From _The Mad Lover_ (produced about 1618: published in 1640). Compare the wooden imitations of Dryden in _Amboyna_ and elsewhere. VI First printed, Mr. Bullen tells me, in 1640. Compare X. (Shirley, _post_, p. 20), and the cry from Raleigh's _History of the World_: 'O Eloquent, Just, and Mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the World hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the World and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched Greatness, all the Pride, Cruelty, and Ambition of Man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, "_Hic Jacet_."' VII, VIII This pair of 'noble numbers,' of brilliant and fervent lyrics, is from _Hesperides, or, The Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrich, Esq._ (1648). IX No. 61, '_Vertue_,' in _The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations_, 1632-33. Compare Herbert to Christopher Farrer, as reported by Izaak Walton:--'Tell him that I do not repine, but am pleased with my want of health; and tell him, my heart is fixed on that place where true joy is only to be found, and that I long to be there, and do wait for my appointed change with hope and patience.' X From _The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses_, printed 1659. Compare VI. (Beaumont, _ante_, p. 15), and Bacon, _Essays_, 'On Death': 'But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is _Nunc dimittis_, when a man hath attained worthy ends and expectations.' XI Written in the November of 1637, and printed next year in the _Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King_. 'In this Monody,' the title runs, 'the Author bewails a Learned Friend unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruine of our corrupted Clergie, then in their height.' King, who died at five- or six-and-twenty, was a personal friend of Milton's, but the true accents of grief are inaudible in _Lycidas_, which is, indeed, an example as perfect as exists of Milton's capacity for turning whatever he touched into pure poetry: an arrangement, that is, of 'the best words in the best order'; or, to go still further than Coleridge, the best words in the prescribed or inevitable sequence that makes the arrangement art. For the innumerable allusions see Professor Masson's edition of Milton (Macmillan, 1890), i. 187-201, and iii. 254-276. XII The Eighth Sonnet (Masson): 'When the Assault was Intended to the City.' Written in 1642, with Rupert and the King at Brentford, and printed in the edition of 1645. XIII The Sixteenth Sonnet (Masson): 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652: On the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel.' Printed by Philips, _Life of Milton_, 1694. In defence of the principle of Religious Voluntaryism, and against the intolerant Fifteen Proposals of John Owen and the majority of the Committee. XIV