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and vaulted aisles of a venerable cathedral, of tilts and tournaments, of masques and pageantries, is wholly repugnant to the anti-poetical principles which he afterwards adopted. We doubt exceedingly whether Milton can be held to have turned Puritan to the extent in which Warton accepts the term. Milton was a republican in politics, and an asserter of liberty of conscience, independent of Church government, in religion. But the constitution of his mind was utterly opposed to the reception of such extreme notions of formal fitness as determined the character of a Puritan. There has been something of exaggeration and mistake in this matter. For example: Warton, in a note on that passage in the epistle to Deodati in which Milton is supposed to allude to Shakspere's tragedies, says, His warmest poetical predilections were at last totally obliterated by civil and religious enthusiasm. Seduced by the gentle eloquence of fanaticism, he listened no longer to the "wild and native wood-notes of Fancy's sweetest child." In his "Iconoclastes" he censures King Charles for studying "one, whom we well know was the closet-companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare." This remonstrance, which not only resulted from his abhorrence of a king, but from his disapprobation of plays, would have come with propriety from Prynne or Hugh Peters. Nor did he now perceive that what was here spoken in contempt conferred the highest compliment on the elegance of Charles's private character.' Mr. Waldron had the merit of pointing out, some fifty years ago, that the passage in the Iconoclastes' to which Warton alludes gives not the slightest evidence of Milton's listening no longer to Fancy's sweetest child,' nor of reproaching Charles for having made Shakspere the closet-companion of his solitudes.' Milton is arguing— with the want of charity certainly which belongs to an advocate that the deepest policy of a tyrant hath been ever to counterfeit religious;' and, applying this to the devotion of the Icon Basilike,' he thus proceeds :- The poets also, and some English, have been in this point so mindful of decorum as to put never more pious words in

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the mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall no instance an abstruse author, wherein the King may be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closetcompanion of his solitudes, William Shakespeare, who introduces the person of Richard III. speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage in this book' (the 'Icon Basilike'). He then quotes a speech of Shakspere's Richard III., and adds, 'The poet used not much licence in departing from the truth of history.' If Milton had meant to reproach Charles with being familiar with Shakspere, the reproach would have recoiled upon himself, in evidencing the same familiarity. There was, in truth, scarcely a greater disparity between the clustering locks of Milton and the cropped hair of the Roundheads, than between his abiding love of poetry and music and the frantic denunciations of both by such as Prynne. Prynne, for example, devotes a whole chapter of the 'Histriomastix' to a declamation against effeminate, delicate, lust-provoking music,' in which the mildest thing he quotes from the Fathers is, 'Let the singer be thrust out of thy house as noxious; expel out of thy doors all fiddlers, sing ing-women, with all this choir of the devil, as the deadly songs of syrens.' Compare this with Milton's sonnet, pub lished in 1648, To my Friend, Mr. Henry Lawes,'-the royalist Henry Lawes :

Harry, whose tuneful and well-measur'd song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas' ears, committing short and long;

Thy worth and skill exempt thee from the throng,
With praise enough for envy to look wan;

To after age thou shalt be writ the man

That with smooth air couldst humour best our tongue.'

Doubtless since 'Comus' was presented at Ludlow Castle in 1634, and Lawes composed and sung some of its lyrics, up to the period when Milton wrote the Iconoclastes,' the elegancies, the splendours, the high triumphs, the antique pageantries, which so captivated the youthful

poet, had given place to sterner things. In his own mind, especially, that process of deep reflection was going forward which finally made him a zealous partisan and a bitter controversialist; but which was blended with purer and loftier aspirations than usually belong to politics or polemics. But his was an age of deep thinkers and resolute actors. The leaders and the followers then of either party were sincere in their thoughts and earnest in their deeds. They were not a compromising and evasive generation. There was no mistaking their friendships or their enmities. Milton early chose his part in the great contention of his times. Amidst the classical imagery of Lycidas we have his bitter denunciations against the hirelings of the Church, who

Creep, and intrude, and climb into
the fold.'

He would not enter the service
of that Church himself lest
he should be called upon to
'subscribe slave.' To that
vocation, however, he says,
'I was destined of a child
and in mine own resolutions.'
That he was impatient of
what he considered the ty-

ranny which interfered between a service so suited to his character was to be expected from the ardour of his nature: but we can scarcely think that in those lines of Lycidas. written in 1637

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'But that two-handed engine at the door

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more

he anticipates, as some have maintained, the execution of Archbishop Laud. Matters were scarcely then come to that pass. But yet Laud in 1637 had some unpleasant demonstrations of the temper of the times. In that year Bastwick, Burton, and Prynne were sentenced by the Star Chamber, That each of the defendants should be fined five thousand pounds; that Bastwick and Burton should stand in the pillory at Westminster, and there lose their ears: and that Prynne, having lost his ears before by sentence of this court, should have the remainder of his ears cut off, and should be branded on both cheeks with the letters S. L., to signify a seditious libeller.' The execution to the tittle of this barbarous sentence maddened and disgusted those who looked upon the spectacle. Laud's Diary, for two months after this revolting exhibition, contains some very significant entries, recording the libels which it produced. A short libel pasted on the cross in Cheapside described him as the arch-wolf of Canterbury; another, on the south gate of St. Paul's, informed the people that the devil had let that house to the Archbishop; another, fastened to the north gate, averred that the government of the Church of England is a candle in the snuff going out in a stench. These were warnings; but power is apt to look upon own pomp, and forget that the day of humiliation and weakness may arise. Howell, in one of his letters written in the year of Laud's execution, says, 'Who would have dreamt ten years since, when Archbishop Laud did ride in state through London streets, accompanying my Lord of London, to be sworn Lord High Treasurer of England, that the mitre should have now come to such a scorn, to such a national kind of hatred? In those eventful days such

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contrasts were not unfrequent; and they sometimes followed each other much more closely than the triumphal procession of Laud, and his execution. On the 25th of November, 1641, the city of London welcomed Charles from Scotland with an entertainment of unusual magnificence; and the historian of the city, after revelling in his description of aldermen and liverymen, to the number of five hundred, mounted on horseback, with all the array of velvet and scarlet and golden chains,-of conduits running with claret, -of banquetings and loyal anthems, says, The whole day seemed to be spent in a kind of emulation, with reverence be it spoken, between their Majesties and the City; the citizens blessing and praying for their Majesties and their princely issue, and their Majesties returning the same blessings upon the heads of the citizens.' In 1642, not quite a year after these pleasant gratulations, Milton wrote the following noble sonnet:

'WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY.

'Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms,

Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,

If deed of honour did thee ever please,

Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
He can requite thee, for he knows the charms
That call fame on such gentle acts as these.
And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,
Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms,
Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bow'r:
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tow'r
Went to the ground: and the repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet had the pow'r

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.'

On the 25th of August, 1642, the King erected his standard on Nottingham Castle. Essex, as Generalissimo of the Parliament forces, had already marched upon Northampton. The King's army was advancing towards the capital; and London, with its vast suburbs, required to be put in a state of defence. It was on this occasion that