This Poem was originally composed in very early youth. It was first published in 1831, and though unfortunately coupled with a very jejune and puerile burlesque called 'The Siamese Twins' (which to my great satisfaction has been long since forgotten), it was honoured by a very complimentary notice in the _Edinburgh Review_, and found general favour with those who chanced to read it. In the present edition, although the conception and the general structure remain the same, many passages have been wholly re-written, and the diction throughout carefully revised, and often materially altered. I have sought, in short, from an affection for the subject (too partial it may be) to give to the ideas which visited me in the freshness of youth, whatever aid from expression they could obtain in the taste and culture of mature manhood. No doubt, however, faults of exuberance in form, as in fancy, still remain, and betray the age in which we scarcely look beyond the Spring that delights us, nor comprehend that the multitude of the blossoms can be injurious to the bearing of the tree. Nevertheless, such faults may find more indulgence among my younger readers than those of an opposite nature, incident to the style, closer and more compressed, which my present theories of verse have led me to adopt in most of the poems I have composed of late years. It will be observed that the design of this poem is that of a picture. It is intended to portray the great Patriot Poet in the three cardinal divisions of life--Youth, Manhood, and Age. The first part is founded upon the well-known, though ill-authenticated, tradition of the Italian lady or ladies seeing Milton asleep under a tree in the gardens of his college, and leaving some tributary verses beside the sleeper. Taking full advantage of this legend, and presuming to infer from Milton's Italian verses (as his biographers have done before me) that in his tour through Italy he did not escape the influence of the master passion, I have ventured to connect, by a single thread of romantic fiction, the segments of a poem in which narrative after all is subservient to description. This idea belongs to the temerity of youth, but I trust it has been subjected to restrictions more reverent than those ordinarily imposed on poetic licence. PART THE FIRST. "Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eve by haunted stream."--L'ALLEGRO. I. It was the Minstrel's merry month of June; Silent and sultry glow'd the breezeless noon; Along the flowers the bee went murmuring; Life in its myriad forms was on the wing; Play'd on the green leaves with the quiv'ring beam, Sang from the grove, and sparkled from the stream, When, where yon beech-tree veil'd the soft'ning ray, On violet-banks young Milton dreaming lay.