unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription, facetiously termed the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, had set a mark on the poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by name to the hatred of a profligate court and an inconstant people! Venial and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman, were now the favorite writers of the sovereign and the people. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these, his muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque,-lofty, spotless and serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rabble of satyrs and goblins.

"If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen nor fretful. Such as it was, when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly

beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be, when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die.

"Hence it was, that though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to fade, even in those minds from which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and delightful in the physical and moral world. Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer, nor a more healthful sense of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, and the coolness of shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of the chivalric tourna ments, with all the pure and quiet affection of an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of the mir acles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and the myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.

"His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high and an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind-at the very height of the great conflict between liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on the same

cast with the freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles, which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with a strange and unwonted fear. Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton was, the most devoted and eloquent champion. We need not say how much we admire his public conduct."

SHAKSPERE.*

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, the greatest of dramatic poets, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, April 23, 1564. When he was but three months old, his birth-place was visited by pestilence, and one seventh part of the inhabitants were swept away; but it did not enter the dwelling of his parents. His father, John Shakspere, was a man of respectable standing, and for several years high bailiff, or chief magistrate of Stratford. He appears to have been a landed proprietor, and of the rank of a gentleman, though he doubtless engaged in some kinds of business. It has been said that he was a butcher; but this is a mistake, occasioned by the fact, that another John Shakspere, who was of this trade, lived in Stratford. The name of Shakspere was common in that town, and some confusion has arisen in the obscurity which shrouds the history of the great poet, from that circumstance. His mother, Mary Arden, of Wellingcote, in the

* The name is usually spelt Shakspeare, but it appears, on good authority, that the poet spells it as above. This orthography is, therefore, adopted by the best authorities.