[173] The Connoisseur, by Mr. Towne, vol. I, p. 350, a new edition, 1822.
On her return she repeated, at request, her lines on Melancholy: “Her voice is low and gives a hollow sound, etc.” quoted above: whereupon Milton, who, with Shakespeare, had helped her to dismount, “seemed very much chagrined, and it was whispered by some that he was obliged for many of the thoughts in his ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’ to this lady’s dialogue between Mirth and Melancholy”.
Well! Who knows? But what a contrast to the blinking lamps, tapers small, and shadows against the wall, of the Duchess, is Milton’s—
Hence, loathed Melancholy
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,
Find out some uncouth cell, etc.
The beginning of L’Allegro.
Or, again, the Duchess’s summers hot, fresh green grass, and music the buzzing of a fly, to Milton’s—