turned to a scholar's ways. The stream which had been diverted returned to the channel of poetry, and the story of his last years is the story of writing Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. He listened to readers and he dictated his poems. In his youth he had pondered over large schemes of verse. Now in his old age, after taking part in a revolution which had been set in motion by love of liberty and a deep religious earnestness, he took the great theme of the human race in its relation to God. The largeness of the poet's ideal, a largeness which had been before him all his life, finds expression in this great epic, just as the beauty which he loved finds expression in the group of poems printed in this little collection. Milton died November 8, 1674.

ON READING MILTON'S VERSE.

THE text of the long poems included in this vol ame follows the edition of 1645 with occasional variations suggested by the edition of 1673. By the end of 1652 Milton had become totally blind, and the earlier edition therefore could be the only one which would have the benefit of his eyesight in the preparation of copy and the correction of proof. This is an important consideration, for no one can give the most casual attention to Milton's writings, especially to his verse, without perceiving the scholarly delight which he took in all the niceties of his art.

It becomes then of great moment in reading Milton to have his verse just as he left it, and it is fortunate that the shorter poems here printed all appeared in the fresh strength of Milton's young manhood. At a superficial view, it is of no consequence whether we read L'Allegro in a text which is modernized, or in a text which scrupulously follows Milton's own. Indeed it might be argued that a listener would be better off if the reader had the aid of the more familiar form, inasmuch as there would be fewer ob stacles for the eye to overcome. But a closer inspec tion will reveal the advantage which accrues to the slightly archaic form here given.

Milton, as a scholar, was one of the arbiters of orthography. The time had not come when dictionary makers and printers fixed the exact form. Consequently he varied the spelling of the same word

according to the demands of rhythm or even of rhyme to the eye. If he wished the accent to fall lightly on their, he spelled it thir. If he wrote a line,

"Com, but keep thy wonted state,"

he allowed himself to spell the rhyme-making word of the next line in the same way,

"With eev'n step, and musing gate."

The instances of each sort are many and very interesting to trace. The line just quoted affords another example of his delicate ear. He spelled even in a way to show the length of the first syllable and the elision in the second. The reader will perceive repeatedly how nicely Milton distinguishes by typographic marks between syllables dropped and syllables sounded, and how carefully he indicates the t and the sounds in past participles. The student of these poems will constantly be delighted by these evidences of Milton's punctilious care.

There are other forms of spelling, which are interesting in an historical way. When one sees that Milton wrote Plowman, and center, and savory, it sets him reflecting that the orthography which is so strongly contested is not the innovation of an imperfectly trained lexicographer, and that the usage of a few generations of London writers does not necessarily determine the best usage of to-day. These and similar points of study and observation, which are sometimes referred to explicitly in the notes and sometimes left for the student to discover to his own pleasure, afford an admirable secondary pursuit in the reading of Milton. Those who read this bock for the first time will not be persons unacquainted with the ordinary forms of English, and what they meet

here, therefore, will not serve to undermine their confidence in the accepted spelling of the day; but they will be, for the most part, students ready for an introduction to one of the most pregnant subjects for intellectual excitement, the study of words, and the slight variation from regular orthography will suggest many interesting excursions in language. It would be hard to find a book better calculated to initiate the student in a course of lexical inquiry than a collection of Milton's minor verse printed just as he intended it to be printed; the student will have opportunity then to ask, Is this a form which Milton deliberately chose, or is it the common form of language in the time of Milton? and the answer in each case is likely to afford him great interest.

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We have said that this study of words is a secondary pursuit. It is a great gain both to teacher and pupil to have such a secondary pursuit when reading the works of a great author. But the primary study of Milton supplies another reason for using a text which follows his own edition. We have hinted at it in referring to Milton's delicate ear. Angelic," De Quincey calls it, and he adds: "Many are the prima facie anomalous lines in Milton; many are the suspicious lines, which in many a book I have seen many a critic peering into, with eyes made up for mischief, yet with a misgiving that all was not quite safe, very much like an old raven looking down a marrow bone. In fact, such is the metrical skill of the man, and such the perfection of his metrical sensibility, that, on any attempt to take liberties with a passage of his, you feel as when coming in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion; perhaps he

may not be dead; nay, perhaps he may not be sleeping, but only shamming. And you have a jealousy, as to Milton, even in the most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that after all there may be a plot in it. You may be put down with shame by some man reading the line otherwise, reading it with a different emphasis, a different cæsura, or perhaps a different suspension of the voice, so as to bring out a new and self-justifying effect." And De Quincey gives an illustration of the singular enrichment of a line by proper reading when he takes a line from Samson Agonistes,

"Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,"

and punctuates it thus, following Landor's suggestion, "Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves."

6

"And why?" he asks; "because thus the grief of Samson is aggravated at every member of the sentence.' He (like Milton) was (1) blind; (2) in a city of triumphant enemies; (3) working for daily bread; (4) herding with slaves, Samson literally, and Milton with those whom he regarded as such."

The appeal which great poetry makes is through its splendid music. No comment on L'Allegro for example, no analysis of its contents, is such an interpretation as a beautiful reading aloud of its lovely measures. What would we not give if we could have a phonographic repetition of Milton's own recital! In the absence of that we come most closely to Milton's voice when we read attentively as he has bidden us read, by his fine distinctions in accent, in length

1 Milton vs. Southey and Landor. Volume IV. of The Works q* Thomas De Quincey.