In _Lycidas_ (1637) we have reached the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production. A period of a century and a half was to elapse before poetry in England seemed, in Wordsworth's _Ode on Immortality_ (1807), to be rising again towards the level of inspiration which it had once attained in _Lycidas_. And in the development of the Miltonic genius this wonderful dirge marks the culminating point. As the twin idylls of 1632 show a great advance upon the _Ode on the Nativity_ (1629), the growth of the poetic mind during the five years which follow 1632 is registered in _Lycidas_. Like the _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, _Lycidas_ is laid out on the lines of the accepted pastoral fiction; like them it offers exquisite touches of idealised rural life. But _Lycidas_ opens up a deeper vein of feeling, a patriot passion so vehement and dangerous, that, like that which stirred the Hebrew prophet, it is compelled to veil itself from power, or from sympathy, in utterance made purposely enigmatical. The passage which begins "Last came and last did go", raises in us a thrill of awe-struck expectation which. I can only compare with that excited by the Cassandra of Aeschylus's _Agamemnon_. For the reader to feel this, he must have present in memory the circumstances of England in 1637. He must place himself as far as possible in the situation of a contemporary. The study of Milton's poetry compels the study of his time; and Professor Masson's six volumes are not too much to enable us to understand that there were real causes for the intense passion which glows underneath the poet's words--a passion which unexplained would be thought to be intrusive. The historical exposition must be gathered from the English history of the period, which may be read in Professor Masson's excellent summary. All I desire to point out here is, that in _Lycidas_, Milton's original picturesque vein is for the first time crossed with one of quite another sort, stern, determined, obscurely indicative of suppressed passion, and the resolution to do or die. The fanaticism of the covenanter and the sad grace of Petrarch seem to meet in Milton's monody. Yet these opposites, instead of neutralising each other, are blended into one harmonious whole by the presiding, but invisible, genius of the poet. The conflict between the old cavalier world--the years of gaiety and festivity of a splendid and pleasure-loving court, and the new puritan world into which love and pleasure were not to enter--this conflict which was commencing in the social life of England, is also begun in Milton's own breast, and is reflected in _Lycidas_. For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill. Here is the sweet mournfulness of the Spenserian time, upon whose joys Death is the only intruder. Pass onward a little, and you are in presence of the tremendous Two-handed engine at the door,