n!

* * * * *

Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere,
So may'st thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all heaven's harmonies.

And again, the description of Chastity, in the same poem, is inimitable in
the language:

So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her.

HIS SCHOLARSHIP.--It is unnecessary to state the well-known fact, attested
by all his works, of his elegant and versatile scholarship. He was the
most learned man in England in his day. If, like J. C. Scaliger, he did
not commit Homer to memory in twenty-one days, and the whole of the Greek
poets in three months, he had all classical learning literally at his
fingers' ends, and his works are absolutely glistening with drops which
show that every one has been dipped in that Castalian fountain which, it
was fabled, changed the earthly flowers of the mind into immortal jewels.

Nor need we refer to what every one concedes, that a vein of pure but
austere morals runs through all his works; but Puritan as he was, his
myriad fancy led him into places which Puritanism abjured: the cloisters,
with their dim religious light, in _Il Penseroso_--and anon with mirth he
cries:

Come and trip it as you go,
On the light fantastic toe.

SONNETS.--His sonnets have been variously estimated: they are not as
polished as his other poems, but are crystal-like and sententious, abrupt
bursts of opinion and feeling in fourteen lines. Their masculine power it
was which caused Wordsworth, himself a prince of sonneteers, to say:

In his hand,
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains....

That to his dead wife, whom he saw in a vision; that to Cyriac Skinner on
his blindness, and that to the persecuted Waldenses, are the most known
and appreciated. That to Skinner is a noble assertion of heart and hope:

Cyriac, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear
To outward view, of blemish and of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot:
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?