bject the author finding to be
above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what
was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but soon
deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The "Hymn on
the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of far-fetched
prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through strophes of
ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and Child seem
in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity; when
suddenly, by an exquisite turn, the poet sinks back into his original
key, and finally harmonizes his strain by the divine repose of
concluding picture worthy of Correggio:--

"But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid the Babe to rest;
Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable."

In some degree this magnificent composition loses force in our day from
its discordance with modern sentiment. We look upon religions as
members of the same family, and are more interested in their
resemblances than their antagonisms. Moloch and Dagon themselves appear
no longer as incarnate fiends, but as the spiritual counterparts of
antediluvian monsters; and Milton's treatment of the Olympian deities
jars upon us who remember his obligations to them. If the most Hebrew of
modern poets, he still owed more to Greece than to Palestine. How living
a thing Greek mythology was to him from his earliest years appears from
his college vacation exercise of 1628, where there are lines which, if
one did not know to be Milton's, one would declare to be Keats's. Among
his other compositions by the time of his quitting Cambridge are to be
named the superb verses, "At a Solemn Music," perhaps the most perfect
expression of his ideal of song; the pretty but over fanciful lines, "On
a fair Infant dying of a cough;" and the famous panegyric of
Shakespeare, a fancy made impressive by dignity and sonority of
utterance.

With such earnest of a true vocation, Milton betook himself to
retirement at Horton, a village between Colnbrook and Datchet, in the
south-eastern corner of Buckinghamshire, county of nightingales, where
his father had settled himself on his retirement from business. This
retreat of the