nothing else; but Milton found time to write the "Masque of Comus,"
which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord
President of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by
the Earl of Bridgewater's sons and daughter. The fiction is derived
from Homer's "Circe;" but we never can refuse to any modern the
liberty of borrowing from Homer:


--a quo ceu fonte perenni
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.


His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the
death of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, Secretary for Ireland
in the time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a
favourite at Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to
his memory. Milton's acquaintance with the Italian writers may be
discovered by a mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to
the rules of Tuscan poetry, and his malignity to the church by some
lines which are interpreted as threatening its extermination.

He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for
while he lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies
a few days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the Countess
Dowager of Derby, where the Arcades made part of a dramatic
entertainment.

He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of
taking chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother
set him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father's