Thyself
Art skilful to associate verse with airs
Harmonious, and to give the human voice
A thousand modulations.—
Such distribution of himself to us
Was Phœbus' choice; thou hast thy gift, and I
Mine also; and between us we receive,
Father and Son, the whole inspiring God!
ad patrem.
[146] There is extant a prose letter from Milton to Holstentius, the librarian of the Vatican, in which he accounts as one of his greatest pleasures at Rome, that of having known and heard Leonora.
[147] A Miss Davies. "The father (says Hayley) seems to have been a convert to Milton's arguments; but the lady had scruples. She possessed (according to Philips) both wit and beauty. A novelist could hardly imagine circumstances more singularly distressing to sensibility than the situation of the poet, if, as we may reasonably conjecture, he was deeply enamoured of this lady; if her father was inclined to accept him as a son-in-law, and the object of his love had no inclination to reject his suit, but what arose from a dread of his being indissolubly mated to another."—Life of Milton, p. 90.
—I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors or without, still as a fool
In power of others, never in my own, &c.
samson agonistes.
[149] Todd's Life of Milton—See also Milton's Will, which has been lately recovered, and published by Warton.
[150] Aubrey's Letters.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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