The woody scenery of Harefield, and the personal accomplishments of the countess, are not unfavorable to this supposition; which, if admitted, tends to confirm the opinion that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were composed at Horton. The Masque of Comus, and Lycidas, were certainly produced under the roof of his father." The whole of these poems breathe the spirit of youth, and of scenes like those in which he now dayly rambled. Whether L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were written, as Sir William Jones contends, at Forest Hill, in Oxfordshire, or here, need not be much contested. If they were written there, it must have been many years afterward, after his return from abroad, and after his first marriage; for it was at Forest Hill that he found his wife. But for the reason assigned, and for that of their general spirit, I incline to the belief that they were written at Horton, as there is plenty of evidence that Comus and the Arcades were. These latter poems overflow with the imagery and the feeling of the old wooded scenery of Buckinghamshire. "_Comus._ I know each lane, and every alley green, Dingle, or bushy dell of this wild wood, And every bosky bourne from side to side, My dayly walks and ancient neighborhood." How full of the old pastoral country are these lines: "_Sec. Bro._ Might we but hear The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes, Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock Count the night watches to his feathery dames, 'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering, In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs." There is no other poet who has been able to transfuse the very spirit of nature into words, as it is done in the following passages, except Shakspeare, on whose soul images of rural beauty and repose fell with equal felicity of effect. "This evening late, by then the chewing flocks Had ta'en their supper on the savory herb Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold, I sat me down to watch upon a bank With ivy canopied, and interwove With flaunting honey-suckle, and began, Wrapped in a pleasing fit of melancholy, To meditate my rural minstrelsy, Till Fancy had her fill; but ere a close, The wonted roar was up amid the woods," &c. How exquisite is every image of this passage: