Spirit. To the ocean now I fly, All amidst the gardens fair Of Hesp'rus, and his daughters three And west-winds, with musky wing, Waters the od'rous banks, that blow 1 After her wand'ring labours long, And from her fair unspotted side 1 Venus; so called because she was identified with the Assyrian Astarte. Two blissful twins are to be born, Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn. Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend ; Mortals, that would follow me, Heav'n itself would stoop to her. After the production of "Comus" Milton's poetic powers subsided for a time, though he continued his studies with unabated enthusiasm. Not that he had by any means abandoned the thought of poetry as his true career. Far from it. The determination to devote himself to some great work which should make his name immortal was year by year growing upon him. But for the moment he did not feel himself ready. "Hear me, Theoditus," he writes to Diodati, "but in your ear, lest I blush; and allow me for a little to speak big words to you. Do you ask me what I am thinking of? So may the good God help me, of Immortality. But what am I doing? I am pluming my wings and preparing to fly; but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to bear it aloft." What came of this now clearly conceived ambition we shall learn in the sequel. Meanwhile. as the 66 His April same letter goes on to tell us, he was beginning to feel cramped and ill at ease at Horton. mother had died a few months before-in 1637-and perhaps her death had something to do with his newly awakened desire for change. In the country, as he had now come to realise, he was buried in obscurity"; he needed a larger life and more varied companionship. For this reason, as he further informs his friend, he was planning to migrate to town, and to seek there a convenient lodging in "some inn of the lawyers," where the social surroundings would be more stimulating, and where at the same time he would find quietude, seclusion, and "a pleasant and shady walk" for his hours of meditation and exercise. This was written in September 1637, about a month, we may note in passing, after Ben Jonson had been laid to rest in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Almost immediately after this, though the great flight of which he had spoken was not even attempted, a sad occasion inspired him suddenly and unexpectedly to further poetic effort. The poem which he now produced was a very different thing indeed from the mighty epic which he was already contemplating. But in the valuation of art we think little of mere bulk; and “ Lycidas," an elegy of under two hundred lines, is still one of the glories of English literature. Among Milton's chief companions at Christ's College had been a young man, some three years his junior, named Edward King. A youth of fine talents and amiable character, King had a brilliant college career; he became a Fellow of his college when only just out of his undergraduateship; took his Master's degree in 1633; and was presently made a tutor. He was at this time busily preparing himself to enter the Church. That he was extremely popular with all who knew him is perfectly clear; nor is it less clear that he impressed friends and strangers alike as a man who was certain to make his mark in the world and to become a leader in the cause of goodness and truth. But as in the case of Arthur Hallam, of whom King inevitably reminds us, fate mysteriously intervened, and the high promises of these early years never found fruition. In the Long Vacation of 1637, with the intention of visiting relatives in Ireland, he set out from Chester Bay in a vessel bound for Dublin. On August 10, in absolutely calm weather, the illstarred ship struck a rock on the Welsh coast, and foundered. A few of the passengers were saved. Among those who perished was Edward King. The news of his tragic death came as a sad shock to his college friends and associates, who resolved to enshrine their affection and grief in a book of memorial verses. As a number of writers were asked to contribute, there was some delay in the completion of the work, and the volume did not appear till the following year. It contained twenty-three poems in Greek and Latin and thirteen in English. "Lycidas," which Milton had finished in November 1637, is the last, as it is the longest, in the English division. In form and method "Lycidas," like "Comus," is directly connected with the Renaissance and its classicism. It belongs to the kind of poetry which we call the pastoral elegy; that is, it is an elegy in the shape of a song sung by a shepherd mourning for a dead companion, and is full of conventional bucolic imagery. For the origin of this particular type of elegy we have to go back to the pastoral poetry of later Greek literature, and especially to the "Lament for Adonis " by the Ionian poet Bion, and the "Lament for Bion" by Moschus of Syracuse. At the time of the revival of learning, when the masterpieces of Greek and Latin antiquity became the objects of unbounded and indeed undiscriminating admiration, the pastoral elegy, like all other kinds of classical poetry, passed into modern European literature, and in this as in other cases admiration naturally led to imitation. Thus Spenser's "Astrophel," a memorial poem on the death of "the most noble and virtuous knight, Sir Philip Sidney," is conceived and executed upon the strict lines of the Greek pastoral elegy, and in its extreme artificiality may indeed be regarded as a typical example of the courtly-classic taste which prevailed in English non-dramatic literature during the Elizabethan age. These lines Milton again follows in "Lycidas," in which, instead of expressing directly his sorrow for the loss of his friend, he adopts the convention |