_Milton_ wrote 5 sonnets in Italian, which were translated by Cowper. In them he followed Petrarch in his subject. It was in his 18 English sonnets, that he has given to this form of poetry its true elevation and dignity. Instead of applying it, like his predecessors, to love meditations, expressive of fictitious or real affection, he made it the instrument of conveying most important moral, patriotic, and religious sentiments. The following is a sonnet of Milton, who died in 1675. It was addressed to A VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY. "Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth Wisely hast shunn'd the broad way and the green, And with those few art eminently seen, That labor up the hill of heav'nly truth, The better part with Mary and with Ruth Chosen thou hast; and they, that overween, And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. Thy care is fix'd, and zealously attends To fill thy od'rous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night, Hast gain'd thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure." It will be seen, that he combined with his rhymes much of the freedom and force of blank verse. He never allows the absence of good strong sense nor the presence of unmeaning or useless words in order to make out the rhyme. By printing his sonnets compactly without separating the stanzas from each other Milton carried on his sentences, as he found desirable, from stanza to stanza, frequently without any close at the end of a stanza, sometimes just beginning near the end. In this case the separation of the stanzas by spaces would evidently be absurd. Read the last five lines of his sonnet to Cromwell:―― "Peace hath her victories No less renown'd than war: new foes arise Threat'ning to bind our souls with sec'lar chains.―― Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." Here, in the method of separating the stanzas by wider spaces in printing, the phrase "new foes arise" would have been separated from the line which follows, with which it is so intimately connected,――the head line of the last triplet. The author may here be allowed to say, that in his judgment in the whole compass of English poetry there are no sonnets equal to a few of Milton's, numbered 8, 9, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22 and 23. If any one would know, whether Milton's meditations brought out sentiments worthy of utterance, and whether he knew how to utter them with the melody of rhyme and at the same time with the unshackled freedom and energy of blank verse, I leave with him for his refreshment the following lines from his sonnet on his own Blindness:――