mine eyes; For in the flaxen lilies’ shade, It like a bank of lilies laid.  Upon the roses it would feed, Until its lips even seemed to bleed; And then to me ’twould boldly trip And plant those roses on my lip. . . . . .  Now my sweet fawn in vanish’d to Whither the swans and turtles go; In fair Elysium to endure, With milk-white lambs and ermines pure, O do not run too fast:  for I Will but bespeak thy grave, and die.”

After the Restoration Marvell wrote satires, a kind of poem of which you had an early and mild example in the fable of the two mice by Surrey, a kind of poem of which we will soon hear much more.  In these satires Marvell poured out all the wrath of a Puritan upon the evils of his day.  Marvell’s satires were so witty and so outspoken that once or twice he was in danger of punishment because of them.  But once at least the King himself saved a book of his from being destroyed, for by every one “from the King down to the tradesman his books were read with great pleasure."* Yet he had many enemies, and when he died suddenly in August, 1678, many people though that he had been poisoned.  He was the last, we may say, of the seventeenth-century lyric poets.

Burnet.

Besides the lyric writers there were many prose writers in the seventeenth century who are among the men to be remembered.  But their books, although some day you will love them, would not interest you yet.  They tell no story, they are long, they have not, like poetry, a lilt or rhythm to carry one on.  It would be an effort to read them.  If I tried to explain to you wherein the charm of them lies I fear the charm would fly, for it is impossible to imprison the sunbeam or find the foundations of the rainbow.  It is better therefore to leave these books until the years to come in which it will be no effort to read them, but a joy.

Chapter LVII MILTON—­SIGHT AND GROWTH

“THERE is but one Milton,"* there is, too, but one Shakespeare, yet John Milton, far more than William Shakespeare, stands a lonely figure in our literature.  Shakespeare was a dramatist among dramatists.  We can see how there were those who led up to him, and others again who led away from him.  From each he differs in being greater, he outshines them all.  Shakespeare was a man among men.  He loved and sinned with men, he was homely and kindly, and we can take him to our hearts.  Milton both in his life and work was cold and lonely.  He was a master without scholars, a leader without followers.  Him we can admire, but cannot love with an understanding love.  Yet although we love Shakespeare we can find throughout all his works hardly a line upon which we can place a finger and say here Shakespeare speaks of himself, here he shows what he himself thought and felt.  Shakespeare understood human nature so well that he could see through another’s eyes and so forget himself.  But over and over again