times over, and never going out without a little Horace in his pocket. The poet Wordsworth was exceedingly fond of Horace, and so was a man as unlike Wordsworth as can be imagined, the fat Louis XVIII., King of France after Waterloo. This king, it is said, did actually know very many of the poems of Horace by heart.

It was the strong desire of Horace that he might not live longer than his beloved friend Mecenas. His words, expressive of this wish, have been well translated:

"Ah! if untimely fate should snatch thee hence,

Thou, of my soul a part,

Why should I linger on with deadened sense

And ever aching heart,

A worthless fragment of a fallen shrine?

No, no! one day beholds thy death and mine!"

This desire was destined to be gratified. The two friends did not, indeed, depart this life on the same day, but in the same year. Mecenas died in July, bequeathing Horace to the friendship of Augustus. Horace died in November of the same year, which was the eighth before the birth of Christ.

Horace was a short man, inclining to corpulency, of a happy disposition, and much disposed to innocent merriment; simple in his habits; not less pleased when mingling with the people in the market-place, or supping at home upon bread and onions, than when reclining in the banqueting room of the emperor's palace. And again the question occurs, Why should so many of the grave people of New England name their children after this merry poet?

B 16 f 16.74 66%

MILTON.

THE father of John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, was precisely such a man as we should naturally expect the father of John Milton to be. He also was named John, and he was the son of a substantial English Catholic farmer, who disinherited him because he turned Protestant. Coming to London in quest of fortune, he set up in the business of notary and conveyancer, in which he gained a considerable fortune. The very spot in Broad Street, near Cheapside, where his house stood, in which he lived and worked, and in which the poet was born, is known and pointed out to strangers. Houses were not numbered then, but distinguished by signs. Over the door of a bookseller there would be a gilt Bible, perhaps; over a baker's store a sheaf of wheat, and some men would mark their houses by a sign having no reference to their occupation. John Milton, scrivener, distinguished his office and abode by putting up over the entrance a black spread eagle, the arms of his family.

This thriving notary, besides being a man of reading and culture, was a composer of music, and some of his compositions, which were published in his lifetime, have been found in musical works of that day. We have reason to believe, too, that he was a man of liberal opinions both in politics and religion, equally opposed to the tyranny of kings and the intolerance of bishops. Of the mother of the poet we know two interesting facts. One is, that she kept the peace in her household; and the other, that at the early age of thirty she had weak eyes. Of the five children of this couple, three survived childhood, Anne, John, and Christopher. Anne, who was twice married, transmitted a little of the family talent to her children, some of whom obtained some slight celebrity as writers in the reign

1.

of James II. But Christopher, who was seven years younger than the poet, was a man of such slender understanding, and so wanting in spirit, as to adhere to the cause of Charles I. in the war which that mean, false king waged against the liberties of his countrymen. All through the shameful reign of Charles II. he was a partisan of the king. James II. knighted him, and made him a judge, as a reward for his subserviency, and he was one of the servile judges who lost their places when James II. ran away to France, and made a vacancy on the throne for a man, William III.

John Milton owed the bent and nurture of his mind to his father. His father was his first instructor, particularly in music, and when the boy was ten years old, he provided for him a tutor of eminent qualifications. This good parent early discovered the prodigious genius of his son, and he made the culture of that genius the chief object of his existence. The poet was enabled, by his father's liberality, to pass the first thirty-one years of his life in gaining knowledge and cultivating his faculties. Until he was thirty-one, John Milton was a student, and nothing but a student; first, at home, at his father's side; next at a great London grammar-school; then at Cambridge University; afterwards at his father's house in the country; and finally in foreign countries. During all this long period of preparation he was a most diligent, earnest, and intense student. He was probably the best Latin scholar that ever lived who was not a native Roman of Cicero's day. At the same time, I rejoice to state, he was an excellent swordsman. If a bandit had attacked him during his Italian tour, he could have given a very good account of himself. This student, let me tell you, young gentlemen, was no dyspeptic spooney.

It was during his residence in Italy that his literary ambition was born. From an early period of his youth he had been accustomed to write Latin poems, some of which he carried to Italy and showed to his learned friends there. They were struck with wonder that a man from distant England should have attained such mastery of the Latin language, and they were not less astonished that a Briton should be so excellent a poet. It was the.r hearty praise, he says in one of his letters, that first

suggested to him the idea of devoting his life to literature. Then and there it was, he tells us, that he began to think that "by labor and intent study" he might, perhaps, produce something so written that posterity would not willingly let it die. A great Christian poem was the object to which he aspired. He desired to do for England what Homer had done for Greece, Virgil for Rome, Dante for Italy, and Camoens for Portugal. It was in Italy, too, that he saw those religious dramas, representing the temptation of Adam and Eve and its consequences, which are supposed to have given him the idea of his Paradise Lost.

While he was indulging in these pleasing dreams under the deep blue of the Italian sky, the news came to him that civil war was about to break out in England. All the patriot and all the republican awoke within him. Just as many American citizens travelling in Europe in 1861 hastened to return home and take their part in their country's danger, so did this poet and scholar turn his steps homeward when he heard that hostilities were imminent between his countrymen and their perjured king. "I thought it dishonorable," said he, "that I should be travelling at ease for amusement, when my fellow-countrymen at home were fighting for liberty."

Farewell, Poetry, for twenty years!

When Milton returned to his native land, after two years' absence, it was not at his father's house that he found a home. His brother Christopher, then a lawyer beginning practice, had established himself at Reading, a country town of more importance then than now; and their father had gone to live with him. Christopher Milton was already a declared royalist, and his house was no fit abode for the republican poet. John Milton preferred to reside in London, where he took a few pupils to prepare for the university, and spent his leisure in defending by his eloquent pen the cause of his oppressed country. These were his employments for many years, until Oliver Cromwell /~ appointed him his Latin secretary. Milton was a thorough-going believer in Oliver Cromwell, and was proud to serve the ablest ruler that England ever had.

He was extremely unfortunate, as poets usually are, in his relations with women. Until he was thirty-five he lived a bach

elor, and it had been better for him, perhaps, if he had remained such all his life. In his thirty-fifth year, just as the civil war was actually beginning, he went into the country, telling no one the object of the journey. A month after he returned home a married man, bringing his wife with him. She was a good enough country girl, the daughter of an old friend of Milton's father, but as unsuitable a wife for John Milton as any woman in England. She was rather stupid, very ignorant, fond of pleasure, accustomed to go to country balls and dance with gay young officers. Milton was a grave, austere student, absorbed in the weightiest public topics, and living only in his books and in his thoughts. The poor girl found his house so intolerably dull, that, after a short trial of it, she asked leave to go home for a short visit, and, being at home, she positively refused to go back. He was not less disgusted with her; and his sufferings leading him to study the great questions of marriage and divorce, he came to the conclusion that divorce ought to be about as free and about as easy as marriage. He published divers pamphlets on this subject, the substance of which is this: that when man and wife, after a fair and full trial, find they cannot live together in peace, and both deliberately choose to separate, there ought to be no legal obstacle to their doing so ; provided always that proper provision be made for the support and education of the children.

During the troubles of the civil war, his wife's family being driven from their home, he took them all into his house, with his own aged father, and so they again lived together. They had three daughters, who resembled their mother more than their father, and who loved him little more than she did. She died when the youngest of these children was an infant in arms. Three years after, he was married again, and in less than a year he was left again a widower. Six years later he married his third wife, who was twenty-eight years younger than himself, who survived him for the long period of fifty-five years. This last marriage was embittered by ceaseless contentions between his daughters and his wife, of which Milton lays the blame upon his daughters. He says his wife was good and kind to him in his blind old age, but that his daughters were undutiful and in