of the sanctity of marriage (act ii. scene ii.) are somewhat riper and graver in style, with less admixture of rhyme and more variety of cadence, than the lovely verses above quoted. Milton's obligation to the latter passage is less direct than his earlier obligation to a later play of Middleton's from which he transferred one of the most beautiful as well as most famous images in Lycidas: but his early and intimate acquaintance with Middleton had apparently (as Mr. Dyce seems to think[1]) left in the ear of the blind old poet a more or less distinct echo from the noble opening verses of the dramatist's address to 'reverend and honourable matrimony.'
In 'Michaelmas Term' the realism of Middleton's comic style is no longer alloyed or flavoured with poetry or fancy. It is an excellent Hogarthian comedy, full of rapid and vivid incident, of
- ↑ Mr. Dyce would no doubt have altered his opinion had he lived to see the evidence adduced by the Director of the New Meltun Society that the real author of A Game at Chess was none other than John Milton himself, whose earliest poems had appeared the year before the publication of that anti-papal satire. This discovery is only less curious and precious than a later revelation which we must accept on the same authority, that Comus was written by Sir John Suckling, Paradise Regained by Lord Rochester, and Samson Agonistes by Elkanah Settle: while on the other hand it may be affirmed with no less confidence that Milton—who never would allow his name to be spelled right on the title-page or under the dedication of any work published by him—owed his immunity from punishment after the Restoration to the admitted fact that he was the real author of Dryden's Astræa Redux.
