Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/65

 L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO

��The initial idea of the twin poems, L' Allegro and 11 Penseroso, may be traced with considerable probability to a poem prefixed to Burton's Anatomy of Melan- choly, a book which is in the list of Mil- ton's reading at Horton. The verses are entitled " The Author's Abstract of Melan- choly; or, A Dialogue Between Pleasure and Pain " The following extracts will give a fair idea of them :

" When I go musing all alone, Thinking of divers things foreknown, When I build castles in the air, Void of sorrow, void of fear, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,

When to mj'self I act and smile, With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, By a brookside or wood so green, Unheard, unsought for, and unseen, Methinks I hear, methinks I see, Sweet music, wondrous melody, Towns, palaces, and cities fine ; Here now, then there, the world is mine : Rare beauties, gallant ladies, shine, Whate'er is lovely or divine. All other joys to this are folly ; Nought so sweet as Melancholy."

An idea so congenial as this to Milton's contemplative nature, and so imperfectly expressed, would naturally tease his artis- tic fancy, especially when the seclusion of country life gave him ample opportunity to taste the pleasures which Burton cele- brates. It is not improbable that he found a further stimulus in a pretty song in Beaumont and Fletcher's play entitled Nice Valour. The play was not published, it is true, until 1647, fifteen years after the probable date of L' Allegro and II Pense- roso; but as Francis Beaumont died in 1625,

��and the play in question was a joint produc- tion of his and Fletcher's, the song was in all probability popular before Milton wrote. It begins just in the strain of // Penseroso, and contains details of which certain well- known passages in the latter poem seem expansions :

" Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly !

Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes,

Fountain heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves ; Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed, save bats and owls. A midnight bell, a parting groan, These are the sounds we feed upon.

Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley ;

Nothing 's so dainty - sweet as lovely Melan- choly."

The scheme of contrasts in L' Allegro and II Penseroso may also have been suggested by Burton's verses; for he gives, as a run- ning antithesis to the pleasures of the mild contemplative type of melancholy, alter- nate verses dealing with the darker aspects of that mood of mind, ending with the em- phatic refrain,

" All my griefs to this are jolly, None so damned as Melancholy."

Milton has lifted this contrast to the other side of the scale, placing over against the sweetness of contemplation the sweetness of frank and open mirth and delight in the outward aspects of things.

In the case of vital literature, however, such external indications of origin go at best a very little way toward explaining

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