noble numbers,' of brilliant and fervent lyrics,
is from _Hesperides, or, The Works both Human and Divine of
Robert Herrich, Esq._ (1648).

IX

No. 61, '_Vertue_,' in _The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private
Ejaculations_, 1632-33. Compare Herbert to Christopher Farrer,
as reported by Izaak Walton:--'Tell him that I do not repine,
but am pleased with my want of health; and tell him, my heart
is fixed on that place where true joy is only to be found, and
that I long to be there, and do wait for my appointed change
with hope and patience.'

X

From _The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses_, printed 1659. Compare
VI. (Beaumont, _ante_, p. 15), and Bacon, _Essays_, 'On Death':
'But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is _Nunc
dimittis_, when a man hath attained worthy ends and expectations.'

XI

Written in the November of 1637, and printed next year in the
_Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King_. 'In this Monody,'
the title runs, 'the Author bewails a Learned Friend unfortunately
drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And
by occasion foretells the ruine of our corrupted Clergie, then
in their height.' King, who died at five- or six-and-twenty, was
a personal friend of Milton's, but the true accents of grief are
inaudible in _Lycidas_, which is, indeed, an example as perfect
as exists of Milton's capacity for turning whatever he touched
into pure poetry: an arrangement, that is, of 'the best words
in the best order'; or, to go still further than Coleridge, the
best words in the prescribed or inevitable sequence that makes
the arrangement art. For the innumerable allusions see Professor
Masson's edition of Milton (Macmillan, 1890), i. 187-201, and
iii. 254-276.

XII

The Eighth Sonnet (Masson): 'When the Assault was Intended to the
City.' Written in 1642, with Rupert and the King at Brentford,
and printed in the edition of 1645.

XIII

The Sixteenth Sonnet (Masson): 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May,
1652: On the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for
Propagation of the Gospel.' Printed by Philips, _Life of Milton_,
1694. In defence of the principle of Religious Voluntaryism,
and against the intolerant Fifteen Proposals of John Owen and
the majority of the Committee.

XIV

The Eighteenth Sonnet (Masson). 'Written in 1655,' says Masson,
and referring 'to the persecution instituted, in the early part
of the year, by Charles Emmanuel II., Duke of Savoy