The cheerful man," however, unburdened by such speculations, starts forth to taste the pleasures of the country,

"Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn."

Sees the great sun begin his state,

"While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land;
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe;
And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale."

A thorough Englishman, his eye observes not only the simplicity of rural life, but

"Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where, perhaps, some beauty lies,
The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

Yet how like to the England of to-day,

"Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,"

where some "neat-handed Phillis" dresses the frugal meal. Afterwards the traveller goes to the upland hamlets,

"When the merry bells ring round,

And the jocund rebeckst sound

To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade;

And young and old come forth to play,
On a sun-shine holy-day."

When evening comes, "the cheerful man" speaks tenderly of "the spicy nut-brown ale," as fairy stories are related by the rustic fireside. Such is Milton's picture of English rural pleasures two and a half centuries ago.

"Cynosure," loadstar.

+"Rebeck," a kind of fiddle.

1

The poet, however, would have accomplished but half his task had he left us to suppose that the serene joys of "the pensive man" were one whit less real than those of his contrasted companion. For to him belong the loftiest and the purest delights of poetry and art :—

This is a noble reference to Chaucer, the great father of British poetry; and it may be interesting to refer to the "Squire's Tale," given in the course of the Canterbury pilgrimage, in order to understand the subject to which Milton here refers. The story begins thus :

"At Sarra, in the land of Tartary,

There dwelt a king that warrayed Russia,

Through which there diéd many a doughty man.

This noble king was cleped Cambuscan,
Which in his time was of so great renown,
That there was nowhere, in no regioun,
So excellent a lord in allé thing."

In passing from this extract, it is curious to note that even_in Chaucer's days, five centuries ago, there was an Eastern Question. But the reference of Milton is not merely intended to direct the pensive mind to the founder of British poetry, or to one of his heroes, but our author singles out the features of Chaucer's verse, which are specially suggestive, which set the mind inly musing, which veil some verity with recorded and fabulous marvels. The wondrous horse of brass given to Cambuscan; the ring of his daughter, the pure and sweet Canace, which taught her the meaning of the songs of birds; the mirror which displayed the true characters of those who looked into it, and revealed the truth or falsehood of those around them; such were proper subjects for the pensive man's charmed contemplations.

"And if aught else great bards beside

In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of tourneys, and of trophies hung,

Of forests and enchantments drear,

WHERE MORE IS MEANT THAN MEETS THE EAR."

Milton here recognises the fact that the divinest claim of the poet on the human mind is the symbolic value of his verse; the clothing of noble ideas in a vesture of purple and gold, now regal, saintly, or sublime; now embroidered with all the brilliant and tender tissues of imagination, so that, finely or fitly clad, his conceptions may walk before the nations, instinct with life, with a soul of deep meaning, veritable sons of light, and leading on the mind of man for evermore. To Chaucer is given the first place, as of right deserved, but in the lines just quoted Milton has clearly in view the vast and magnificent dream-land of Spenser's "Faerie Queene."

We left "the cheerful man" rejoicing in the country; we now follow him as he reverts to the refined pleasures of the town. The mask, the

revel, the marriage feast, and even the theatre, come in for their share of attention. We note that while the poet would be very discriminating as to what plays he might see, yet one of his pleasures is the performance of the legitimate drama :

"Then to the well-trod stage anon,

If Jonson's learned sock be on;
Or sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild."

He

Returning to "the pensive man," it will naturally be assumed that he does not follow the former in seeking the joys of the crowd. prefers to walk forth alone, when the beauty of the morning is

"Kercheft in a'comely cloud,

While rocking winds are piping loud;"

or to wander during the sultry noon in

"Arched walks of twilight groves,"

where, seated anon by murmuring waters, "some strange mysterious dream may

"Wave at his wings in airy stream

Of lively portraiture displayed,"

softly on his eyelids laid, and that, as he wakes, unseen music may breathe around him,

"Sent by some spirit to mortals good."

In fine, the only joys "the pensive man" seems to find in the city are within the Cloisters or the Cathedral. Dr. Johnson, remarking this, says, with a sneer, that probably Milton, when he wrote these two poems, had not yet left the Church of England. At any rate, the poet's love for church architecture is striking. The pensive man continues :

"Let my due feet never fail

To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars, massy, proof;
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.'

:

Both the characters depicted in these remarkable poems resemble each other in their sensibility to good music. The kinds of music to which they are each susceptible are diverse as the tones of their thoughts and feelings, but all are described with that compass and clearness which prove Milton's mastery of his art. While in the church the pensive man cries,

"There let the pealing organ blow

To the full-voiced choir below;

In service high and anthems clear,

As may, with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ectasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes."

The cheerful man, seeking music at a different time and place, with a different object, as a resource against the daily trials and petty annoyances of life, exclaims :

"Ever against eating cares,

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
'Married to immortal verse ;'

Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out;
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony."

There is an exquisite symbolism in this last passage.

The idea is

that the "hidden soul" of a good man, whose affections are pure and noble, is in harmony and at peace. But this hidden soul is often enthralled by the chains of hard necessity, of misfortune, pain, or loss; sometimes, indeed, by what Lytton calls

"Those twin gaolers of the daring heart, Low birth and iron fortune."

But according to Milton all these chains of trouble and care can, by the combined power of music and poetry, be unwound and unfastened, thus for a while liberating the hidden soul from their cankering bondage. There is, moreover, a double value in the image which the poet here employs. Not only is it a rich picture in itself, but it furnishes us with an explanation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. The beloved maiden, Eurydice, is the hidden soul, bound for a while in Pluto's dark and sordid realm. Orpheus, the lover, is the noble intellect, who, by the united power and inspiration of music and poetry, seeks, rouses, and partly liberates the best affection of the soul. As illustrating the relative power of music, while Milton leads us to infer that the music of "the pensive man " would only conditionally release Eurydice; he tells us that the music of "the cheerful man," "married to immortal verse," would have won the ear of Pluto to have quite set her free.

It is worth noting in this connection that the late Hugh Miller, in his "First Impressions of England," tells a local anecdote, referring to a line of one of these poems. He says that some years ago, at a great Concert, at our Birmingham Town Hall, the audience was somewhat impassive until that line was sung, in which Milton describes Orpheus as singing

"Such notes, as warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek."

To the conceptions

Here, we are told, the listeners were enraptured. of the Hardware Village what so fine as "iron tears?"

Dr. Johnson urges against Milton, in regard to these poems, that while he can find no mirth in his melancholy, he can always trace some melancholy in his mirth. But to my thinking this very quality is a necessity of the highest form of genius. The wisest writer is the most

comprehensive, the most powerful poet has the tenderest sympathies, and must, in his most joyous flights, be mindful of suffering and sadness, which only for a time he has quitted. I recall the words of Shelley, in that exquisite piece, the "Skylark" :

"We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."

I can follow more implicitly the remark of the learned Doctor, that while Milton makes no provision for the old age of "the cheerful man,” he conducts "the pensive man" with great dignity to the close of life. The poet may have held that "the immortals are always young," and that thus the atmosphere of "the cheerful man" was one of perennial youth. I must quote "the pensive man's" closing wish :-

"May at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Off every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain."

It is not given to man of himself to prophesy, and when we contrast the youthful dream to the actual later life of Milton-the peaceful hermit, with the little blind old man wearing a threadbare coat, who sat betimes on a chair in the sun at the door of an humble house in Cripplegate we feel the sad difference between hope and fact. We are conscious that the poet, bereaved of the sight of flower or of star, was almost as solitary in the crowded city as he would have been in the anchorite's cave. Yet we know that he was comforted. We perceive that to him celestial light shone inward-that he fed on thoughts that voluntary moved harmonious numbers-and that stone by stone he was raising the mighty, the sacred monument of his genius. But among his lighter works there is hardly one which affords so sure a key to the true enjoyment of life as the dual poem we have been considering; hardly one which can better help us to discern the real from the apparent in human pleasures and pursuits; hardly one which can more clearly guide us to the substantial and soul-satisfying elements in which human happiness consists.

J. W. T.