n composed the _Penseroso_ in the aisle of
a cloister, or in an ivy-grown abbey.

_Comus_ is a noble poem, philosophic and tender, but neither pastoral nor
dramatic, except in form; it presents the power of chastity in disarming
_Circe, Comus_, and all the libidinous sirens. _L'Allegro_ and _Il
Penseroso_ were written at Horton, about 1633.

_Lycidas_, written in 1637, is a tender monody on the loss of a friend
named King, in the Irish Channel, in that year, and is a classical
pastoral, tricked off in Italian garb. What it loses in adherence to
classic models and Italian taste, is more than made up by exquisite lines
and felicitous phrases. In it he calls fame "that last infirmity of noble
mind." Perhaps he has nowhere written finer lines than these:

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed.
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
_Flames in the forehead of the morning sky_.

Besides these, Milton wrote Latin poems with great vigor, if not with
remarkable grace; and several Italian sonnets and poems, which have been
much admired even by Italian critics. The sonnet, if not of Italian
origin, had been naturalized there when its birth was forgotten; and this
practice in the Italian gave him that power to produce them in English
which he afterward used with such effect.

PARADISE LOST.--Having thus summarily disposed of his minor poems, each of
which would have immortalized any other man, we come to that upon which
his highest fame rests; which is familiarly known by men who have never
read the others, and who are ignorant of his prose works; which is used as
a parsing exercise in many schools, and which, as we have before hinted,
has furnished Protestant pulpits with pictorial theology from that day to
this. It occupied him several years in the composition; from 1658, when
Cromwell died, through the years of retirement and obscurity until 1667.
It came forth in an evil day, for the merry monarch was on the throne, and
an irreligious court gave tone to public opinion.

The hardiest critic must approach the _Paradise Lost_ with wonder and
reverence. What an imagination, and what a compass of imagination! Now
with the lost peers in Hell, his glowing fancy projects an empire almost
as grand and glorious as that of God himself. Now with undazzled,
presumptuous gaze he stands face to face with the Almighty, and records
the words falling from His lips; words w