It would be difficult to meet with any
two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author of
_Paradise Lost_ and the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone
in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS.
Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show"
says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how
little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he
proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the
garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a
century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house
(the cradle of _Paradise Lost_) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled
stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and
forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!"
No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in
so noble a style as Milton. He has anticipated the finest conceptions of
the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpassed all the
accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us.
His Paradise is a
Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned
Or of revived Adonis or renowned
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse[010]
The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a
delightful extract.
Pages:
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63