Mr. L. I don't dispute your word, kind sir, about that sort of value-not that I quite comprehend what picturesque is-but I make not the least manner of doubt, that you would catch fish in that water there, if you would but try your hand. Only try, sir, do. Sh. (sneering.) Why, the fact is, my men have sometimes caught a few red herrings, and a stock-fish or two; but I do not encourage the fishery, for those sorts do not agree with my stomach. Mr. L. Dear now-why, bless me!-Oh ho, Mr. Shenstone, I smell a rat; you love a joke. No, no, we don't get our Lent saltfish from the Leasowes. But I am quite rested now; may we go on? Sh. (aside.) Come, the booby is good humoured; but would it were over. (Aloud.) Stop, sir, stop; don't go through that gate— it is meant to come in at, not to go out by. Mr. L. Oh, I find no difficulty in getting through it. Sh. How perverse it is, that you will not understand me-I mean, sir, that it will lead you to take the wrong point of view. That walk is so laid out, as to be entered at the other end. The prospects suit best in that direction. Here, sir, here-how do you fancy this lawn ? Mr. L. It is a nice place indeed; if it was levelled, 'twould make a good bowling-green. It is a good deal like a place I used to go to, only the statue there was a shepherdess, and this is I don't know exactly what-'twas a tea-garden at Hoxton, where— Sh. Pray, sir, don't mention such odious puppet-shows. This urn is inscribed to the memory of the late Mr. Somerville, the poet of The Chase. You may have heard Dodsley mention him. Mr. L. I have, sir. Now, though that urn is of a good size, I have sold jars of real china nearly as big-I have indeed. Oh, then, that statue is the gentleman's monument!-Dear, what a very odd looking man he must have been-he has amazingly large ears, and great bumps, almost like horns, on his forehead! Sh. I wish, Mr. Ludgate, you would keep to your crockeryware comparisons; yet it is too ridiculous to be angry at. Heaven help your bow-bell wits! that is a cast of the piping Fawn, and not an image of Mr. Somerville. But come, come, we will leave this seat. Our next post is beyond those willows. This rough building is, you see, dedicated to my noble friend the Earl of Stamford. Mr. L. And pray, sir, may I be so bold as to ask what my lord does with it? Does he keep any thing there? Sh. Do with it? Pshaw, sir, he was present at the opening of that water-fall; and the building is named after him, to commemorate that occasion, and his friendship for me. After we have passed through that piece of forest ground, there is something that will, I presume, gratify you. Now, sir, here it is-read what is on that stone. Mr. L. (Reads.) TO MR. DODSLEY. "Come then, my friend, thy sylvan taste display; The care of other strains, and tune thine own," What! and so you have erected a tombstone to our friend Robert? But Doddy isn't dead yet. Is it not rather unusual, sir, to do it beforehand? Sh. A tombstone! no such thing-a mere appropriation of the spot to the memory of a worthy man-a record of my respect for him-a compliment to a brother poet. However, sir, we must get forward—not so fast either-this bench will hold us both, while we look towards the Priory. Mr. L. Why, your seats are so many-and, to say the truth, I a'n't at all tired, and don't in the least want to sit so soon again; and, besides, I had a little touch of gout last autumn. But, as you please, good sir, I'm conformable. Those pales round the Priory are rather roughish. What d'ye think, sir, of a neat Chinese railing? My wife has ordered ever so many yards of it for our fence. Sh. Mrs. Ludgate may copy the designs on your quondam cups and saucers, and welcome; but I am not at all smitten with the teapot taste now in vogue. I derive my hints from paintings of another sort. Mr. L. Every one to his liking-no affront, I hope. But what is here?-a bowl, I protest. "To all our friends round the Wre kin." Sh. That famous hill is seen from this station. It is the distant one which lies in that direction. Mr. L. Is it indeed? I have heard talk of it. you have a syllabub out of this bowl sometimes. Now, I dare say, Sh. No, sir, my beechen bowl has never been honoured (I should prefer saying, profaned) by such a rus-in-urbe beverage. Mr. L. Then, sir, what do you drink out of it? Sh. Pshaw, sir, there it stands, and looks in character; and the inscription is apt, and that is enough. Excuse me, for I am tired of whys and whats and wherefores. And you, sir, I am sure you are tired also. Now, I can assure you, that it is not worth while for you to go over the rest of the place; for there is nothing in the whole walk but wood and water, and shrubs and grass, and rocks and banks, and all that sort of things, with a few busts and inscriptions which you won't care a farthing for. Let me show you the short way to Hales Owen. Mr. L. Why, I can't deny but that I thought I should see a garden full of flowers and fountains, and arbours and shell-work; but it has been all the world like taking a long walk by Hampstead and Highgate, with a peep into a churchyard now and then. However, as you are satisfied, I suppose you intended to make the place such as it is-didn't you, sir? Sh. Yes, sir. I am strangely deficient in love for terraces, and yew peacocks, and smoking arbours, and ninepin alleys. I am afraid this sight-seeing has been as dull to you as it would have been to me to witness your unpacking some crates of delft ware. My compliments to Dodsley. That high road leads straight to Hales Owen-you can't miss it. I wish you a good morning.-0 what a blessed riddance! Milton at Chalfont. Milton. Is the plague abated, Elwood, or does it still walk onward in its strength, commissioned as it is to chastise this evil nation? Elwood. No, John Milton, it hath not ceased. The deaths indeed are some deal fewer, but the pestilence retains the same hold of the guilty city. It gladdeneth me, however, friend, to think that thou camest at my suggestion to this Zoar of Chalfont, where, under God, thou art, as it seemeth, aloof from peril. Mil. Worthy friend, your care of me is not to be requited by thanks. The service you will have rendered to a later age, by saving me, must be your recompense. Blind as I am, crippled in my joints, and with the snows of premature age drifted among these locks of brown, I yet feel that I have that within which will make the world my debtor. These our times will not perchance acknowledge the obligation, for it is an age of slavery and frivolity, of shallowness and impiety, of profane jesting and depraved indulgence. Our writers no longer drink from the cisterns of their forefathers, but turn towards France, and draw their waters at her noisy but scanty fountains, while the wells of poesy in our native land are full even to overflowing, pure as drops of unswept dew, and wholesome as noon-tide breezes on the hills in summer. Chaucer, and Spenser, and Shakspeare, are cast aside, and mouldiness is creeping over their covers, while a vile book of love-songs, some rhymester's sorry tragedy, or a miscellany, half-part folly and halfpart lasciviousness, occupies the hands and heads of our wits and beauties. I trow I shall give them more substantial food, when I print the manuscript which I entrusted you with. But their cloyed appetites and debile stomachs will peradventure be unable to digest what has its basis in scripture, and its ornaments from diligent study of ancient and modern lore. Elw. I have brought thy papers safely back. Mil. And have you given the work an attentive perusal? Elw. I have, friend John, and truly I may say, thou hast descanted on the lapse of our first parents very pertinently; but what aileth thee that thou hast not put rhymes to thy lines? they are not hexameters, or according to other classic metre-they are much one, I wot, as the verses in Abraham Cowley's Davideis; and yet neither he nor any other Englishman, as far as my poor knowledge goes, hath dispensed with rhymes in a narrative poem. Mil. Rhyme is no necessary adjunct or true ornament of good verse; it is but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre. Elw. Then this is an experiment of thine, is it not? Mil. In some measure-for true it is, that most of the famous modern poets, carried away by custom, and much to their own vexation and hindrance and constraint, have submitted to the bondage of rhyme. But both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note, have rejected it both in longer and shorter works; and in even our own English tragedies it has been cast aside, much to their advantage, so I claim not the invention of the metre, but only its application to a new purpose for which it is highly eligible. Elw. Thou knowest, John Milton, that my religious persuasion forbiddeth me to be acquainted with the stage; and I have thought it right to abstain even from looking at the printed works of the much vaunted William Shakspeare. Mil. Ay, in him, independently of the admirable matter, which 'tis pity that the fanatical notions of your sect cut you off from enjoying, you would find excellent specimens of the nobleness and beauty of this metre. Rhyme is a trivial thing, and of no true musical delight; for that consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse to another, and not in the jingling sound of like endings, which, among the learned ancients, was ever in disrepute, and avoided as a fault, both in poetry and all good oratory. In Shakspeare, however, whose purpose led him to employ this verso sciolto (as the Italians call it) in colloquies, you would find that he was not tied up to the metrical strictness I have submitted to-his is made more familiar greater license and flexibility were essential to his design-not but that he hath passages of memorable and well sustained excellence, even if they be only rhythmically considered, much more if the skill, the imagination, the power, which revel in them, be taken into account. How can you defraud yourself, by such narrowness of mind, of such a treat, especially as you do not scruple to read the ancient dramatists? Where is the difference betwixt them? Elw. We have talked of that before. I prefer telling thee what I thought of thy poem concerning Lost Paradise. I confess, that, though at first I thought thy metre prosaic, and lacking something of an accustomed delight, yet, before I had finished all thy ten books, I found such charming varieties of cadence, such continuousness and prolongation of a new kind of harmony, such suitableness of sound to the lofty import of the sense, that I could almost conceive that there was a resemblance between it and the pieces of grand music, which I have erst-while heard thee play upon thy organ. Mil. Ah, you are getting the better of your prejudices. Mark me, such, however tardy the avowal may be in coming, will be the general and permanent opinion concerning this mode of verse, well exercised. The neglect of rhyme, in a poem of magnitude, and on a solemn and weighty subject, is so little to be taken for a defect, (for that will be the cry when it first appears,) that this emprize of mine is rather to be esteemed the first good example set in England, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poetry, from the troublesome and new fangled bondage of rhyming. Elw. Well, better judges than I am will determine upon thy success in this particular; but no one, John, will have a more friendly feeling of joy, if thine honest reputation is enlarged thereby. Mil. I want not the buzz of contemporary applause, and I know that I shall not have it, Elwood. A petulant lampoon, a scrap of prurient sing-song, or a graceless fling at those sacred oracles, to which I have resorted for a subject, will find fitter audience than my theme can be expected to do in these degenerate times. The music of the songs of Zion is discord to the ears of the sons of Belial. Elw. Pity is it that it is so; and yet, John Milton, solemn as thine argument is, and decorously as thou hast treated it, canst thou, without offence, denominate it a song of Zion? Remember, the still small voice of the Spirit whispered those songs only into favoured ears of old. Mil. Why, good friend, what are your scruples? I do not insinuate that my production is any new portion of revelation. Nevertheless, what hinders but that it be the effect of a sacred efflux upon my spirit, the work of inspiration? Elw. What! canst thou fancy a poem, John, to be the dictate of that sacred One, who is the comforter of the faithful? Is not this thing of thine a piece of verse-work, and merely meant to be the amusement of idle hours? Mil. My poem is designed for no such unworthy end. The whole strength of no mean or inglorious mind has been applied to the creation of it. Not without frequent prayer to the enlightening source of all intellect, was it resolved upon; and as I hold, not without obtaining direction and illumination from above, was it accomplished. What, Elwood! shall your brethren in their conventicles lay claim to a perception of a Divine afflatus, and I will not dispute the truth of their assertions, illiterate and immethodical as their rhapsodies are, and therefore bearing small evidence to those beyond your pale of communion, that the spirit of knowledge has prompted them-and shall I, who have felt within me that exaltation above my common self, those powers of reaching in thought beyond this visible diurnal sphere, those concomitant promptings of pregnant matter, and meet harmonious language, those periodical unveilings of the mental eyes which at other whiles were as dark as these faded corporeal orbs which roll uselessly beneath this channelled forehead-shall I, who have found the tenor of my voutest aspirations answered, who have arisen from prostration before the Divine footstool with the new sense of inner light im de |