and bewildered by contact with a perverted style.

Even thus hampered, however, his genius could not help sending out an occasional herald voice; and we do not have to look far to find exceptions to all that has just been said concerning these early efforts. Curiously enough, the very first line of his recorded composition,

"When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son," Aritten at fifteen, has the true Miltonic gravity and largeness. In the "Vacation Exercise," in close connection with the longing there expressed to use his native language in some great poetic emprise, we find an expression of his disgust at the ingenuities so dear to the heart of the "metaphysicals," those

"New-fangled toys ard trimming slight, Which take our late fantastics with delight." His lines on Shakespeare show an appreciation of that sane master completely at variance with the stiff exaggeration of its concluding verses, which are quite in the concettistic spirit. It should not go unchronicled either, that in the lines on the death of Hobson, the University carrier, Milton showed at least a seasonable desire to be humorous.

But it is the hymn On the Morning of Christ's Nativity which allows us to read his early title clear. A good deal of reservation, it is true, has to be made even here. The poem has to an extreme degree the Jacobean vice of diffuseness, possibly caught in this instance from the beautiful religious epic of Giles Fletcher, Christ's Victory and Triumph on Earth and in Heaven; the metre of the induction is certainly imitated from that poem, and an occasional quaint dulcity of expression, such as,

"See how from far upon the Eastern road The star-led Wizards haste with odours sweet," seems as certainly caught from it. The opening description of Nature's attempt to hide her sin under a covering of snow at

the moment of the Saviour's birth, the sun's shamed reluctance to rise because of the presence of a greater Sun, and the drolly prosaic figure in the next stanza from the last, where the sun is pictured in bed, with cloud curtains drawn about him and his chin pillowed upon a wave, -over all this

is the trail of affectation and mistake. In places, too, where the thought becomes more sincere, the imagery remains unplastic. The descent of "meek-eyed Peace," for example, in the third stanza, reminds one of the stage-contrivances of a court masque; and the figures of Truth, Justice, and Mercy, in stanza fifteen, have the same disillusioning suggestion. But when all reservation is made, and all the unvitalized matter counted out, there remains enough true poetry in the Hymn to have furnished forth a lesser man for immortality. Scattered lines and even stanzas of splendid utterance occur throughout, but the grand manner begins in earnest with the nineteenth

XII

Such music (as 't is said)

Before was never made,

The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss,

So both himself and us to glorify:

For, if such holy song

Enwrap our fancy long,

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for from this happy day
The Old Dragon under ground,

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway, And, wroth to see his Kingdom fail,

171

of Gold;

And speckled Vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous Sin will melt from earthly

mould;

And Hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the

peering day.

XV

Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

140

No nightly trance, or breathèd spell, Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the pro

phetic cell.

XX

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

180

A voice of weeping heard and loud la

ment;

From haunted spring, and dale

Edgèd with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

To this translation there is prefixed in the original editions the words: This and the following Psalm were done by the Author at fifteen years old." They are the earliest of Milton's compositions of which we have record, and the only ones dating from the period of his school-life at St. Paul's. Whether they were self-elected tasks or appointed exercises is unknown. The diction employed in them shows strongly the influence of the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, made popular in England early in the seventeenth century through Sylvester's translation.