superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always
unskilful; but here they are indecent, and at least approach to
impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been
conscious.

Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze
drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have
fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the
author.

Of the two pieces, "L'Allegro" and "il Penseroso," I believe,
opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with
pleasure. The author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked,
merely to show how objects derive their colours from the mind, by
representing the operation of the same things upon the gay and the
melancholy temper, or upon the same man as he is differently
disposed; but rather how, among the successive variety of
appearances, every disposition of mind takes hold on those by which
it may be gratified.

The CHEERFUL man hears the lark in the morning; the PENSIVE man
hears the nightingale in the evening. The CHEERFUL man sees the
cock strut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then
walks, NOT UNSEEN, to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen
to the singing milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and
the mower; then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling
plenty, and looks up to the distant tower, the residence of some
fair inhabitant; thus he pursues real gaiety through a day of labour
or of play, and delights himself at night with the fanciful
narratives of superstitious ignorance.