Sweet Echo, sweeter nymph that liv’st unseen
Within thy airy shell,
By slow Meander’s margent green!

* * * * *

Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere,
So may’st thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all heaven’s harmonies.

And again, the description of Chastity, in the same poem, is inimitable in the language: 

So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her.

HIS SCHOLARSHIP.—­It is unnecessary to state the well-known fact, attested by all his works, of his elegant and versatile scholarship.  He was the most learned man in England in his day.  If, like J. C. Scaliger, he did not commit Homer to memory in twenty-one days, and the whole of the Greek poets in three months, he had all classical learning literally at his fingers’ ends, and his works are absolutely glistening with drops which show that every one has been dipped in that Castalian fountain which, it was fabled, changed the earthly flowers of the mind into immortal jewels.

Nor need we refer to what every one concedes, that a vein of pure but austere morals runs through all his works; but Puritan as he was, his myriad fancy led him into places which Puritanism abjured:  the cloisters, with their dim religious light, in Il Penseroso—­and anon with mirth he cries: 

    Come and trip it as you go,
    On the light fantastic toe.

SONNETS.—­His sonnets have been variously estimated:  they are not as polished as his other poems, but are crystal-like and sententious, abrupt bursts of opinion and feeling in fourteen lines.  Their masculine power it was which caused Wordsworth, himself a prince of sonneteers, to say: 

                        In his hand,
    The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
    Soul-animating strains....

That to his dead wife, whom he saw in a vision; that to Cyriac Skinner on his blindness, and that to the persecuted Waldenses, are the most known and appreciated.  That to Skinner is a noble assertion of heart and hope: 

    Cyriac, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear
      To outward view, of blemish and of spot,
      Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot: 
    Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
    Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
      Or man, or woman.  Yet I argue not
      Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
    Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
      Right onward.  What supports me, dost thou ask? 
    The conscience friend to have lost them over-plied
      In liberty’s defence, my noble task,
    Of which all Europe talks from side to side,
      This thought might lead me through the world’s vain mask
    Content, though blind, had I no better guide.