Milton, the greatest of the Puritans—­intellectual ancestry of the modern degenerate Prudes—­had a wholesome love of the dance, and nowhere is his pen so joyous as in its description in the well known passage from “Comus” which, should it occur to my memory while delivering a funeral oration, I am sure I could not forbear to quote, albeit this, our present argument, is but little furthered by its context

    Meanwhile welcome joy and feast
    Midnight shout and revelry
    Tipsy dance and jollity
    Braid your locks with rosy twine
    Dropping odors dropping wine
    Rigor now is gone to bed
    And advice with scrupulous head
    Strict age and sour severity
    With their grave saws in slumber lie
    We that are of purer fire
    Imitate the starry quire
    Who in their nightly watching spheres
    Lead in swift round the months and years
    The sounds and seas with all their finny drove
    And on the tawny sands and shelves
    Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves

If Milton was not himself a good dancer—­and as to that point my memory is unstored with instance or authority—­it will at least be conceded that he was an admirable reporter, with his heart in the business.  Somewhat to lessen the force of the objection that he puts the foregoing lines into a not very respectable mouth, on a not altogether reputable occasion, I append the following passage from the same poem, supposed to be spoken by the good spirit who had brought a lady and her two brothers through many perils, restoring them to their parents: 

    Noble lord and lady bright
    I have brought ye new delight
    Here behold so goodly grown
    Three fair branches of your own
    Heaven hath timely tried their youth
    Their faith their patience and their truth
    And sent them here through hard assays
    With a crown of deathless praise
    To triumph in victorious dance
    O’er sensual folly and intemperance

The lines on dancing—­lines which themselves dance—­in “L’Allegro,” are too familiar, I dare not permit myself the enjoyment of quotation.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most finished gentlemen of his time, otherwise laments in his autobiography that he had never learned to dance because that accomplishment “doth fashion the body, and gives one a good presence and address in all companies since it disposeth the limbs to a kind of souplesse (as the French call it) and agility insomuch as they seem to have the use of their legs, arms, and bodies more than many others who, standing stiff and stark in their postures, seem as if they were taken in their joints, or had not the perfect use of their members.”  Altogether, a very grave objection to dancing in the opinion of those who discountenance it, and I take great credit for candor in presenting his lordship’s indictment.

In the following pertinent passage from Lemontey I do not remember the opinion he quotes from Locke, but his own is sufficiently to the point: