THE DESCRIPTION OF CASTARA.

LIKE the violet which alone
Prospers in some happy shade;
My Castara lives unknowne,
To no looser eye betray'd,

For shee's to herself untrue,
Who delights i' th' publicke view.

Such is her beauty, as no arts
Have enrich't with borrowed grace.
Her high birth no pride imparts,
For she blushes in her place.
Folly boasts a glorious blood,
She is noblest being good.

Cautious she knew never yet
What a wanton courtship meant;
Nor speaks loud to boast her wit,
In her silence eloquent.

Of herself survey she takes,

But 'tweene men no difference makes.

She obeyes with speedy will

Her grave parents' wise commands:
And so innocent, that ill,

She nor acts, nor understands.

Women's feet runne still astray
If once to ill they know the way.

She sailes by that rocke, the court,
Where oft honour splits her mast:
And retir'dnesse thinks the port,
Where her fame may anchor cast.
Vertue safely cannot sit,

Where vice is enthron'd for wit.

She holds that daye's pleasure best,
Where sinne waits not on delight;
Without maske, or ball, or feast,
Sweetly spends a winter's night.

O're that darknesse whence is thrust,
Prayer and sleepe oft governs lust.

She her throne makes reason climbe,
While wild passions captive lie;
And each article of time,

Her pure thoughts to heaven flie:
All her vowes religious be,

And her love she vowes to me.

TO CASTARA.

GIVE me a heart where no impure
Disorder'd passions rage,
Which jealousie doth not obscure,
Nor vanity t' expence ingage,

Nor wooed to madnesse by queint oathes,
Or the fine rhetoricke of cloathes,

Which not the softnesse of the age

To vice or folly doth decline;

Give me that heart (Castara) for 'tis thine.

Take thou a heart where no new looke

Provokes new appetite:

With no fresh charm of beauty tooke,

Or wanton stratagem of wit;

Not idly wandring here and there,

Led by an am'rous eye or eare.

Aiming each beautious marke to hit;

Which vertue doth to one confine:

Take thou that heart, Castara, for 'tis mine.

And now my heart is lodg'd with thee,

Observe but how it still

Doth listen how thine doth with me;

And guard it well, for else it will
Runne hither backe; not to be where

I am, but 'cause thy heart is here.

But without discipline, or skill,

Our hearts shall freely 'tweene us move:

Should thou or I want hearts, wee'd breath by love.

JOHN MILTON, the son of John Milton, a scrivener, was born on the 9th of December, 1608, in the parish of All Hallows, Bread-street, London. The opportunities of a learned education lay within his reach, and he availed himself of them to the uttermost. His youth was a youth of intense study. Ab anno ætatis duodecimo viz unquam ante mediam noctem a lucubrationibus cubitum discederem. Poetry, however, the latest source of his glory and satisfied desire, was the earliest also. It was his first emotion and his last-the life that chanced between, the troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes into which he was suddenly thrown, served only to make that final haven, which was ever his hope, a repose of grander and more collected glory. The "inward prompting" never abandoned him "that by labour and intense study. (which I take to be my portion in this life,) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times as they should not willingly let die." He entered Cambridge, but the barren system of University teaching offended him, and he quitted it in disgust. He had, besides, other motives. "By the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined from a child to the service of the Church. I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and began with servitude and forswearing." He took refuge from divinity in his father's house in Buckinghamshire. "Do you ask what I am meditating, my Deodati? By the help of heaven, an immortality of fame!" He had even then, numbering four or five and twenty years, achieved it! He had written the Ode on Christ's Nativity-one of the grandest, the sublimest, and most various of his poems-Arcades, Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas. Shortly after this he went abroad-met Marvell there-visited the great and injured Galileoand confessed the influence of Leonora Baroni, La Bella Adriana, whose inexpressible charms of voice and of personal beauty he has made immortal.

Suddenly a sound from England arrested his further travel. "I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad while my fellow citizens were fighting for liberty at home." He returned, and from that hour devoted his services to the State, in schemes for the education of youth (which he practically illustrated), and in the composition of treatises of political and religious government, unequalled in majesty and richness of style. With modest pride he says, "I exercised that freedom of discussion which I loved. Others, without labour or desert, got the possession of honours and emoluments; but no one ever knew me, either soliciting any thing myself, or through the medium of my friends; ever beheld me in a supplicating posture at the doors of the senate or the halls of the great." Calmly and contentedly he remained a schoolmaster, limited in his resources ("my life has not been inexpensive, in learning and voyaging about"), until 1649-"when after the subversion of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic, I was surprised by an invitation from the council of state, who desired my services in the office of foreign affairs." This appointment he owed, we think, to the influence of President Bradshaw, a relative by marriage. The successive marriages of the Poet himself can only be alluded to. His first wife was utterly unworthy of his genius and affectionate care; his second wife proved to him an "espoused saint" indeed, full of love, sweetness, and goodness;-and his third wife, the young partner of his age, devoted herself to his necessities, and with her loving solicitude made him "not alone," although "in darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, and solitude." The world owes to this excellent woman a debt of honour and of gratitude, which has never been sufficiently paid. It is unnecessary to allude to the changes which had left Milton thus "blind but bold." On Sunday the 8th of November, 1674, he died with silent calmness-having finished the great works to which in his earliest and his latest days he had sanctified his wonderful genius.

The character of those works may be described in one word, that word conveying the accomplishment of the utmost conceivable grandeur. They were EPIC. Passion in them reaches us through the medium of imagination, grand and distant, but permanent and universal. Character in them is simple, not various, subject only to the mightiest circumstances, and elevated to the sublimest sphere of action. Tributary to these Milton exercises every function of the poet, sweetness, natural imagery, unparalleled beauty of description, thought, and fancy. In force of style no, one, we think, has ever approached him.

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night raven sings;

There under ebon shades, and low brow'd rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

But come, thou Goddess, fair and free,
In Heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,

And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as some sages sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a-maying,
There on beds of violets blue,

And fresh-blown roses wash't in dew,
Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,
So bucksom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,

Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles,

Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastick toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew

To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-towre in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spight of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:

While the cock with lively din

Scatters the rear of darknes thin,

And to the stack, or the barn-dore,

Stoutly struts his dames before,

Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
Chearly rouse the slumb'ring morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,

Through the high wood echoing shrill :