act as his amanuenses, or hear him talk." A sonnet inscribed to one of
these, Henry Lawrence, gives a pleasing picture of the British Homer in
his Horatian hour:--

"Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise."

CHAPTER VI.

"Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds
As flake by flake is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round."

These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the
slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of
those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation. In
most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep.
In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen
years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest. After
two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to
consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country
might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals
of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than
Thamyris and Maeonides. Yet the material of his immortal poem must have
gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so
soon have been transmuted into song. It can hardly be doubted that his
cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life.
Remanded thus to solemn meditation, he would gradually rise to the
height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in
comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation
he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point
when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing,
as always hitherto, the impulse of others. We cannot tell what influence