This enjoyment," continues the critic, in the spirit of a true reader, luxuriating over a beautiful thought, "this enjoyment, which is highly imagined, was a relaxation from the duties of his peculiar charge, in the depth of midnight, when the world is locked up in sleep and silence."* The music of the spheres is the old Platonic or Pythagorean doctrine; but it remained for Milton to render it a particular midnight recreation to "purged ears," after the earthly toils of the day. And we partake of it with the Genius. We may say of the love of nature, what Shakspeare says of another love, that it

Adds a precious seeing to the eye.

And we may say also, upon the like principle, that it adds a precious hearing to the ear. This and imagination, which ever follows upon it, are the two purifiers of our sense, which rescue us from the deafening babble of common cares, and enable us to hear all the affectionate voices of earth and heaven. The starry

orbs, lapsing about in their smooth and sparkling dance, sing to us. The brooks talk to us of solitude. The birds are the animal spirits of nature, carolling in the air, like a careless lass.

The gentle gales,

Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense

Native perfumes; and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils.-Paradise Lost, Book iv.

The poets are called creators (IIonraí, Makers) because with their magical words they bring forth to our eyesight the abundant images and beauties of creation. They put them there, if the reader pleases; and so are literally creators. But whether put there or discovered, whether created or invented (for invention

*If the reader wishes to indulge himself in a volume full of sheer poetry with a pleasant companion, familiar with the finest haunts of the Muses, he cannot do better than get Warton's Edition of the Minor Poems of Milton. The principal notes have been transferred by Mr. Todd to the sixth volume of his own valuable edition of Milton's Poetical Works but it is better to have a good thing entire.

us.

means notring but finding out), there they are. If they touch us, they exist to as much purpose as anything else which touches If a passage in King Lear brings the tears into our eyes, it is real as the touch of a sorrowful hand. If the flow of a song of Anacreon's intoxicates us, it is as true to a pulse within us as the wine he drank. We hear not their sounds with ears, nor see their sights with eyes; but we hear and see both so truly, that we are moved with pleasure; and the advantage, nay even the test, of seeing and hearing, at any time, is not in the seeing and hearing, but in the ideas we realize, and the pleasure we derive. Intellectual objects, therefore, inasmuch as they come home to us, are as true a part of the stock o. nature, as visible ones; and they are infinitely more abundant. Between the tree of a country clown and the tree of a Milton or Spenser, what a difference in point of productiveness! Between the plodding of a sexton through a church-yard, and the walk of a Gray, what a difference! What a difference between the Bermudas of a ship-builder and the Bermoothes of Shakspeare! the isle

Full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not;

the isle of elves and fairies, that chased the tide to and fro on the sea-shore; of coral-bones and the knell of sea-nymphs: of spirits dancing on the sands, and singing amidst the hushes of the wind; of Caliban, whose brute nature enchantment had made poetical; of Ariel, who lay in cowslip bells, and rode upon the bat; of Miranda, who wept when she saw Ferdinand work so hard, and begged him to let her help; telling him,

I am your wife, if you will marry me;

If not, I'll die your maid. To be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant.
Whether you will or no.

Such are the discoveries which the poets make for us: worlds, to which that of Columbus was but a handful of brute matter. America began to be richer for us the other day, when Hum.

bold came back and told us of its luxuriant and gigantic vegetation; of the myriads of shooting lights, which revel at evening in the southern sky; and of that grand constellation at which Dante seems to have made so remarkable a guess (Purgatorio, Cant. i., V. 22). The natural warmth of the Mexican and Peruvian genius, set free from despotism, will soon do all the rest for it; awaken the sleeping riches of its eye-sight, and call forth the glad music of its affections,

To return to our parks or landscapes, and what the poets can make of them. It is not improbable that Milton, by his Genius of the Grove at Harefield, covertly intended himself. He had been applied to by the Derbys to write some holiday poetry for them. He puts his consent in the mouth of the Genius, whose hand, he says, curls the ringlets of the grove, and who refreshes himself at midnight with listening to the music of the spheres; that is to say, whose hand confers new beauty on it by its touch, and who has pleasure in solitude far richer and loftier than those of mere patrician mortals.

See how finely Ben Jonson enlivens his description of Penshurst, the family-seat of the Sydneys: now with the creations of classical mythology, and now with the rural manners of the time.

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show,

Or touch, of marble; nor canst boast a row

Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold;

Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told :
Or stairs, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile:
And these, grudged at, are reverenced the while.
Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air,

Of wood, of water: therein thou art fair.
Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport;
Thy mount, to which the Dryads do resort;
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made
Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade;
That taller tree, which of a nut was set
At his great birth, where all the Muses met.*
There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names
Of many a Silvan, taken with his flames:

Sir Philip Sydney.

And thence the ruddy Satyrs oft provoke
The lighter fawns to reach thy lady's oak.
Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,
That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer,
When thou wouldst feast, or exercise thy friends.
The lower land, that to the river bends,

Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed,
The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed:
Each bank doth yield thee conies; and thy tops
Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sydney copse,
To crown,-thy open table doth provide
The purple pheasant with the speckled side.

Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.
The early cherry, with the later plum,

Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come
The blushing apricot, and woolly peach,

Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach :
And though thy walls be of the country stone,
They're rear'd with no man's ruin, no man's groan;
There's none that dwell about them wish them down.
But all come in, the farmer and the clown,

And no one empty-handed, to salute

Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.

Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,

Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make
The better cheeses, bring 'em; or else send
By their ripe daughters, whom they would commerd
This way to husbands; and whose baskets bear
An emblem of themselves in plum or pear.

Imagination enriches everything. A great library contains not only books, but

The assembled souls of all that men held wise.

Davenant.

The moon is Homer's and Shakspeare's moon, as well as the one we look at. The sun comes out of his chamber in the east, with a sparkling eye, "rejoicing like a bridegroom." The commonest thing becomes like Aaron's rod, that budded. Pope called up the spirits of the Cabala to wait upon a lock of hair, and justly gave it the honors of a constellation; for he has hung it, sparkling for ever, in the eyes of posterity. A common mea.

dow is a sorry thing to a ditcher or a coxcomb; but by the help of its dues from imagination and the love of nature, the grass brightens for us, the air soothes us, we feel as we did in the daisied hours of childhood. Its verdures, its sheep, its hedgerow elms, all these, and all else which sight, and sound, and associations can give it, are made to furnish a treasure of pleasant thoughts. Even brick and mortar are vivified, as of old, at the harp of Orpheus. A metropolis becomes no longer a mere collection of houses or of trades. It puts on all the grandeur of its history, and its literature; its towers, and rivers; its art, and jewellery, and foreign wealth; its multitude of human beings all intent upon excitement, wise or yet to learn; the huge and sullen dignity of its canopy of smoke by day; the wide gleam upwards of its lighted lustre at night-time; and the noise of its many chariots, heard at the same hour, when the wind sets gently towards some quiet suburb.