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And thus the Penseroso was understood by Gray, who, in his Installation Ode, introduces Milton among the bards and sages who lean from heaven, To bless the place where, on their opening soul, First the genuine ardour stole.
One after another his principal works were produced before admiring audiences in the new Music Hall in Fishamble Street. The crush to hear the "Allegro" and "Penseroso" at the opening performances was so great that the doors had to be closed. The papers declared there never had been seen such a scene before in Dublin.
Eheu! quid volui miscro mihi! floribus anstrum Perditus The words are Virgil's, but the appropriation of them, and their application in this "second intention" is too exquisite to have been made by any but Milton.To the poems of the Horton period belong also the two pieces L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and Lycidas.
We close our eyes whenever we would collect our mind together, or trace more distinctly an object which seems to have faded away in our recollection. The study of an author or an artist would be ill placed in the midst of a beautiful landscape; the "Penseroso" of Milton, "hid from day's garish eye," is the man of genius.
Such an amazing allegory as "On Raiding the Ice Box," which deals, of course, with the experience of a man who attempts to explore the mind of an elderly Boston spinster, marks this powerful poet as a man of unusual satirical and philosophical depth. Boston Penseroso: We find Mr. Dove Dulcet's new book rather baffling.
Throwing a penseroso air into his thin cheeks, our Don then began a few preliminary thrummings, which set my teeth on edge, and made Tarleton put both hands to his ears.
Il Penseroso is not more different from L'Allegro than was my anticipation from the charming reality. We soon found that her mind was as charming as her person. Indeed, her face, lovely as it was, derived the best part of its loveliness from her sunny temper, her frank and ardent spirit, her affectionate and generous heart.
Some of Milton's most early, as well as mos't exquisite pieces, are his Lycidas, l'Allegro, and il Penseroso, if we may except his ode on the Nativity of Christ, which is, indeed, prior in order of time, and in which a penetrating critick might have observed the seeds of that boundless imagination, which was, one day, to produce the Paradise Lost."
This is poetic imagination, the intellect sent on far errands by a sensibility which is at once generous and bold, and fastidious through the promptings and the exactions of the beautiful. In the opening of "Il Penseroso" Milton describes the shapes that in sprightly moods possess the fancy, "As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams."
But now comes a biographer in whose eyes the life of Milton the citizen is a mere episode, and not only a mere episode but a lamentable and humiliating episode, in the life of Milton the poet. Milton's life, says Mr. Pattison "is a drama in three acts. The first discovers him in the calm and peaceful retirement of Horton, of which 'L'Allegro, 'Il Penseroso, and 'Lycidas' are the expression.
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