‘Oh fountain Arethuse, and thou honour’d flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown’d with vocal reeds, That strain I heard was of a higher mood; But now my oat proceeds, And listens to the herald of the sea That came in Neptune’s plea. He ask’d the waves, and ask’d the felon winds, What hard mishap hath doom’d this gentle swain? And question’d every gust of rugged winds That blows from off each beaked promontory. They knew not of his story: And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon stray’d, The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters play’d.’ If this is art, it is perfect art; nor do we wish for anything better. The measure of the verse, the very sound of the names, would almost produce the effect here described. To ask the poet not to make use of such allusions as these, is to ask the painter not to dip in the colours of the rainbow, if he could. In fact, it is the common cant of criticism to consider every allusion to the classics, and particularly in a mind like Milton’s, as pedantry and affectation. Habit is a second nature; and, in this sense, the pedantry (if it is to be called so) of the scholastic enthusiast, who is constantly referring to images of which his mind is full, is as graceful as it is natural. It is not affectation in him to recur to ideas and modes of expression, with which he has the strongest associations, and in which he takes the greatest delight. Milton was as conversant with the world of genius before him as with the world of nature about him; the fables of the ancient mythology were as familiar to him as his dreams. To be a pedant, is to see neither the beauties of nature nor of art. Milton saw both; and he made use of the one only to adorn and give new interest to the other. He was a passionate admirer of nature; and, in a single couplet of his, describing the moon,— ‘Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,’— there is more intense observation, and intense feeling of nature (as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her), than in twenty volumes of descriptive poetry. But he added to his own observation of nature the splendid fictions of ancient genius, enshrined her in the mysteries of ancient religion, and celebrated her with the pomp of ancient names. ‘Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscrib’d with woe. Oh! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake.’