"pealed with noises loud and ruinous." The age of Shakespeare
was irrecoverably past, and it was impossible for any but a few
imperturbable Cyrenaics, like Herrick, to "fleet the time carelessly, as
they did in the golden world." The large indifference of Shakespeare to
current politics was impossible for Milton. "I had as lief be a Brownist
as a politician," said the folly of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the wisdom
of Shakespeare. But now the Brownists and the politicians had it their
own way; and Milton was something of both.

His notable early poems, written at College and during his retreat in
Buckinghamshire, have therefore a singular interest and pathos. He was
not long for the world in which these poems move with so ineffable a
native grace. They are the poems of his youth, instinct with the
sensibility of youth, and of a delicate and richly nurtured imagination.
But they are also the poems of an age that was closing, and they have a
touch of the sadness of evening. "I know not," says Dr. Johnson, speaking
of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, "whether the characters are kept
sufficiently apart. No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy, but I
am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." It is true;
for both characters are Milton himself, who embodies in separate poems
the cheerful and pensive elements of his own nature--and already his
choice is made. There is something disinterested and detached about his
sketches of the merriment which he takes part in only as a silent
onlooker, compared with the profound sincerity of the lines--

And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.

The rising tide of political passion submerged the solemn Arcadia of his
early fancies. Like Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and the
shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous world." Hence there may
be made a whole index of themes, touched on by Milton in his early poems,
as if in promise, of which no fulfilment is to be found in the greater
poems of his maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth is
often treated, both by those who applaud and by those who lament it, as
if it were the merest interlude between two poetic periods. It was not
so; political passion