18 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



only wrote poetry, but recited it too ; and this is the 

 deuce, as every one knows, and as Thomson found it. 

 The author of the Seasons dedicated his poem of 

 " Spring J; to her; and, no doubt, according to his 

 delightful custom, wandered round her garden in his 

 dressing-gown, and bit off the sunny side of her peaches ; 

 but when Eusebia cried, " Lend me your ears," and pro- 

 duced a manuscript, the sleepy poet plied his pinions 

 and betook himself to a less intellectual feast ; in point 

 of fact, he went off and caroused with Eusebia's husband ; 

 and of course Eusebia was annoyed. 



This dual tenancy of Ritchings has connected the Bath 

 Road with some famous literary characters already — 

 with, indeed, the lions of two periods and their 

 jackals ; but its passage through Colnbrook connects it 

 with a greater memory still. It was here — or, to speak 

 more accurately, in the neighbouring village of Horton — 

 that young Milton lived, from the time he was twenty- 

 four to the time he was thirty. It was here, in the quiet 

 Buckinghamshire hamlet, and before the shadow of 

 political convulsion informed his genius with a sterner 

 bent, that he gave to the world those rich fancies of a 

 yet courtly Muse, which some hold still to be her most 

 precious request. At Horton he wrote " Lycidas," the 

 " Comus," the "Sonnet to the Nightingale," and 

 probably the " Allegro " and " Penseroso." Hence it 

 was that he wrote to his friend Diodati, " You ask me of 

 what I am thinking. As God shall help me, of im- 

 mortality ; but how shall I attain it ? My wings are 

 fledging, and I meditate a flight." I like to think that 

 the travellers on the Bath Road between 1634 and 1637 

 may have often passed and noticed the romantic figure 

 of the young poet, his fine face aflame with genius, his 

 comely head bent to catch the music of the spheres. 

 The ladies in the Bath Machine or the Post-Chaise of 

 Charles the First's time would, I am sure, have noticed 

 him ; would have awakened their sleeping husbands, 

 heavy with the dinner at Cranford, and pointed him out 



