hundred pages; and is divided into seven “Days” or Cantos, as follows:

1* Day: The Chaos.

5th Day: The Fishes and Fowls. 2nd Day: The Elements.

6th Day: The Beasts and Man. 3rd Day: The Sea and Earth.

7th Day: The Sabaoth. 4* Day: The Heavens, Sun, Moon, etc.

Each Canto treats of the part of the work of Creation indicated by the prefixed heading; and in each the poet accumulates such particulars of Natural History, according to the knowledge then possessed, as related themselves to the subject of the Canto. In the first Canto are described the emergence out of Chaos and the creation of Elemental Light; in the second there is an ample display of crude meteorological knowledge; in the third the poet passes on to his geology, mineralogy, and botany; in the fourth he expounds his astronomy, which, by the bye, is decidedly anti-Copernican; in the fifth and sixth we have his zoology in all its branches, with elucidations of the human anatomy and physiology somewhat in the spirit of a Bridgewater treatise; and in the last, after a quaint picture of the Deity resting from his works and contemplating them as a whole, the poet becomes doctrinal and reflective. The following passage from the third Canto, describing the creation of the forest and fruit trees, is characteristic:

'No sooner spoken, but the lofty Pine
Distilling pitch, the Larch yield-turpentine,
The ever-green Box, and gummy Cedar sprout,
And the airy mountains mantle round about;
The mast-full Oak, the useful Ash, the Holm,
Coat-changing Cork, white Maple, shady Elm,
Through hill and plain ranged their plumed ranks.
The winding rivers bordered all their banks
With slice-sea Alders, and green Osiers small,
With trembling Poplars, and with Willows pale,
And many trees beside, fit to be made
Fucl, or Timber, or to serve for shade.

The dainty Apricock (of Plums the prince)
The velvet Peach, gilt Orange, downy Quince,
Already bear, grav'n in their tender barks
God's powerful providence in open marks.
The scent-sweet Apple, and astringent Pear,
The Cherry, Filberd, Walnut, Meddeler,

The milky Fig, the Damson black and white,
The Date and Olive, aiding appetite,
Spread everywhere a most delightful Spring,
And everywhere a very Eden bring.”

The second Part of the Poem, entitled metaphorically “ The Second Week,” is, though unfinished, considerably longer than the first. It is a metrical paraphrase of the Sacred History of the World, as related in the Hebrew Scriptures, as far as the Books of Kings and Chronicles. It is divided into metaphorical “Days,” each corresponding to an epoch in the Sacred History, and each entitled by the name of a man representative of that epoch. The finished portion includes four “Days,” entitled Adam, Noah, Abraham, and David. Three more “ Days," entitled respectively Zedechias, Messias and the Eternal Sabbath, were to have been added had the author lived to fulfil his entire plan, as indicated in the invocation with which the first Book commences :

“Great God, which hast this world's birth made me see,
Unfold his cradle, show his infancy:
Walk thou, my Spirit, through all the flowering alleys
Of that sweet Garden, where through winding valleys
Four lively floods crawled: tell me what misdeed
Banisht both Eden's Adam and his seed:
Tell who, immortal mortalizing, brought us
The balm from Heaven which hopéd health hath wrought us:
Grant me the story of thy Church to sing,
And gests of Kings: Let me this total bring
From thy first Sabaoth to his fatal tomb,
My style extending to the Day of Doom.”

It will be time enough hereafter to speak of Milton's recollections of Sylvester's Du Bartas when he in his turn came to sing of Eden, and Man's Fall and Restoration. Meanwhile, it is with his early readings of Du Bartas, Spenser, and other poets, that we are bound, by the concord of time, to connect his own first efforts in English verse. According to Aubrey, he had been a poet from the age of ten. Of his boyish attempts in versification, however, the earliest that remain are two preserved by himself, and published in his later life, with the intimation that they were written when he was “ fifteen years old,” — i. e. in 1624, the last year of his stay at St. Paul's School. They are translations or paraphrases into English of two of the Psalms. We give them both (the second somewhat abridged) with the titles prefixed to them by himself:

A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV.

(This and the following Psalm were done by the Author at fifteen years old.]

“When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son

After long toil their liberty had won,
And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan land,
Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand,
Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown,
His praise and glory were in Israel known.
That saw the troubled sea, and shivering fled,
And sought to hide his froth-becurled head
Low in the earth; Jordan's clear streams recoil,
As a faint host that hath received the foil.
The high huge-bellied mountains skip like rams
Amongst their ewes, the little hills like lambs.
Why fled the Ocean? And why skipt the Mountains ?
Why turnéd Jordan toward his crystal fountains ?
Shake, Earth; and at the presence be aghast
Of Him that ever was and aye shall last,
That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,
And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush!

PSALM CXXXVI.

Let us, with a gladsome mind,
Praise the Lord, for he is kind:

For his mercies aye endure,

Ever faithful, ever sure.
Let us blaze his name abroad,
For of Gods he is the God:

For, etc.

*

Who by his wisdom did create
The painted heavens so full of state:

For, etc.
Who did the solid Earth ordain
To rise above the watery plain:

For, etc.

Who, by his all-commanding might,
Did fill the new-made world with light:
For, etc.

And cause the golden-tresséd sun
All the day long his course to run:

For, etc.
The hornéd moon to shine by night,
Amongst the spangled sisters bright:

For, etc.
• He, with his thunder-clasping hand,
Smote the first-born of Egypt-land:

For, etc.
And, in despite of Pharaoh fell
He brought from thence his Israel:

For, etc.
The ruddy waves he cleft in twain
Of the Erythræan main:

For, etc.
The floods stood still, like walls of glass,
While the Hebrew bands did pass :

For, etc.
But full soon they did devour
The tawny king with all his power:
For, etc.

*
All living creatures he doth feed,
And with full hand supplies their need:

For, etc.
Let us therefore warble forth
His mighty majesty and worth:

For, etc.
That his mansion hath on high
Above the reach of mortal eye:

For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.

Warton, Todd, Mr. Dunster and others, who have examined with minute attention these two earliest extant specimens of Milton's verse, find in them rhymes, images, and turns of expres-sion which were almost certainly suggested by Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer, Fairfax and Buchanan. Thus, in the second of the two,“golden-tresséd sun” is either a version of Buchanan's “solem auricomum” in his Latin version of the same Psalm, or it is directly borrowed from Chaucer in Troilus and Cresseide :

“The golden-tresséd Phebus high on loft."

The phrase “Erythræan main” for the Red Sea, is Sylvester's; and the word “ruddy,” as applied to the waves of this “Erythræan,” comes from him. “Warble forth,” which sounds so quaintly in the last stanza but one, is also Sylvester's. The much-admired “ tawny king” as a name for Pharaoh is traced by Todd to Fairfax's Tasso published in 1600 :

Conquer'd were all hot Afric's tawny kings.”

Much of this criticism seems to us overstrained, and unfair to the young poet, who was quite capable of the “golden-tressed sun," and even of the “ tawny king” for himself. Still the proof is clear that, in translating, he made free use of phrases lying before him in books, and also that, among the English poets, Sylvester was the one whose rhymes and cadences dwelt most familiarly in his ear. The first of the two paraphrases is Sylvester all over. “Froth-becurled head ” is quite in his manner; 6 recoil ” and “foil,” and “ crush ” and “gush,” are among his stereotyped rhymes; the whole measure is Sylvester's; and these two lines, conspicuous for their dissyllabic endings, look as if Sylvester had written them:

“Why fled the Ocean? And why skipt the Mountains ?

Why turned Jordan from his crystal fountains ? "

Apart from the imitative faculty shown in the verses, they have real poetic merit. They are clear, firmly-worded, and harmonious. Dr. Johnson's opinion of them, it is true, is not high : “They raise,” he says, “no great expectations; they would in any numerous school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.” But Apollo himself, when at school, would hardly, we fancy, have “excited wonder” in paraphrasing a Psalm.

The young poet had, of course, his friends about him to whom he showed his first attempts in composition. It is certain, at least, that the younger Mr. Gill was not left in ignorance of these or any other contemporary efforts of his favorite pupil in his own metrical art. Young Gill, indeed, was the person who, at this time, stood most nearly in that position of literary Mentor to Milton, which Young had formerly occupied. Four years later, Milton, writing to him from College, and enclosing some compositions of that date for his inspection, compliments him as one whom he knows to be