And the man, joyous
or melancholy, is not a bare spectator of them; he is the student,
compounded of sensibility and intelligence, of whom we are not told
that he saw so and so, or that he felt so, but with whom we are
made copartners of his thoughts and feeling. Description melts into
emotion, and contemplation bodies itself in imagery. All the charm of
rural life is there, but it is not tendered to us in the form of a
landscape; the scenery is subordinated to the human figure in the
centre.
These two short idylls are marked by a gladsome spontaneity which
never came to Milton again. The delicate fancy and feeling which play
about _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ never reappear, and form a strong
contrast to the austere imaginings of his later poetical period. These
two poems have the freedom and frolic, the natural grace of movement,
the improvisation, of the best Elizabethan examples, while both
thoughts and words are under a strict economy unknown to the diffuse
exuberance of the Spenserians.
In _Lycidas_ (1637) we have reached the high-water mark of English
Poesy and of Milton's own production.
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