The Romance of Biography Volume I Part 25

And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs.

[145] Milton alludes to his father's talent for music:

Thyself Art skilful to a.s.sociate verse with airs Harmonious, and to give the human voice A thousand modulations.-- Such distribution of himself to us Was Phoebus' choice; _thou_ hast thy gift, and I Mine also; and between us we receive, Father and Son, the whole inspiring G.o.d!

AD PATREM.

[146] There is extant a prose letter from Milton to Holstentius, the librarian of the Vatican, in which he accounts as one of his greatest pleasures at Rome, that of having known and heard Leonora.

[147] A Miss Davies. "The father (says Hayley) seems to have been a convert to Milton's arguments; but the lady had scruples. She possessed (according to Philips) both wit and beauty. A novelist could hardly imagine circ.u.mstances more singularly distressing to sensibility than the situation of the poet, if, as we may reasonably conjecture, he was deeply enamoured of this lady; if her father was inclined to accept him as a son-in-law, and the object of his love had no inclination to reject his suit, but what arose from a dread of his being indissolubly mated to another."--_Life of Milton_, p. 90.

[148]

--I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors or without, still as a fool In power of others, never in my own, &c.

SAMSON AGONISTES.

[149] Todd's Life of Milton--See also Milton's Will, which has been lately recovered, and published by Warton.

[150] Aubrey's Letters.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.