few or no signs of belonging to any age or generation in particular of English literature. Butler's poem, the Hudibras, is the only one of its kind; and if its author owes anything to other writers, it is to France and not to England that we must look for its sources. Dryden, again, shows no sign of being related to Shakespeare or the dramatic writers of the early part of the century; he is separated from them by a great gulf; he owes most, when he owes anything, to the French school of poetry.

8. JOHN MILTON (1608-1674), the second greatest name in English poetry, and the greatest of all our epic poets, was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, in the year 1608-five years after the accession of James I. to the throne, and eight years before the death of Shakespeare. He was educated at St Paul's School, and then at Christ's College, Cambridge. He was so handsome-with a delicate complexion, clear blue eyes, and light-brown hair flowing down his shoulders that he was known as the "Lady of Christ's." He was destined for the Church; but, being early seized with a strong desire to compose a great poetical work which should bring honour to his country and to the English tongue, he gave up all idea of becoming a clergyman. Filled with his secret purpose, he retired to Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had bought a small country seat. Between the years 1632 and 1638 he studied all the best Greek and Latin authors, mathematics, and science; and he also wrote L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and some shorter poems. These were preludes, or exercises, towards the great poetical work which it was the mission of his life to produce. In 1638-39 he took a journey to the Continent. Most of his time was spent in Italy; and, when in Florence, he paid a visit to Galileo in prison. It had been his intention to go on to Greece; but the troubled state of politics at home brought him back sooner than he wished. The next ten years of his life were engaged in teaching and in writing his prose works. His ideas on teaching are to be found in his Tractate on Education. The most eloquent of his prose-works is his Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644)—a plea for the freedom of the press, for relieving all writings from the criticism of censors. In 1649the year of the execution of Charles I.-Milton was appointed Latin or Foreign Secretary to the Government of Oliver Cromwell; and for the next ten years his time was taken up with official work, and with writing prose-volumes in defence of the action of the

Republic. In 1660 the Restoration took place; and Milton was at length free, in his fifty-third year, to carry out his long-cherished scheme of writing a great Epic poem. He chose the subject of the fall and the restoration of man. Paradise Lost was completed in 1665; but, owing to the Plague and the Fire of London, it was not published till the year 1667. Milton's young Quaker friend, Ellwood, said to him one day: "Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" Paradise Regained was the result a work which was written in 1666, and appeared, along with Samson Agonistes, in the year 1671. Milton died in the year 1674-about the middle of the reign of Charles II. He had been three times married.

9. L'Allegro (or "The Cheerful Man") is a companion poem to Il Penseroso (or "The Meditative Man"). The poems present two contrasted views of the life of the student. They are written in an irregular kind of octosyllabic verse. The Comus-mostly in blank verse-is a lyrical drama; and Milton's work was accompanied by a musical composition by the then famous musician Henry Lawes. Lycidas—a poem in irregular rhymed verse-is a threnody on the death of Milton's young friend, Edward King, who was drowned in sailing from Chester to Dublin. This poem has been called "the. touchstone of taste;" the man who cannot admire it has no feeling for true poetry. The Paradise Lost is the story of how Satan was allowed to plot against the happiness of man; and how Adam and Eve fell through his designs. The style is the noblest in the English language; the music of the rhythm is lofty, involved, sustained, and sublime. "In reading 'Paradise Lost," says Mr Lowell, one has a feeling of spaciousness such as no other poet gives." Paradise Regained is, in fact, the story of the Temptation, and of Christ's triumph over the wiles of Satan. Wordsworth says: "Paradise Regained' is most perfect in execution of any written by Milton;" and Coleridge remarks that "it is in its kind the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest." Samson Agonistes ("Samson in Struggle") is a drama, in highly irregular unrhymed verse, in which the poet sets forth his own unhappy fate

"Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves."

It is, indeed, an autobiographical poem-it is the story of the last years of the poet's life.

10. SAMUEL BUTLER (1612-1680), the wittiest of English poets, was born at Strensham, in Worcestershire, in the year 1612, four years

after the birth of Milton, and four years before the death of Shakespeare. He was educated at the grammar-school of Worcester, and afterwards at Cambridge-but only for a short time. At the Restoration he was made secretary to the Earl of Carbery, who was then President of the Principality of Wales, and steward of Ludlow Castle. The first part of his long poem called Hudibras appeared in 1662; the second part in 1663; the third in 1678. Two years after, Butler died in the greatest poverty in London. He was buried in St Paul's, Covent Garden; but a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey. Upon this fact Wesley wrote the following epigram :

"While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,

No generous patron would a dinner give;

See him, when starved to death, and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust.

The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,-

He asked for bread, and he received a stone."

11. The Hudibras is a burlesque poem,- -a long lampoon, a laboured caricature,—in mockery of the weaker side of the great Puritan party. It is an imaginary account of the adventures of a Puritan knight and his squire in the Civil Wars. It is choke-full of all kinds of learning, of the most pungent remarks—a very hoard of sentences and saws, "of vigorous locutions and picturesque phrases, of strong, sound sense, and robust English." It has been more quoted from than almost any book in our language. Charles II. was never tired of reading it and quoting from it

"He never ate, nor drank, nor slept,
But Hudibras still near him kept"-

says Butler himself.

The following are some of his best known lines:

"And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn."

"For loyalty is still the same,

Whether it win or lose the game:

True as the dial to the sun,

Altho' it be not shin'd upon."

"He that complies against his will,

Is of his own opinion still."

12. JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700), the greatest of our poets in the second rank, was born at Aldwincle, in Northamptonshire, in the

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year 1631. He was descended from Puritan ancestors on both sides of his house. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. London became his settled abode in the year 1657. At the Restoration, in 1660, he became an ardent Royalist; and, in the year 1663, he married the daughter of a Royalist nobleman, the Earl of Berkshire. It was not a happy marriage; the lady, on the one hand, had a violent temper, and, on the other, did not care a straw for the literary pursuits of her husband. In 1666 he wrote his first long poem, the Annus Mirabilis ("The Wonderful Year"), in which he paints the war with Holland, and the Fire of London; and from this date his life is "one long literary labour." In 1670, he received the double appointment of HistoriographerRoyal and Poet-Laureate. Up to the year 1681, his work lay chiefly in writing plays for the theatre; and these plays were written in rhymed verse, in imitation of the French plays; for, from the date of the Restoration, French influence was paramount both in literature and in fashion. But in this year he published the first part of Absalom and Achitophel—one of the most powerful satires in the language. In the year 1683 he was appointed Collector of Customs in the port of London-a post which Chaucer had held before him. (It is worthy of note that Dryden "translated" the Tales of Chaucer into modern English.) At the accession of James II., in 1685, Dryden became a Roman Catholic; most certainly neither for gain nor out of gratitude, but from conviction. In 1687, appeared his poem of The Hind and the Panther, in which he defends his new creed. He had, a few years before, brought out another poem called Religio Laici ("A Layman's Faith "), which was a defence of the Church of England and of her position in religion. In The Hind and the Panther, the Hind represents the Roman Catholic Church, "a milkwhite hind, unspotted and unchanged," the Panther the Church of England; and the two beasts reply to each other in all the arguments used by controversialists on these two sides. When the Revolution of 1688 took place, and James II. had to flee the kingdom, Dryden lost both his offices and the pension he had from the Crown. Nothing daunted, he set to work once more. Again he wrote for the stage; but the last years of his life were spent chiefly in translation. He translated passages from Homer, Ovid, and from some Italian writers; but his most important work was the translation of the whole of Virgil's Eneid. To the last he retained his fire and vigour, action and rush of verse ; and some of his greatest lyric poems belong to his later years. His ode called Alexander's Feast was written at the age of sixty-six; and it was written at one sitting. At the age of sixty-nine he was meditating a

translation of the whole of Homer—both the Iliad and the Odyssey. He died at his house in London, on May-day of 1700, and was buried with great pomp and splendour in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

13. His best satire is the Absalom and Achitophel; his best specimen of reasoning in verse is The Hind and the Panther. His best ode is his Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew. Dryden's style is distinguished by its power, sweep, vigour, and "long majestic march." No one has handled the heroic couplet— and it was this form of verse that he chiefly used-with more vigour than Dryden; Pope was more correct, more sparkling, more finished, but he had not Dryden's magnificent march or sweeping impulsiveness. "The fire and spirit of the Annus Mirabilis,'" says his latest critic, are nothing short of amazing, when the difficulties which beset the author are remembered. The glorious dash of the performance is his own." His prose, though full of faults, is also very vigorous. It has "something of the lightning zigzag vigour and splendour of his verse." He always writes clear, homely, and pure English,-full of force and point.

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Many of his most pithy lines are often quoted:

"Men are but children of a larger growth."

"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He that would search for pearls must dive below."
"The greatest argument for love is love."

"The secret pleasure of the generous act,
Is the great mind's great bribe."

The great American critic and poet, Mr Lowell, compares him to "an ostrich, to be classed with flying things, and capable, what with leap and flap together, of leaving the earth for a longer or a shorter space, but loving the open plain, where wing and foot help each other to something that is both flight and run at once."

14. JEREMY TAYLOR (1613-1667), the greatest master of ornate and musical English prose in his own day, was born at Cambridge in the year 1613—just three years before Shakespeare died. His father was a barber. After attending the free grammar - school of Cambridge, he proceeded to the University. He took holy orders and removed to London. When he was lecturing one day at St Paul's, Archbishop Laud was so taken by his "youthful beauty, pleasant air," fresh eloquence, and exuberant style, that he had him created