With pleasant liquors crown’d: O innocence
Deserving Paradise! if ever, then,
Then had the sons of God excuse to have been
Enamour’d at that sight; but in those hearts
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy
Was understood, the injur’d lover’s Hell.’
The character which a living poet has given of Spenser, would be much more true of Milton:
——‘Yet not more sweet
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise;
High Priest of all the Muses’ mysteries.’