sonnet on his three-and-twentieth
year followed. _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ date not before, but probably
not much after, 1632; _Comus_ dating from 1634, and _Lycidas_ from 1637.
All these were written either in the later years at Cambridge, or in the
period of independent study at Horton in Buckinghamshire--chiefly in the
latter. Almost every line and word of these poems has been commented on and
fought over, and I cannot undertake to summarise the criticism of others.
Among the greater memorabilia of the subject is that wonderful Johnsonism,
the description of _Lycidas_ as "harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the
numbers unpleasing;" among the minor, the fact that critics have gravely
quarrelled among themselves over the epithet "monumental" applied to the
oak in _Il Penseroso_, when Spenser's "Builder Oak" (Milton was a
passionate student of Spenser) would have given them the key at once, even
if the same phrase had not occurred, as I believe it does, in Chaucer, also
a favourite of Milton's. We have only space here for first-hand criticism.

This body of work, then, is marked by two qualities: an extraordinary
degree of poetic merit, and a still more extraordinary originality of
poetic kind. Although Milton is always Milton, it would be difficult to
find in another writer five poems, or (taking the _Allegro_ and its
companion together) four, so different from each other and yet of such high
merit. And it would be still more difficult to find poems so independent in
their excellence. Neither the influence of Jonson nor the influence of
Donne--the two poetical influences in the air at the time, and the latter
especially strong at Cambridge--produced even the faintest effect on
Milton. We know from his own words, and should have known even if he had
not mentioned it, that Shakespere and Spenser were his favourite studies in
English; yet, save in mere scattered phrases none of these poems owes
anything to either. He has teachers but no models; masters, but only in the
way of learning how to do, not what to do. The "certain vital marks," of
which he somewhat arrogantly speaks, are indeed there. I do not myself see
them least in the poem on the "Nativity," which has been the least general
favourite. It shows youth in a certain inequality, in a slight overdose of
ornament, and especially in a very inartistic conclusion. But nowhere even
in Milton does the mastery of harmonies appear better than in the exquisite
rhythmical a