g of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright."

Richard Crashaw, a Cambridge graduate and Catholic mystic, concludes
his poem, _The Flaming Heart_, with this touching prayer to Saint
Teresa:--

"By all of Him we have in thee
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read my life that I
Unto all life of mine may die."

His verse, like that of his contemporaries, is often marred by
fantastic conceits which show the influence of Donne. Although much of
Crashaw's poem, _The Weeper_, is beautiful, he calls the eyes of Mary
Magdalene:--

"Two walking baths, two weeping motions,
Portable and compendious oceans."

JOHN MILTON, 1608-1674

[Illustration: JOHN MILTON. _After a drawing by W. Faithorne, at
Bayfordbury_.]

His Youth.--The second greatest English poet was born in London,
eight years before the death of Shakespeare. John Milton's father
followed the business of a scrivener and drew wills and deeds and
invested money for clients. As he prospered at this calling, his
family did not suffer for want of money. He was a man of much culture
and a musical composer of considerable note.

A portrait of the child at the age of ten, the work of the painter to
the court, still exists and shows him to have been "a sweet, serious,
round-headed boy," who gave early promise of future greatness. His
parents, seeing that he acted as if he was guided by high ideals, had
the rare judgment to allow him to follow his own bent. They employed
the best teachers to instruct him at home. At the age of sixteen he
was fully prepared to enter Christ's College. Cambridge, where he took
both the B.A. and M.A. degrees.

[Illustration: JOHN MILTON, AET. 10.]

His Early Manhood and Life at Horton.--In 1632 Milton left Cambridge
and went to live with his father in a country home at Horton, about
twenty miles west of London. Milton had been intended for the church;
but he felt that he could not subscribe to its intolerance, and that
he had another mission to perform. His father accordingly provided
sufficient funds for maintaining him for over five years at Horton in
a life of studious leisure. The poet's greatest biographer, David
Masson, says "Until Milton was thirty-two years of age, if even then,
he did not earn a penny for himself." Such a course would ruin
ninety-nine out of every hundred talented young men; but it was the
making of Milton. He spent those years in careful study and in writing
his immortal earl