Denzil had grown up under the prosperous rule of the Protector, and
his boyhood had been spent in the guardianship of a most watchful
and serious-minded mother. He had been somewhat over-cosseted and
apron-stringed, it may be, in that tranquil atmosphere of the rich widow's
house; but not all Lady Warner's tenderness could make her son a milksop.
Except for a period of two years in London, when he had lived under the
roof of the great Republican, a docile pupil to a stern but kind master,
Denzil had lived mostly under the open sky, was a keen sportsman, and loved
the country with almost as sensitive a love as his quondam master and
present friend, John Milton; and it was perhaps this appreciation of rural
beauty which had made a bond of friendship between the great poet and the
Puritan squire.
"You have a knack of painting rural scenes which needs but to be joined
with the gift of music to make you a poet," he said, when Denzil had been
expatiating upon the landscape amidst which he had enjoyed his last bout of
falconry, or his last run with his half-dozen couple of hounds. "You are
almost as the power of sight to me when you describe those downs and
valleys whose every shape and shadow I once knew so well.
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