the present day in some of our north-western counties. But in the construction of good English "it" served badly for a genitive, and at the end of the reign of Elizabeth the form "its" was beginning to come into use. In the reign of James I. this form was slowly making way. The authorised translation of the Bible, based upon an elder version, is almost1 without it, and the best writers seldom used it without a distinct reason for doing so. Thus, in Measure for Measure, “ Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary's," was a form of avoiding what might look like an irreverent antithesis between the persons of God and the King of Hungary. Yet here is a passage from the Winter's Tale (Act I., sc. 2) printed before the accession of Charles I. in which the word "its," most rare as it usually is in Shakespeare, occurs three times in seven lines, and that, too, where need for it is not strong.

"How sometimes Nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines
Of my boy's face, methought I did recoil
Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreeched,
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled
Lest it should bite its master."

In the reign of Charles I. the use of “its," established by the need of such a word, became much more familiar. George Herbert, dead before 1647, wrote

"Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die."

Lovelace wrote for the curtain of Lucasta's picture

1 "Its" occurs in Levit. xxv. 5; and perhaps elsewhere.

"Her fair soul's in all

So truly copied from the originall,

That you will swear her body by this law

Is but its shadow, as this its-now draw."

Cowley wrote

"What pity in my breast does reign,

Methinks I feel, too, all its pain."

The word, in fact, had in 1647 become common.

But the true argument is-and I have no wish to evade it— that, common as the use of the word had become, Milton followed the elder poets, was a master of the language, and avoided indiscriminate use of the modern form. Nearly twenty years before the date of the Epitaph, Milton, in the Hymn on the Nativity, wrote of Nature that she

"Now was almost won

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last fulfilling."

Put "his" for "its," and the reason for the adoption of the new form becomes obvious. The equivocal "his" was to be avoided in a context which included double use of the word "her." So in Paradise Lost (Book I., 1. 254)—

"The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven;"

the necessary use of the word "itself" made the use of "its" preferable to "his" in association with it. Or take the famous lines (Book IV., l. 810-14) :

"Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear

Touch'd lightly; for no falsehood can endure

Touch of celestial temper, but returns

Of force to its own likeness: up he starts

Discovered and surprised."

Had "his" been used for "its," the equivocal gender would have connected itself inconveniently with the "he" which follows.

Now, although a looser use of "its" might have been permitted for once to Milton in a piece not polished for the Press-since we find the word used loosely three times in seven lines of a finished work of Shakespeare, who wrote when the employment of it was far more exceptional-I enter no such plea. Let us rather see whether Milton's own test will not bear strict application to the occurrences of the word "its" in the Epitaph.

"With whom he sported ere the day
Budded forth its tender ray-"

is precisely one of the cases in which Milton would avoid the equivocal genitive. Substitute "his" for "its,” and the reason becomes obvious. The other three occurrences of "its" are virtually one, since they are all part of the same construction. The repetition of "his" would have injured the poetry by not excluding a suggestion of masculine remains which the feminine Psyche shall “in her fostering arms enfold." To the very essence of the thought belonged reduction of man's body to an “it,” which yet contains the germ of life, and absolute shutting out of all suggestion of a sexual relation in the return of the soul to the body that springs up again out of its dust.

There remains only the question of handwriting. If the poem be in Milton's autograph, his authorship becomes indisputable. If not, this piece is in the position of other poems written before his blindness, which come down to us in a handwriting either not his, or supposed to be that of a copyist. Milton's natural

and unrestricted handwriting was large and bold, but, he was skilful with the pen, and when restricted by space to a cramped form, or in the act of copying, would fall into such variations of style as we know, in our own experience, to be usual to a practised hand.

In Milton's case this difficulty is complicated by the facts, that often before his blindness, and always after it, he used an amanuensis, and that the quantity of his undoubted handwriting, now left to us, is not large. In the British Museum there is very little. The most precious collection is that kept in a glass-case at Trinity College, Cambridge, a volume of original MSS. of Milton's earlier period, including drafts, with his corrections, of Comus and Lycidas. The facsimile now published of the MS. of the Epitaph will enable those who have ready access to this collection, or more especially to examples of Milton's small hand upon margins or fly leaves of books, to make, with the requisite thoroughness, the direct comparison on which alone a safe opinion can be based. That the scrutiny may take the right direction, I add here a letter addressed to the Times, in which Mr. Bond, the experienced Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, defines the ground of his belief that it is not the handwriting of Milton :

"Sir,-As my opinion on the handwriting and signature of the poem ascribed to Milton has been referred to by writers in the controversy, I think it becoming to state it publicly and in my own words.

“I have several times examined both writing and signature, and always with the same conclusion, that the writing is not Milton's, and the signature is not 'J. M.'

"The difference between Milton's handwriting and that of the poem is perceptible in their general character; and it is important to study the expression

in discriminating handwritings. The firm and somewhat rigid characters of Milton are not in harmony with the light, pliant, and rather weak forms of the poem.

“Applying the test of comparison of particular letters, I find essential variations in the two writings. Characteristic forms used by Milton are not found in the writing of the poem.

"It has been pleaded that some letters are found similarly formed in the two writings. But on such grounds volumes of anonymous verses might be fathered on Milton. The differences in forms of letters are too considerable in the present case to be disregarded.

"Some of these differences have been questioned on the authority of certain pieces included in Sotheby's specimens, which are themselves of doubtful genuineness. One of these, the verses found in the Mel Heliconium, Mr. Masson has recently condemned; and I also remember to have examined it and declared it not of Milton's writing many years ago.

"In addition to the evidence of general expression and the forms of letters, I would refer to the orthography and the contractions of words used in the poem. Both forms of spelling and contractions I find foreign to Milton's common use in the year 1647. Indeed, there is ground for surmising that the poem is by the hand of a copyist. The word "nature" in the twelfth line from

This argument founded upon spelling is much open to'question. It is in no man's power to define precisely how Milton would have spelt a word in a particular year of his life. Except in the case of a few words, Milton's spelling varied like that of his neighbours. I have before me an exact copy, made in 1792, of Milton's MSS. in Trinity College, and find by comparison of spelling my belief that Milton was here the copyist of his own lines distinctly strengthened.