The exquisite poems to which Milton gave the Italian titles L'Allegro,--the mirthful, or jovial, man,--and Il Penseroso,--the melancholy, or saturnine, man,--should be regarded each as the pendant and complement of the other, and should be read as a single whole. The poet knew both moods, and takes both standpoints with equal grace and heartiness. The essential idea of thus contrasting the mirthful and the melancholy temperament he found ready to his hand. Robert Burton had prefaced his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, published in 1621, with a series of not unpleasing, though by no means graceful, amoebean stanzas, in which two speakers alternately represent Melancholy, one as sweet and divine, and the other as harsh, sour, and damned. Undoubtedly Milton knew his Burton. But if he got his main idea from this source, he made his poems thoroughly Miltonic by his art of visualizing in delicious pictures the various phases of his abstract theme. The poems are wholly poetical, equally free from obscurity of thought and from obscurity of expression. Each poem is prefaced with a vigorous exorcism of the spirit to which it is hostile. This is couched in alternate three and five accent iambics, preparing a delicious rhythmic effect when the metre changes, in the invocation, to the octosyllable, with or without anacrusis. In L'Allegro we accompany the mirthful man through an entire day of his pleasures, from early morning to late evening. The melancholy man moves through a programme less definitely and regularly planned. The scenes of his delights are mostly in the hours of the night: when the sun is up, he hides himself from day's garish eye. L'Allegro. 2. Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born. Milton follows the example of the ancient poets in announcing the parentage of the principal beings whom he brings upon his stage. Moreover, he uses the ancient freedom in assigning mythical pedigrees, not only adopting no authority as a canon, but allowing his own fancy to invent origins as suits his purpose. He knew the Greek and Latin poets, and assumed for himself the privilege which they exercised of shaping the myths as they pleased. We are not therefore to seek in Milton a reproduction of any system of mythology. _Cerberus_ was the terrible three-headed dog of Pluto. His station was at the entrance to the lower world, or the _Stygian cave_. 3. The Stygian cave is so called from the Styx, the infernal river, "the flood of deadly hate." 5. some uncouth cell. _Uncouth_ may be used here in its original sense of _unknown_, as in Par. Lost VIII 230. 10. In dark Cimmerian desert. The Cimmerians were a people fabled by the ancients to live in perpetual darkness. 12. yclept is the participle of the obsolete verb _clepe_, with the ancient prefix _y_, as in ychained, Hymn on the Nativity 155.