there is evident a filial relation of unusual depth and sweetness. Again, in the verses to Salzillo and to Manso, and in the Epitaphium Damonis, we get many entertaining glimpses of the friendships which Milton made in Italy. Above all, we get from the Latin poems, as a whole, an understanding of the one great friendship of Milton's life, that with Charles Diodati. The lament upon Diodati's untimely death not only is an exquisite work of art, beautiful with the delicate, pure beauty of the Sicilian lyrists, but it also has a touching humanity very rare in Milton's work. This latter quality suggests another interest possessed by the Latin poems, namely, the indirect information they convey concerning Milton's character during its plastic period. His enthusiasm for the theatre, his eager holiday interest in the crowds thronging the London parks and suburban pleasure - places, the rapturous praise of English girls to which he is moved by the sight of groups of them promenading in holiday attire, his instantaneous surrender before one pair of challenging eyes, all this shows a side of Milton unfamiliar to those who know him only through his English verse. The sixth elegy, sent to Diodati at some countryhouse where Christmas was being celebrated in good old English fashion, has a delightful geniality, not spoiled but only thrown into relief by the mood of strenuousness with which the poem closes. The unrestrained fervor of the lines On the Approach of Spring surprises us until we learn from a dozen places in the poems of this period that the lax, voluptuous Ovid was Milton's darling poet among the Latins. Along with these hints of character, we get others of a more familiar kind, the Puritan boy's indignation over the fact that a godly minister like Young should be compelled to seek sustenance in a foreign country; the Puritan youth's dogma of asceticism as a preparation for the life of poetry; the young bachelor's self-confidence, tinge - ing the real humility of his feeling toward his father and the venerable Manso with a hint of superb intellectual arrogance behind; and, in the Ode to Rouse, the adult poet's weariness with the wranglings and hoarse disputes of his generation. Milton is Milton still; a knowledge of his Latin poetry can hardly disturb our fundamental conceptions of him; but it is safe to say that no one who is unfamiliar with that poetry can form a true idea of his youth. With only the English poems and letters to judge from, we are left with an uncomfortable sense that young Milton was a young prig; the real dignity of his moral attitude escapes us, because we do not see the opposing forces which he had to over come. As to the artistic qualities of this poetry, it would not be profitable to speak here at length. In the main they are qualities of delicacy and felicitousness rather than of strength. They bear a relation to Milton's later English poetry roughly analogous to that which Tennyson's early lyrical experiments bear to his adult work. In them Milton learned his trade of poet, at least on its technical and imitative side. The habit of assimilation, the power to freight his lines with the accumulated riches of past thought, we see here in the making, and we see also how the habit of conveying commonplace thought in a sonorous and magniloquent medium fostered that large Miltonic diction, which was so noble in Milton's own hands, and so intolerably hollow in the hands of his eighteenth-century imitators. It would be wrong, however, to think of these poems as consciously disciplinary. When they were written, the chances seemed even that Milton's main work as poet would be in Latin rather than in English; they represent sincere creative effort, and offer many rare intrinsic beauties in spite of their immaturity. To see most clearly what Milton could have accomplished in neo-Latin poetry, ve must turn to the few pieces written after his apprenticeship had passed, and especially to the Epitaphium Damonis. No more convincing proof is needed of the artistic sincerity of Milton's Latin poetry than the fact that he chose the Latin medium for this threnody. For sweet directness of feeling, undiverted by the conventional mould into which it is thrown, it challenges comparison with Theocritus himself, of whose lament for Bion it is formally an imitation. To place the Epitaphium Damonis beside Lycidas is to show the difference between pastoral poetry in its early purity and pastoral poetry after it had gathered up the confused riches of the Renaissance. Lycidas is more splendid; the poet's imagination circles out from his theme with a mightier wing, and lays under contribution a wider area of suggestion: but the Epitaphium Damonis has a unity, a plaintive clinging to its grief, a touching absorption in the familiar aspects of the life it mourns, which compensate for its narrower range. This effect of unity is subtly heightened by the recurrence of the plaint : "Ite domum, impasti; domino jam non vacat, agni," interrupting the pastoral pictures as they drift by in lovely succession. The episodic passages descriptive of Milton's experiences at Florence, of the Manso cups, and of the incepted epic upon King Arthur, might seem to be exceptions to the unity of design. Such episodes, however, were traditional in poetry of the kind; and they serve, by the touch of garrulous egotism that is in them, to heighten the effect of naïveté proper to the speaker. The conclusion is similar to that of Lycidas, but touched with a wilder phantasy. Perhaps no passage in Milton is so original, so daring, as this, where the joys of the redeemed soul in Paradise are represented under the symbolism of the Dionysiac orgies. LATIN POEMS [DE AUCTORE TESTIMONIA] Hæc quæ sequuntur de Authore testimonia, tametsi ipse intelligebat non tam de se quam supra se esse dicta, eo quod præclaro ingenio viri, nec non amici, ita fere solent laudare ut omnia suis potius virtutibus quam veritati congruentia nimis cupide affingant, noluit tamen horum egregiam in se voluntatem non esse notam, cum alii præsertim ut id faceret magnopere suaderent. Dum enim nimiæ laudis invidiam totis ab se viribus amolitur, sibique quod plus æquo est non attributum esse mavult, judicium interim hominum cordatorum atque illustrium quin summo sibi honori ducat negare non potest. JOANNES BAPTISTA MANSUS, MARCHIO VILLENSIS NEAPOLITANUS, AD JOANNEM MILTONIUM ANGLUM Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic, Non Anglus, verùm herclè Angelus ipse, fores. AD JOANNEM MILTONEM ANGLUM, TRIPLICI POESEOS LAUREA CORONANDUM, GRÆCA NIMIRUM, LATINA, ATQUE HETRUSCA, EPIGRAMMA JOANNIS SALSILLI ROMANI Cede, Meles; cedat depressâ Mincius urnâ; das; Nam per te, Milto, par tribus unus erit. AD JOANNEM MILTONUM Græcia Mæonidem, jactet sibi Roma Maro nem; Anglia Miltonum jactat utrique parem. SELVAGGI. AL SIGNOR GIO. MILTONI, NOBILE INGLESE ODE Ergimi all' Etra o Clio, Perchè di stelle intreccierò corona! Non più del biondo Dio La fronde eterna in Pindo, e in Elicona: Diensi a merto maggior maggiori i fregi, A celeste virtù celesti pregi. Non può del Tempo edace Furar dalle memorie eccelso onore. Dell' Ocean profondo Cinta dagli ampi gorghi Anglia risiede Però che il suo valor l' umano eccede: Ch' hanno a ragion del sovruman tra noi. Alla virtù sbandita Danno nei petti lor fido ricetto, Perchè in lei san trovar gioia e diletto; Lungi dal patrio lido Spinse Zeusi l' industre ardente brama; Ch' udio d' Elena il grido Con aurea tromba rimbombar la fama, E per poterla effigiare al paro Dalle più belle Idee trasse il più raro. Così l'ape ingegnosa Trae con industria il suo liquor pregiato E quanti vaghi fiori ornano il prato; Di bella gloria amante Milton, dal Ciel natio, per varie parti Volgesti a ricercar scienze ed arti; Fabro quasi divino, Sol virtù rintracciando, il tuo pensiero Chi di nobil valor calca il sentiero; Quanti nacquero in Flora, D in lei del parlar Tosco appreser l'arte, Juveni patriâ, virtutibus, eximio: Viro qui multa peregrinatione, studio cuncta, orbis terrarum loca perspexit, ut, novus Ulysses, omnia ubique ab omnibus apprehenderet: Polyglotto, in cujus ore linguæ jam deperdita sic reviviscunt ut idiomata omnia sint in ejus laudibus infacunda; et jure ea This verse-letter marks the occasion of Milton's rustication from college during his second academic year, 1625-26, owing to a dispute with his tutor, William Chappell (see introductory biography). It is addressed to his bosom friend Charles Diodati, to whom also the sixth Latin Elegy and the Italian canzone are addressed, and in whose memory the Epitaphium Damonis was written. Diodati was the son of an Italian father- -a physician settled in London and an English mother. Milton's acquaintance with him, begun at St. Paul's School, continued after Diodati went up to Oxford, two years before Milton went to Cambridge. When the present epistle was written, Diodati had taken his first degree, and was visiting in the neighborhood of Chester. The chief interest of the elegy, besides the light it throws on the incident of Milton's rustication and his feeling toward his college, lies TANDEM, chare, tuæ mihi pervenere tabellæ, Pertulit et voces nuncia charta tuas; Pertulit occiduâ Devæ Cestrensis ab orâ Vergivium prono quà petit amne salum. Multùm, crede, juvat terras aluisse remotas Pectus amans nostri, tamque fidele caput, Quòdque mihi lepidum tellus longinqua sodalem Debet, at unde brevi reddere jussa velit. in the account which he gives of his pastimes during this period of enforced vacation. The enthusiastic account of his theatre-going is especially noteworthy, though ambiguity exists throughout the passage as to whether actual stage representations or merely the reading of drama is meant, an ambiguity which is increased by the fact that the illustrations seem drawn equally from Roman comedy and Greek tragedy, and from the contemporary drama of England. He also recounts his walks in the streets and parks of London, with a youthful zest and freshness doubly delightful in a character like his. His praise of the girls whom he encounters, though couched in the conventional language of pseudo-classic poetry, is thoroughly youthful and gay; even here, however, there is a touch of strenuousness at the end, none the less earnest for being half-playfully uttered. Ar last, dear friend, your letter has reached me; the missive paper bears me your words from the western shore of the Dee, by Chester, where that river goes down swiftly to the Irish Sea. Much joy it gives me to think that a far-off country has nourished for me so dear a head as yours, and a heart that loves me; and that soon that distant region where you sojourn will yield back my sweet comrade to my O utinam vates nunquam graviora tulisset Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri. Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri, Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos. Seu catus auditur senior, seu prodigus hæres, Seu procus, aut positâ casside miles adest, Sive decennali fœcundus lite patronus Detonat inculto barbara verba foro; Sæpe vafer gnato succurrit servus amanti, Et nasum rigidi fallit ubique patris; Sæpe novos illic virgo mirata calores 30 Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit prayers. I am in that city which Thames washes with her tidal wave, and I am glad to be there; I have no wish to go back to reedy Cam; I feel no homesickness for that forbidden college room of mine. The bare fields there, niggard of pleasant shade, do not please me. How ill does that place suit with poets! But here in London no stern master's threats can reach me, nor any of those other indignities at which my nature rebelled. If this is "exile," to live under my father's roof and be free to use my leisure pleasantly, I will not repudiate either the name or the lot they have put upon me, but will in all happiness enjoy my condition. Oh would that Ovid, sad exile in the fields of Thrace, had never suffered a worse lot! Then he would have yielded not a whit even to Homer, nor would the first praise be thine, Virgil, for he would have vanquished thee. I have time free now to give to the tranquil Muses. They claim me wholly; my books are my life. When I am weary, the pomp of the changing theatre awaits me, the garrulous stage and the clapping hands. Sometimes the cautious old man holds the scene, or the prodigal heir, or the wooer, or the soldier with his helmet laid aside; or the lawyer, pregnant with a ten-years' suit, thunders barbarous words before an ignorant court. The wily servant helps his master's son in his love-scrapes, and tricks the stern father under his very nose; and the girl, wondering at the new ardors that fill her, loves without knowing what love is. Then awful Tragedy shakes her bloody sceptre, and rolls her eyes under her disheveled hair. I suffer and gaze, and find it good to suffer and gaze. Bitterness mingles with sweet tears as I see some hapless boy, torn from his love, leave all his joys untasted and fall lamentable; or when the fierce avenger of crime recrosses Styx out of the shades, and terrifies the breasts of the guilty with his funeral torch; or when the house of Pelops mourns, or the house of Ilus; or when the hall of Creon laments the incest of its lords. But I do not stay indoors always, nor even in town; I do not let the spring slip |