced obligations to several minor English poets; but his genius had too great a supremacy to belong to any school. Though he acknowledged a filial reverence for Spenser as a poet, he left no Gothic irregular tracery in the design of his own great work, but gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous pile. It thus resembles a dome, the vastness of which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, but which expands more and more to the eye while it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have neither disturbed nor corrected the bad taste

of the age. 'Comus came into the world unacknowledged by

its author, and Lycidas' appeared at first only with his initials. Almost a century elapsed before his minor works obtained their proper fame. Even when Paradise Lost' appeared, though it was not neglected, it attracted no crowd of imitators, and made no visible change in the poetical practice of the age. He stood alone and aloof above his times, the bard of immortal subjects; and, as far as there is perpetuity in language, of immortal fame. There is something that overawes the mind in conceiving his long deliberated selection of that theme-his attempting it when his eyes were shut upon the face of nature-his dependence, we might almost say,

(1) Dr. Channing. "Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton."

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