playing he sat with a rapt, transfigured face, such as might well have called forth the Italian's encomium, thirty years before,—"If thy piety were equal to thy understanding, figure, eloquence, beauty and manners, verily thou wouldest not be an Angle but an Angel!"

And, now, good Tom," quoth Milton to the young man, "let us to work: the day moves on apace." They went upstairs to the study. "Before we read, I have some forty lines to set down," continued the poet, "all day they have been knocking for admission, and with that last music they made entrance. Needs must I house them now in ink and paper."

"I am instant at thy bidding, friend," and Elwood seated himself with dutiful alacrity at the table. Milton, placing himself obliquely athwart his elbow-chair, with one leg thrown across the arm, dictated forty lines, almost in a breath,—they burst from him, as it would seem, in a stream no longer to be restrained.

"Gently, gently, good sir!" exclaimed Elwood, "slow-witted and slow fingered I may be,—but I cannot keep pace with thee!"

A grim smile hovered over Milton's full lips, "Out of practice, Tom," he replied indulgently, "it is a long while since I required this service at thy hands. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, as I have told thee, my muse lies dumb,

and silent as the moon

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

But now the winter is overpast, the singing of birds is heard in our land, and she too awakes and sings. With the vernal equinox my thoughts flow free as Helicon." Then, with slow and deliberate diction, he repeated the lines once more: and, having had them read aloud to him, he compressed, condensed, concentrated every thought and phrase, and reduced them to twenty.

"There is more to come?" queried Elwood, his quill poised ready to write.

"No more. Not one word more at present," replied Milton, sighing as though somewhat exhausted.

His inspiration was entirely intermittent: and sometimes he would lie awake all night, trying, but without success, to complete one single line to his liking. "They please me not wholly, these lines," he continued, "much remains to be done before I set them down to be changed no more."

"Not every man would say so," replied Elwood, "the learning and erudition whereof these few lines alone give witness, would supply many with just cause for boasting throughout a lifetime."

Milton shook his head. "Pomp and ostentation of reading," he remarked, "is admired among the vulgar: but in matters of religion, he is learnedest who is plainest."

IL PENSEROSO. Painting by S. Meteyard.

"And may at last my weary age

Find out the peaceful hermitage,

The hairy gown and mossy cell,

Where I may sit and rightly spell

Of every star that heaven doth show."

(IL Penseroso.)

"Yet, Mr. Milton, thee hast the reputation of such scope and range of wisdom, as the greatest scholar in Europe might fitly envy. To me, I confess, in my poor unlettered ignorance, it is not conceivable in what manner thee acquired so great and witty powers."

"I gathered them not of mine own strength," said Milton, "but they were mine for the asking and endeavour, and any man may obtain them in like fashion. I ceased not, nor will cease, in devout prayer to the Holy Spirit, that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and