"Comus" once off his mind, he gives no sign of poetical life for three years, nor would have given any then but for the inaccurate chart or unskilful seamanship which proved fatal to his friend Edward King, August 10, 1637.

King, a Fellow of Milton's college, had left Chester, on a voyage to Ireland, in the stillest summer weather:-- "The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope and all her sisters played." Suddenly the vessel struck on a rock, foundered, and all on board perished except some few who escaped in a boat.

Of King it was reported that he refused to save himself, and sank to the abyss with hands folded in prayer.

Great sympathy was excited among his friends at Cambridge, enough at least to evoke a volume of thirty-six elegies in various languages, but not enough to inspire any of the contributors, except Milton, with a poetical thought, while many are so ridiculous that quotation would be an affront to King's memory.

But the thirty-sixth is "Lycidas." The original manuscript remains, and is dated in November.