example from which the latter never swerved, and from him the younger
Milton derived not only the independence of thought which was to lead
him into moral and social heresy, and the fidelity to principle which
was to make him the Abdiel of the Commonwealth, but no mean share of his
poetical faculty also. His mastery of verbal harmony was but a new phase
of his father's mastery of music, which he himself recognizes as the
complement of his own poetical gift:--

"Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus,
Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti."

As a composer, the circumspect, and, as many no doubt thought prosaic
scrivener, took rank among the best of his day. One of his
compositions, now lost, was rewarded with a gold medal by a Polish
prince (Aubrey says the Landgrave of Hesse), and he appears among the
contributors to _The Triumphs of Oriana_, a set of twenty-five madrigals
composed in honour of Queen Elizabeth. "The Teares and Lamentations of a
Sorrowful Soule"--dolorous sacred songs, Professor Masson calls
them--were, according to their editor, the production of "famous
artists," among whom Byrd, Bull, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, certainly
figure, and three of them were composed by the elder Milton. He also
harmonized the Norwich and York psalm tunes, which were adapted to six
of the Psalms in Ravenscroft's Collection. Such performance bespeaks not
only musical accomplishment, but a refined nature; and we may well
believe that Milton's love of learning, as well as his love of music,
was hereditary in its origin, and fostered by his contact with his
father. Aubrey distinctly affirms that Milton's skill on the organ was
directly imparted to him by his father, and there would be nothing
surprising if the first rudiments of knowledge were also instilled by
him. Poetry he may have taught by precept, but the one extant specimen