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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of John Milton, by Richard Garnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life of John Milton
+
+Author: Richard Garnett
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2005 [EBook #16757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN MILTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Louise Pryor and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+Produced from page images provided by Internet
+Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Great Writers."
+EDITED BY
+PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_LIFE OF MILTON._
+
+
+
+
+LIFE
+
+OF
+
+JOHN MILTON
+
+BY
+
+RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D.
+
+
+
+LONDON
+WALTER SCOTT, 24, WARWICK LANE
+1890
+(_All rights reserved._)
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+The number of miniature "Lives" of Milton is great; great also is the
+merit of some of them. With one exception, nevertheless, they are all
+dismissed to the shelf by the publication of Professor Masson's
+monumental and authoritative biography, without perpetual reference to
+which no satisfactory memoir can henceforth be composed. One recent
+biography has enjoyed this advantage. Its author, the late Mark
+Pattison, wanted neither this nor any other qualification except a
+keener sense of the importance of the religious and political
+controversies of Milton's time. His indifference to matters so momentous
+in Milton's own estimation has, in our opinion, vitiated his conception
+of his hero, who is represented as persistently yielding to party what
+was meant for mankind. We think, on the contrary, that such a mere man
+of letters as Pattison wishes that Milton had been, could never have
+produced a "Paradise Lost." If this view is well-founded, there is not
+only room but need for yet another miniature "Life of Milton,"
+notwithstanding the intellectual subtlety and scholarly refinement
+which render Pattison's memorable. It should be noted that the recent
+German biography by Stern, if adding little to Professor Masson's facts,
+contributes much valuable literary illustration; and that Keighley's
+analysis of Milton's opinions occupies a position of its own, of which
+no subsequent biographical discoveries can deprive it. The present
+writer has further to express his deep obligations to Professor Masson
+for his great kindness in reading and remarking upon the proofs--not
+thereby rendering himself responsible for anything in these pages; and
+also to the helpful friend who has provided him with an index.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.                                                            11
+
+      Milton born in Bread Street, Cheapside, December 9, 1608;
+      condition of English literature at his birth; part in its
+      development assigned to him; materials available for his
+      biography; his ancestry; his father; influences that surrounded
+      his boyhood; enters St. Paul's School, 1620; distinguished for
+      compositions in prose and verse; matriculates at Cambridge, 1625;
+      condition of the University at the period; his misunderstandings
+      with his tutor; graduates B.A., 1629, M.A., 1632; his relations
+      with the University; declines to take orders or follow a
+      profession; his first poems; retires to Horton, in
+      Buckinghamshire, where his father had settled, 1632
+
+CHAPTER II.                                                           35
+
+      Horton, its scenery and associations with Milton; Milton's studies
+      and poetical aspirations; exceptional nature of his poetical
+      development; his Latin poems; "Arcades" and "Comus" composed and
+      represented at the instance of Henry Lawes, 1633 and 1634; "Comus"
+      printed in 1637; Sir Henry Wootton's opinion of it; "Lycidas"
+      written in the same year, on occasion of the death of Edward King;
+      published in 1638; criticism on "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso,"
+      "Lycidas" and "Comus"; Milton's departure for Italy, April, 1638.
+
+CHAPTER III.                                                          57
+
+      State of Italy at the period of Milton's visit; his acquaintance
+      with Italian literati at Florence; visit to Galileo; at Rome and
+      Naples; returns to England, July, 1639; settles in St. Bride's
+      Churchyard, and devotes himself to the education of his nephews;
+      his elegy on his friend Diodati; removes to Aldersgate Street,
+      1640; his pamphlets on ecclesiastical affairs, 1641 and 1642; his
+      tract on Education his "Areopagitica," November, 1644; attacks the
+      Presbyterians.
+
+CHAPTER IV.                                                           83
+
+      Milton as a Parliamentarian; his sonnet, "When the Assault was
+      intended to the City," November, 1642; goes on a visit to the
+      Powell family in Oxfordshire, and returns with Mary Powell as his
+      wife, May and June, 1643; his domestic unhappiness; Mary Milton
+      leaves him, and refuses to return, July to September, 1643;
+      publication of his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," August,
+      1643, and February, 1644; his father comes to live with him; he
+      takes additional pupils; his system of education; he courts the
+      daughter of Dr. Davis; his wife, alarmed, returns, and is
+      reconciled to him, August, 1645; he removes to the Barbican,
+      September, 1645; publication of his collected poems, January,
+      1646; he receives his wife's relatives under his roof; death of
+      his father, March, 1647; he writes "The Tenure of Kings and
+      Magistrates," February, 1649; becomes Latin Secretary to the
+      Commonwealth, March, 1649.
+
+CHAPTER V.                                                           104
+
+      Milton's duties as Latin Secretary; he drafts manifesto on the
+      state of Ireland; occasionally employed as licenser of the press;
+      commissioned to answer "Eikon Basilike"; controversy on the
+      authorship of this work; Milton's "Eikonoklastes" published,
+      October, 1649; Salmasius and his "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I.";
+      Milton undertakes to answer Salmasius, February, 1650; publication
+      of his "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio," March, 1651; character and
+      complete controversial success of this work; Milton becomes
+      totally blind, March, 1652; his wife dies, leaving him three
+      daughters, May, 1652; his controversy with Morus and other
+      defenders of Salmasius, 1652-1655; his characters of the eminent
+      men of the Commonwealth; adheres to Cromwell; his views on
+      politics; general character of his official writings: his marriage
+      to Elizabeth Woodcock, and death of his wife, November,
+      1656-March, 1658; his nephews; his friends and recreations.
+
+CHAPTER VI.                                                          128
+
+      Milton's poetical projects after his return from Italy; drafts of
+      "Paradise Lost" among them; the poem originally designed as a
+      masque or miracle-play; commenced as an epic in 1658; its
+      composition speedily interrupted by ecclesiastical and political
+      controversies; Milton's "Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical
+      Causes," and "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove
+      Hirelings out of the Church"; Royalist reaction in the winter of
+      1659-60; Milton writes his "Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free
+      Commonwealth"; conceals himself in anticipation of the
+      Restoration, May 7, 1660; his writings ordered to be burned by the
+      hangman, June 16; escapes proscription, nevertheless; arrested by
+      the Serjeant-at-Arms, but released by order of the Commons,
+      December 15; removes to Holborn; his pecuniary losses and
+      misfortunes; the undutiful behaviour of his daughters; marries
+      Elizabeth Minshull, February, 1663; lives successively in Jewin
+      Street and in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields; particulars of his
+      private life; "Paradise Lost" completed in or about 1663;
+      agreement for its publication with Samuel Symmons; difficulties
+      with the licenser; poem published in August, 1667.
+
+CHAPTER VII.                                                         152
+
+      Place of "Paradise Lost" among the great epics of the world; not
+      rendered obsolete by changes in belief; the inevitable defects of
+      its plan compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion
+      of his age; Milton's conception of the physical universe; his
+      theology; magnificence of his poetry; his similes; his
+      descriptions of Paradise; inevitable falling off of the later
+      books; minor critical objections mostly groundless; his diction;
+      his indebtedness to other poets for thoughts as well as phrases;
+      this is not plagiarism; his versification; his Satan compared with
+      Calderon's Lucifer; plan of his epic, whether in any way suggested
+      by Andreini, Vondel, or Ochino; his majestic and unique position
+      in English poetry.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.                                                        173
+
+      Milton's migration to Chalfont St. Giles to escape the plague in
+      London, July, 1665; subject of "Paradise Regained" suggested to
+      him by the Quaker Ellwood; his losses by the Great Fire, 1666;
+      first edition of "Paradise Lost" entirely sold by April, 1669;
+      "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes" published, 1671;
+      criticism on these poems; Samson partly a personification of
+      Milton himself, partly of the English people; Milton's life in
+      Bunhill Fields; his daughters live apart from him; Dryden adapts
+      "Paradise Lost" as an opera; Milton's "History of Britain," 1670;
+      second editions of his poems, 1673, and of "Paradise Lost," 1674;
+      his "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"; fate of the manuscript;
+      Milton's mature religious opinions; his death and burial, 1674;
+      subsequent history of his widow and descendants; his personal
+      character.
+
+INDEX                                                                199
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF MILTON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, when Shakespeare had lately
+produced "Antony and Cleopatra," when Bacon was writing his "Wisdom of
+the Ancients" and Ralegh his "History of the World," when the English
+Bible was hastening into print; when, nevertheless, in the opinion of
+most foreigners and many natives, England was intellectually unpolished,
+and her literature almost barbarous.
+
+The preposterousness of this judgment as a whole must not blind us to
+the fragment of truth which it included. England's literature was, in
+many respects, very imperfect and chaotic. Her "singing masons" had
+already built her "roofs of gold"; Hooker and one or two other great
+prose-writers stood like towers: but the less exalted portions of the
+edifice were still half hewn. Some literatures, like the Latin and the
+French, rise gradually to the crest of their perfection; others, like
+the Greek and the English, place themselves almost from the first on
+their loftiest pinnacle, leaving vast gaps to be subsequently filled in.
+Homer was not less the supreme poet because history was for him
+literally an old song, because he would have lacked understanding for
+Plato and relish for Aristophanes. Nor were Shakespeare and the
+translators of the Bible less at the head of European literature because
+they must have failed as conspicuously as Homer would have failed in all
+things save those to which they had a call, which chanced to be the
+greatest. Literature, however, cannot remain isolated at such altitudes,
+it must expand or perish. As Homer's epic passed through Pindar and the
+lyrical poets into drama history and philosophy, continually fitting
+itself more and more to become an instrument in the ordinary affairs of
+life, so it was needful that English lettered discourse should become
+popular and pliant, a power in the State as well as in the study. The
+magnitude of the change, from the time when the palm of popularity
+decorated Sidney's "Arcadia" to that when it adorned Defoe and Bunyan,
+would impress us even more powerfully if the interval were not engrossed
+by a colossal figure, the last of the old school in the erudite
+magnificence of his style in prose and verse; the first of the new,
+inasmuch as English poetry, hitherto romantic, became in his hands
+classical. This "splendid bridge from the old world to the new," as
+Gibbon has been called in a different connection, was John Milton: whose
+character and life-work, carefully analyzed, resolve themselves into
+pairs of equally vivid contrasts. A stern Puritan, he is none the less a
+freethinker in the highest and best sense of the term. The recipient of
+direct poetical inspiration in a measure vouchsafed to few, he
+notwithstanding studies to make himself a poet; writes little until no
+other occupation than writing remains to him; and, in general, while
+exhibiting even more than the usual confidence, shows less than the
+usual exultation and affluence of conscious genius. Professing to
+recognize his life's work in poetry, he nevertheless suffers himself to
+be diverted for many a long year into political and theological
+controversy, to the scandal and compassion of one of his most competent
+and attached biographers. Whether this biographer is right or wrong, is
+a most interesting subject for discussion. We deem him wrong, and shall
+not cease to reiterate that Milton would not have been Milton if he
+could have forgotten the citizen in the man of letters. Happy, at all
+events, it is that this and similar problems occupy in Milton's life the
+space which too frequently has to be spent upon the removal of
+misconception, or the refutation of calumny. Little of a sordid sort
+disturbs the sentiment of solemn reverence with which, more even than
+Shakespeare's, his life is approached by his countrymen; a feeling
+doubtless mainly due to the sacred nature of his principal theme, but
+equally merited by the religious consecration of his whole existence. It
+is the easier for the biographer to maintain this reverential attitude,
+inasmuch as the prayer of Agur has been fulfilled in him, he has been
+given neither poverty nor riches. He is not called upon to deal with an
+enormous mass of material, too extensive to arrange, yet too important
+to neglect. Nor is he, like Shakespeare's biographer, reduced to choose
+between the starvation of nescience and the windy diet of conjecture. If
+a humbling thought intrudes, it is how largely he is indebted to a
+devoted diligence he never could have emulated; how painfully Professor
+Masson's successors must resemble the Turk who builds his cabin out of
+Grecian or Roman ruins.
+
+Milton's genealogy has taxed the zeal and acumen of many investigators.
+He himself merely claims a respectable ancestry (_ex genere honesto_).
+His nephew Phillips professed to have come upon the root of the family
+tree at Great Milton, in Oxfordshire, where tombs attested the residence
+of the clan, and tradition its proscription and impoverishment in the
+Wars of the Roses. Monuments, station, and confiscation have vanished
+before the scrutiny of the Rev. Joseph Hunter; it can only be safely
+concluded that Milton's ancestors dwelt in or near the village of
+Holton, by Shotover Forest, in Oxfordshire, and that their rank in life
+was probably that of yeomen. Notwithstanding Aubrey's statement that
+Milton's grandfather's name was John, Mr. Hyde Clarke's researches in
+the registers of the Scriveners' Company have proved that Mr. Hunter and
+Professor Masson were right in identifying him with Richard Milton, of
+Stanton St. John, near Holton; and Professor Masson has traced the
+family a generation further back to Henry Milton, whose will, dated
+November 21, 1558, attests a condition of plain comfort, nearer poverty
+than riches. Henry Milton's goods at his death were inventoried at £6
+19s.; when his widow's will is proved, two years afterwards, the
+estimate is £7 4s. 4d. Richard, his son, is stated, but not proved, to
+have been an under-ranger of Shotover Forest. He appears to have married
+a widow named Jeffrey, whose maiden name had been Haughton, and who had
+some connection with a Cheshire family of station. He would also seem to
+have improved his circumstances by the match, which may account for the
+superior education of his son John, whose birth is fixed by an affidavit
+to 1562 or 1563. Aubrey, indeed, next to Phillips and Milton himself,
+the chief contemporary authority, says that he was for a time at Christ
+Church, Oxford--a statement in itself improbable, but slightly confirmed
+by his apparent acquaintance with Latin, and the family tradition that
+his course of life was diverted by a quarrel with his father. Queen
+Mary's stakes and faggots had not affected Richard Milton as they
+affected most Englishmen. Though churchwarden in 1582, he must have
+continued to adhere to the ancient faith, for he was twice fined for
+recusancy in 1601, which lends credit to the statement that his son was
+cast off by him for Protestantism. "Found him reading the Bible in his
+chamber," says Aubrey, who adds that the younger Milton never was a
+scrivener's apprentice; but this is shown to be an error by Mr. Hyde
+Clarke's discovery of his admission to the Scriveners' Company in 1599,
+where he is stated to have been apprentice to James Colborn. Colborn
+himself had been only four years in business, instead of the seven which
+would usually be required for an apprentice to serve out his
+indenture--which suggests that some formalities may have been dispensed
+with on account of John Milton's age. A scrivener was a kind of cross
+between an attorney and a law stationer, whose principal business was
+the preparation of deeds, "to be well and truly done after my learning,
+skill, and science," and with due regard to the interests of more
+exalted personages. "Neither for haste nor covetousness I shall take
+upon me to make any deed whereof I have not cunning, without good advice
+and information of counsel." Such a calling offered excellent
+opportunities for investments; and John Milton, a man of strict
+integrity and frugality, came to possess a "plentiful estate." Among his
+possessions was the house in Bread Street destroyed in the Great Fire.
+The tenement where the poet was born, being a shop, required a sign, for
+which he chose The Spread Eagle, either from the crest of such among the
+Miltons as had a right to bear arms, among whom he may have reckoned
+himself; or as the device of the Scriveners' Company. He had been
+married about 1600 to a lady whose name has been but lately ascertained
+to have been Sarah Jeffrey. John Milton the younger was the third of six
+children, only three of whom survived infancy. He grew up between a
+sister, Anne, several years older, and a brother, Christopher, seven
+years younger than himself.
+
+Milton's birth and nurture were thus in the centre of London; but the
+London of that day had not half the population of the Liverpool of ours.
+Even now the fragrance of the hay in far-off meadows may be inhaled in
+Bread Street on a balmy summer's night; then the meadows were near the
+doors, and the undefiled sky was reflected by an unpolluted stream.
+There seems no reason to conclude that Milton, in his early boyhood,
+enjoyed any further opportunities of resort to rural scenery than the
+vicinity of London could afford; but if the city is his native element,
+natural beauty never appeals to him in vain. Yet the influences which
+moulded his childhood must have been rather moral and intellectual than
+merely natural:--
+
+   "The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks
+    Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,"
+
+played a greater part in the education of this poet than
+
+   "The murmur of the unreposing brooks,
+    And the green light which, shifting overhead,
+    Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,
+    The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers."
+
+Paramount to all other influences must have been the character of his
+father, a "mute" but by no means an "inglorious" Milton, the preface and
+foreshadowing of the son. His great step in life had set the son the
+example from which the latter never swerved, and from him the younger
+Milton derived not only the independence of thought which was to lead
+him into moral and social heresy, and the fidelity to principle which
+was to make him the Abdiel of the Commonwealth, but no mean share of his
+poetical faculty also. His mastery of verbal harmony was but a new phase
+of his father's mastery of music, which he himself recognizes as the
+complement of his own poetical gift:--
+
+   "Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus,
+    Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti."
+
+As a composer, the circumspect, and, as many no doubt thought prosaic
+scrivener, took rank among the best of his day. One of his
+compositions, now lost, was rewarded with a gold medal by a Polish
+prince (Aubrey says the Landgrave of Hesse), and he appears among the
+contributors to _The Triumphs of Oriana_, a set of twenty-five madrigals
+composed in honour of Queen Elizabeth. "The Teares and Lamentations of a
+Sorrowful Soule"--dolorous sacred songs, Professor Masson calls
+them--were, according to their editor, the production of "famous
+artists," among whom Byrd, Bull, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, certainly
+figure, and three of them were composed by the elder Milton. He also
+harmonized the Norwich and York psalm tunes, which were adapted to six
+of the Psalms in Ravenscroft's Collection. Such performance bespeaks not
+only musical accomplishment, but a refined nature; and we may well
+believe that Milton's love of learning, as well as his love of music,
+was hereditary in its origin, and fostered by his contact with his
+father. Aubrey distinctly affirms that Milton's skill on the organ was
+directly imparted to him by his father, and there would be nothing
+surprising if the first rudiments of knowledge were also instilled by
+him. Poetry he may have taught by precept, but the one extant specimen
+of his Muse is enough to prove that he could never have taught it by
+example.
+
+We have therefore to picture Milton growing up in a narrow street amid a
+strict Puritan household, but not secluded from the influences of nature
+or uncheered by melodious recreations; and tenderly watched over by
+exemplary parents--a mother noted, he tells us, for her charities among
+her neighbours, and a father who had discerned his promise from the very
+first. Given this perception in the head of a religious household, it
+almost followed in that age that the future poet should receive the
+education of a divine. Happily, the sacerdotal caste had ceased to
+exist, and the education of a clergyman meant not that of a priest, but
+that of a scholar. Milton was instructed daily, he says, both at grammar
+schools and under private masters, "as my age would suffer," he adds, in
+acknowledgment of his father's considerateness. Like Disraeli two
+centuries afterwards (perhaps the single point of resemblance), he went
+for schooling to a Nonconformist in Essex, "who," says Aubrey, "cut his
+hair short." His own hair? or his pupil's? queries Biography. We boldly
+reply, Both. Undoubtedly Milton's hair is short in the miniature painted
+of him at the age of ten by, as is believed, Cornelius Jansen. A
+thoughtful little face, that of a well-nurtured, towardly boy; lacking
+the poetry and spirituality of the portrait of eleven years later, where
+the long hair flows down upon the ruff.
+
+After leaving his Essex pedagogue, Milton came under the private tuition
+of Thomas Young, a Scotchman from St. Andrews, who afterwards rose to be
+master of Jesus College, Cambridge. It would appear from the elegies
+subsequently addressed to him by his pupil that he first taught Milton
+to write Latin verse. This instruction was no doubt intended to be
+preliminary to the youth's entrance at St. Paul's School, where he must
+have been admitted by 1620 at the latest.
+
+At the time of Milton's entry, St. Paul's stood high among the schools
+of the metropolis, competing with Merchant Taylors', Westminster, and
+the now extinct St. Anthony's. The headmaster, Dr. Gill, was an
+admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping
+fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the
+systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's schoolmaster
+when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom Fuller approvingly
+records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon
+where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed
+with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing
+than mitigating his severity on their offending children." Milton's
+father, though by no means "cockering," would not have tolerated such
+discipline, and the passionate ardour with which Milton threw himself
+into the studious life of the school is the best proof that he was
+exempt from tyranny. "From the twelfth year of my age," he says, "I
+scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight." The ordinary
+school tasks cannot have exacted so much time from so gifted a boy: he
+must have read largely outside the regular curriculum, and probably he
+practised himself diligently in Latin verse. For this he would have the
+prompting, and perhaps the aid, of the younger Gill, assistant to his
+father, who, while at the University, had especially distinguished
+himself by his skill in versification. Gill must also have been a man of
+letters, affable and communicative, for Milton in after-years reminds
+him of their "almost constant conversations," and declares that he had
+never left his company without a manifest accession of literary
+knowledge. The Latin school exercises have perished, but two English
+productions of the period, paraphrases of Psalms executed at fifteen,
+remain to attest the boy's proficiency in contemporary English
+literature. Some of the unconscious borrowings attributed to him are
+probably mere coincidences, but there is still enough to evince
+acquaintance with "Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer,
+Fairfax, and Buchanan." The literary merit of these versions seems to us
+to have been underrated. There may be no individual phrase beyond the
+compass of an apt and sensitive boy with a turn for verse-making; but
+the general tone is masculine and emphatic. There is not much to say,
+but what is said is delivered with a "large utterance," prophetic of the
+"os magna soniturum," and justifying his own report of his youthful
+promise:--"It was found that whether aught was imposed me by them that
+had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice, in English or
+other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly by this latter, the style,
+by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live."
+
+Among the incidents of Milton's life at St. Paul's School should not be
+forgotten his friendship with Charles Diodati, the son of a Genevese
+physician settled in England, whose father had been exiled from Italy
+for his Protestantism. A friendship memorable not only as Milton's
+tenderest and his first, but as one which quickened his instinctive love
+of Italian literature, enhanced the pleasure, if it did not suggest the
+undertaking, of his Italian pilgrimage, and doubtless helped to inspire
+the execration which he launched in after years against the slayers of
+the Vaudois. The Italian language is named by him among three which,
+about the time of his migration to the University, he had added to the
+classical and the vernacular, the other two being French and Hebrew. It
+has been remarked, however, that his use of "Penseroso," incorrect both
+in orthography and signification, shows that prior to his visit to Italy
+he was unacquainted with the niceties of the language. He entered as "a
+lesser pensioner" at Christ's College, Cambridge, on February 12, 1625;
+the greatest poetic name in an University roll already including
+Spenser, and destined to include Dryden, Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+Byron, and Tennyson. Why Oxford was not preferred has been much debated.
+The father may have taken advice from the younger Gill, whose Liberalism
+had got him into trouble at that University. He may also have been
+unwilling to place his son in the neighbourhood of his estranged
+relatives. Shortly before Milton's matriculation his sister had married
+Mr. Edward Phillips, of the office of the Clerk of the Crown, now
+abolished, then charged with the issue of Parliamentary and judicial
+writs. From this marriage were to spring the young men who were to find
+an instructor in Milton, as he in one of them a biographer.
+
+The external aspect of Milton's Cambridge is probably not ill
+represented by Lyne's coloured map of half a century earlier, now
+exhibited in the King's Library at the British Museum. Piles of stately
+architecture, from King's College Chapel downward, tower all about, over
+narrow, tortuous, pebble-paved streets, bordered with diminutive,
+white-fronted, red-tiled dwellings, mere dolls' houses in comparison. So
+modest, however, is the chartographer's standard, that a flowery Latin
+inscription assures the men of Cambridge they need but divert
+Trumpington Brook into Clare Ditch to render their town as elegant as
+any in the universe. Sheep and swine perambulate the environs, and green
+spaces are interspersed among the colleges, sparsely set with trees, so
+pollarded as to justify Milton's taunt when in an ill-humour with his
+university:--
+
+   "Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles,
+    Quam male Phoebicolis convenit ille locus!"
+
+His own college stands conspicuous at the meeting of three ways, aptly
+suggestive of Hecate and infernal things. Its spiritual and intellectual
+physiognomy, and that of the university in general, must be learned from
+the exhaustive pages of Professor Masson. A book unpublished when he
+wrote, Ball's life of Dr. John Preston, Master of Emmanuel, vestige of
+an entire continent of submerged Puritanism, also contributes much to
+the appreciation of the place and time. We can here but briefly
+characterize the University as an institution undergoing modification,
+rather by the decay of the old than by the intrusion of the new. The
+revolution by which mathematics became the principal instrument of
+culture was still to be deferred forty years. Milton, who tells us that
+he delighted in mathematics, might have been nearly ignorant of that
+subject if he pleased, and hardly could become proficient in it by the
+help of his Alma Mater. The scholastic philosophy, however, still
+reigned. But even here tradition was shaky and undermined; and in
+matters of discipline the rigid code which nominally governed the
+University was practically much relaxed. The teaching staff was
+respectable in character and ability, including many future bishops. But
+while the academical credentials of the tutors were unimpeachable,
+perhaps not one among them all could show a commission from the Spirit.
+No one then at Cambridge seems to have been in the least degree capable
+of arousing enthusiasm. It might not indeed have been easy for a Newman
+or a Green to captivate the independent soul of Milton, even at this
+susceptible period of his life; failing any approach to such external
+influence, he would be likely to leave Cambridge the same man as he
+entered it. Ere, indeed, he had completed a year's residence, his
+studies were interrupted by a temporary rupture with the University,
+probably attributable to his having been at first placed under an
+uncongenial tutor. William Chappell was an Arminian and a tool of Laud,
+who afterwards procured him preferment in Ireland, and, as Professor
+Masson judges from his treatise on homiletics, "a man of dry, meagre
+nature." His relations with such a pupil could not well be harmonious;
+and Aubrey charges him with unkindness, a vague accusation rendered
+tangible by the interlined gloss, "Whipt him." Hence the legend, so dear
+to Johnson, that Milton was the last man to be flogged at college. But
+Aubrey can hardly mean anything more than that Chappell on some occasion
+struck or beat his pupil, and this interpretation is supported by
+Milton's verses to Diodati, written in the spring of 1626, in which,
+while acknowledging that he had been directed to withdraw from Cambridge
+("_nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor_") he expresses his intention
+of speedily returning:--
+
+   "Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes,
+    Atque iterum raucae murmur adire scholae."
+
+A short rustication would be just the notice the University would be
+likely to take of the conduct of a pupil who had been engaged in a
+scuffle with his tutor, in which the fault was not wholly or chiefly
+his. Formal corporal punishment would have rendered rustication
+unnecessary. That Milton was not thought wholly in the wrong appears
+from his not having been mulcted of a term's residence, his absence
+notwithstanding, and from the still more significant fact that Chappell
+lost his pupil. His successor was Nathaniel Tovey, in whom his
+patroness, the Countess of Bedford, had discerned "excellent talent."
+What Milton thought of him there is nothing to show.
+
+This temporary interruption of the smoothness of Milton's University
+life occurred, as has been seen, quite early in its course. Had it
+indeed implied a stigma upon him or the University, the blot would in
+either case have been effaced by the perfect regularity of his
+subsequent career. He went steadily through the academic course, which
+to attain the degree of Master of Arts, then required seven years'
+residence. He graduated as Bachelor at the proper time, March, 1629, and
+proceeded Master in July, 1632. His general relations with the
+University during the period may be gathered partly from his own account
+in after years, when perhaps he in some degree "confounded the present
+feelings with the past," partly from a remarkable passage in one of his
+academical exercises, fortunately preserved to us, the importance of
+which was first discerned by his editor and biographer Mitford.
+Professor Masson, however, ascertained the date, which is all important.
+We must picture Milton "affable, erect, and manly," as Wood describes
+him, speaking from a low pulpit in the hall of Christ's College, to an
+audience of various standing, from grave doctors to skittish
+undergraduates, with most of whom he was in daily intercourse. The term
+is the summer of 1628, about nine months before his graduation; the
+words were Latin, but we resort to the version of Professor Masson:--
+
+      "Then also there drew and invited me, in no ordinary degree, to
+      undertake this part your very recently discovered graciousness to
+      me. For when, some few months ago, I was about to perform an
+      oratorical office before you, and was under the impression that
+      any lucubrations whatsoever of mine would be the reverse of
+      agreeable to you, and would have more merciful judges in Aeacus
+      and Minos than almost any of you would prove, truly, beyond my
+      fancy, beyond my hope if I had any, they were, as I heard, nay, as
+      I myself felt, received with the not ordinary applause of
+      all--yea, of those who at other times were, on account of
+      disagreements in our studies, altogether of an angry and
+      unfriendly spirit towards me. A generous mode of exercising
+      rivalry this, and not unworthy of a royal breast, if, when
+      friendship itself is wont often to misconstrue much that is
+      blamelessly done, yet then sharp and hostile enmity did not grudge
+      to interpret much that was perchance erroneous, and not a little,
+      doubtless, that was unskilfully said, more clemently than I
+      merited."
+
+It is sufficiently manifest from this that after two years' residence
+Milton had incurred much anger and unpopularity "on account of
+disagreements in our studies," which can scarcely mean anything else
+than his disapprobation of the University system. Notwithstanding this
+he had been received on a former occasion with unexpected favour, and on
+the present is able to say, "I triumph as one placed among the stars
+that so many men, eminent for erudition, and nearly the whole University
+have flocked hither." We have thus a miniature history of Milton's
+connection with his Alma Mater. We see him giving offence by the freedom
+of his strictures on the established practices, and misliking them so
+much as to write in 1642, "Which [University] as in the time of her
+better health and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so
+now much less." But, on the other hand, we see his intellectual revolt
+overlooked on account of his unimpeachable conduct and his brilliant
+talents, and himself selected to represent his college on an occasion
+when an able representative was indispensable. Cambridge had all
+imaginable complacency in the scholar, it was towards the reformer that
+she assumed, as afterwards towards Wordsworth, the attitude of
+
+      "Blind Authority beating with his staff
+    The child that would have led him."
+
+The University and Milton made a practical covenant like Frederick the
+Great and his subjects: she did what she pleased, and he thought what he
+pleased. In sharp contrast with his failure to influence her educational
+methods is "that more than ordinary respect which I found above any of
+my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows
+of that College wherein I spent seven years; who, at my parting, after I
+had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much
+better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters full
+of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I
+was assured of their singular good affection toward me." It may be added
+here that his comeliness and his chastity gained him the appellation of
+"Lady" from his fellow collegians: and the rooms at Christ's alleged to
+have been his are still pointed out as deserving the veneration of poets
+in any event; for whether Milton sacrificed to Apollo in them or not, it
+is certain that in them Wordsworth sacrificed to Bacchus.
+
+For Milton's own sake and ours his departure from the University was the
+best thing that could have happened to him. It saved him from wasting
+his time in instructing others when he ought to be instructing himself.
+From the point of view of advantage to the University, it is perhaps the
+most signal instance of the mischief of strictly clerical fellowships,
+now happily things of the past. Only one fellowship at Christ's was
+tenable by a layman: to continue in academical society, therefore, he
+must have taken orders. Such had been his intention when he first
+repaired to Cambridge, but the young man of twenty-three saw many
+things differently from the boy of sixteen. The service of God was still
+as much as ever the aim of his existence, but he now thought that not
+all service was church service. How far he had become consciously
+alienated from the Church's creed it is difficult to say. He was able,
+at all events, to subscribe the Articles on taking his degree, and no
+trace of Arianism appears in his writings for many years. As late as
+1641 he speaks of "the tri-personal Deity." Curiously enough, indeed,
+the ecclesiastical freethought of the day was then almost entirely
+confined to moderate Royalists, Hales, Chillingworth, Falkland. But he
+must have disapproved of the Church's discipline, for he disapproved of
+all discipline. He would not put himself in the position of those Irish
+clergymen whom Strafford frightened out of their conscientious
+convictions by reminding them of their canonical obedience. This was
+undoubtedly what he meant when he afterwards wrote: "Perceiving that he
+who would take orders must subscribe slave." Speaking of himself a
+little further on as "Church-outed by the prelates," he implies that he
+would not have refused orders if he could have had them on his own
+terms. As regarded Milton personally this attitude was reasonable, he
+had a right to feel himself above the restraints of mere formularies;
+but he spoke unadvisedly if he meant to contend that a priest should be
+invested with the freedom of a Prophet. His words, however, must be
+taken in connection with the peculiar circumstances of the time. It was
+an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful
+persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and Williams, had for
+years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning,
+but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused
+to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But
+if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; he
+had the Church completely under his control, he was fast filling it with
+his partisans and creatures, he was working it for every end which
+Milton most abhorred, and was, in particular, allying it with a king who
+in 1632 had governed three years without a Parliament. The mere thought
+that he must call this hierarch his Father in God, the mere foresight
+that he might probably come into collision with him, and that if he did
+his must be the fate of the earthen vessel, would alone have sufficed to
+deter Milton from entering the Church.
+
+Even so resolute a spirit as Milton's could hardly contemplate the
+relinquishment of every definite calling in life without misgiving, and
+his friends could hardly let it pass without remonstrance. There exists
+in his hand the draft of a letter of reply to the verbal admonition of
+some well-wisher, to whom he evidently feels that he owes deference. His
+friend seems to have thought that he was yielding to the allurements of
+aimless study, neglecting to return as service what he had absorbed as
+knowledge. Milton pleads that his motive must be higher than the love of
+lettered ease, for that alone could never overcome the incentives that
+urge him to action. "Why should not all the hopes that forward youth and
+vanity are afledge with, together with gain, pride, and ambition, call
+me forward more powerfully than a poor, regardless, and unprofitable
+sin of curiosity should be able to withhold?" And what of the "desire of
+honour and repute and immortal fame seated in the breast of every true
+scholar?" That his correspondent may the better understand him, he
+encloses a "Petrarchean sonnet," recently composed, on his twenty-third
+birthday, not one of his best, but precious as the first of his frequent
+reckonings with himself:--
+
+   "How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
+      Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
+      My hasting days fly on with full career;
+      But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
+    Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
+      That I to manhood am arrived so near;
+      And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
+      Than some more timely-happy spirits indu'th.
+    Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
+      It shall be still in strictest measure even
+      To that same lot, however mean or high,
+    Towards which Time leads me, and the Will of Heaven.
+      All is, if I have grace to use it so,
+      As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."
+
+The poetical temperament is especially liable to misgiving and
+despondency, and from this Milton evidently was not exempt. Yet he is
+the same Milton who proclaimed a quarter of a century afterwards--
+
+                            "I argue not
+    Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
+    Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
+    Right onward."
+
+There is something very fine in the steady resolution with which, after
+so fully admitting to himself that his promise is yet unfulfilled, and
+that appearances are against him, he recurs to his purpose, frankly
+owning the while that the gift he craves is Heaven's, and his only the
+application. He had received a lesson against over-confidence in the
+failure of his solitary effort up to this time to achieve a work on a
+large scale. To the eighth and last stanza of his poem, "The Passion of
+Christ," is appended the note: "This subject the author finding to be
+above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what
+was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but soon
+deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The "Hymn on
+the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of far-fetched
+prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through strophes of
+ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and Child seem
+in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity; when
+suddenly, by an exquisite turn, the poet sinks back into his original
+key, and finally harmonizes his strain by the divine repose of
+concluding picture worthy of Correggio:--
+
+        "But see, the Virgin blest
+         Hath laid the Babe to rest;
+    Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
+         Heaven's youngest-teemed star
+         Hath fixed her polished car,
+    Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
+    And all about the courtly stable
+    Bright harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable."
+
+In some degree this magnificent composition loses force in our day from
+its discordance with modern sentiment. We look upon religions as
+members of the same family, and are more interested in their
+resemblances than their antagonisms. Moloch and Dagon themselves appear
+no longer as incarnate fiends, but as the spiritual counterparts of
+antediluvian monsters; and Milton's treatment of the Olympian deities
+jars upon us who remember his obligations to them. If the most Hebrew of
+modern poets, he still owed more to Greece than to Palestine. How living
+a thing Greek mythology was to him from his earliest years appears from
+his college vacation exercise of 1628, where there are lines which, if
+one did not know to be Milton's, one would declare to be Keats's. Among
+his other compositions by the time of his quitting Cambridge are to be
+named the superb verses, "At a Solemn Music," perhaps the most perfect
+expression of his ideal of song; the pretty but over fanciful lines, "On
+a fair Infant dying of a cough;" and the famous panegyric of
+Shakespeare, a fancy made impressive by dignity and sonority of
+utterance.
+
+With such earnest of a true vocation, Milton betook himself to
+retirement at Horton, a village between Colnbrook and Datchet, in the
+south-eastern corner of Buckinghamshire, county of nightingales, where
+his father had settled himself on his retirement from business. This
+retreat of the elder Milton may be supposed to have taken place in 1632,
+for in that year he took his clerk into partnership, probably devolving
+the larger part of the business upon him. But it may have been earlier,
+for in 1626 Milton tells Diodati--
+
+   "Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus ulmo,
+    Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci."
+
+And in a college declamation, which cannot have been later than 1632, he
+"calls to witness the groves and rivers, and the beloved village elms,
+under which in the last past summer I remember having had supreme
+delight with the Muses, when I too, among rural scenes and remote
+forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden
+eternity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Doctor Johnson deemed "the knowledge of nature half the task of a poet,"
+but not until he had written all his poetry did he repair to the
+Highlands. Milton allows natural science and the observation of the
+picturesque no place among the elements of a poetical self-education,
+and his practice differs entirely from that which would in our day be
+adopted by an aspirant happy in equal leisure. Such an one would
+probably have seen no inconsiderable portion of the globe ere he could
+resolve to bury himself in a tiny hamlet for five years. The poems which
+Milton composed at Horton owe so much of their beauty to his country
+residence as to convict him of error in attaching no more importance to
+the influences of scenery. But this very excellence suggests that the
+spell of scenery need not be exactly proportioned to its grandeur.
+
+The beauties of Horton are characterized by Professor Masson as those of
+"rich, teeming, verdurous flat, charming by its appearance of plenty,
+and by the goodly show of wood along the fields and pastures, in the
+nooks where the houses nestle, and everywhere in all directions to the
+sky-bound verge of the landscape." He also notices "the canal-like
+abundance and distribution of water. There are rivulets brimming through
+the meadows among rushes and water-plants; and by the very sides of the
+ways, in lieu of ditches, there are slow runnels, in which one can see
+the minnows swimming." The distant keep of Windsor, "bosomed high in
+tufted trees," is the only visible object that appeals to the
+imagination, or speaks of anything outside of rural peace and
+contentment. Milton's house, as Todd was informed by the vicar of the
+parish, stood till about 1798. If so, however, it is very remarkable
+that the writer of an account of Horton in the _Gentleman's Magazine_
+for August, 1791, who speaks of Milton with veneration, and transcribes
+his mother's epitaph, does not allude to the existence of his house. Its
+site is traditionally identified with that of Berkyn Manor, near the
+church, and an old pigeon-house is asserted to be a remnant of the
+original building. The elder Milton was no doubt merely the tenant; his
+landlord is said to have been the Earl of Bridgewater, but as there is
+no evidence of the Earl having possessed property in Horton, the
+statement may be merely an inference from Milton's poetical connection
+with the family. If not Bridgewater, the landlord was probably
+Bulstrode, the lord of the manor, and chief personage in the village.
+The Miltons still kept a footing in the metropolis. Christopher Milton,
+on his admission to the Inner Temple in September, 1632, is described as
+second son of John Milton of London, and subsequent legal proceedings
+disclose that the father, with the aid of his partner, was still doing
+business as a scrivener in 1637. It may be guessed that the veteran cit
+would not be sorry to find himself occasionally back in town. What with
+social exclusiveness, political and religious controversy, and
+uncongeniality of tastes, the Miltons' country circle of acquaintance
+was probably narrow. After five years of country life the younger Milton
+at all events thought seriously of taking refuge in an Inn of Court,
+"wherever there is a pleasant and shady walk," and tells Diodati, "Where
+I am now I live obscurely and in a cramped manner." He had only just
+made the acquaintance of his distinguished neighbour, Sir Henry Wotton,
+Provost of Eton, by the beginning of 1638, though it appears that he was
+previously acquainted with John Hales.
+
+Milton's five years at Horton were nevertheless the happiest of his
+life. It must have been an unspeakable relief to him to be at length
+emancipated from compulsory exercises, and to build up his mind without
+nod or beck from any quarter. For these blessings he was chiefly
+indebted to his father, whose industry and prudence had procured his
+independence and his rural retirement, and whose tender indulgence and
+noble confidence dispensed him from what most would have deemed the
+reasonable condition that he should at least earn his own living. "I
+will not," he exclaims to his father, "praise thee for thy fulfilment of
+the ordinary duties of a parent, my debt is heavier (_me poscunt
+majora_). Thou hast neither made me a merchant nor a barrister":--
+
+           "Neque enim, pater, ire jubebas
+    Qua via lata patet, qua pronior area lucri,
+    Certaque condendi fulget spes aurea nummi:
+    Nec rapis ad leges, male custoditaque gentis
+    Jura, nec insulsis damnas clamoribus aures."
+
+The stroke at the subserviency of the lawyers to the Crown (_male
+custodita jura gentis_) would be appreciated by the elder Milton, nor
+can we doubt that the old Puritan fully approved his son's resilience
+from a church denied by Arminianism and prelacy. He would not so easily
+understand the dedication of a life to poetry, and the poem from which
+the above citation is taken seems to have been partly composed to smooth
+his repugnance away. He was soon to have stronger proofs that his son
+had not mistaken his vocation: it would be pleasant to be assured that
+the old man was capable of valuing "Comus" and "Lycidas" at their worth.
+The circumstances under which "Comus" was produced, and its subsequent
+publication with the extorted consent of the author, show that Milton
+did not wholly want encouragement and sympathy. The insertion of his
+lines on Shakespeare in the Second Folio (1632) also denotes some
+reputation as a wit. In the main, however, remote from urban circles and
+literary cliques, with few correspondents and no second self in
+sweetheart or friend, he must have led a solitary intellectual life,
+alone with his great ambition, and probably pitied by his acquaintance.
+"The world," says Emerson to the Poet, "is full of renunciations and
+apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool and a
+churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has
+protected his well-beloved flower." The special nature of Milton's
+studies cannot now be exactly ascertained. Of his manner of studying he
+informs Diodati, "No delay, no rest, no care or thought almost of
+anything holds me aside until I reach the end I am making for, and round
+off, as it were, some great period of my studies." Of his object he
+says: "God has instilled into me, at all events, a vehement love of the
+beautiful. Not with so much labour is Ceres said to have sought
+Proserpine as I am wont day and night to seek for the idea of the
+beautiful through all the forms and faces of things, and to follow it
+leading me on as with certain assured traces." We may be sure that he
+read the classics of all the languages which he understood. His copies
+of Euripides, Pindar, Aratus, and Lycophron, are, or have been recently,
+extant, with marginal notes, proving that he weighed what he read. A
+commonplace book contains copious extracts from historians, and he tells
+Diodati that he has read Greek history to the fall of Constantinople. He
+speaks of having occasionally repaired to London for instruction in
+mathematics and music. His own programme, promulgated eight years later,
+but without doubt perfectly appropriate to his Horton period, names
+before all else--"Devout prayer to the Holy Spirit, that can enrich with
+all utterance and knowledge, and send out His Seraphim with the hallowed
+fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases. To
+this must be added select reading, steady observation, and insight into
+all seemly and generous arts and affairs, till which in some measure be
+compassed, I refuse not to sustain this expectation." This is not the
+ideal of a mere scholar, as Mark Paulson thinks he at one time was, and
+would wish him to have remained. "Affairs" are placed fully on a level
+with "arts." Milton was kept from politics in his youth, not by any
+notion of their incompatibility with poetry; but by the more cogent
+arguments at their command "under whose inquisitious and tyrannical
+duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish."
+
+Milton's poetical development is, in many respects, exceptional. Most
+poets would no doubt, in theory, agree with Landor, "febriculis non
+indicari vires, impatientiam ab ignorantia non differre," but their
+faith will not be proved by lack of works, as Landor's precept and
+example require. He, who like Milton lisps in numbers usually sings
+freely in adolescence; he who is really visited by a true inspiration
+generally depends on mood rather than on circumstance. Milton, on the
+other hand, until fairly embarked on his great epic, was comparatively
+an unproductive, and literally an occasional poet. Most of his pieces,
+whether English or Latin, owe their existence to some impulse from
+without: "Comus" to the solicitation of a patron, "Lycidas" to the death
+of a friend. The "Allegro" and the "Penseroso" seem almost the only two
+written at the urgency of an internal impulse; and perhaps, if we knew
+their history, we should discover that they too were prompted by
+extraneous suggestion or provoked into being by accident. Such is the
+way with Court poets like Dryden and Claudian; it is unlike the usual
+procedure of Milton's spiritual kindred. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, write
+incessantly; whatever care they may bestow upon composition, the
+impulse to produce is never absent. With Milton it is commonly dormant
+or ineffectual; he is always studying, but the fertility of his mind
+bears no apparent proportion to the pains devoted to its cultivation. He
+is not, like Wordsworth, labouring at a great work whose secret progress
+fills him with a majestic confidence; or, like Coleridge, dreaming of
+works which he lacks the energy to undertake; or, save once, does he
+seem to have felt with Keats:--
+
+   "Fears that I may cease to be
+      Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
+    Before that books, in high piled charactery,
+      Hold in rich garners the full ripened grain."
+
+He neither writes nor wishes to write; he simply studies, piling up the
+wood on the altar, and conscious of the power to call down fire from
+Heaven when he will. There is something sublime in this assured
+confidence; yet its wisdom is less evident than its grandeur. "No man,"
+says Shelley, "can say, 'I will compose poetry.'" If he cannot say this
+of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He
+cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly;
+whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious
+blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an
+uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he
+told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my
+Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air."
+But the danger of this protracted preparation was shown by his narrow
+escape from poetical shipwreck when the duty of the patriot became
+paramount to that of the poet. The Civil War confounded his
+anticipations of leisurely composition, and but for the disguised
+blessing of his blindness, the mountain of his attainment might have
+been Pisgah rather than Parnassus.
+
+It is in keeping with the infrequency of Milton's moods of overmastering
+inspiration, and the strength of will which enabled him to write
+steadily or abstain from writing at all, that his early compositions
+should be, in general, so much more correct than those of other English
+poets of the first rank. The childish bombast of "Titus Andronicus," the
+commonplace of Wordsworth, the frequent inanity of the youthful
+Coleridge and the youthful Byron, Shelley's extravagance, Keats's
+cockneyism, Tennyson's mawkishness, find no counterpart in Milton's
+early compositions. All these great writers, though the span of some of
+them was but short, lived long enough to blush for much of what they had
+in the days of their ignorance taken for poetry. The mature Milton had
+no cause to be ashamed of anything written by the immature Milton,
+reasonable allowance being made for the inevitable infection of
+contemporary false taste. As a general rule, the youthful exuberance of
+a Shakespeare would be a better sign; faults, no less than beauties,
+often indicate the richness of the soil. But Milton was born to confute
+established opinions. Among other divergencies from usage, he was at
+this time a rare example of an English poet whose faculty was, in large
+measure, to be estimated by his essays in Latin verse. England had up to
+this time produced no distinguished Latin poet, though Scotland had:
+and had Milton's Latin poems been accessible, they would certainly have
+occupied a larger place in the estimation of his contemporaries than his
+English compositions. Even now they contribute no trifling addition to
+his fame, though they cannot, even as exercises, be placed in the
+highest rank. There are two roads to excellence in Latin verse--to write
+it as a scholar, or to write it as a Roman. England has once, and only
+once, produced a poet so entirely imbued with the Roman spirit that
+Latin seemed to come to him like the language of some prior state of
+existence, rather remembered than learned. Landor's Latin verse is hence
+greatly superior to Milton's, not, perhaps, in scholarly elegance, but
+in absolute vitality. It would be poor praise to commend it for fidelity
+to the antique, for it is the antique. Milton stands at the head of the
+numerous class who, not being actually born Romans, have all but made
+themselves so. "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." His Latin
+compositions are delightful, but precisely from the qualities least
+characteristic of his genius as an English poet. Sublimity and
+imagination are infrequent; what we have most commonly to admire are
+grace, ease, polish, and felicitous phrases rather concise in expression
+than weighty with matter. Of these merits the elegies to his friend
+Diodati, and the lines addressed to his father and to Manso, are
+admirable examples. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is in a higher strain, and
+we shall have to recur to it.
+
+Except for his formal incorporation with the University of Oxford, by
+proceeding M.A. there in 1635, and the death of his mother on April 3,
+1637, Milton's life during his residence at Horton, as known to us, is
+entirely in his writings. These comprise the "Sonnet to the
+Nightingale," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," all probably written in 1633;
+"Arcades," probably, and "Comus" certainly written in 1634; "Lycidas" in
+1637. The first three only are, or seem to be, spontaneous overflowings
+of the poetic mind: the others are composed in response to external
+invitations, and in two instances it is these which stand highest in
+poetic desert. Before entering on any criticism, it will be convenient
+to state the originating circumstances of each piece.
+
+"Arcades" and "Comus" both owe their existence to the musician Henry
+Lawes, unless the elder Milton's tenancy of his house from the Earl of
+Bridgewater can be accepted as a fact. Both were written for the
+Bridgewater family, and if Milton felt no special devotion to this
+house, his only motive could have been to aid the musical performance of
+his friend Henry Lawes, whose music is discommended by Burney, but who,
+Milton declares:
+
+   "First taught our English music how to span
+    Words with just note and accent."
+
+Masques were then the order of the day, especially after the splendid
+exhibition of the Inns of Court in honour of the King and Queen,
+February, 1634. Lawes, as a Court musician, took a leading part in this
+representation, and became in request on similar occasions. The person
+intended to be honoured by the "Arcades" was the dowager Countess of
+Derby, mother-in-law of the Earl of Bridgewater, whose father, Lord
+Keeper Egerton, she had married in 1600. The aged lady, to whom more
+than forty years before Spenser had dedicated his "Teares of the Muses,"
+and who had ever since been an object of poetic flattery and homage,
+lived at Harefield, about four miles from Uxbridge; and there the
+"Arcades" were exhibited, probably in 1634. Milton's melodious verses
+were only one feature in a more ample entertainment. That they pleased
+we may be sure, for we find him shortly afterwards engaged on a similar
+undertaking of much greater importance, commissioned by the Bridgewater
+family. In those days Milton had no more of the Puritanic aversion to
+the theatre--
+
+   "Then to the well-trod stage anon,
+    If Jonson's learned sock be on,
+    Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
+    Warble his native wood-notes wild,"
+
+than to the pomps and solemnities of cathedral ritual:--
+
+   "But let my due feet never fail
+    To walk the studious cloisters pale,
+    And love the high-embowed roof,
+    With antique pillars massy proof,
+    And storied windows richly dight,
+    Casting a dim religious light:
+    There let the pealing organ blow,
+    To the full-voic'd quire below,
+    In service high and anthems clear,
+    As may with sweetness through mine ear
+    Dissolve me into ecstacies,
+    And bring all heaven before mine eyes."
+
+He therefore readily fell in with Lawes's proposal to write a masque to
+celebrate Lord Bridgewater's assumption of the Lord Presidency of the
+Welsh Marches. The Earl had entered upon the office in October, 1633,
+and "Comus" was written some time between this and the following
+September. Singular coincidences frequently linked Milton's fate with
+the north-west Midlands, from which his grandmother's family and his
+brother-in-law and his third wife sprung, whither the latter retired,
+where his friend Diodati lived, and his friend King died, and where now
+the greatest of his early works was to be represented in the
+time-hallowed precincts of Ludlow Castle, where it was performed on
+Michaelmas night, in 1634. If, as we should like to think, he was
+himself present, the scene must have enriched his memory and his mind.
+The castle--in which Prince Arthur had spent with his Spanish bride the
+six months of life which alone remained to him, in which eighteen years
+before the performance Charles the First had been installed Prince of
+Wales with extraordinary magnificence, and which, curiously enough, was
+to be the residence of the Cavalier poet, Butler--would be a place of
+resort for English tourists, if it adorned any country but their own.
+The dismantled keep is still an imposing object, lowering from a steep
+hill around whose base the curving Teme alternately boils and gushes
+with tumultuous speed. The scene within must have realized the lines in
+the "Allegro ":
+
+   "Pomp, and feast, and revelry,
+    Mask and antique pageantry,
+    Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
+    In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
+    With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
+    Rain influence."
+
+Lawes himself acted the attendant Spirit, the Lady and the Brothers
+were performed by Lord Bridgewater's youthful children, whose own
+nocturnal bewilderment in Haywood Forest, could we trust a tradition,
+doubted by the critics, but supported by the choice of the neighbourhood
+of Severn as the scene of the drama, had suggested his theme to Milton.
+He is evidently indebted for many incidents and ideas to Peele's "Old
+Wives' Tale," and the "Comus" of Erycius Puteanus; but there is little
+morality in the former production and little fancy in the latter. The
+peculiar blending of the highest morality with the noblest imagination
+is as much Milton's own as the incomparable diction. "I," wrote Sir
+Henry Wootton on receiving a copy of the anonymous edition printed by
+Lawes in 1637, "should much commend the tragical part if the lyrical did
+not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes,
+whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in
+our language." "Although not openly acknowledged by the author," says
+Lawes in his apology for printing prefixed to the poem, "it is a
+legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired that the often
+copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction,
+and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view." The
+publication is anonymous, and bears no mark of Milton's participation
+except a motto, which none but the author could have selected,
+intimating a fear that publication is premature. The title is simply "A
+Maske presented at Ludlow Castle," nor did the piece receive the name of
+"Comus" until after Milton's death.
+
+It has been remarked that one of the most characteristic traits of
+Milton's genius, until he laid hand to "Paradise Lost," is the
+dependence of his activity upon promptings from without. "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. Of
+the elegy's relation to Milton's biography it may be said that it sums
+up the two influences which had been chiefly moulding his mind of late
+years, the natural influences of which he had been the passive recipient
+during his residence at Horton, and the political and theological
+passion with which he was becoming more and more inspired by the
+circumstances of the time. By 1637 the country had been eight years
+without a parliament, and the persecution of Puritans had attained its
+acme. In that year Laud's new Episcopalian service book was forced, or
+rather was attempted to be forced, upon Scotland; Prynne lost his ears;
+and Bishop Williams was fined eighteen thousand pounds and ordered to be
+imprisoned during the King's pleasure. Hence the striking, if
+incongruous, introduction of "The pilot of the Galilean lake," to
+bewail, in the character of a shepherd, the drowned swain in conjunction
+with Triton, Hippotades, and Camus. "The author," wrote Milton
+afterwards, "by occasion, foretells the ruin of the corrupted clergy,
+then in their height." It was a Parthian dart, for the volume was
+printed at the University Press in 1638, probably a little before his
+departure for Italy.
+
+The "Penseroso" and the "Allegro," notwithstanding that each piece is
+the antithesis of the other, are complementary rather than contrary, and
+may be, in a sense, regarded as one poem, whose theme is the praise of
+the reasonable life. It resembles one of those pictures in which the
+effect is gained by contrasted masses of light and shade, but each is
+more nicely mellowed and interfused with the qualities of the other than
+it lies within the resources of pictorial skill to effect. Mirth has an
+undertone of gravity, and melancholy of cheerfulness. There is no
+antagonism between the states of mind depicted; and no rational lover,
+whether of contemplation or of recreation, would find any difficulty in
+combining the two. The limpidity of the diction is even more striking
+than its beauty. Never were ideas of such dignity embodied in verse so
+easy and familiar, and with such apparent absence of effort. The
+landscape-painting is that of the seventeenth century, absolutely true
+in broad effects, sometimes ill-defined and even inaccurate in minute
+details. Some of these blemishes are terrible in nineteenth-century
+eyes, accustomed to the photography of our Brownings and Patmores.
+Milton would probably have made light of them, and perhaps we owe him
+some thanks for thus practically refuting the heresy that inspiration
+implies infallibility. Yet the poetry of his blindness abounds with
+proof that he had made excellent use of his eyes while he had them, and
+no part of his poetry wants instances of subtle and delicate observation
+worthy of the most scrutinizing modern:--
+
+   "Thee, chantress, oft the woods among,
+    I woo, to hear thy evensong;
+    And, missing thee, I walk unseen
+    On the dry, smooth-shaven green."
+
+"The song of the nightingale," remarks Peacock, "ceases about the time
+the grass is mown." The charm, however, is less in such detached
+beauties, however exquisite, than in the condensed opulence--"every
+epithet a text for a canto," says Macaulay--and in the general
+impression of "plain living and high thinking," pursued in the midst of
+every charm of nature and every refinement of culture, combining the
+ideal of Horton with the ideal of Cambridge.
+
+"Lycidas" is far more boldly conventional, not merely in the treatment
+of landscape, but in the general conception and machinery. An initial
+effort of the imagination is required to feel with the poet; it is not
+wonderful that no such wing bore up the solid Johnson. Talk of Milton
+and his fellow-collegian as shepherds! "We know that they never drove
+afield, and that they had no flocks to batten." There is, in fact,
+according to Johnson, neither nature nor truth nor art nor pathos in the
+poem, for all these things are inconsistent with the introduction of a
+shepherd of souls in the character of a shepherd of sheep. A
+nineteenth-century reader, it may be hoped, finds no more difficulty in
+idealizing Edward King as a shepherd than in personifying the ocean calm
+as "sleek Panope and all her sisters," which, to be sure, may have been
+a trouble to Johnson. If, however, Johnson is deplorably prosaic,
+neither can we agree with Pattison that "in 'Lycidas' we have reached
+the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production."
+Its innumerable beauties are rather exquisite than magnificent. It is an
+elegy, and cannot, therefore, rank as high as an equally consummate
+example of epic, lyric, or dramatic art. Even as elegy it is surpassed
+by the other great English masterpiece, "Adonais," in fire and grandeur.
+There is no incongruity in "Adonais" like the introduction of "the pilot
+of the Galilean lake"; its invective and indignation pour naturally out
+of the subject; their expression is not, as in "Lycidas," a splendid
+excrescence. There is no such example of sustained eloquence in
+"Lycidas" as the seven concluding stanzas of "Adonais" beginning, "Go
+thou to Rome." But the balance is redressed by the fact that the
+beauties of "Adonais" are the inimitable. Shelley's eloquence is even
+too splendid for elegy. It wants the dainty thrills and tremors of
+subtle versification, and the witcheries of verbal magic in which
+"Lycidas" is so rich--"the opening eyelids of the morn;" "smooth-sliding
+Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds;" Camus's garment, "inwrought with
+figures dim;" "the great vision of the guarded mount;" "the tender stops
+of various quills;" "with eager thought warbling his Doric lay." It will
+be noticed that these exquisite phrases have little to do with Lycidas
+himself, and it is a fact not to be ignored, that though Milton and
+Shelley doubtless felt more deeply than Dryden when he composed his
+scarcely inferior threnody on Anne Killegrew, whom he had never seen,
+both might have found subjects of grief that touched them more nearly.
+Shelley tells us frankly that "in another's woe he wept his own." We
+cannot doubt of whom Milton was thinking when he wrote:
+
+   "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
+    (That last infirmity of noble mind)
+    To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
+    But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
+    And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
+    Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
+    And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,'
+    Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
+    'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
+    Nor in the glistering foil
+    Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;
+    But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
+    And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
+    As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
+    much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'"
+
+"Comus," the richest fruit of Milton's early genius, is the epitome of
+the man at the age at which he wrote it. It bespeaks the scholar and
+idealist, whose sacred enthusiasm is in some danger of contracting a
+taint of pedantry for want of acquaintance with men and affairs. The
+Elder Brother is a prig, and his dialogues with his junior reveal the
+same solemn insensibility to the humorous which characterizes the
+kindred genius of Wordsworth, and would have provoked the kindly smile
+of Shakespeare. It is singular to find the inevitable flaw of "Paradise
+Lost" prefigured here, and the wicked enchanter made the real hero of
+the piece. These defects are interesting, because they represent the
+nature of Milton as it was then, noble and disinterested to the height
+of imagination, but self-assertive, unmellowed, angular. They disappear
+entirely when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the
+introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina.
+They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with
+the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with
+virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely
+avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one
+need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of
+thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly than in
+"Comus." No drama out of Shakespeare has furnished such a number of the
+noblest familiar quotations. It is, indeed, true that many of these
+jewels are fetched from the mines of other poets: great as Milton's
+obligations, to Nature were, his obligations to books were greater. But
+he has made all his own by the alchemy of his genius, and borrows little
+but to improve. The most remarkable coincidence is with a piece
+certainly unknown to him--Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso," which was
+first acted in 1637, the year of the publication of "Comus," a great
+year in the history of the drama, for the "Cid" appeared in it also. The
+similarity of the situations of Justina tempted by the Demon, and the
+Lady in the power of Comus, has naturally begotten a like train of
+thought in both poets.
+
+     "_Comus._ Nay, Lady, sit; if I but wave this wand,
+    Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,
+    And you a statue, or, as Daphne was,
+    Root-bound, that fled Apollo.
+
+      _Lady._                     Fool, do not boast
+    Thou can'st not touch the freedom of my mind
+    With all thy charms, although this corporal rind
+    Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good."
+
+
+     "_Justina._ Thought is not in my power, but action is.
+    I will not move my foot to follow thee.
+
+      _Demon._ But a far mightier wisdom than thine own
+    Exerts itself within thee, with such power
+    Compelling thee to that which it inclines
+    That it shall force thy step; how wilt thou then
+    Resist, Justina?
+
+      _Justina._ By my free will.
+
+      _Demon._                    I
+    Must force thy will.
+
+      _Justina._           It is invincible.
+    It were not free if thou had'st power upon it."
+
+It must be admitted that where the Spaniard and the Englishman come
+directly into competition the former excels. The dispute between the
+Lady and Comus may be, as Johnson says it is, "the most animating and
+affecting scene in the drama;" but, tried by the dramatic test which
+Calderon bears so well, it is below the exigencies and the possibilities
+of the subject. Nor does the poetry here, quite so abundantly as in the
+other scenes in this unrivalled "suite of speeches," atone for the
+deficiencies of the play.
+
+It is a just remark of Pattison's that "in a mind of the consistent
+texture of Milton's, motives are secretly influential before they emerge
+in consciousness." In September, 1637, Milton had complained to Diodati
+of his cramped situation in the country, and talked of taking chambers
+in London. Within a few months we find this vague project matured into a
+settled scheme of foreign travel. One tie to home had been severed by
+the death of his mother in the preceding April; and his father was to
+find another prop of his old age in his second son, Christopher, about
+to marry and reside with him. "Lycidas" had appeared meanwhile, or was
+to appear, and its bold denunciation of the Romanizing clergy might well
+offend the ruling powers. The atmosphere at home was, at all events,
+difficult breathing for an impotent patriot; and Milton may have come to
+see what we so clearly see in "Comus," that his asperities and
+limitations needed contact with the world. Why speak of the charms of
+Italy, in themselves sufficient allurement to a poet and scholar? His
+father, trustful and unselfish as of old, found the considerable sum
+requisite for a prolonged foreign tour; and in April, 1638, Milton,
+provided with excellent introductions from Sir Henry Wootton and others,
+seeks the enrichment and renovation of his genius in Italy:--
+
+   "And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
+    Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Four times has a great English poet taken up his abode in "the paradise
+of exiles," and remained there until deeply imbued with the spirit of
+the land. The Italian residence of Byron and Shelley, of Landor and
+Browning, has infused into English literature a new element which has
+mingled with its inmost essence. Milton's brief visit could not be of
+equal moment. Italian letters had already done their utmost for him; and
+he did not stay long enough to master the secret of Italian life. A real
+enthusiasm for Italy's classical associations is indicated by his
+original purpose of extending his travels to Greece, an enterprise at
+that period requiring no little disdain of hardship and peril. But it
+would have been an anachronism if he could have contemplated the
+comprehensive and scientific scheme of self-culture by Italian
+influences of every kind which, a hundred and fifty years later, was
+conceived and executed by Goethe. At the time of Milton's visit Italian
+letters and arts sloped midway in their descent from the Renaissance to
+the hideous but humorous rococo so graphically described by Vernon Lee.
+Free thought had perished along with free institutions in the preceding
+century, and as a consequence, though the physical sciences still
+numbered successful cultivators, originality of mind was all but
+extinct. Things, nevertheless, wore a gayer aspect than of late. The
+very completeness of the triumph of secular and spiritual despotism had
+made them less suspicious, surly, and austere. Spanish power was visibly
+decaying. The long line of _zelanti_ Popes had come to an end; and it
+was thought that if the bosom of the actual incumbent could be
+scrutinized, no little complacency in Swedish victories over the Faith's
+defenders would be found. An atmosphere of toleration was diffusing
+itself, bigotry was imperceptibly getting old-fashioned, the most
+illustrious victim of the Inquisition was to be well-nigh the last. If
+the noble and the serious could not be permitted, there was no ban upon
+the amiable and the frivolous: never had the land been so full of petty
+rhymesters, antiquarian triflers, and gregarious literati, banded to
+play at authorship in academies, like the seven Swabians leagued to kill
+the hare. For the rest, the Italy of Milton's day, its superstition and
+its scepticism, and the sophistry that strove to make the two as one;
+its monks and its bravoes; its processions and its pantomimes; its cult
+of the Passion and its cult of Paganism; the opulence of its past and
+the impotence of its present; will be found depicted by sympathetic
+genius in the second volume of "John Inglesant."
+
+Milton arrived in Paris about the end of April or beginning of May. Of
+his short stay there it is only known that he was received with
+distinction by the English Ambassador, Lord Scudamore, and owed to him
+an introduction to one of the greatest men in Europe, Hugo Grotius, then
+residing at Paris as envoy from Christina of Sweden. Travelling by way
+of Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, he arrived about the beginning of
+August at Florence; where, probably by the aid of good recommendations,
+he "immediately contracted the acquaintance of many noble and learned,"
+and doubtless found, with the author of "John Inglesant," that "nothing
+can be more delightful than the first few days of life in Italy in the
+company of polished and congenial men." The Florentine academies, he
+implies answered one of the purposes of modern clubs, and enabled the
+traveller to multiply one good introduction into many. He especially
+mentions Gaddi, Dati, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei, Chimentelli,
+and Francini, of all of whom a full account will be found in Masson. Two
+of them, Dati and Francini, have linked their names with Milton's by
+their encomiums on him inserted in his works. The key-note of these
+surprising productions is struck by Francini when he remarks that the
+heroes of England are accounted in Italy superhuman. If this is so, Dati
+may be justified in comparing a young man on his first and last foreign
+tour to the travelled Ulysses; and Francini in declaring that Thames
+rivals Helicon in virtue of Milton's Latin poems, which alone the
+panegyrist could read. Truly, as Smollett says, Italian is the language
+of compliments. If ludicrous, however, the flattery is not nauseous, for
+it is not wholly insincere. Amid all conventional exaggerations there is
+an under-note of genuine feeling, showing that the writers really had
+received a deep impression from Milton, deeper than they could well
+explain or understand. The bow drawn at a venture did not miss the mark,
+but it is a curious reflection that those of his performances which
+would really have justified their utmost enthusiasm were hieroglyphical
+to them. Such of his literary exercises as they could understand
+consisted, he says, of "some trifles which I had in memory composed at
+under twenty or thereabout; and other things which I had shifted, in
+scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch up among them." The former
+class of compositions may no doubt be partly identified with his college
+declamations and Latin verses. What the "things patched up among them"
+may have been is unknown. It is curious enough that his acquaintance
+with the Italian literati should have been the means of preserving one
+of their own compositions, the "Tina" of Antonio Malatesti, a series of
+fifty sonnets on a mistress, sent to him in manuscript by the author,
+with a dedication to the _illustrissimo signore et padrone
+osservatissimo_. The pieces were not of a kind to be approved by the
+laureate of chastity, and annoyance at the implied slur upon his morals
+may account for his omission of Malatesti from the list of his Italian
+acquaintance. He carried the MS. home, nevertheless, and a copy of it,
+finding its way back to Italy in the eighteenth century, restored
+Malatesti's fifty indiscretions to the Italian Parnassus. That his
+intercourse with men of culture involved freedom of another sort we
+learn from himself. "I have sate among their learned men," he says, "and
+been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as
+they supposed England was, while they themselves did nothing but bemoan
+the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought, that
+this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had
+been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian." Italy
+had never acquiesced in her degradation, though for a century and a half
+to come she could only protest in such conventicles as those frequented
+by Milton.
+
+The very type and emblem of the free spirit of Italy, crushed but not
+conquered, then inhabited Florence in the person of "the starry
+Galileo," lately released from confinement at Arcetri, and allowed to
+dwell in the city under such severe restraint of the Inquisition that no
+Protestant should have been able to gain access to him. It may not have
+been until Milton's second visit in March, 1639, when Galileo had
+returned to his villa, that the English stranger stood unseen before
+him. The meeting between the two great blind men of their century is one
+of the most picturesque in history; it would have been more pathetic
+still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in
+"Paradise Lost," or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen
+years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity
+which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How
+deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison
+of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic
+glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of
+"Paradise Lost," of the points at issue between Ptolemy and
+Copernicus:--
+
+   "Whether the sun predominant in heaven
+    Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun,
+    He from the east his flaming road begin,
+    Or she from west her silent course advance
+    With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps
+    On her soft axle, while she paces even,
+    And bears thee soft with the smooth air along."
+
+It would be interesting to know if Milton's Florentine acquaintance
+included that romantic adventurer, Robert Dudley, strange prototype of
+Shelley in face and fortune, whom Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Dean
+Bargrave encountered at Florence, but whom Milton does not mention. The
+next stage in his pilgrimage was the Eternal City, by this time resigned
+to live upon its past. The revenues of which Protestant revolt had
+deprived it were compensated by the voluntary contributions of the
+lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the
+centres of European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid
+architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was
+well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser
+of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a
+tribe of nephews, inordinately enriched by their indulgent uncle. Milton
+arrived early in October. The most vivid trace of his visit is his
+presence at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, who,
+"himself waiting at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd,
+nay, almost laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly
+most honourable manner." There he heard the singer, Leonora Baroni, to
+whom he inscribed three Latin epigrams, omitted from the fifty-six
+compositions in honour of her published in the following year. But we
+may see her as he saw her in the frontispiece, reproduced in Ademollo's
+monograph upon her. The face is full of sensibility, but not handsome.
+She lived to be a great lady, and if any one spoke of her artist days
+she would say, _Chi le ricercava queste memorie?_ Next to hers, the name
+most entwined with Milton's Roman residence is that of Lucas Holstenius,
+a librarian of the Vatican. Milton can have had little respect for a man
+who had changed his religion to become the dependant of Cardinal
+Barberini, but Holstenius's obliging reception of him extorted his
+gratitude, expressed in an eloquent letter. Of the venerable ruins and
+masterpieces of ancient and modern art which have inspired so many
+immortal compositions, Milton tells us nothing, and but one allusion to
+them is discoverable in his writings. The study of antiquity, as
+distinguished from that of classical authors, was not yet a living
+element in European culture: there is also truth in Coleridge's
+observation that music always had a greater attraction for Milton than
+plastic art.
+
+After two months' stay in Rome, Milton proceeded to Naples, whence,
+after two months' residence, he was recalled by tidings of the impending
+troubles at home, just as he was about to extend his travels to Sicily
+and Greece. The only name associated with his at Naples is that of the
+Marquis Manso, then passing his seventy-ninth year with the halo of
+reverence due to a veteran who fifty years ago had soothed and shielded
+Tasso, and since had protected Marini. He now entertained Milton with
+equal kindness, little dreaming that in return for hospitality he was
+receiving immortality. Milton celebrated his desert as the friend of
+poets, in a Latin poem of singular elegance, praying for a like guardian
+of his own fame, in lines which should never be absent from the memory
+of his biographers. He also unfolded the project which he then cherished
+of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly
+barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets. He is
+silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare. Manso requited the eulogium with an
+epigram and two richly-wrought cups, and told Milton that he would have
+shown him more observance still if he could have abstained from
+religious controversy. Milton had not acted on Sir Henry Wootton's
+advice to him, _il volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti_. "I had made this
+resolution with myself," he says, "not of my own accord to introduce
+conversation about religion; but, if interrogated respecting the faith,
+whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing." To this resolution he
+adhered, he says, during his second two months' visit to Rome,
+notwithstanding threats of Jesuit molestation, which probably were not
+serious. At Florence his friends received him with no less warmth than
+if they had been his countrymen, and with them he spent another two
+months. His way to Venice lay through Bologna and Ferrara, and if his
+sonnets in the Italian language were written in Italy, and all addressed
+to the same person, it was probably at Bologna, since the lady is spoken
+of as an inhabitant of "Reno's grassy vale," and the Reno is a river
+between Bologna and Ferrara. But there are many difficulties in the way
+of this theory, and, on the whole, it seems most reasonable to conclude
+that the sonnets were composed in England, and that their
+autobiographical character is at least doubtful. That nominally
+inscribed to Diodati, however, would well suit Leonora Baroni. Diodati
+had been buried in Blackfriars on August 27, 1638, but Milton certainly
+did not learn the fact until after his visit to Naples, and possibly not
+until he came to pass some time at Geneva with Diodati's uncle. He had
+come to Geneva from Venice, where he had made some stay, shipping off to
+England a cargo of books collected in Italy, among which were many of
+"immortal notes and Tuscan air." These, we may assume, he found awaiting
+him when he again set foot on his native soil, about the end of July,
+1639.
+
+Milton's conduct on his return justifies Wordsworth's commendation:--
+
+                              "Thy heart
+    The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
+
+Full, as his notebooks of the period attest, of magnificent aspiration
+for "flights above the Aonian mount," he yet quietly sat down to educate
+his nephews, and lament his friend. His brother-in-law Phillips had been
+dead eight years, leaving two boys, Edward and John, now about nine and
+eight respectively. Mrs. Phillips's second marriage had added two
+daughters to the family, and from whatever cause, it was thought best
+that the education of the sons should be conducted by their uncle. So it
+came to pass that "he took him a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, at
+the house of one Russel, a tailor;" Christopher Milton continuing to
+live with his father.
+
+We may well believe that when the first cares of resettlement were over,
+Milton found no more urgent duty than the bestowal of a funeral tribute
+upon his friend Diodati. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is the finest of his
+Latin poems, marvellously picturesque in expression, and inspired by
+true manly grief. In Diodati he had lost perhaps the only friend whom,
+in the most sacred sense of the term, he had ever possessed; lost him
+when far away and unsuspicious of the already accomplished stroke; lost
+him when returning to his side with aspirations to be imparted, and
+intellectual treasures to be shared. _Bis ille miser qui serus amavit._
+All this is expressed with earnest emotion in truth and tenderness,
+surpassing "Lycidas," though void of the varied music and exquisite
+felicities which could not well be present in the conventionalized idiom
+of a modern Latin poet. The most pathetic passage is that in which he
+contrasts the general complacency of animals in their kind with man's
+dependence for sympathy on a single breast; the most biographically
+interesting where he speaks of his plans for an epic on the story of
+Arthur, which he seems about to undertake in earnest. But the impulses
+from without which generally directed the course of this seemingly
+autocratic, but really susceptible, nature, urged him in quite a
+different direction: for some time yet he was to live, not make a poem.
+
+The tidings which, arriving at Naples about Christmas, 1638, prevailed
+upon Milton to abandon his projected visit to Sicily and Greece, were no
+doubt those of the revolt of Scotland, and Charles's resolution to
+quell it by force of arms. Ere he had yet quitted Italy, the King's
+impotence had been sufficiently demonstrated, and about a month ere he
+stood on English soil the royal army had "disbanded like the break-up of
+a school." Milton may possibly have regretted his hasty return, but
+before many months had passed it was plain that the revolution was only
+beginning. Charles's ineffable infatuation brought on a second Scottish
+war, ten times more ridiculously disastrous than the first, and its
+result left him no alternative but the convocation (November, 1640) of
+the Long Parliament, which sent Laud to the Tower and Strafford to the
+block, cleared away servile judges and corrupt ministers, and made the
+persecuted Puritans persecutors in their turn. Not a member of this
+grave assemblage, perhaps, but would have laughed if told that not its
+least memorable feat was to have prevented a young schoolmaster from
+writing an epic.
+
+Milton had by this time found the lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard
+insufficient for him, and had taken a house in Aldersgate Street, beyond
+the City wall, and suburban enough to allow him a garden. "This street,"
+writes Howell, in 1657, "resembleth an Italian street more than any
+other in London, by reason of the spaciousness and uniformity of the
+buildings and straightness thereof, with the convenient distance of the
+houses." He did not at this time contemplate mixing actively in
+political or religious controversy.
+
+      "I looked about to see if I could get any place that would hold
+      myself and my books, and so I took a house of sufficient size in
+      the city; and there with no small delight I resumed my intermitted
+      studies; cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to
+      God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that
+      task."
+
+But this was before the convocation of the Long Parliament. When it had
+met,
+
+      "Perceiving that the true way to liberty followed on from these
+      beginnings, inasmuch also as I had so prepared myself from my
+      youth that, above all things, I could not be ignorant what is of
+      Divine and what of human right, I resolved, though I was then
+      meditating certain other matters, to transfer into this struggle
+      all my genius and all the strength of my industry."
+
+Milton's note-books, to be referred to in another place, prove that he
+did not even then cease to meditate themes for poetry, but practically
+he for eighteen years ceased to be a poet.
+
+There is no doubt something grating and unwelcome in the descent of the
+scholar from regions of serene culture to fierce political and religious
+broils. But to regret with Pattison that Milton should, at this crisis
+of the State, have turned aside from poetry to controversy is to regret
+that "Paradise Lost" should exist. Such a work could not have proceeded
+from one indifferent to the public weal, and if Milton had been capable
+of forgetting the citizen in the man of letters we may be sure that "a
+little grain of conscience" would ere long have "made him sour." It is
+sheer literary fanaticism to speak with Pattison of "the prostitution of
+genius to political party." Milton is as much the idealist in his prose
+as in his verse; and although in his pamphlets he sides entirely with
+one of the two great parties in the State, it is not as its instrument,
+but as its prophet and monitor. He himself tells us that controversy is
+highly repugnant to him.
+
+      "I trust to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure
+      to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a
+      calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident
+      thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse
+      disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in
+      the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come in to the
+      dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk."
+
+But he felt that if he allowed such motives to prevail with him, it
+would be said to him:
+
+      "Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now again at the
+      foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest, What matters it
+      for thee or thy bewailing? When time was, thou would'st not find a
+      syllable of all that thou hast read or studied to utter on her
+      behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired
+      thoughts, but of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence,
+      the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be
+      adorned or beautified; but when the cause of God and His Church
+      was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee
+      which thou hast, God listened if He could hear thy voice among His
+      zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward
+      be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee."
+
+A man with "Paradise Lost" in him must needs so think and act, and, much
+as it would have been to have had another "Comus" or "Lycidas," were not
+even such well exchanged for a hymn like this, the high-water mark of
+English impassioned prose ere Milton's mantle fell upon Ruskin?
+
+      "Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable.
+      Parent of angels and men! next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King,
+      Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume,
+      ineffable and everlasting Love! And Thou, the third subsistence of
+      Divine Infinitude, illuminating Spirit, the joy and solace of
+      created things! one Tri-personal godhead! look upon this Thy poor
+      and almost spent and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to
+      these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they
+      devour Thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broke into Thy
+      vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls
+      of Thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs
+      that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting
+      the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and
+      scorpions to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal
+      darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth
+      again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird
+      of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this
+      our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes, and
+      struggling against the grudges of more dreaded calamities.
+
+      "O Thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody
+      inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking
+      the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless
+      revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were
+      quite breathless of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of
+      covenant with us; and, having first well-nigh freed us from
+      anti-Christian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic Empire to a
+      glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about
+      her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our
+      half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of
+      sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat
+      through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive
+      spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom:
+      that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how, for
+      us, the northern ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered
+      with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw
+      of Hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction,
+      ere she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast.
+
+      "O how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear,
+      when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest
+      miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest happiness to
+      come? Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from
+      the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes, now unite us entirely
+      and appropriate us to Thyself, tie us everlastingly in willing
+      homage to the prerogative of Thy eternal throne.
+
+      "And now we know, O Thou, our most certain hope and defence, that
+      Thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great
+      whore, and have joined their plots with that sad, intelligencing
+      tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies
+      thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas:
+      but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought;
+      let them decree, and do Thou cancel it; let them gather
+      themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be
+      broken; let them embattle, and be broken, for Thou art with us.
+
+      "Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may
+      perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty
+      measures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous
+      judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and
+      warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual
+      practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the
+      rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy
+      emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian
+      people at that day, when Thou, the Eternal and shortly-expected
+      King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the
+      world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious
+      and just commonwealths, shall put an end to all earthly tyrannies,
+      proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and
+      earth; where they undoubtedly, that by their labours, counsels,
+      and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion,
+      and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the
+      blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and
+      thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of
+      beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle
+      of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in
+      over-measure for ever.
+
+      "But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the
+      true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire
+      to high dignity, rule and promotion here, after a shameful end in
+      this life (which God grant them), shall be thrown down eternally
+      into the darkest and deepest gulf of Hell, where, under the
+      despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned,
+      that in the anguish of their torture, shall have no other ease
+      than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their
+      slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the
+      basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and
+      down-trodden vassals of perdition."
+
+The five pamphlets in which Milton enunciated his views on Church
+Government fall into two well-marked chronological divisions. Three--"Of
+Reformation touching Church Discipline in England," "Of Prelatical
+Episcopacy," "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against
+Smectymnuus"--which appeared almost simultaneously, belong to the
+middle of 1641, when the question of episcopacy was fiercely agitated.
+Two--"The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy," and "The
+Apology for Smectymnuus,"[1] belong to the early part of 1642, when the
+bishops had just been excluded from the House of Lords. To be just to
+Milton we must put ourselves in his position. At the present day forms
+of church government are usually debated on the ground of expediency,
+and even those to whom they seem important cannot regard them as they
+were regarded by Milton's contemporaries. Many may protest against
+Episcopacy receiving especial recognition from the State, but no one
+dreams of abolishing it, or of endowing another form of ecclesiastical
+administration in its room. It is no longer contended that the national
+religion should be changed, the contention is that no religion should be
+national, but that all should be placed on an impartial footing. But
+Milton at this time desired a theocracy, and nothing doubted that he
+could produce a pattern agreeable in every respect to the Divine will if
+only Prelacy could be hurled after Popery. The controversy, therefore,
+assumed far grander proportions than would be possible in our day, when
+it is three-fourths a protest against the airs of superiority which the
+alleged successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards
+teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than
+their own to the Apostolic model. What would seem exaggerated now was
+then perfectly in place. Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for
+which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the
+tongues of angels too melodious. As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry
+the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor
+ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the
+interminable period must not unfold itself in heights and hollows like
+the incoming tide of ocean, nor peal forth melodious thunder like a
+mighty organ. But, considered as argumentative compositions, they are
+exceedingly weak. No masculine head could be affected by them; but a
+manly heart may easily imbibe the generous contagion of their noble
+enthusiastic idealism. No man with a single fibre of ideality or
+enthusiasm can help confessing that Milton has risen to a transcendent
+height, and he may imagine that it has been attained by the ladder of
+reason rather than the pinion of poetry. Such an one may easily find
+reasons for agreeing with Milton in many inspired outbursts of eloquence
+simulating the logic that is in fact lacking to them. The following
+splendid passage, for instance, and there are very many like it, merely
+proves that a seat in the House of Lords is not essential to the
+episcopal office, which no one ever denied. It would have considerable
+force if the question involved the nineteenth century one of the Pope's
+temporal sovereignty:--
+
+      "Certainly there is no employment more honourable, more worthy to
+      take up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free
+      nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of heavenly truth
+      from God to man, and by the faithful work of holy doctrine to
+      procreate a number of faithful men, making a kind of creation like
+      to God's by infusing his spirit and likeness into them, to their
+      salvation, as God did into him; arising to what climate soever he
+      turn him, like that Sun of Righteousness that sent him, with
+      healing in his wings, and new light to break in upon the chill and
+      gloomy hearts of his hearers, raising out of darksome barrenness a
+      delicious and fragrant spring of saving knowledge and good works.
+      Can a man thus employed find himself discontented or dishonoured
+      for want of admittance to have a pragmatical voice at sessions and
+      jail deliveries? or because he may not as a judge sit out the
+      wrangling noise of litigious courts to shrive the purses of
+      unconfessing and unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be
+      discouraged though men call him not lord, whereas the due
+      performance of his office would gain him, even from lords and
+      princes, the voluntary title of father?"
+
+When it was said of Robespierre, _cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit
+tout ce qu'il dit_, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief
+place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal
+sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity
+to family life, to the horror of many nominal allies. His treatise on
+Divorce was the next of his publications in chronological order, but is
+so entwined with his domestic life that it will be best to postpone it
+until we again take up the thread of his personal history, and to pass
+on for the present to his next considerable writings, his tracts on
+education and on the freedom of the press.
+
+Milton's tract on Education, like so many of his performances, was the
+fruit of an impulse from without. "Though it be one of the greatest and
+noblest designs that can be thought on, and for want of which this
+nation perishes, I had not at this time been induced but by your earnest
+entreaties and serious conjurements." The efficient cause thus referred
+to existed in the person of Samuel Hartlib, philanthropist and
+polypragmatist, precursor of the Franklins and Rumfords of the
+succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction,
+Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country
+behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour
+applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal
+hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather
+however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by
+any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings to
+which he devoted himself were two of no less moment than the union of
+British and foreign Protestants, and the reform of English education by
+the introduction of the methods of Comenius. This Moravian pastor, the
+Pestalozzi of his age, had first of men grasped the idea that the
+ordinary school methods were better adapted to instil a knowledge of
+words than a knowledge of things. He was, in a word, the inventor of
+object lessons. He also strove to organize education as a connected
+whole from the infant school to the last touch of polish from foreign
+travel. Milton alludes almost scornfully to Comenius in his preface to
+Hartlib, but his tract is nevertheless imbued with the Moravian's
+principles. His aim, like Comenius's, is to provide for the instruction
+of all, "before the years of puberty, in all things belonging to the
+present and future life." His view is as strictly utilitarian as
+Comenius's. "Language is but the instrument conveying to us things
+useful to be known." Of the study of language as intellectual discipline
+he says nothing, and his whole course of instruction is governed by the
+desire of imparting useful knowledge. Whatever we may think of the
+system of teaching which in our day allows a youth to leave school
+disgracefully ignorant of physical and political geography, of history
+and foreign languages, it cannot be denied that Milton goes into the
+opposite extreme, and would overload the young mind with more
+information than it could possibly digest. His scheme is further
+vitiated by a fault which we should not have looked for in him,
+indiscriminate reverence for the classical writers, extending to
+subjects in which they were but children compared with the moderns. It
+moves something more than a smile to find ingenuous youth referred to
+Pliny and Solinus for instruction in physical science; and one wonders
+what the agricultural Hartlib thought of the proposed course of "Cato,
+Varro, and Columella," whose precepts are adapted for the climate of
+Italy. Another error, obvious to any dunce, was concealed from Milton by
+his own intellectual greatness. He legislates for a college of Miltons.
+He never suspects that the course he is prescribing would be beyond the
+abilities of nine hundred and ninety-nine scholars in a thousand, and
+that the thousandth would die of it. If a difficulty occurs he
+contemptuously puts it aside. He has not provided for Italian, but can
+it not "be easily learned at any odd hour"? "Ere this time the Hebrew
+tongue" (of which we have not hitherto heard a syllable), "might have
+been gained, whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldee and
+the Syrian dialect." This sublime confidence in the resources of the
+human intellect is grand, but it marks out Milton as an idealist, whose
+mission it was rather to animate mankind by the greatness of his
+thoughts than to devise practical schemes for human improvement. As an
+ode or poem on education, Milton's tract, doubtless, has delivered many
+a teacher and scholar from bondage to routine; and no man's aims are so
+high or his thoughts so generous that he might not be further profited
+and stimulated by reading it. As a practical treatise it is only
+valuable for its emphatic denunciation of the folly of teasing youth,
+whose element is the concrete, with grammatical abstractions, and the
+advice to proceed to translation as soon as possible, and to keep it up
+steadily throughout the whole course. Neglect of this precept is the
+principal reason why so many youths not wanting in capacity, and
+assiduously taught, leave school with hardly any knowledge of
+languages. Milton's scheme is also remarkable for its bold dealing with
+day schools and universities, which it would have entirely superseded.
+
+The next publication of Milton's is another instance of the dependence
+of his intellectual workings upon the course of events outside him. We
+owe the "Areopagitica," not to the lonely overflowings of his soul, or
+even to the disinterested observation of public affairs, but to the real
+jeopardy he had incurred by his neglect to get his books licensed. The
+Long Parliament had found itself, in 1643, with respect to the Press,
+very much in the position of Lord Canning's government in India at the
+time of the Mutiny. It marks the progress of public opinion that,
+whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent
+inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure,
+the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous,
+seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had
+no right to exist, and should be nipped in the bud by the appointment of
+licensers. Twelve London ministers, therefore, were nominated to license
+books in divinity, which was equivalent to enacting that nothing
+contrary to Presbyterian orthodoxy should be published in England.[2]
+Other departments, not forgetting poetry and fiction, were similarly
+provided for. The ordinance is dated June 14, 1643. Milton had always
+contemned the licensing regulations previously existing, and within a
+month his brain was busy with speculations which no reverend licenser
+could have been expected to confirm with an imprimatur. About August 1st
+the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" appeared, with no recognition
+of or from a licenser; and the second edition, published in the
+following February, equally infringed the Parliamentary ordinance. No
+notice appears to have been taken until the election of a new Master of
+the Stationers' Company, about the middle of 1644. The Company had an
+interest in the enforcement of the ordinance, which was aimed at piracy
+as well as sedition and heresy; and whether for this reason, or at the
+instigation of Milton's adversaries, they (August 24th) petitioned
+Parliament to call him to account. The matter was referred to a
+committee, but more urgent business thrust it out of sight. Milton,
+nevertheless, had received his marching orders, and on November 24,
+1644, appeared "Areopagitica; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
+Printing": itself unlicensed.
+
+The "Areopagitica" is by far the best known of Milton's prose writings,
+being the only one whose topic is not obsolete. It is also composed with
+more care and art than the others. Elsewhere he seeks to overwhelm, but
+here to persuade. He could without insincerity profess veneration for
+the Lords and Commons to whom his discourse is addressed, and he spares
+no pains to give them a favourable opinion both of his dutifulness and
+his reasonableness. More than anywhere else he affects the character of
+a practical man, pressing home arguments addressed to the understanding
+rather than to the pure reason. He points out sensibly, and for him
+calmly, that the censorship is a Papal invention, contrary to the
+precedents of antiquity; that while it cannot prevent the circulation of
+bad books, it is a grievous hindrance to good ones; that it destroys the
+sense of independence and responsibility essential to a manly and
+fruitful literature. We hear less than might have been expected about
+first principles, of the sacredness of conscience, of the obligation on
+every man to manifest the truth as it is within him. He does not dispute
+that the magistrate may suppress opinions esteemed dangerous to society
+after they have been published; what he maintains is that publication
+must not be prevented by a board of licensers. He strikes at the censor,
+not at the Attorney-General. This judicious caution cramped Milton's
+eloquence; for while the "Areopagitica" is the best example he has given
+us of his ability as an advocate, the diction is less magnificent than
+usual. Yet nothing penned by him in prose is better known than the
+passage beginning, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant
+nation;" and none of his writings contain so many seminal sentences,
+pithy embodiments of vital truths. "Revolutions of ages do not oft
+recover the loss of a rejected truth." "A dram of well-doing should be
+preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil
+doing. For God more esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
+person than the restraint of ten vicious." "Opinion in good men is but
+knowledge in the making." "A man maybe a heretic in the truth." Towards
+the end the argument takes a wider sweep, and Milton, again the poet and
+the seer, hails with exultation the approach of the time he thinks he
+discerns when all the Lord's people shall be prophets. "Behold now this
+vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed
+and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more
+anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of
+armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and
+heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching,
+revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their
+homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation." He clearly
+indicates that he regards the licensing ordinance as not really the
+offspring of an honest though mistaken concern for religion and
+morality, but as a device of Presbyterianism to restrain this outpouring
+of the spirit and silence Independents as well as Royalists.
+Presbyterianism had indeed been weighed in the balance and found
+wanting, and Milton's pamphlet was the handwriting on the wall. The fine
+gold must have become very dim ere a Puritan pen could bring itself to
+indite that scathing satire on the "factor to whose care and credit the
+wealthy man may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some
+divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres; resigns
+the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys into
+his custody; and, indeed, makes the very person of that man his
+religion--esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and
+commendation of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now
+no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and
+comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He
+entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him, his religion
+comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped and sumptuously laid to
+sleep, rises, is saluted; and after the malmsey or some well-spiced
+brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would
+have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his
+religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the
+shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling
+passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless,
+congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was
+humour. And now, surely as ever Saul was among the prophets, behold
+Milton among the wits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Ranging with Milton's spirit over the "fresh woods and pastures new,"
+foreshadowed in the closing verse of "Lycidas," we have left his mortal
+part in its suburban dwelling in Aldersgate Street, which he seems to
+have first inhabited shortly before the convocation of the Long
+Parliament in November, 1640. His visible occupations are study and the
+instruction of his nephews; by and by he becomes involved in the
+revolutionary tempest that rages around; and, while living like a
+pedagogue, is writing like a prophet. He is none the less cherishing
+lofty projects for epic and drama; and we also learn from Phillips that
+his society included "some young sparks," and may assume that he then,
+as afterwards--
+
+   "Disapproved that care, though wise in show,
+    That with superfluous burden loads the day,
+    And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains."
+
+There is eloquent testimony of his interest in public affairs in his
+subscription of four pounds, a large sum in those days, for the relief
+of the homeless Protestants of Ulster. The progress of events must have
+filled him with exultation, and when at length civil war broke out in
+September, 1642, Parliament had no more zealous champion. His zeal,
+however, did not carry him into the ranks, for which some biographers
+blame him. But if he thought that he could serve his cause better with a
+pamphlet than with a musket, surely he had good reason for what he
+thought. It should seem, moreover, that if Milton detested the enemy's
+principles, he respected his pikes and guns:--
+
+WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY [NOVEMBER, 1642.]
+
+    Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms,
+        Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
+        If deed of honour did thee ever please,
+        Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
+    He can requite thee, for he knows the charms
+        That call fame on such gentle acts as these,
+        And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,
+        Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.
+    Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower:
+        The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
+        The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
+    Went to the ground; and the repeated air
+        Of sad Electra's poet had the power
+        To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.
+
+
+If this strain seems deficient in the fierceness befitting a besieged
+patriot, let it be remembered that Milton's doors were literally
+defenceless, being outside the rampart of the City.
+
+We now approach the most curious episode of Milton's life, and the most
+irreconcilable with the conventional opinion of him. Up to this time
+this heroic existence must have seemed dull to many, for it has been a
+life without love. He has indeed, in his beautiful Sonnet to the
+Nightingale (about 1632), professed himself a follower of Love: but if
+so, he has hitherto followed at a most respectful distance. Yet he had
+not erred, when in the Italian sonnet, so finely rendered in Professor
+Masson's biography, he declared the heart his vulnerable point:--
+
+   "Young, gentle-natured, and a simple wooer,
+        Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly,
+        Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I
+        Offer devoutly; and by tokens sure
+    I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure,
+        In its conceptions graceful, good, and high.
+        When the world roars, and flames the startled sky;
+        In its own adamant it rests secure;
+    As free from chance and malice ever found,
+        And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse,
+        As it is loyal to each manly thing
+    And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse.
+        Only in that part is it not so sound
+        Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting."
+
+It is highly probable that the very reaction from party strife turned
+the young man's fancies to thoughts of love in the spring of 1643.
+Escorted, we must fear, by a chorus of mocking cuckoos, Milton, about
+May 21st, rode into the country on a mysterious errand. It is a ghoulish
+and ogreish idea, but it really seems as if the elder Milton quartered
+his progeny upon his debtors, as the ichneumon fly quarters hers upon
+caterpillars. Milton had, at all events for the last sixteen years, been
+regularly drawing interest from an Oxfordshire squire, Richard Powell
+of Forest Hill, who owed him £500, which must have been originally
+advanced by the elder Milton. The Civil War had no doubt interfered with
+Mr. Powell's ability to pay interest, but, on the other hand, must have
+equally impaired Milton's ability to exact it; for the Powells were
+Cavaliers, and the Parliament's writ would run but lamely in loyal
+Oxfordshire. Whether Milton went down on this eventful Whitsuntide in
+the capacity of a creditor cannot now be known; and a like uncertainty
+envelops the precise manner of the metamorphosis of Mary Powell into
+Mary Milton. The maiden of seventeen may have charmed him by her
+contrast to the damsels of the metropolis, she may have shielded him
+from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the
+Royalist headquarters, she may have won his heart while pleading for her
+harassed father; he may have fancied hers a mind he could mould to
+perfect symmetry and deck with every accomplishment, as the Gods
+fashioned and decorated Pandora. Milton also seems to imply that his, or
+his bride's, better judgment was partly overcome by "the persuasion of
+friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all." It is
+possible, too, that he had long been intimate with his debtor's family,
+and that Mary had previously made an impression upon him. If not, his
+was the most preposterously precipitate of poets' marriages; for a month
+after leaving home he presented a mistress to his astounded nephews and
+housekeeper. The newly-wedded pair were accompanied or quickly followed
+by a bevy of the bride's friends and relatives, who danced and sang and
+feasted for a week in the quiet Puritan house, then departed--and after
+a few weeks Milton finds himself moved to compose his tract on the
+"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce."
+
+How many weeks? The story seemed a straightforward one until Professor
+Masson remarked what had before escaped attention. According to
+Phillips, an inmate of the house at the period--"By that time she had
+for a month, or thereabouts, led a philosophical life (after having been
+used to a great house, and much company and joviality), her friends,
+possibly incited by her own desire, made earnest suit by letter to have
+her company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, on
+condition of her return at the time appointed, Michaelmas or thereabout.
+Michaelmas being come, and no news of his wife's return, he sent for her
+by letter, and receiving no answer sent several other letters, which
+were also unanswered, so that at last he dispatched down a
+foot-messenger; but the messenger came back without an answer. He
+thought it would be dishonourable ever to receive her again after such a
+repulse, and accordingly wrote two treatises," &c. Here we are
+distinctly assured that Mary Milton's desertion of her husband, about
+Michaelmas, was the occasion of his treatise on divorce. It follows
+that Milton's tract must have been written after Michaelmas. But the
+copy in the British Museum belonged to the bookseller Thomason, who
+always inscribed the date of publication on every tract in his
+collection, when it was known to him, and his date, as Professor Masson
+discovered, is August 1. Must we believe that Phillips's account is a
+misrepresentation? Must we, in Pattison's words, "suppose that Milton
+was occupying himself with a vehement and impassioned argument in favour
+of divorce for incompatibility of temper, during the honeymoon"? It
+would certainly seem so, and if Milton is to be vindicated it can only
+be by attention to traits in his character, invisible on its surface,
+but plainly discoverable in his actions.
+
+The grandeur of Milton's poetry, and the dignity and austerity of his
+private life, naturally incline us to regard him as a man of iron will,
+living by rule and reason, and exempt from the sway of passionate
+impulse. The incident of his marriage, and not this incident alone,
+refutes this conception of his character; his nature was as lyrical and
+mobile as a poet's should be. We have seen "Comus" and "Lycidas" arise
+at another's bidding, we shall see a casual remark beget "Paradise
+Regained." He never attempts to utter his deepest religious convictions
+until caught by the contagious enthusiasm of a revolution. If any
+incident in his life could ever have compelled him to speak or die it
+must have been the humiliating issue of his matrimonial adventure. To be
+cast off after a month's trial like an unsatisfactory servant, to
+forfeit the hope of sympathy and companionship which had allured him
+into the married state, to forfeit it, unless the law could be altered,
+for ever! The feelings of any sensitive man must find some sort of
+expression in such an emergency. At another period what Milton learned
+in suffering would no doubt have been taught in song. But pamphlets were
+then the order of the day, and Milton's "Doctrine and Discipline of
+Divorce," in its first edition, is as much the outpouring of an
+overburdened heart as any poem could have been. It bears every mark of a
+hasty composition, such as may well have been written and printed within
+the last days of July, following Mary Milton's departure. It is short.
+It deals with the most obvious aspects of the question. It is meagre in
+references and citations; two authors only are somewhat vaguely alleged,
+Grotius and Beza. It does not contain the least allusion to his domestic
+circumstances, nor anything unless the thesis itself, that could hinder
+his wife's return. Everything betokens that it was composed in the
+bitterness of wounded feeling upon the incompatibility becoming
+manifest; but that he had not yet arrived at the point of demanding the
+application of his general principle to his own special case. That point
+would be reached when Mary Milton deliberately refused to return, and
+the chronology of the greatly enlarged second edition, published in the
+following February, entirely confirms Phillips's account. In one point
+only he must be wrong. Mary Milton's return to her father's house cannot
+have been a voluntary concession on Milton's part, but must have been
+wrung from him after bitter contentions. Could we look into the
+household during those weeks of wretchedness, we should probably find
+Milton exceedingly deficient in consideration for the inexperienced girl
+of half his age, brought from a gay circle of friends and kindred to a
+grave, studious house. But it could not well have been otherwise. Milton
+was constitutionally unfit "to soothe and fondle," and his theories
+cannot have contributed to correct his practice. His "He for God only,
+she for God in him," condenses every fallacy about woman's true relation
+to her husband and her Maker. In his Tractate on Education there is not
+a word on the education of girls, and yet he wanted an intellectual
+female companion. Where should the woman be found at once submissive
+enough and learned enough to meet such inconsistent exigencies? It might
+have been said to him as afterwards to Byron: "You talk like a
+Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in
+the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe
+for not containing a sylph."
+
+If Milton's first tract on divorce had not been a mere impromptu,
+extorted by the misery of finding "an image of earth and phlegm" in her
+"with whom he looked to be the co-partner of a sweet and gladsome
+society," he would certainly have rendered his argument more cogent and
+elaborate. The tract, in its inspired portions, is a fine impassioned
+poem, fitter for the Parliament of Love than the Parliament at
+Westminster. The second edition is far more satisfactory as regards that
+class of arguments which alone were likely to impress the men of his
+generation, those derived from the authority of the Scriptures and of
+divines. In one of his principal points all Protestants and philosophers
+will confess him to be right, his reference of the matter to Scripture
+and reason, and repudiation of the mediæval canon law. It is not here,
+nevertheless, that Milton is most at home. The strength of his position
+is his lofty idealism, his magnificent conception of the institution he
+discusses, and his disdain for whatever degrades it to conventionality
+or mere expediency. "His ideal of true and perfect marriage," says Mr.
+Ernest Myers, "appeared to him so sacred that he could not admit that
+considerations of expediency might justify the law in maintaining sacred
+any meaner kind, or at least any kind in which the vital element of
+spiritual harmony was not." Here he is impregnable and above criticism,
+but his handling of the more sublunary departments of the subject must
+be unsatisfactory to legislators, who have usually deemed his sublime
+idealism fitter for the societies of the blest than for the imperfect
+communities of mankind. When his "doctrine and discipline" shall have
+been sanctioned by lawgivers, we may be sure that the world is already
+much better, or much worse.
+
+As the girl-wife vanishes from Milton's household her place is taken by
+the venerable figure of his father. The aged man had removed with his
+son Christopher to Reading, probably before August, 1641, when the birth
+of a child of his name--Christopher's offspring as it should
+seem--appears in the Reading register. Christopher was to exemplify the
+law of reversion to a primitive type. Though not yet a Roman Catholic
+like his grandfather, he had retrograded into Royalism, without becoming
+on that account estranged from his elder brother. The surrender of
+Reading to the Parliamentary forces in April, 1643, involved his
+"dissettlement," and the migration of his father to the house of John,
+with whom he was moreover better in accord in religion and politics.
+Little external change resulted, "the old gentleman," says Phillips,
+"being wholly retired to his rest and devotion, with the least trouble
+imaginable." About the same time the household received other additions
+in the shape of pupils, admitted, Phillips is careful to assure us, by
+way of favour, as M. Jourdain selected stuffs for his friends. Milton's
+pamphlet was perhaps not yet published, or not generally known to be
+his, or his friends were indifferent to public sentiment. Opinion was
+unquestionably against Milton, nor can he have profited much by the
+support, however practical, of a certain Mrs. Attaway, who thought that
+"she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified
+husband, that did not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of
+Canaan," and by and by actually did what Milton only talked of doing. We
+have already seen that he had incurred danger of prosecution from the
+Stationers' Company, and in July, 1644, he was denounced by name from
+the pulpit by a divine of much note, Herbert Palmer, author of a book
+long attributed to Bacon. But, if criticised, he was read. By 1645 his
+Divorce tract was in the third edition, and he had added three more
+pamphlets--one to prove that the revered Martin Bucer had agreed with
+him; two, the "Tetrachordon" and "Colasterion," directed against his
+principal opponents, Palmer, Featley, Caryl, Prynne, and an anonymous
+pamphleteer, who seems to have been a somewhat contemptible person, a
+serving-man turned attorney, but whose production contains some not
+unwelcome hints on the personal aspects of Milton's controversy. "We
+believe you count no woman to due conversation accessible, as to you,
+except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, and dispute
+against the canon law as well as you." Milton's later tracts are not
+specially interesting, except for the reiteration of his fine and bold
+idealism on the institution of marriage, qualified only by his no less
+strenuous insistance on the subjection of woman. He allows, however,
+that "it is no small glory to man that a creature so like him should be
+made subject to him," and that "particular exceptions may have place, if
+she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly
+yield; for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser
+should govern the less wise, whether male or female."
+
+Milton's seminary, meanwhile, was prospering to such a degree as to
+compel him to take a more commodious house. Was it necessity or
+enthusiasm that kept him to a task so little compatible with the repose
+he must have needed even for such intellectual exercise as the
+"Areopagitica," much more for the high designs he had not ceased to
+meditate in verse? Enthusiasm, one would certainly say, only that it is
+impossible to tell to what extent his father's income, chiefly derived
+from money out at interest, may have been impaired by the confusion of
+the times. Whether he had done rightly or wrongly in taking the duties
+of a preceptor upon himself, his nephew's account attests the
+self-sacrificing zeal with which he discharged them: we groan as we read
+of hours which should have been devoted to lonely musing or noble
+composition passed in "increasing as it were by proxy" his knowledge of
+"Frontinus his Stratagems, with the two egregious poets Lucretius and
+Manilius." He might also have been better employed than in dictating "A
+tractate he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines who have
+written on that subject of atheism, Amesius, Wollebius," &c. Here should
+be comfort for those who fear with Pattison that Milton's addiction to
+politics deprived us of unnumbered "Comuses." The excerpter of Amesius
+and Wollebius, as we have so often insisted, needed great stimulus for
+great achievements. Such stimulus would probably have come
+superabundantly if he could at this time have had his way, for the most
+moral of men was bent on assuming a direct antagonism to conventional
+morality. He had maintained that marriage ought to be dissolved for mere
+incompatibility; his case must have seemed much stronger now that
+incompatibility had produced desertion. He was not the man to shrink
+from acting on his opinion when the fit season seemed to him to have
+arrived; and in the summer of 1645 he was openly paying his addresses to
+"a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, one of Dr. Davis's daughters."
+Considering the consequences to the female partner to the contract, it
+is clear that Miss Davis could not be expected to entertain Milton's
+proposals unless her affection for him was very strong indeed. It is
+equally clear that he cannot be acquitted of selfishness in urging his
+suit unless he was quite sure of this, and his own heart also was deeply
+interested. An event was about to occur which seems to prove that these
+conditions were wanting.
+
+Nearly two years have passed since we have heard of Mary Milton, who has
+been living with her parents in Oxfordshire. Her position as a nominal
+wife must have been most uncomfortable, but there is no indication of
+any effort on her part to alter it, until the Civil War was virtually
+terminated by the Battle of Naseby, June, 1645. Obstinate malignants had
+then nothing to expect but fine and forfeiture, and their son-in-law's
+Puritanism may have presented itself to the Powells in the light of a
+merciful dispensation. Rumours of Milton's suit to Miss Davis may also
+have reached them; and they would know that an illegal tie would be as
+fatal to all hopes of reconciliation as a legal one. So, one day in July
+or August, 1645, Milton, paying his usual call on a kinsman named
+Blackborough,[3] not otherwise mentioned in his life, who lived in St.
+Martin's-le-Grand Lane, where the General Post Office now stands, "was
+surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making
+submission and begging pardon on her knees before him." There are two
+similar scenes in his writings, of which this may have formed the
+groundwork, Dalila's visit to her betrayed husband in "Samson
+Agonistes," and Eve's repentance in the tenth book of "Paradise Lost."
+Samson replies, "Out, out, hyæna!" Eve's "lowly plight"
+
+                              "in Adam wrought
+    Commiseration;...
+    As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
+    And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon."
+
+Phillips appears to intimate that the penitent's reception began like
+Dalila's and ended like Eve's. "He might probably at first make some
+show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more
+inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge,
+and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon
+brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for the
+future." With a man of his magnanimous temper, conscious no doubt that
+he had himself been far from blameless, such a result was to be
+expected. But it was certainly well that he had made no deeper
+impression than he seems to have done upon "the handsome and witty
+gentlewoman." One would like to know whether she and Mistress Milton
+ever met, and what they said to and thought of each other. For the
+present, Mary Milton dwelt with Christopher's mother-in-law, and about
+September joined her husband in the more commodious house in the
+Barbican whither he was migrating at the time of the reconciliation. It
+stood till 1864, when it was destroyed by a railway company.
+
+Soon after removing to the Barbican, Milton set his Muse's house in
+order, by publishing such poems, English and Latin, as he deemed worthy
+of presentation. It is a remarkable proof both of his habitual
+cunctativeness and his dependence on the suggestions of others, that he
+should so long have allowed such pieces to remain uncollected, and
+should only have collected them at all at the solicitation of the
+publisher, Humphrey Moseley. The transaction is most honourable to the
+latter. "It is not any private respect of gain," he affirms; "for the
+slightest pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of
+learnedest men, but it is the love I bear to our own language.... I know
+not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy
+soul is: perhaps more trivial airs may please better.... Let the event
+guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing
+forth into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth
+since our famous Spenser wrote." The volume was published on Jan. 2,
+1646. It is divided into two parts, with separate title-pages, the first
+containing the English poems, the second the Latin. They were probably
+sold separately. The frontispiece, engraved by Marshall, is
+unfortunately a sour and silly countenance, passing as Milton's, but
+against which he protests in four lines of Greek appended, which the
+worthy Marshall seems to have engraved without understanding them. The
+British Museum copy in the King's Library contains an additional MS.
+poem of considerable merit, in a hand which some have thought like
+Milton's, but few now believe it to have been either written or
+transcribed by him. It is dated 1647, but for which circumstance one
+might indulge the fancy that the copy had been a gift from him to some
+Italian friend, for the binding is Italian, and the book must have seen
+Italy.
+
+Milton was now to learn what he afterwards taught, that "they also serve
+who only stand and wait." He had challenged obloquy in vindication of
+what he deemed right: the cross actually laid upon him was to fill his
+house with inimical and uncongenial dependants on his bounty and
+protection. The overthrow of the Royalist cause was utterly ruinous to
+the Powells. All went to wreck on the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646.
+The family estate was only saved from sequestration by a friendly
+neighbour taking possession of it under cover of his rights as creditor;
+the family mansion was occupied by the Parliamentarians, and the
+household stuff sold to the harpies that followed in their train; the
+"malignant's" timber went to rebuild the good town of Banbury. It was
+impossible for the Powells to remain in Oxfordshire, and Milton opened
+his doors to them as freely as though there had never been any
+estrangement. Father, mother, several sons and daughters came to dwell
+in a house already full of pupils, with what inconvenience from want of
+room and disquiet from clashing opinions may be conjectured. "Those whom
+the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless
+kind," he says to Dati, "has closely conjoined with me, whether by
+accident or the tie of law, they are the persons who sit daily in my
+company, weary me, nay, by heaven, almost plague me to death whenever
+they are jointly in the humour for it." Milton's readiness to receive
+the mother, deemed the chief instigator of her daughter's "frowardness,"
+may have been partly due to the situation of the latter, who gave him a
+daughter on July 29, 1646. In January, 1647, Mr. Powell died, leaving
+his affairs in dire confusion. Two months afterwards Milton's father
+followed him at the age of eighty-four, partly cognisant, we will hope,
+of the gift he had bestowed on his country in his son. It was probably
+owing to the consequent improvement in Milton's circumstances that he
+about this time gave up his pupils, except his nephews, and removed to a
+smaller house in High Holborn, not since identified; the Powells also
+removing to another dwelling. "No one," he says of himself at this
+period, "ever saw me going about, no one ever saw me asking anything
+among my friends, or stationed at the doors of the Court with a
+petitioner's face. I kept myself almost entirely at home, managing on my
+own resources, though in this civil tumult they were often in great part
+kept from me, and contriving, though burdened with taxes in the main
+rather oppressive, to lead my frugal life." The traces of his literary
+activity at this time are few--preparations for a history of England,
+published long afterwards, an ode, a sonnet, correspondence with Dati,
+some not very successful versions of the Psalms. He seems to have been
+partly engaged in preparing the treatise on Christian Doctrine, which
+was fortunately reserved for a serener day. In undertaking it at this
+period he was missing a great opportunity. He might have been the
+apostle of toleration in England, as Roger Williams had been in America.
+The moment was most favourable. Presbyterianism had got itself
+established, but could not pretend to represent the majority of the
+nation. It had been branded by Milton himself in the memorable line:
+"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The Independents were for
+toleration, the Episcopalians had been for the time humbled by
+adversity, the best minds in the nation, including Cromwell, were
+Seekers or Latitude men, or sceptics. Here was invitation enough for a
+work as much greater than the "Areopagitica" as the principle of freedom
+of thought is greater than the most august particular application of it.
+Milton might have added the better half of Locke's fame to his own, and
+compelled the French philosophers to sit at the feet of a Bible-loving
+Englishman. But unfortunately no external impulse stirred him to action,
+as in the case of the "Areopagitica." Presbyterians growled at him
+occasionally; they did not fine or imprison him, or put him out of the
+synagogue. Thus his pen slumbered, and we are in danger of forgetting
+that he was, in the ordinary sense of that much-abused term, no Puritan,
+but a most free and independent thinker, the vast sweep of whose thought
+happened to coincide for a while with the narrow orbit of so-called
+Puritanism.
+
+Impulse to work of another sort was at hand. On January 30, 1649,
+Charles the First's head rolled on the scaffold. On February 13th was
+published a pamphlet from Milton's hand, which cannot have been begun
+before the King's trial, another proof of his feverish impetuosity when
+possessed by an overmastering idea. The title propounds two theses with
+very different titles to acceptance. "The Tenure of Kings and
+Magistrates proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all
+ages, for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked
+king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death: if the
+ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it." That kings have
+no more immunity than others from the consequences of evil doing is a
+proposition which seemed monstrous to many in Milton's day, but which
+will command general assent in ours. But to lay it down that "any who
+has the power" may interpose to correct what he chooses to consider the
+laches of the lawful magistrate is to hand over the administration of
+the law to Judge Lynch--rather too high a price to pay for the
+satisfaction of bringing even a bad king to the block. Milton's sneer at
+"vulgar and irrational men, contesting for privileges, customs, forms,
+and that old entanglement of iniquity, their gibberish laws," is
+equivalent to an admission that his party had put itself beyond the pale
+of the law. The only defence would be to show that it had acted under
+great and overwhelming necessity; but this he takes for granted, though
+knowing well that it was denied by more than half the nation. His
+argument, therefore, is inconclusive, except that portion of it which
+modern opinion allows to pass without argument. He seems indeed to admit
+in his "Defensio Secunda" that the tract was written less to vindicate
+the King's execution than to saddle the protesting Presbyterians with a
+share of the responsibility. The diction, though robust and spirited, is
+not his best, and, on the whole, the most admirable feature in his
+pamphlet is his courage in writing it. He was to speak yet again on this
+theme as the mouthpiece of the Commonwealth, thus earning honour and
+reward; it was well to have shown first that he did not need this
+incentive to expose himself to Royalist vengeance, but had prompting
+enough in the intensity of his private convictions.
+
+He had flung himself into a perilous breach. "Eikon Basilike"--most
+timely of manifestoes--had been published only four days before the
+appearance of "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." Between its
+literary seduction and the horror generally excited by the King's
+execution, the tide of public opinion was turning fast. Milton no doubt
+felt that no claim upon him could be equal to that which the State had a
+right to prefer. He accepted the office of "Secretary for Foreign
+Tongues" to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, a delegation from the
+Council of State of forty-one members, by which the country was at that
+time governed. Vane, Whitelocke, and Marten were among the members of
+the committee. The specified duties of the post were the preparation and
+translation of despatches from and to foreign governments. These were
+always in Latin,--the Council, says that sturdy Briton, Edward Phillips,
+"scorning to carry on their affairs in the wheedling, lisping jargon of
+the cringing French." But it must have been understood that Milton's pen
+would also be at the service of the Government outside the narrow range
+of official correspondence. The salary was handsome for the time--£288,
+equivalent to about £900 of our money. It was an honourable post, on the
+manner of whose discharge the credit of England abroad somewhat
+depended; the foreign chanceries were full of accomplished Latinists,
+and when Blake's cannon was not to be the mouthpiece, the Commonwealth's
+message needed a silver trumpet. It was also as likely as any employment
+to make a scholar a statesman. If in some respects it opposed new
+obstacles to the fulfilment of Milton's aspirations as a poet, he might
+still feel that it would help him to the experience which he had
+declared to be essential: "He who would not be frustrate of his hope to
+write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true
+poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest
+things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous
+cities, unless he have within himself the experience and the practice of
+all that which is praiseworthy." Up to this time Milton's experience of
+public affairs had been slight; he does not seem to have enjoyed the
+intimate acquaintance of any man then active in the making of history.
+In our day he would probably have entered Parliament, but that was
+impossible under a dispensation which allowed a Parliament to sit till a
+Protector turned it out of doors. He was, therefore, only acting upon
+his own theory, and he seems to us to have been acting wisely as well as
+courageously, when he consented to become a humble but necessary wheel
+of the machinery of administration, the Orpheus among the Argonauts of
+the Commonwealth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Milton was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues on March 15, 1649. He
+removed from High Holborn to Spring Gardens to be near the scene of his
+labours, and was soon afterwards provided with an official residence in
+Whitehall Palace, a huge intricacy of passages and chambers, of which
+but a fragment now remains. His first performance was in some measure a
+false start; for the epistle offering amity to the Senate of Hamburg,
+clothed in his best Latin, was so unamiably regarded by that body that
+the English envoy never formally delivered it. An epistle to the Dutch
+on the murder of the Commonwealth's ambassador, Dorislaus, by refugee
+Cavaliers, had a better reception; and Milton was soon engaged in
+drafting, not merely translating, a State paper designed for the
+press--observations on the peace concluded by Ormond, the Royalist
+commander in Ireland, with the confederated Catholics in that country,
+and on the protest against the execution of Charles I. volunteered by
+the Presbytery of Belfast. The commentary was published in May, along
+with the documents. It is a spirited manifesto, cogent in enforcing the
+necessity of the campaign about to be undertaken by Cromwell. Ireland
+had at the moment exactly as many factions as provinces; and never,
+perhaps, since the days of Strongbow had been in a state of such utter
+confusion. Employed in work like this, Milton did not cease to be "an
+eagle towering in his pride of place," but he may seem to have
+degenerated into the "mousing owl" when he pounced upon newswriters and
+ferreted unlicensed pamphlets for sedition. True, there was nothing in
+this occupation formally inconsistent with anything he had written in
+the "Areopagitica"; yet one wishes that the Council of State had
+provided otherwise for this particular department of the public service.
+Nothing but a sense of duty can have reconciled him to a task so
+invidious; and there is some evidence of what might well have been
+believed without evidence--that he mitigated the severity of the
+censorship as far as in him lay. He was not to want for better
+occupation, for the Council of State was about to devolve upon him the
+charge of answering the great Royalist manifesto, "Eikon Basilike."
+
+The controversy respecting the authorship of the "Eikon Basilike" is a
+remarkable instance of the degree in which literary judgment may be
+biassed by political prepossession. In the absence of other testimony
+one might almost stamp a writer as Royalist or Parliamentarian according
+as his verdict inclined to Charles I. or Bishop Gauden. In fact, it is
+no easy matter to balance the respective claims of two entirely
+different kinds of testimony. The external evidence of Charles's
+authorship is worth nothing. It is almost confined to the assertions,
+forty years after the publication, of a few aged Cavaliers, who were
+all morally certain that Charles wrote the book, and to whom a fiction
+supplying the accidental lack of external testimony would have seemed
+laudable and pious. The only wonder is that such legends are not far
+more numerous. On the other hand, the internal evidence seems at first
+sight to make for the king. The style is not dissimilar to that of the
+reputed royal author; the sentiments are such as would have well become
+him; the assumed character is supported throughout with consistency; and
+there are none of the slips which a fabricator might have been thought
+hardly able to avoid. The supposed personator of the King was
+unquestionably an unprincipled time-server. Is it not an axiom that a
+worthy book can only proceed from a worthy mind?
+
+                       "If this fail,
+    The pillared firmament is rottenness,
+    And earth's base built on stubble!"
+
+Against such considerations we have to set the stubborn facts that
+Bishop Gauden did actually claim the authorship that he preferred his
+claim to the very persons who had the strongest interest in exploding
+it; that he invoked the testimony of those who must have known the
+truth, and could most easily have crushed the lie; that he convinced not
+only Clarendon, but Charles's own children, and received a substantial
+reward. In the face of these undeniable facts, the numerous
+circumstances used with skill and ingenuity by Dr. Wordsworth to
+invalidate his claim, are of little weight. The stronger the apparent
+objections, the more certain that the proofs in Gauden's hands must have
+been overwhelming, and the greater the presumption that he was merely
+urging what had always been known to several persons about the late
+king. When, with this conviction, we recur to the "Eikon," and examine
+it in connection with Gauden's acknowledged writings, the internal
+testimony against him no longer seems so absolutely conclusive. Gauden's
+style is by no means so bad as Hume represents it. Many remarkable
+parallels between it and the diction of the "Eikon" have been pointed
+out by Todd, and the most searching modern investigator, Doble. We may
+also discover one marked intellectual resemblance. Nothing is more
+characteristic in the "Eikon" than its indirectness. The writer is full
+of qualifications, limitations, allowances; he fences and guards
+himself, and seems always on the point of taking back what he has said,
+but never does; and veers and tacks, tacks and veers, until he has
+worked himself into port. The like peculiarity is very observable in
+Gauden, especially in his once-popular "Companion to the Altar." There
+is also a strong internal argument against Charles's authorship in the
+preponderance of the theological element. That this should occupy an
+important place in the writings of a martyr for the Church of England
+was certainly to be expected, but the theology of the "Eikon" has an
+unmistakably professional flavour. Let any man read it with an unbiassed
+mind, and then say whether he has been listening to a king or to a
+chaplain. "One of _us_," pithily comments Archbishop Herring. "I write
+rather like a divine than a prince," the assumed author acknowledges, or
+is made to acknowledge. When to these considerations is added that any
+scrap of the "Eikon" in the King's handwriting would have been
+treasured as an inestimable relic, and that no scrap was ever produced,
+there can be little question as to the verdict of criticism. For all
+practical purposes, nevertheless, the "Eikon" in Milton's time was the
+King's book, for everybody thought it so. Milton hints some vague
+suspicions, but refrains from impugning it seriously, and indeed the
+defenders of its authenticity will be quite justified in asserting that
+if Gauden had been dumb, Criticism would have been blind.
+
+According to Selden's biographer, Cromwell was at first anxious that the
+"Eikon" should be answered by that consummate jurist, and it was only on
+his declining the task that it came into Milton's hands. That he also
+would have declined it but for his official position may be inferred
+from his own words: "I take it on me as a work assigned, rather than by
+me chosen or affected." His distaste may further be gauged by his
+tardiness; while "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" had been written
+in little more than a week, his "Eikonoklastes," a reply to a book
+published in February, did not appear until October 6th. His reluctance
+may be partly explained by his feeling that "to descant on the
+misfortunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity, who hath also
+paid his final debt both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself
+a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discourse." The intention
+it may not have been, but it was necessarily the performance. The scheme
+of the "Eikon" required the respondent to take up the case article by
+article, a thing impossible to be done without abundant "descant" of the
+kind which Milton deprecates. He is compelled to fight the adversary on
+the latter's chosen ground, and the eloquence which might have swept all
+before it in a discussion of general principles is frittered away in
+tiresome wrangling over a multitude of minutiæ. His vigorous blows avail
+but little against the impalpable ideal with which he is contending; his
+arguments might frequently convince a court of justice, but could do
+nothing to dispel the sorcery which enthralled the popular imagination.
+Milton's "Eikonoklastes" had only three editions, including a
+translation, within the year; the "Eikon Basilike" is said to have had
+fifty.
+
+Milton's reputation as a political controversialist, however, was not to
+rest upon "Eikonoklastes," or to be determined by a merely English
+public. The Royalists had felt the necessity of appealing to the general
+verdict of Europe, and had entrusted their cause to the most eminent
+classical scholar of the age. To us the idea of commissioning a
+political manifesto from a philologist seems eccentric; but erudition
+and the erudite were never so highly prized as in the seventeenth
+century. Men's minds were still enchained by authority, and the
+precedents of Agis, or Brutus, or Nehemiah, weighed like dicta of
+Solomon or Justinian. The man of Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew learning
+was, therefore, a person of much greater consequence than he is now, and
+so much the more if he enjoyed a high reputation and wrote good Latin.
+All these qualifications were combined in Claudius Salmasius, a
+Frenchman, who had laid scholars under an eternal obligation by his
+discovery of the Palatine MS. of the Anthology at Heidelberg, and who,
+having embraced Protestantism from conviction, lived in splendid style
+at Leyden, where the mere light of his countenance--for he did not
+teach--was valued by the University at three thousand livres a year. It
+seems marvellous that a man should become dictator of the republic of
+letters by editing "Solinus" and "The Augustan History," however ably;
+but an achievement like this, not a "Paradise Lost" or a "Werther" was
+the _sic itur ad astra_ of the time. On the strength of such Salmasius
+had pronounced _ex cathedra_ on a multiplicity of topics, from
+episcopacy to hair-powder, and there was no bishop and no perfumer
+between the Black Sea and the Irish who would not rather have the
+scholar for him than against him. A man, too, to be named with respect;
+no mere annotator, but a most sagacious critic; peevish, it might be,
+but had he not seven grievous disorders at once? One who had shown such
+independence and integrity in various transactions of his life, that we
+may be very sure that Charles II.'s hundred Jacobuses, if ever given or
+even promised, were the very least of the inducements that called him
+into the field against the executioners of Charles I.
+
+Whether, however, the hundred Jacobuses were forthcoming or not,
+Salmasius's undertaking was none the less a commission from Charles II.,
+and the circumstance put him into a false position, and increased the
+difficulty of his task. Human feeling is not easily reconciled to the
+execution of a bad magistrate, unless he has also been a bad man.
+Charles I. was by no means a bad man, only a mistaken one. He had been
+guilty of many usurpations and much perfidy: but he had honestly
+believed his usurpations within the limits of his prerogative; and his
+breaches of faith were committed against insurgents whom he regarded as
+seamen look upon pirates, or shepherds upon wolves. Salmasius, however,
+pleading by commission from Charles's son, can urge no such mitigating
+plea. He is compelled to maintain the inviolability even of wicked
+sovereigns, and spends two-thirds of his treatise in supporting a
+proposition to state which is to refute it in the nineteenth century. In
+the latter part he is on stronger ground. Charles had unquestionably
+been tried and condemned by a tribunal destitute of legal authority, and
+executed contrary to the wish and will of the great majority of his
+subjects. But this was a theme for an Englishman to handle. Salmasius
+cannot think himself into it, nor had he sufficient imagination to be
+inspired by Charles as Burke (who, nevertheless, has borrowed from him)
+was to be inspired by Marie Antoinette.
+
+His book--entitled "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I."--appeared in October
+or November, 1649. On January 8, 1650, it was ordered by the Council of
+State "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the Book of
+Salmasius, and when he hath done it bring it to the Council." There were
+many reasons why he should be entrusted with this commission, and only
+one why he should not; but one which would have seemed conclusive to
+most men. His sight had long been failing. He had already lost the use
+of one eye, and was warned that if he imposed this additional strain
+upon his sight, that of the other would follow. He had seen the greatest
+astronomer of the age condemned to inactivity and helplessness, and
+could measure his own by the misery of Galileo. He calmly accepted his
+duty along with its penalty, without complaint or reluctance. If he
+could have performed his task in the spirit with which he undertook it,
+he would have produced a work more sublime than "Paradise Lost."
+
+This, of course, was not possible. The efficiency of a controversialist
+in the seventeenth century was almost estimated in the ratio of his
+scurrility, especially when he wrote Latin. From this point of view
+Milton had got his opponent at a tremendous disadvantage. With the best
+will in the world, Salmasius had come short in personal abuse, for, as
+the initiator of the dispute, he had no personal antagonist. In
+denouncing the general herd of regicides and parricides he had hurt
+nobody in particular, while concentrating all Milton's lightnings on his
+own unlucky head. They seared and scathed a literary dictator whom
+jealous enemies had long sighed to behold insulted and humiliated, while
+surprise equalled delight at seeing the blow dealt from a quarter so
+utterly unexpected. There is no comparison between the invective of
+Milton and of Salmasius; not so much from Milton's superiority as a
+controversialist, though this is very evident, as because he writes
+under the inspiration of a true passion. His scorn of the presumptuous
+intermeddler who has dared to libel the people of England is ten
+thousand times more real than Salmasius's official indignation at the
+execution of Charles. His contempt for Salmasius's pedantry is quite
+genuine; and he revels in ecstasies of savage glee when taunting the
+apologist of tyranny with his own notorious subjection to a tyrannical
+wife. But the reviler in Milton is too far ahead of the reasoner. He
+seems to set more store by his personalities than by his principles. On
+the question of the legality of Charles's execution he has indeed little
+argument to offer; and his views on the wider question of the general
+responsibility of kings, sound and noble in themselves, suffer from the
+mass of irrelevant quotation with which it was in that age necessary to
+prop them up. The great success of his reply ("Pro Populo Anglicano
+Defensio") arose mainly from the general satisfaction that Salmasius
+should at length have met with his match. The book, published in or
+about March, 1651, instantly won over European public opinion, so far as
+the question was a literary one. Every distinguished foreigner then
+resident in London, Milton says, either called upon him to congratulate
+him, or took the opportunity of a casual meeting. By May, says Heinsius,
+five editions were printed or printing in Holland, and two translations.
+"I had expected nothing of such quality from the Englishman," writes
+Vossius. The Diet of Ratisbon ordered "that all the books of Miltonius
+should be searched for and confiscated." Parisian magistrates burned it
+on their own responsibility. Salmasius himself was then at Stockholm,
+where Queen Christina, who did not, like Catherine II., recognize the
+necessity of "standing by her order," could not help letting him see
+that she regarded Milton as the victor. Vexation, some thought,
+contributed as much as climate to determine his return to Holland. He
+died in September, 1653, at Spa, as, remote from books, but making his
+memory his library, he was penning his answer. This unfinished
+production, edited by his son, appeared after the Restoration, when the
+very embers of the controversy had grown cold, and the palm of literary
+victory had been irrevocably adjudged to Milton.
+
+Milton could hear the plaudits, he could not see the wreaths. The total
+loss of his sight may be dated from March, 1652, a year after the
+publication of his reply. It was then necessary to provide him with an
+assistant--that no change should have been made in his position or
+salary shows either the value attached to his services or the feeling
+that special consideration was due to one who had voluntarily given his
+eyes for his country. "The choice lay before me," he writes, "between
+dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I
+could not listen to the physician, not if Æsculapius himself had spoken
+from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not
+what, that spoke to me from heaven." In September, 1654, he described
+the symptoms of his infirmity to his friend, the Greek Philaras, who had
+flattered him with hopes of cure from the dexterity of the French
+oculist Thevenot. He tells him how his sight began to fail about ten
+years before; how in the morning he felt his eyes shrinking from the
+effort to read anything; how the light of a candle appeared like a
+spectrum of various colours; how, little by little, darkness crept over
+the left eye; and objects beheld by the right seemed to waver to and
+fro; how this was accompanied by a kind of dizziness and heaviness which
+weighed upon him throughout the afternoon. "Yet the darkness which is
+perpetually before me seems always nearer to a whitish than to a
+blackish, and such that, when the eye rolls itself, there is admitted,
+as through a small chink, a certain little trifle of light." Elsewhere
+he says that his eyes are not disfigured:
+
+                               "Clear
+    To outward view of blemish or of spot."
+
+These symptoms have been pronounced to resemble those of glaucoma.
+Milton himself, in "Paradise Lost," hesitates between amaurosis ("drop
+serene") and cataract ("suffusion"). Nothing is said of his having been
+recommended to use glasses or other precautionary contrivances.
+Cheselden was not yet, and the oculist's art was probably not well
+understood. The sufferer himself, while not repining or despairing of
+medical assistance, evidently has little hope from it. "Whatever ray of
+hope may be for me from your famous physician, all the same, as in a
+case quite incurable, I prepare and compose myself accordingly. My
+darkness hitherto, by the singular kindness of God, amid rest and
+studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, has been much easier
+to bear than that deathly one. But if, as is written, 'Man doth not live
+by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
+God,' what should prevent me from resting in the belief that eyesight
+lies not in eyes alone, but enough for all purposes in God's leading and
+providence? Verily, while only He looks out for me, and provides for me,
+as He doth; teaching me and leading me forth with His hand through my
+whole life, I shall willingly, since it hath seemed good to Him, have
+given my eyes their long holiday. And to you I now bid farewell, with a
+mind not less brave and steadfast than if I were Lynceus himself for
+keenness of sight." Religion and philosophy, of which no brighter
+example was ever given, did not, in this sore trial, disdain the support
+of a manly pride:--
+
+                 "What supports me, dost thou ask?
+    The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
+    In liberty's defence, my noble task,
+    O! which all Europe rings from side to side;
+    This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
+    Content though blind, had I no better guide."
+
+Noble words, and Milton might well triumph in his victory in the field
+of intellectual combat. But if his pamphlet could have put Charles the
+First's head on again, then, and then only, could it have been of real
+political service to his party.
+
+Milton's loss of sight was accompanied by domestic sorrow, though
+perhaps not felt with special acuteness. Since the birth of his eldest
+daughter in 1646, his wife had given him three more children--a
+daughter, born in October, 1648; a son, born in March, 1650, who died
+shortly afterwards; and another daughter, born in May, 1652. The birth
+of this child may have been connected with the death of the mother in
+the same or the following month. The household had apparently been
+peaceful, but it is unlikely that Mary Milton can have been a companion
+to her husband, or sympathized with such fraction of his mind as it was
+given her to understand. She must have become considerably emancipated
+from the creeds of her girlhood if his later writings could have been
+anything but detestable to her; and, on the whole, much as one pities
+her probably wasted life, her disappearance from the scene, if tragic
+in her ignorance to the last of the destiny that might have been hers,
+is not unaccompanied with a sense of relief. Great, nevertheless, must
+have been the blind poet's embarrassment as the father of three little
+daughters. Much evil, it is to be feared, had already been sown; and his
+temperament, his affliction, and his circumstances alike nurtured the
+evil yet to come. He was then living in Petty France, Westminster,
+having been obliged, either by the necessities of his health or of the
+public service, to give up his apartments in Whitehall. The house stood
+till 1877, a forlorn tenement in these latter years; far different,
+probably, when the neighbourhood was fashionable and the back windows
+looked on St. James's Park. It is associated with other celebrated
+names, having been owned by Bentham and occupied by Hazlitt.
+
+The controversy with Salmasius had an epilogue, chiefly memorable in so
+far as it occasioned Milton to indulge in autobiography, and to record
+his estimate of some of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Among various
+replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of
+especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," published about
+August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the
+bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set
+him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been
+answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed with Italian
+vices: he would have been accused of cannibalism had his path lain
+towards the Caribee Islands. A fulsome dedication to Salmasius tended
+to fix the suspicion of authorship upon Alexander Morus, a Frenchman of
+Scotch extraction, Professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, and pastor
+of the Walloon Church, then an inmate of Salmasius's house, who actually
+had written the dedication and corrected the proof. The real author,
+however, was Peter Du Moulin, ex-rector of Wheldrake, in Yorkshire. The
+dedicatory ink was hardly dry ere Morus was involved in a desperate
+quarrel with Salmasius through the latter's imperious wife, who accused
+Morus of having been over-attentive to her English waiting-maid, whose
+patronymic is lost to history under the Latinized form of Bontia.
+Failing to make Morus marry the damsel, she sought to deprive him of his
+ecclesiastical and professorial dignities. The correspondence of
+Heinsius and Vossius shows what intense amusement the affair occasioned
+to such among the scholars of the period as were unkindly affected
+towards Salmasius. Morus was ultimately acquitted, but his position in
+Holland had become uncomfortable, and he was glad to accept an
+invitation from the congregation at Charenton, celebrated for its
+lunatics. Understanding, meanwhile, that Milton was preparing a reply,
+and being naturally unwilling to brave invective in the cause of a book
+which he had not written, and of a patron who had cast him off, he
+protested his innocence of the authorship, and sought to ward off the
+coming storm by every means short of disclosing the writer. Milton,
+however, esteeming his Latin of much more importance than Morus's
+character, and justly considering with Voltaire, "que cet Habacuc était
+capable de tout," persisted in exhibiting himself as the blind Cyclop
+dealing blows amiss. His reply appeared in May, 1654, and a rejoinder by
+Morus produced a final retort in August, 1655. Both are full of
+personalities, including a spirited description of the scratching of
+Morus's face by the injured Bontia. These may sink into oblivion, while
+we may be grateful for the occasion which led Milton to express himself
+with such fortitude and dignity on his affliction and its
+alleviations:--"Let the calumniators of God's judgments cease to revile
+me, and to forge their superstitious dreams about me. Let them be
+assured that I neither regret my lot nor am ashamed of it, that I remain
+unmoved and fixed in my opinion, that I neither believe nor feel myself
+an object of God's anger, but actually experience and acknowledge His
+fatherly mercy and kindness to me in all matters of greatest
+moment--especially in that I am able, through His consolation and His
+strengthening of my spirit, to acquiesce in His divine will, thinking
+oftener of what He has bestowed upon me than of what He has withheld:
+finally, that I would not exchange the consciousness of what I have done
+with that of any deed of theirs, however righteous, or part with my
+always pleasant and tranquil recollection of the same." He adds that his
+friends cherish him, study his wants, favour him with their society more
+assiduously even than before, and that the Commonwealth treats him with
+as much honour as if, according to the customs of the Athenians of old,
+it had decreed him public support for his life in the Prytaneum.
+
+Milton's tract is also interesting for its pen-portraits of some of the
+worthies of the Commonwealth, and its indications of his own views on
+the politics of his troubled times. Bradshaw is eulogized with great
+elegance and equal truth for his manly courage and strict consistency.
+"Always equal to himself, and like a consul re-elected for another year,
+so that you would say he not only judged the King from his tribunal, but
+is judging him all his life." This was matter of notoriety: one may hope
+that Milton had equal reason for his praise of Bradshaw's affability,
+munificence, and placability. The comparison of Fairfax to the elder
+Scipio Africanus is more accurate than is always or often the case with
+historical parallels, and by a dexterous turn, surprising if we have
+forgotten the scholar in the controversialist, Fairfax's failure in
+statesmanship, as Milton deemed it, is not only extenuated, but is made
+to usher in the more commanding personality of Cromwell. Cæsar, says
+Johnson, had not more elegant flattery than Cromwell received from
+Milton: nor Augustus, he might have added, encomiums more heartfelt and
+sincere. Milton was one of the innumerable proofs that a man may be very
+much of a Republican without being anything of a Liberal. He was as firm
+a believer in right divine as any Cavalier, save that in his view such
+right was vested in the worthiest; that is, practically, the strongest.
+An admirable doctrine for 1653,--how unfit for 1660 remained to be
+discovered by him. Under its influence he had successively swallowed
+Pride's Purge, the execution of Charles I. by a self-constituted
+tribunal, and Cromwell's expulsion of the scanty remnant of what had
+once seemed the more than Roman senate of 1641. There is great reason
+to believe with Professor Masson that a tract vindicating this violence
+was actually taken down from his lips. It is impossible to say that he
+was wrong. Cromwell really was standing between England and anarchy. But
+Milton might have been expected to manifest some compunction at the
+disappointment of his own brilliant hopes, and some alarm at the
+condition of the vessel of the State reduced to her last plank.
+Authority actually had come into the hands of the kingliest man in
+England, valiant and prudent, magnanimous and merciful. But Cromwell's
+life was precarious, and what after Cromwell? Was the ancient
+constitution, with its halo of antiquity, its settled methods, and its
+substantial safeguards, wisely exchanged for one life, already the mark
+for a thousand bullets? Milton did not reflect, or he kept his
+reflections to himself. The one point on which he does seem nervous is
+lest his hero should call himself what he is. The name of Protector even
+is a stumbling-block, though one _can_ get over it. "You have, by
+assuming a title likest that of Father of your Country, allowed yourself
+to be, one cannot say elevated, but rather brought down so many stages
+from your real sublimity, and as it were forced into rank for the public
+convenience." But there must be no question of a higher title:--
+
+      "You have, in your far higher majesty, scorned the title of King.
+      And surely with justice: for if in your present greatness you were
+      to be taken with that name which you were able when a private man
+      to reduce and bring to nothing, it would be almost as if, when by
+      the help of the true God you had subdued some idolatrous nation,
+      you were to worship the gods you had yourself overcome."
+
+This warning, occurring in the midst of a magnificent panegyric,
+sufficiently vindicates Milton against the charge of servile flattery.
+The frank advice which he gives Cromwell on questions of policy is less
+conclusive evidence: for, except on the point of disestablishment, it
+was such as Cromwell had already given himself. Professor Masson's
+excellent summary of it may be further condensed thus--1. Reliance on a
+council of well-selected associates. 2. Absolute voluntaryism in
+religion. 3. Legislation not to be meddlesome or over-puritanical. 4.
+University and scholastic endowments to be made the rewards of approved
+merit. 5. Entire liberty of publication at the risk of the publisher. 6.
+Constant inclination towards the generous view of things. The advice of
+an enthusiastic idealist, Puritan by the accident of his times, but
+whose true affinities were with Mill and Shelley and Rousseau.
+
+An interesting question arises in connection with Milton's official
+duties: had he any real influence on the counsels of Government? or was
+he a mere secretary? It would be pleasing to conceive of him as Vizier
+to the only Englishman of the day whose greatness can be compared with
+his; to imagine him playing Aristotle to Cromwell's Alexander. We have
+seen him freely tendering Cromwell what might have been unpalatable
+advice, and learn from Du Moulin's lampoon that he was accused of having
+behaved to the Protector with something of dictatorial rudeness. But it
+seems impossible to point to any direct influence of his mind in the
+administration; and his own department of Foreign Affairs was neither
+one which he was peculiarly qualified to direct, nor one in which he was
+likely to differ from the ruling powers. "A spirited foreign policy" was
+then the motto of all the leading men of England. Before Milton's loss
+of sight his duties included attendance upon foreign envoys on State
+occasions, of which he must afterwards have been to a considerable
+extent relieved. The collection of his official correspondence published
+in 1676 is less remarkable for the quantity of work than the quality.
+The letters are not very numerous, but are mostly written on occasions
+requiring a choice dignity of expression. "The uniformly Miltonic style
+of the greater letters," says Professor Masson, "utterly precludes the
+idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him." We
+seem to see him sitting down to dictate, weighing out the fine gold of
+his Latin sentences to the stately accompaniment, it may be, of his
+chamber-organ. War is declared against the Dutch; the Spanish ambassador
+is reproved for his protraction of business; the Grand Duke of Tuscany
+is warmly thanked for protecting English ships in the harbour of
+Leghorn; the French king is admonished to indemnify English merchants
+for wrongful seizure; the Protestant Swiss cantons are encouraged to
+fight for their religion; the King of Sweden is felicitated on the birth
+of a son and heir, and on the Treaty of Roeskilde; the King of Portugal
+is pressed to use more diligence in investigating the attempted
+assassination of the English minister; an ambassador is accredited to
+Russia; Mazarin is congratulated on the capture of Dunkirk. Of all his
+letters, none can have stirred Milton's personal feelings so deeply as
+the epistle of remonstrance to the Duke of Savoy on the atrocious
+massacre of the Vaudois Protestants (1655); but the document is
+dignified and measured in tone. His emotion found relief in his greatest
+sonnet; blending, as Wordsworth implies, trumpet notes with his habitual
+organ-music; the most memorable example in our language of the fire and
+passion which may inspire a poetical form which some have deemed only
+fit to celebrate a "mistress's eyebrow"[4]:--
+
+   "Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
+      Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
+      Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,
+      When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones.
+    Forget not: in Thy book record their groans
+      Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
+      Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled
+      Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
+    The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
+      To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
+      O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
+    The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
+      A hundredfold, who, having learned Thy way,
+      Early may fly the Babylonian woe."
+
+This is what Johnson calls "carving heads upon cherry-stones!"
+
+Milton's calamity had, of course, required special assistance. He had
+first had Weckherlin as coadjutor, then Philip Meadows, finally Andrew
+Marvell. His emoluments had been reduced, in April, 1655, from £288 to
+£150 a year, but the diminished allowance was made perpetual instead of
+annual, and seems to have been intended as a retiring pension. He
+nevertheless continued to work, drawing salary at the rate of £200 a
+year, and his pen was never more active than during the last months of
+Oliver's Protectorate. He continued to serve under Richard, writing
+eleven letters between September, 1658, and February, 1659. With two
+letters for the restored Parliament after Richard's abdication, written
+in May, 1659, Milton, though his formal supersession was yet to come,
+virtually bade adieu to the Civil Service:--
+
+                          "God doth not need
+      Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
+      Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state
+    Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
+      And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
+      They also serve who only stand and wait."
+
+The principal domestic events in Milton's life, meanwhile, had been his
+marriage with Katherine, daughter of an unidentified Captain Woodcock,
+in November, 1656; and the successive loss of her and an infant daughter
+in February and March, 1658. It is probable that Milton literally never
+saw his wife, whose worth and the consequent happiness of the fifteen
+months of their too brief union, are sufficiently attested by his sonnet
+on the dream in which he fancied her restored to him, with the striking
+conclusion, "Day brought back my night." Of his daughters at the time,
+much may be conjectured, but nothing is known; his nephews, whose
+education had cost him such anxious care, though not undutiful in their
+personal relations with him, were sources of uneasiness from their own
+misadventures, and might have been even more so as sinister omens of the
+ways in which the rising generation was to walk. The fruits of their
+bringing up upon the egregious Lucretius and Manilius were apparently
+"Satyr against Hypocrites," _i.e._, Puritans; "Mysteries of Love and
+Eloquence;" "Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment," which last brought the
+Council down upon John Phillips as a propagator of immorality. In his
+nephews Milton might have seen, though we may be sure he did not see,
+how fatally the austerity of the Commonwealth had alienated those who
+would soon determine whether the Commonwealth should exist. Unconscious
+of the "engine at the door," he could spend happy social hours with
+attached friends--Andrew Marvell, his assistant in the secretaryship and
+poetical satellite; his old pupil Cyriack Skinner; Lady Ranelagh;
+Oldenburg, the Bremen envoy, destined to fame as Secretary of the Royal
+Society and the correspondent of Spinoza; and a choice band of
+"enthusiastic young men who accounted it a privilege to read to him, or
+act as his amanuenses, or hear him talk." A sonnet inscribed to one of
+these, Henry Lawrence, gives a pleasing picture of the British Homer in
+his Horatian hour:--
+
+   "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
+      Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
+      Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
+      Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
+    From the hard season gaining? Time will run
+      On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
+      The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
+      The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
+    What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
+      Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
+      To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
+    Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
+      He who of those delights can judge, and spare
+      To interpose them oft, is not unwise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+   "Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds
+    As flake by flake is piled, till some great truth
+    Is loosened, and the nations echo round."
+
+These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the
+slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of
+those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation. In
+most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep.
+In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen
+years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest. After
+two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to
+consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country
+might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals
+of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than
+Thamyris and Mæonides. Yet the material of his immortal poem must have
+gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so
+soon have been transmuted into song. It can hardly be doubted that his
+cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life.
+Remanded thus to solemn meditation, he would gradually rise to the
+height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in
+comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation
+he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point
+when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing,
+as always hitherto, the impulse of others. We cannot tell what influence
+finally launched this high-piled avalanche of thrice-sifted snow. The
+time is better ascertained. Aubrey refers it to 1658, the last year of
+Oliver's Protectorate. As Cromwell's death virtually closed Milton's
+official labours, a Genie, overshadowing land and sea, arose from the
+shattered vase of the Latin Secretaryship.
+
+Nothing is more interesting than to observe the first gropings of genius
+in pursuit of its aim. Ample insight, as regards Milton, is afforded by
+the precious manuscripts given to Trinity College, Cambridge, by Sir
+Henry Newton Puckering (we know not how he got them), and preserved by
+the pious care of Charles Mason and Sir Thomas Clarke. By the portion of
+the MSS. relating to Milton's drafts of projected poems, which date
+about 1640-1642, we see that the form of his work was to have been
+dramatic, and that, in respect of subject, the swift mind was divided
+between Scripture and British History. No fewer than ninety-nine
+possible themes--sixty-one Scriptural, and thirty-eight historical or
+legendary--are jotted down by him. Four of these relate to "Paradise
+Lost." Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are "Sodom" (the
+plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently
+impracticable, is interesting as a counterpart of "Comus"), "Samson
+Marrying," "Ahab," "John the Baptist," "Christus Patiens," "Vortigern,"
+"Alfred the Great," "Harold," "Athirco" (a very striking subject from a
+Scotch legend), and "Macbeth," where Duncan's ghost was to have appeared
+instead of Banquo's, and seemingly taken a share in the action.
+"Arthur," so much in his mind when he wrote the "Epitaphium Damonis,"
+does not appear at all. Two of the drafts of "Paradise Lost" are mere
+lists of _dramatis personæ_, but the others indicate the shape which the
+conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a
+religious drama on the pattern of the mediæval mystery or miracle play.
+Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the
+second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer
+bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's
+temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which
+Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope
+for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion,
+"the Angel causes to pass before his eyes a masque of all the evils of
+this life and world," a conception traceable in the eleventh book of
+"Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the
+freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked
+upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by
+Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech
+which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the
+exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have
+originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's
+mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark
+that his purpose had from the first been didactic. This is particularly
+visible in the notes of alternative subjects in his manuscripts, many of
+which palpably allude to the ecclesiastical and political incidents of
+his time, while one is strikingly prophetic of his own defence of the
+execution of Charles I. "The contention between the father of Zimri and
+Eleazar whether he ought to have slain his son without law; next the
+ambassadors of the Moabites expostulating about Cosbi, a stranger and a
+noblewoman, slain by Phineas. It may be argued about reformation and
+punishment illegal, and, as it were, by tumult. After all arguments
+driven home, then the word of the Lord may be brought, acquitting and
+approving Phineas." It was his earnest aim at all events to compose
+something "doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." "Whatsoever," he says
+in 1641, "whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
+or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
+that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
+refluxes of man's thoughts from within--all these things with a solid
+and treatable smoothness to paint out and describe; teaching over the
+whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example,
+with much delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper who
+will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her
+elegantly drest, that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear
+more rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant,
+they would then appear to all men easy and pleasant though they were
+rugged and difficult in deed." An easier task than that of "justifying
+the ways of God to man" by the cosmogony and anthropology of "Paradise
+Lost."
+
+If it is true--and the fact seems well attested--that Milton's poetical
+vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to the vernal[5], he cannot
+well have commenced "Paradise Lost" before the death of Cromwell, or
+have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty
+called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on
+which he had irreconcilably differed from Cromwell was that of a State
+Church; Cromwell, the practical man, perceiving its necessity, and
+Milton, the idealist, seeing only its want of logic. Unfortunately, this
+inconsequence existed only for the few thinkers who could in that age
+rise to the acceptance of Milton's premises. In his "Treatise of Civil
+Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," published in February, 1659, he
+emphatically insists that the civil magistrate has neither the right nor
+the power to interfere in matters of religion, and concludes: "The
+defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt
+not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour
+might be spared and the commonwealth better tended." It is to be
+regretted that he had not entered upon this great subject at an earlier
+period. The little tract, addressed to the Republican members of
+Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of
+Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of
+resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument,
+in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable
+in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the
+following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title,
+"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the
+Church." The recipe is simple and efficacious--cease to hire them, and
+they will cease to be hirelings. Suppress all ecclesiastical endowments,
+and let the clergyman be supported by free-will offerings. The fact that
+this would have consigned about half the established clergy to beggary
+does not trouble him; nor were they likely to be greatly troubled by a
+proposal so sublimely impracticable. Vested interests can only be
+over-ridden in times of revolution, and 1659, in outward appearance a
+year of anarchy, was in truth a year of reaction. For the rest, it is to
+be remarked that Milton scarcely allowed the ministry to be followed as
+a profession, and that his views on ecclesiastical organization had come
+to coincide very nearly with those now held by the Plymouth Brethren.
+
+There is much plausibility in Pattison's comparison of the men of the
+Commonwealth disputing about matters of this sort on the eve of the
+Restoration, to the Greeks of Constantinople contending about the
+Azymite controversy while the Turks were breaching their walls. In fact,
+however, this blindness was not confined to one party. Anthony Wood, a
+Royalist, writing thirty years afterwards, speaks of the Restoration as
+an event which no man expected in September, 1659. The Commonwealth was
+no doubt dead as a Republic. "Pride's Purge," the execution of Charles,
+and Cromwell's expulsion of the remnant of the Commons, had long ago
+given it mortal wounds. It was not necessarily defunct as a
+Protectorate, or a renovated Monarchy: the history of England might have
+been very different if Oliver had bequeathed his power to Henry instead
+of to Richard. No such vigorous hand taking the helm, and the vessel of
+the State drifting more and more into anarchy, the great mass of
+Englishmen, to the frustration of many generous ideals, but to the
+credit of their practical good sense, pronounced for the restoration of
+Charles the Second. It is impossible to think without anger and grief of
+the declension which was to ensue, from Cromwell enforcing toleration
+for Protestants to Charles selling himself to France for a pension, from
+Blake at Tunis to the Dutch at Chatham. But the Restoration was no
+national apostasy. The people as a body did not decline from Milton's
+standard, for they had never attained to it; they did not accept the
+turpitudes of the new government, for they did not anticipate them. So
+far as sentiment inspired them, it was not love of license, but
+compassion for the misfortunes of an innocent prince. Common sense,
+however, had much more to do with prompting their action, and common
+sense plainly informed them that they had no choice between a restored
+king and a military despot. They would not have had even that if the
+leading military chief had not been a man of homely sense and vulgar
+aims; such an one as Milton afterwards drew in--
+
+   "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+    From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts
+    Were always downward bent, admiring more
+    The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold."
+
+In the field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier,
+acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually. In his
+political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of
+the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot. Such are they for
+whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually
+find that they have laboured. "Great things," said Edward Gibbon
+Wakefield, "are begun by men with great souls and little
+breeches-pockets, and ended by men with great breeches-pockets and
+little souls."
+
+Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever
+so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the
+course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his
+blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot
+hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither
+and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested
+reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or
+misrepresent. On February 11th, about ten at night, Mr. Samuel Pepys,
+being in Cheapside, heard "all the bells in all the churches a-ringing.
+But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of
+bonfires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and
+at Strand Bridge I could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King
+Street, seven or eight; and all around burning, roasting, and drinking
+for rumps. There being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down.
+The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a merry peal with their
+knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill
+there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied upon it, and
+another basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the
+greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would
+think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to
+keep on the further side." This burning of the Rump meant that the
+attempt of a miserable minority to pose as King, Lords, and Commons, had
+broken down, and that the restoration of Charles, for good or ill, was
+the decree of the people. A modern Republican might without disgrace
+have bowed to the gale, for such an one, unless hopelessly fanatical,
+denies the divine right of republics equally with that of kings, and
+allows no other title than that of the consent of the majority of
+citizens. But Milton had never admitted the rights of the majority: and
+in his supreme effort for the Republic, "The Ready and Easy Way to
+establish a free Commonwealth," he ignores the Royalist plurality, and
+assumes that the virtuous part of the nation, to whom alone he allows a
+voice, is as desirous as himself of the establishment of a Republic, and
+only needs to be shown the way. As this was by no means the case, the
+whole pamphlet rests upon sand: though in days when public opinion was
+guided not from the press but from the rostrum, many might have been won
+by the eloquence of Milton's invectives against the inhuman pride and
+hollow ceremonial of kingship, and his encomiums of the simple order
+when the ruler's main distinction from the ruled is the severity of his
+toil. "Whereas they who are the greatest are perpetual servants and
+drudges to the public at their own cost and charges, neglect their own
+affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in
+their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely,
+familiarly, friendly without adoration." Whatever generous glow for
+equality such words might kindle, was only too likely to be quenched
+when the reader came to learn on what conditions Milton thought it
+attainable. His panacea was a permanent Parliament or Council of State,
+self-elected for life, or renewable at most only in definite
+proportions, at stated times. The whole history of England for the last
+twelve years was a commentary on the impotence of a Parliament that had
+outlived its mandate, and every line of the lesson had been lost upon
+Milton. He does indeed, near the end, betray a suspicion that the people
+may object to hand over the whole business of legislation to a
+self-elected and irresponsible body, and is led to make a remarkable
+suggestion, prefiguring the federal constitution of the United States,
+and in a measure the Home Rule and Communal agitations of our own day.
+He would make every county independent in so far as regards the
+execution of justice between man and man. The districts might make their
+own laws in this department, subject only to a moderate amount of
+control from the supreme council. This must have seemed to Milton's
+contemporaries the official enthronement of anarchy, and, in fact, his
+proposal, thrown off at a heat with the feverish impetuosity that
+characterizes the whole pamphlet, is only valuable as an aid to
+reflection. Yet, in proclaiming the superiority of healthy municipal
+life to a centralized administration, he has anticipated the judgment of
+the wisest publicists of our day, and shown a greater insight than was
+possessed by the more scientific statesmen of the eighteenth century.
+
+One quality of Milton's pamphlet claims the highest admiration, its
+audacious courage. On the very eve of the Restoration, and with full
+though tardy recognition of its probable imminence, he protests as
+loudly as ever the righteousness of Charles's execution, and of the
+perpetual exclusion of his family from the throne. When all was lost, it
+was no disgrace to quit the field. His pamphlet appeared on March 3,
+1660; a second edition, with considerable alterations, was for the time
+suppressed. On March 28th the publisher was imprisoned for vending
+treasonable books, among which the pamphlet was no doubt included. Every
+ensuing day added something to the discomfiture of the Republicans,
+until on May 1st, "the happiest May-day," says that ardent Royalist _du
+lendemain_, Pepys, "that hath been many a year to England," Charles
+II.'s letter was read to a Parliament that none could deny to have been
+freely chosen, and acclaimed, "without so much as one No." On May 7th,
+as is conjectured by the date of an assignment made to Cyriack Skinner
+as security for a loan, Milton quitted his house, and concealed himself
+in Bartholomew Close, Smithfield. Charles re-entered his kingdom on May
+29th, and the hue and cry after regicides and their abettors began. The
+King had wisely left the business to Parliament, and, when the
+circumstances of the times, and the sincere horror in which good men
+held what they called regicide and sacrilege are duly considered, it
+must be owned that Parliament acted with humanity and moderation. Still,
+in the nature of things, proscription on a small scale was inevitable.
+Besides the regicides proper, twenty persons were to be named for
+imprisonment and permanent incapacitation for office then, and liable to
+prosecution and possibly capital punishment hereafter. It seemed almost
+inevitable that Milton should be included. On June 16th his writings
+against Charles I. were ordered to be burned by the hangman, which
+sentence was performed on August 27th. A Government proclamation
+enjoining their destruction had been issued on August 13th, and may now
+be read in the King's Library at the British Museum. He had not, then,
+escaped notice, and how he escaped proscription it is hard to say.
+Interest was certainly made for him. Andrew Marvell, Secretary Morrice,
+and Sir Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, are named as active on
+his behalf; his brother and his nephew both belonged to the Royalist
+party, and there is a romantic story of Sir William Davenant having
+requited a like obligation under which he lay to Milton himself. More to
+his honour this than to have been the offspring of Shakespeare, but one
+tale is no better authenticated than the other. The simplest explanation
+is that twenty people were found more hated than Milton: it may also
+have seemed invidious to persecute a blind man. It is certainly
+remarkable that the authorities should have failed to find the
+hiding-place of so recognizable a person, if they really looked for it.
+Whether by his own adroitness or their connivance, he avoided arrest
+until the amnesty resolution of August 29th restored him to the world
+without even being incapacitated from office. He still had to run the
+gauntlet of the Serjeant-at-Arms, who at some period unknown arrested
+him as obnoxious to the resolution of June 16th, and detained him,
+charging exorbitant fees, until compelled to abate his demands by the
+Commons' resolution of December 15th. Milton relinquished his house in
+Westminster, and formed a temporary refuge on the north side of Holborn.
+His nerves were shaken; he started in his broken sleep with the
+apprehension and bewilderment natural to one for whom, physically and
+politically, all had become darkness.
+
+His condition, in sooth, was one of well-nigh unmitigated misfortune,
+and his bearing up against it is not more of a proof of stoic fortitude
+than of innate cheerfulness. His cause lost, his ideals in the dust, his
+enemies triumphant, his friends dead on the scaffold, or exiled, or
+imprisoned, his name infamous, his principles execrated, his property
+seriously impaired by the vicissitudes of the times. He had been
+deprived of his appointment and salary as Latin Secretary, even before
+the Restoration: and he was now fleeced of two thousand pounds, invested
+in some kind of Government security, which was repudiated in spite of
+powerful intercession. Another "great sum" is said by Phillips to have
+been lost "by mismanagement and want of good advice," whether at this
+precise time is uncertain. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster
+reclaimed a considerable property which had passed out of their hands in
+the Civil War. The Serjeant-at-Arms had no doubt made all out of his
+captive that the Commons would let him. On the whole, Milton appears to
+have saved about £1500 from the wreck of his fortunes, and to have
+possessed about £200 income from the interest of this fund and other
+sources, destined to be yet further reduced within a few years. The
+value of money being then about three and a half times as great as now,
+this modest income was still a fair competence for one of his frugal
+habits, even when burdened with the care of three daughters. The history
+of his relations with these daughters is the saddest page of his life.
+"I looked that my vineyard should bring forth grapes, and it brought
+forth wild grapes." If any lot on earth could have seemed enviable to an
+imaginative mind and an affectionate heart, it would have been that of
+an Antigone or a Romola to a Milton. Milton's daughters chose to reject
+the fair repute that the simple fulfilment of evident duty would have
+brought them, and to be damned to everlasting fame, not merely as
+neglectful of their father, but as embittering his existence. The
+shocking speech attributed to one of them is, we may hope, not a fact;
+and it may not be true to the letter that they conspired to rob him, and
+sold his books to the ragpickers. The course of events down to his
+death, nevertheless, is sufficient evidence of the unhappiness of his
+household. Writing "Samson Agonistes" in calmer days, he lets us see how
+deep the iron had entered into his soul:
+
+                      "I dark in light exposed
+    To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
+    Within doors, or without, still as a fool
+    In power of others, never in my own."
+
+He probably never understood how greatly he was himself to blame. He
+had, in the first place, neglected to give his daughters the education
+which might have qualified them in some measure to appreciate him. The
+eldest, Anne, could not even write her name; and it is but a poor excuse
+to say that, though good-looking, she was deformed, and afflicted with
+an impediment in her speech. The second, Mary, who resembled her mother,
+and the third, Deborah, the most like her father, were better taught;
+but still not to the degree that could make them intelligent doers of
+the work they had to perform for him. They were so drilled in foreign
+languages, including Greek and Latin (Hebrew and Syriac are also
+mentioned, but this is difficult of belief), that they could read aloud
+to him without any comprehension of the meaning of the text. Sixty years
+afterwards, passages of Homer and Ovid were found lingering as melodious
+sounds in the memory of the youngest. Such a task, inexpressibly
+delightful to affection, must have been intolerably repulsive to dislike
+or indifference: we can scarcely wonder that two of these children (of
+the youngest we have a better report), abhorred the father who exacted
+so much and imparted so little. Yet, before visiting any of the parties
+with inexorable condemnation, we should consider the strong probability
+that much of the misery grew out of an antecedent state of things, for
+which none of them were responsible. The infant minds of two of the
+daughters, and the two chiefly named as undutiful, had been formed by
+their mother. Mistress Milton cannot have greatly cherished her husband,
+and what she wanted in love must have been made up in fear. She must
+have abhorred his principles and his writings, and probably gave free
+course to her feelings whenever she could have speech with a
+sympathizer, without caring whether the girls were within hearing.
+Milton himself, we know, was cheerful in congenial society, but he were
+no poet if he had not been reserved with the uncongenial. To them the
+silent, abstracted, often irritable, and finally sightless father would
+seem awful and forbidding. It is impossible to exaggerate the
+susceptibility of young minds to first impressions. The probability is
+that ere Mistress Milton departed this life, she had intentionally or
+unintentionally avenged all the injuries she could imagine herself to
+have received from her husband, and furnished him with a stronger
+argument than any that had found a place in the "Doctrine and Discipline
+of Divorce."
+
+It is something in favour of the Milton girls that they were at least
+not calculating in their undutifulness. Had they reflected, they must
+have seen that their behaviour was little to their interest. If they
+brought a stepmother upon themselves, the blame was theirs. Something
+must certainly be done to keep Milton's library from the rag-women; and
+in February, 1663, by the advice of his excellent physician Dr. Paget,
+he married Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of a yeoman of Wistaston in
+Cheshire, a distant relation of Dr. Paget's own, and exactly thirty
+years younger than Milton. "A genteel person, a peaceful and agreeable
+woman," says Aubrey, who knew her, and refutes by anticipation
+Richardson's anonymous informant, perhaps Deborah Clarke, who libelled
+her as "a termagant." She was pretty, and had golden hair, which one
+connects pleasantly with the late sunshine she brought into Milton's
+life. She sang to his accompaniment on the organ and bass-viol, but is
+not recorded to have read or written for him; the only direct testimony
+we have of her care of him is his verbal acknowledgment of her attention
+to his creature comforts. Yet Aubrey's memoranda show that she could
+talk with her husband about Hobbes, and she treasured the letters he had
+received from distinguished foreigners. At the time of their marriage
+Milton was living in Jewin Street, Aldersgate, from which he soon
+afterwards removed to Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, his last
+residence. He lodged in the interim with Millington, the book
+auctioneer, a man of superior ability, whom an informant of Richardson's
+had often met in the streets leading his inmate by the hand.
+
+It is at this era of Milton's history that we obtain the fullest details
+of his daily life, as being nearer to the recollection of those from
+whom information was sought after his death. His household was larger
+than might have been expected in his reduced circumstances; he had a
+man-servant, Greene, and a maid, named Fisher. That true
+hero-worshipper, Aubrey, tells us that he generally rose at four, and
+was even then attended by his "man" who read to him out of the Hebrew
+Bible. Such erudition in a serving-man almost surpasses credibility: the
+English Bible probably sufficed both. It is easier to believe that some
+one read to him or wrote for him from seven till dinner time: if,
+however, "the writing was nearly as much as the reading," much that
+Milton dictated must have been lost. His recreations were walking in his
+garden, never wanting to any of his residences, where he would continue
+for three or four hours at a time; swinging in a chair when weather
+prevented open-air exercise; and music, that blissful resource of
+blindness. His instrument was usually the organ, the counterpart of the
+stately harmony of his own verse. To these relaxations must be added the
+society of faithful friends, among whom Andrew Marvell, Dr. Paget, and
+Cyriack Skinner are particularly named. Nor did Edward Phillips neglect
+his uncle, finding him, as Aubrey implies, "most familiar and free in
+his conversation to those to whom most sour in his way of education."
+Milton had made him "a songster," and we can imagine the "sober, silent,
+and most harmless person" (Evelyn) opening his lips to accompany his
+uncle's music. Of Milton's manner Aubrey says, "Extreme pleasant in his
+conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc., but satirical." Visitors
+usually came from six till eight, if at all, and the day concluded with
+a light supper, sometimes of olives, which we may well imagine fraught
+for him with Tuscan memories, a pipe, and a glass of water. This picture
+of plain living and high thinking is confirmed by the testimony of the
+Quaker Thomas Ellwood, who for a short time read to him, and who
+describes the kindness of his demeanour, and the pains he took to teach
+the foreign method of pronouncing Latin. Even more; "having a curious
+ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and when I
+did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most
+difficult passages to me." Milton must have felt a special tenderness
+for the Quakers, whose religious opinions, divested of the shell of
+eccentricity which the vulgar have always mistaken for the kernel, had
+become substantially his own. He had outgrown Independency as formerly
+Presbyterianism. His blindness served to excuse his absence from public
+worship; to which, so long at least as Clarendon's intolerance prevailed
+in the councils of Charles the Second, might be added the difficulty of
+finding edification in the pulpit, had he needed it. But these reasons,
+though not imaginary, were not those which really actuated him. He had
+ceased to value rites and forms of any kind, and, had his religious
+views been known, he would have been "equalled in fate" with his
+contemporary Spinoza. Yet he was writing a book which orthodox
+Protestantism has accepted as but a little lower than the Scriptures.
+
+"The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." We know but little
+of the history of the greatest works of genius. That something more than
+usual should be known of "Paradise Lost" must be ascribed to the
+author's blindness, and consequent dependence upon amanuenses. When
+inspiration came upon him any one at hand would be called upon to
+preserve the precious verses, hence the progress of the poem was known
+to many, and Phillips can speak of "parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty
+verses at a time." We have already heard from him that Milton's season
+of inspiration lasted from the autumnal equinox to the vernal: the
+remainder of the year doubtless contributed much to the matter of his
+poem, if nothing to the form. His habits of composition appear to be
+shadowed forth by himself in the induction to the Third Book:--
+
+   "Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath
+    That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
+    Nightly I visit--"
+
+   "Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
+    Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
+    Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
+    Tunes her nocturnal note."
+
+This is something more precise than a mere poetical allusion to his
+blindness, and the inference is strengthened by the anecdote that when
+"his celestial patroness" "Deigned nightly visitation unimplored," his
+daughters were frequently called at night to take down the verses, not
+one of which the whole world could have replaced. This was as it should
+be. Grand indeed is the thought of the unequalled strain poured forth
+when every other voice was hushed in the mighty city, to no meaner
+accompaniment than the music of the spheres. Respecting the date of
+composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced
+in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered
+("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible
+hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks,
+completed by 1663. It would still require mature revision, which we know
+from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665. Internal
+evidence of the chronology of the poem is very scanty. Professor Masson
+thinks that the first two books were probably written before the
+Restoration. In support of this view it may be urged that lines 500-505
+of Book i. wear the appearance of an insertion after the Restoration,
+and that in the invocation to the Third Book Milton may be thought to
+allude to the dangers his life and liberty had afterwards encountered,
+figured by the regions of nether darkness which he had traversed as a
+poet.
+
+   "Hail holy Light!...
+    Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
+    Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
+    In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
+    Through utter and through middle darkness borne."
+
+The only other passage important in this respect is the famous one from
+the invocation to the Seventh Book, manifestly describing the poet's
+condition under the Restoration:--
+
+   "Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
+    More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
+    To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
+    On evil days though fallen and evil tongues;
+    In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
+    And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
+    Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn
+    Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,
+    Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
+    But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
+    Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
+    Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard."
+
+This allusion to the licentiousness of the Restoration literature could
+hardly have been made until its tendencies had been plainly developed.
+At this time "Paradise Lost" was half finished. ("Half yet remains
+unsung.") The remark permits us to conclude that Milton conceived and
+executed his poem as a whole, going steadily through it, and not leaving
+gaps to be supplied at higher or lower levels of inspiration. There is
+no evidence of any resort to older material, except in the case of
+Satan's address to the Sun.
+
+The publication of "Paradise Lost" was impeded like the birth of
+Hercules. In 1665 London was a city of the dying and the dead; in 1666
+the better part of it was laid in ashes. One remarkable incident of the
+calamity was the destruction of the stocks of the booksellers, which had
+been brought into the vaults of St. Paul's for safety, and perished with
+the cathedral. "Paradise Lost" might have easily, like its hero--
+
+        "In the singing smoke
+    Uplifted spurned the ground."
+
+but the negotiations for its publication were not complete until April
+27, 1667, on which day John Milton, "in consideration of five pounds to
+him now paid by Samuel Symmons, and other the considerations herein
+mentioned," assigned to the said Symmons, "all that book, copy, or
+manuscript of a poem intituled 'Paradise Lost,' or by whatsoever ether
+title or name the same is or shall be called or distinguished, now
+lately licensed to be printed." The other considerations were the
+payment of the like sum of five pounds upon the entire sale of each of
+the first three impressions, each impression to consist of thirteen
+hundred copies. "According to the present value of money," says
+Professor Masson, "it was as if Milton had received £17 10s. down, and
+was to expect £70 in all. That was on the supposition of a sale of 3,900
+copies." He lived to receive ten pounds altogether; and his widow in
+1680 parted with all her interest in the copyright for eight pounds,
+Symmons shortly afterwards reselling it for twenty-five. He is not,
+therefore, to be enumerated among those publishers who have fattened
+upon their authors, and when the size of the book and the
+unfashionableness of the writer are considered, his enterprise may
+perhaps appear the most remarkable feature of the transaction. As for
+Milton, we may almost rejoice that he should have reaped no meaner
+reward than immortality.
+
+It will have been observed that in the contract with Symmons "Paradise
+Lost" is said to have been "lately licensed to be printed." The
+censorship named in "Areopagitica" still prevailed, with the difference
+that prelates now sat in judgment upon Puritans. The Archbishop gave or
+refused license through his chaplains, and could not be ignored as
+Milton had ignored the little Presbyterian Popes; Geneva in his person
+must repair to Lambeth. Chaplain Tomkyns, who took cognisance of
+"Paradise Lost," was fortunately a broad-minded man, disposed to live
+and let live, though scrupling somewhat when he found "perplexity" and
+"fear of change" imputed to "monarchs." His objections were overcome,
+and on August 20, 1667--three weeks after the death of Cowley, and eight
+days after Pepys had heard the deceased extolled as the greatest of
+English poets--John Milton came forth clad as with adamantine mail in
+the approbation of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it
+was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for
+weighing evil against good were hung--
+
+    "Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,"
+
+one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister.
+The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other
+hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with
+Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity
+of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move,
+if not, as Milton would have wished, "a noble and puissant nation
+rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and
+weary nation creeping slowly--Tomkyns and all--towards an era of liberty
+and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's
+impertinence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The world's great epics group themselves in two divisions, which may be
+roughly defined as the natural and the artificial. The spontaneous or
+self-created epic is a confluence of traditions, reduced to symmetry by
+the hand of a master. Such are the Iliad, the Odyssey, the great Indian
+and Persian epics, the Nibelungen Lied. In such instances it may be
+fairly said that the theme has chosen the poet, rather than the poet the
+theme. When the epic is a work of reflection, the poet has deliberately
+selected his subject, and has not, in general, relied so much upon the
+wealth of pre-existing materials as upon the capabilities of a single
+circumstance. Such are the epics of Virgil, Camoens, Tasso, Milton;
+Dante, perhaps, standing alone as the one epic poet (for we cannot rank
+Ariosto and Spenser in this class) who owes everything but his creed to
+his own invention. The traditional epic, created by the people and only
+moulded by the minstrel, is so infinitely the more important for the
+history of culture, that, since this new field of investigation has
+become one of paramount interest, the literary epic has been in danger
+of neglect. Yet it must be allowed that to evolve an epic out of a
+single incident is a greater intellectual achievement than to weave one
+out of a host of ballads. We must also admit that, leaving the unique
+Dante out of account, Milton essayed a more arduous enterprise than any
+of his predecessors, and in this point of view may claim to stand above
+them all. We are so accustomed to regard the existence of "Paradise
+Lost" as an ultimate fact, that we but imperfectly realize the gigantic
+difficulty and audacity of the undertaking. To paint the bloom of
+Paradise with the same brush that has depicted the flames and blackness
+of the nether world; to make the Enemy of Mankind, while preserving this
+character, an heroic figure, not without claims on sympathy and
+admiration; to lend fit speech to the father and mother of humanity, to
+angels and archangels, and even Deity itself;--these achievements
+required a Michael Angelo shorn of his strength in every other province
+of art, that all might be concentrated in song.
+
+It is easy to represent "Paradise Lost" as obsolete by pointing out that
+its demonology and angelology have for us become mere mythology. This
+criticism is more formidable in appearance than in reality. The vital
+question for the poet is his own belief, not the belief of his readers.
+If the Iliad has survived not merely the decay of faith in the Olympian
+divinities, but the criticism which has pulverized Achilles as a
+historical personage, "Paradise Lost" need not be much affected by
+general disbelief in the personality of Satan, and universal disbelief
+in that of Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. A far more vulnerable point is
+the failure of the purpose so ostentatiously proclaimed, "To justify the
+ways of God to men." This problem was absolutely insoluble on Milton's
+data, except by denying the divine foreknowledge, a course not open to
+him. The conduct of the Deity who allows his adversary to ruin his
+innocent creature from the purely malignant motive
+
+   "That with reiterated crimes he might
+    Heap on himself damnation,"
+
+without further interposition than a warning which he foresees will be
+fruitless, implies a grievous deficiency either in wisdom or in
+goodness, or at best falsifies the declaration:
+
+                    "Necessity and chance
+    Approach me not, and what I will is fate."
+
+The like flaw runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is
+resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic
+guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to
+drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial
+portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat,
+considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and
+advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the
+intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take all
+possible pains to prevent his gaining an entrance into Paradise, but
+omit to keep Adam and Eve themselves in sight, notwithstanding the
+strong hint they have received by finding the intruder
+
+   "Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
+    Assaying by his devilish art to reach
+    The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
+    Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams."
+
+If anything more infatuated can be imagined, it is the simplicity of the
+All-Wise Himself in entrusting the wardership of the gate of Hell, and
+consequently the charge of keeping Satan _in_, to the beings in the
+universe most interested in letting him _out_. The sole but sufficient
+excuse is that these faults are inherent in the subject. If Milton had
+not thought that he could justify the ways of Jehovah to man he would
+not have written at all; common sense on the part of the angels would
+have paralysed the action of the poem; we should, if conscious of our
+loss, have lamented the irrefragable criticism that should have stifled
+the magnificent allegory of Sin and Death. Another critical thrust is
+equally impossible to parry. It is true that the Evil One is the hero of
+the epic. Attempts have been made to invest Adam with this character. He
+is, indeed, a great figure to contemplate, and such as might represent
+the ideal of humanity till summoned to act and suffer. When, indeed, he
+partakes of the forbidden fruit in disobedience to his Maker, but in
+compassion to his mate, he does seem for a moment to fulfil the canon
+which decrees that the hero shall not always be faultless, but always
+shall be noble. The moment, however, that he begins to wrangle with Eve
+about their respective shares of blame, he forfeits his estate of
+heroism more irretrievably than his estate of holiness--a fact of which
+Milton cannot have been unaware, but he had no liberty to forsake the
+Scripture narrative. Satan remains, therefore, the only possible hero,
+and it is one of the inevitable blemishes of the poem that he should
+disappear almost entirely from the latter books.
+
+These defects, and many more which might be adduced, are abundantly
+compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion of his age. No
+poet whose fame is co-extensive with the civilised world, except
+Shakespeare and Goethe, has ever been greatly in advance of his times.
+Had Milton been so, he might have avoided many faults, but he would not
+have been a representative poet; nor could Shelley have classed him with
+Homer and Dante, and above Virgil, as "the third epic poet; that is, the
+third poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible
+relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which
+he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itself in
+correspondence with their development." Hence it is that in the
+"Adonais," Shelley calls Milton "the third among the sons of light."
+
+A clear conception of the universe as Milton's inner eye beheld it, and
+of his religious and philosophical opinions in so far as they appear in
+the poem, is indispensable for a correct understanding of "Paradise
+Lost." The best service to be rendered to the reader within such limits
+as ours is to direct him to Professor Masson's discussion of Milton's
+cosmology in his "Life of Milton," and also in his edition of the
+Poetical Works. Generally speaking, it may be said that Milton's
+conception of the universe is Ptolemaic, that for him sun and moon and
+planets revolve around the central earth, rapt by the revolution of the
+crystal spheres in which, sphere enveloping sphere, they are
+successively located. But the light which had broken in upon him from
+the discoveries of Galileo has led him to introduce features not
+irreconcilable with the solar centre and ethereal infinity of
+Copernicus; so that "the poet would expect the effective permanence of
+his work in the imagination of the world, whether Ptolemy or Copernicus
+should prevail." So Professor Masson, who finely and justly adds that
+Milton's blindness helped him "by having already converted all external
+space in his own sensations into an infinite of circumambient blackness
+through which he could flash brilliance at his pleasure." His
+inclination as a thinker is evidently towards the Copernican theory, but
+he saw that the Ptolemaic, however inferior in sublimity, was better
+adapted to the purpose of a poem requiring a definite theatre of action.
+For rapturous contemplation of the glory of God in nature, the
+Copernican system is immeasurably the more stimulating to the spirit,
+but when made the theatre of an action the universe fatigues with its
+infinitude--
+
+   "Millions have meaning; after this
+      Cyphers forget the integer."
+
+An infinite sidereal universe would have stultified the noble
+description how Satan--
+
+        "In the emptier waste, resembling air,
+    Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
+    Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
+    In circuit, undetermined square or round,
+    With opal towers and battlements adorned
+    Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
+    And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
+    This pendant world, in bigness as a star
+    Of smallest magnitude close by the moon."
+
+This pendant world, observe, is not the earth, as Addison understood it,
+but the entire sidereal universe, depicted not as the infinity we now
+know it to be, but as a definite object, so insulated in the vastness of
+space as to be perceptible to the distant Fiend as a minute star, and no
+larger in comparison with the courts of Heaven--themselves not wholly
+seen--than such a twinkler matched with the full-orbed moon. Such a
+representation, if it diminishes the grandeur of the universe accessible
+to sense, exalts that of the supersensual and extramundane regions where
+the action takes its birth, and where Milton's gigantic imagination is
+most perfectly at home.
+
+There is no such compromise between religious creeds in Milton's mind as
+he saw good to make between Ptolemy and Copernicus. The matter was, in
+his estimation, far too serious. Never was there a more unaccountable
+misstatement than Ruskin's, that "Paradise Lost" is a poem in which
+every artifice of invention is consciously employed--not a single fact
+being conceived as tenable by any living faith. Milton undoubtedly
+believed most fully in the actual existence of all his chief personages,
+natural and supernatural, and was sure that, however he might have
+indulged his imagination in the invention of incidents, he had
+represented character with the fidelity of a conscientious historian.
+His religious views, moreover, are such as he could never have thought
+it right to publish if he had not been intimately convinced of their
+truth. He has strayed far from the creed of Puritanism. He is an Arian;
+his Son of God, though an unspeakably exalted being, is dependent,
+inferior, not self-existent, and could be merged in the Father's person
+or obliterated entirely without the least diminution of Almighty
+perfection. He is, moreover, no longer a Calvinist: Satan and Adam both
+possess free will, and neither need have fallen. The reader must accept
+these views, as well as Milton's conception of the materiality of the
+spiritual world, if he is to read to good purpose. "If his imagination,"
+says Pattison, pithily, "is not active enough to assist the poet, he
+must at least not resist him."
+
+This is excellent advice as respects the general plan of "Paradise
+Lost," the materiality of its spiritual personages, and its system of
+philosophy and theology. Its poetical beauties can only be resisted
+where they are not perceived. They have repeated the miracles of Orpheus
+and Amphion, metamorphosing one most bitterly obnoxious, of whom so late
+as 1687 a royalist wrote that "his fame is gone out like a candle in a
+snuff, and his memory will always stink," into an object of universal
+veneration. From the first instant of perusal the imagination is led in
+captivity, and for the first four books at least stroke upon stroke of
+sublimity follows with such continuous and undeviating regularity that
+sublimity seems this Creation's first law, and we feel like pigmies
+transported to a world of giants. There is nothing forced or affected
+in this grandeur, no visible effort, no barbaric profusion, everything
+proceeds with a severe and majestic order, controlled by the strength
+that called it into being. The similes and other poetical ornaments,
+though inexpressibly magnificent, seem no more so than the greatness of
+the general conception demands. Grant that Satan in his fall is not
+"less than archangel ruined," and it is no exaggeration but the simplest
+truth to depict his mien--
+
+                "As when the sun, new risen,
+    Looks through the horizontal misty air,
+    Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
+    In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
+    On half the nations."
+
+When such a being voyages through space it is no hyperbole to compare
+him to a whole fleet, judiciously shown at such distance as to suppress
+every minute detail that could diminish the grandeur of the image--
+
+   "As when far off at sea a fleet descried
+    Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
+    Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
+    Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
+    Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood,
+    Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
+    Ply stemming nightly towards the pole: so seemed
+    Far off the flying Fiend."
+
+These similes, and an infinity of others, are grander than anything in
+Homer, who would, however, have equalled them with an equal subject.
+Dante's treatment is altogether different; the microscopic intensity of
+perception in which he so far surpasses Homer and Milton affords, in
+our opinion, no adequate compensation for his inferiority in
+magnificence. That the theme of "Paradise Lost" should have evoked such
+grandeur is a sufficient compensation for its incurable flaws and the
+utter breakdown of its ostensible moral purpose. There is yet another
+department of the poem where Milton writes as he could have written on
+nothing else. The elements of his under-world are comparatively simple,
+fire and darkness, fallen angels now huddled thick as leaves in
+Vallombrosa; anon,
+
+    "A forest huge of spears and thronging helms,"
+
+charming their painful steps over the burning marl by
+
+            "The Dorian mood
+    Of flutes and soft recorders;"
+
+the dazzling magnificence of Pandemonium; the ineffable welter of Chaos;
+proudly eminent over all like a tower, the colossal personality of
+Satan. The description of Paradise and the story of Creation, if making
+less demand on the poet's creative power, required greater resources of
+knowledge, and more consummate skill in combination. Nature must yield
+up her treasures, whatever of fair and stately the animal and vegetable
+kingdoms can afford must be brought together, blended in gorgeous masses
+or marshalled in infinite procession. Here Milton is as profuse as he
+has hitherto been severe, and with good cause; it is possible to make
+Hell too repulsive for art, it is not possible to make Eden too
+enchanting. In his descriptions of the former the effect is produced by
+a perpetual succession of isolated images of awful majesty; in his
+Paradise and Creation the universal landscape is bathed in a general
+atmosphere of lustrous splendour. This portion of his work is
+accordingly less great in detached passages, but is little inferior in
+general greatness. No less an authority than Tennyson, indeed, expresses
+a preference for the "bowery loneliness" of Eden over the "Titan angels"
+of the "deep-domed Empyrean." If this only means that Milton's Eden is
+finer than his war in heaven, we must concur; but if a wider application
+be intended, it does seem to us that his Pandemonium exalts him to a
+greater height above every other poet than his Paradise exalts him above
+his predecessor, and in some measure, his exemplar, Spenser.
+
+To remain at such an elevation was impossible. Milton compares
+unfavourably with Homer in this; his epic begins at its zenith, and
+after a while visibly and continually declines. His genius is
+unimpaired, but his skill transcends his stuff. The fall of man and its
+consequences could not by any device be made as interesting as the fall
+of Satan, of which it is itself but a consequence. It was, moreover,
+absolutely inevitable that Adam's fall, the proper catastrophe of the
+poem, should occur some time before the conclusion, otherwise there
+would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption,
+equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art. The
+effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar,"
+which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the
+conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes comparatively tame and
+languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the
+contention between Brutus and Cassius. It is to be regretted that
+Milton's extreme devotion to the letter of Scripture has not permitted
+him to enrich his latter books with any corresponding episode. It is not
+until the very end that he is again truly himself--
+
+   "They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
+    Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
+    Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
+    With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
+    Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.
+    The world was all before them, where to choose
+    Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
+    They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
+    Through Eden took their solitary way."
+
+Some minor objections may be briefly noticed. The materiality of
+Milton's celestial warfare has been censured by every one from the days
+of Sir Samuel Morland,[6] a splenetic critic, who had incurred Milton's
+contempt by his treachery to Cromwell and Thurloe. Warfare, however,
+there must be: war cannot be made without weapons; and Milton's only
+fault is that he has rather exaggerated than minimized the difficulties
+of his subject. A sense of humour would have spiked his celestial
+artillery, but a lively perception of the ridiculous is scarcely to be
+demanded from a Milton. After all, he was borrowing from good poets,[7]
+whose thought in itself is correct, and even profound; it is only when
+artillery antedates humanity that the ascription of its invention to the
+Tempter seems out of place. The metamorphosis of the demons into
+serpents has been censured as grotesque; but it was imperatively
+necessary to manifest by some unmistakable outward sign that victory did
+not after all remain with Satan, and the critics may be challenged to
+find one more appropriate. The bridge built by Sin and Death is equally
+essential. Satan's progeny must not be dismissed without some exploit
+worthy of their parentage. The one passage where Milton's taste seems to
+us entirely at fault is the description of the Paradise of Fools (iii.,
+481-497), where his scorn of--
+
+                        "Reliques, beads,
+    Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,"
+
+has tempted him to chequer the sublime with the ludicrous.
+
+No subject but a Biblical one would have insured Milton universal
+popularity among his countrymen, for his style is that of an ancient
+classic transplanted, like Aladdin's palace set down with all its
+magnificence in the heart of Africa; and his diction, the delight of the
+educated, is the despair of the ignorant man. Not that this diction is
+in any respect affected or pedantic. Milton was the darling poet of our
+greatest modern master of unadorned Saxon speech, John Bright. But it
+is freighted with classic allusion--not alone from the ancient
+classics--and comes to us rich with gathered sweets, like a wind laden
+with the scent of many flowers. "It is," says Pattison, "the elaborated
+outcome of all the best words of all antecedent poetry--the language of
+one who lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of past
+time." "Words," the same writer reminds us, "over and above their
+dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has gathered
+round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations
+of song." So it is, every word seems instinct with its own peculiar
+beauty, and fraught with its own peculiar association, and yet each
+detail is strictly subordinate to the general effect. No poet of
+Milton's rank, probably, has been equally indebted to his predecessors,
+not only for his vocabulary, but for his thoughts. Reminiscences throng
+upon him, and he takes all that comes, knowing that he can make it
+lawfully his own. The comparison of Satan's shield to the moon, for
+instance, is borrowed from the similar comparison of the shield of
+Achilles in the Iliad, but what goes in Homer comes out Milton. Homer
+merely says that the huge and massy shield emitted a lustre like that of
+the moon in heaven. Milton heightens the resemblance by giving the
+shield shape, calls in the telescope to endow it with what would seem
+preternatural dimensions to the naked eye, and enlarges even these by
+the suggestion of more than the telescope can disclose--
+
+                   "His ponderous shield,
+    Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round
+    Behind him cast; the broad circumference
+    Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
+    Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
+    At evening, from the top of Fesole,
+    Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
+    Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe."
+
+Thus does Milton appropriate the wealth of past literature, secure of
+being able to recoin it with his own image and superscription. The
+accumulated learning which might have choked the native fire of a
+feebler spirit was but nourishment to his. The polished stones and
+shining jewels of his superb mosaic are often borrowed, but its plan and
+pattern are his own.
+
+One of the greatest charms of "Paradise Lost" is the incomparable metre,
+which, after Coleridge and Tennyson have done their utmost, remains
+without equal in our language for the combination of majesty and music.
+It is true that this majesty is to a certain extent inherent in the
+subject, and that the poet who could rival it would scarcely be well
+advised to exert his power to the full unless his theme also rivalled
+the magnificence of Milton's. Milton, on his part, would have been quite
+content to have written such blank verse as Wordsworth's "Yew Trees," or
+as the exordium of "Alastor," or as most of Coleridge's idylls, had his
+subject been less than epical. The organ-like solemnity of his verbal
+music is obtained partly by extreme attention to variety of pause, but
+chiefly, as Wordsworth told Klopstock, and as Mr. Addington Symonds
+points out more at length, by the period, not the individual line, being
+made the metrical unit, "so that each line in a period shall carry its
+proper burden of sound, but the burden shall be differently distributed
+in the successive verses." Hence lines which taken singly seem almost
+unmetrical, in combination with their associates appear indispensable
+parts of the general harmony. Mr. Symonds gives some striking instances.
+Milton's versification is that of a learned poet, profound in thought
+and burdened with the further care of ordering his thoughts: it is
+therefore only suited to sublimity of a solemn or meditative cast, and
+most unsuitable to render the unstudied sublimity of Homer. Perhaps no
+passage is better adapted to display its dignity, complicated artifice,
+perpetual retarding movement, concerted harmony, and grave but ravishing
+sweetness than the description of the coming on of Night in the Fourth
+Book:--
+
+   "Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
+    Had in her sober livery all things clad;
+    Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
+    They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
+    Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
+    She all night long her amorous descant sung;
+    Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament
+    With living sapphires; Hesperus that led
+    The stary host rose brightest, till the moon,
+    Rising in clouded majesty, at length
+    Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,
+    And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."
+
+How exquisite the indication of the pauseless continuity of the
+nightingale's song by the transition from short sentences, cut up by
+commas and semicolons, to the "linked sweetness long drawn out" of "She
+all night long her amorous descant sung"! The poem is full of similar
+felicities, none perhaps more noteworthy than the sequence of
+monosyllables that paints the enormous bulk of the prostrate Satan:--
+
+    "So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay."
+
+It is a most interesting subject for inquiry from what sources, other
+than the Scriptures, Milton drew aid in the composition of "Paradise
+Lost." The most striking counterpart is Calderon, to whom he owed as
+little as Calderon can have owed to him. "El Magico Prodigioso," already
+cited as affording a remarkable parallel to "Comus," though performed in
+1637, was not printed until 1663, when "Paradise Lost" was already
+completed.[8] The two great religious poets have naturally conceived the
+Evil One much in the same manner, and Calderon's Lucifer,
+
+    "Like the red outline of beginning Adam,"
+
+might well have passed as the original draft of Milton's Satan:--
+
+                               "In myself I am
+    A world of happiness and misery;
+    This I have lost, and that I must lament
+    For ever. In my attributes I stood
+    So high and so heroically great,
+    In lineage so supreme, and with a genius
+    Which penetrated with a glance the world
+    Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,
+    A King--whom I may call the King of Kings,
+    Because all others tremble in their pride
+    Before the terrors of his countenance--
+    In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems
+    Of living light--call them the stars of heaven--
+    Named me his counsellor. But the high praise
+    Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose
+    In mighty competition, to ascend
+    His seat, and place my foot triumphantly
+    Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know
+    The depth to which ambition falls. For mad
+    Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now
+    Repentance of the irrevocable deed.
+    Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory
+    Of not to be subdued, before the shame
+    Of reconciling me with him who reigns
+    By coward cession. Nor was I alone,
+    Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone.
+    And there was hope, and there may still be hope;
+    For many suffrages among his vassals
+    Hailed me their lord and king, and many still
+    Are mine, and many more perchance shall be."
+
+A striking proof that resemblance does not necessarily imply plagiarism.
+Milton's affinity to Calderon has been overlooked by his commentators;
+but four luminaries have been named from which he is alleged to have
+drawn, however sparingly, in his golden urn--Caedmon, the Adamus Exul of
+Grotius, the Adamo of the Italian dramatist Andreini, and the Lucifer of
+the Dutch poet Vondel. Caedmon, first printed in 1655, it is but barely
+possible that he should have known, and ere he could have known him the
+conception of "Paradise Lost" was firmly implanted in his mind. External
+evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his
+knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the
+Italian drama, we can easily believe with Hayley that "his fancy caught
+fire from that spirited, though irregular and fantastic composition."
+Vondel's Lucifer--whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of
+Satan--was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have
+been studying Dutch, but when the plan of "Paradise Lost" must have been
+substantially formed. There can, nevertheless, be no question of the
+frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel's Lucifer and
+"Paradise Lost," but between his Samson and "Samson Agonistes." Milton's
+indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English
+poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his
+lightning-speech, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," was a
+thunderbolt condensed from a brace of Vondel's clumsy Alexandrines,
+which Beddoes renders thus:--
+
+   "And rather the first prince at an inferior court
+    Than in the blessed light the second or still less."
+
+Mr. Gosse followed up the inquiry, which eventually became the subject
+of a monograph by Mr. George Edmundson ("Milton and Vondel," 1885). That
+Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel's works translated
+aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the
+enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet.
+Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be
+overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and
+expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject.
+_Je l'aurais bien pris sans toi._ When, as in the instance above quoted,
+he borrows anything more recondite, he so exalts and transforms it that
+it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has
+entertained unawares. This may not entirely apply to the Italian
+reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems
+indebted for the conception of his diabolical council. Ochino, in many
+respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as
+the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the
+lawfulness of polygamy. In Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," which he may have
+read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of
+Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate. "The
+introduction to the first dialogue," says Ochino's biographer Benrath,
+"is highly dramatic, and reminds us of Job and Faust." Ochino's
+arch-fiend, like Milton's, announces a masterstroke of genius. "God sent
+His Son into the world, and I will send my son." Antichrist accordingly
+comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until
+Henry VIII. is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture. It is a
+token, not only of Milton's, but of Vondel's, indebtedness, that, with
+Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council,
+and even admonishes his leader. "I fear me," he remarks, "lest when
+Antichrist shall die, and come down hither to hell, that as he passeth
+us in wickedness, so he will be above us in dignity." Prescience worthy
+of him who
+
+                         "In his rising seemed
+    A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
+    Deliberation sat, and public care;
+    And princely counsel in his face yet shone."
+
+Milton's borrowings, nevertheless, nowise impair his greatness. The
+obligation is rather theirs, of whose stores he has condescended to
+avail himself. He may be compared to his native country, which, fertile
+originally in little but enterprise, has made the riches of the earth
+her own. He has given her a national epic, inferior to no other, and
+unlike most others, founded on no merely local circumstance, but such as
+must find access to every nation acquainted with the most
+widely-circulated Book in the world. He has further enriched his native
+literature with an imperishable monument of majestic diction, an example
+potent to counteract that wasting agency of familiar usage by which
+language is reduced to vulgarity, as sea-water wears cliffs to shingle.
+He has reconciled, as no other poet has ever done, the Hellenic spirit
+with the Hebraic, the Bible with the Renaissance. And, finally, as we
+began by saying, his poem is the mighty bridge--
+
+    "Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move,"
+
+across which the spirit of ancient poetry has travelled to modern times,
+and by which the continuity of great English literature has remained
+unbroken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+In recording the publication of "Paradise Lost" in 1667, we have passed
+over the interval of Milton's life immediately subsequent to the
+completion of the poem in 1663. The first incident of any importance is
+his migration to Chalfont St. Giles, near Beaconsfield, in
+Buckinghamshire, about July, 1665, to escape the plague then devastating
+London. Ell wood, whose family lived in the neighbourhood of Chalfont,
+had at his request taken for him "a pretty box" in that village; and we
+are, says Professor Masson, "to imagine Milton's house in Artillery Walk
+shuttered up, and a coach and a large waggon brought to the door, and
+the blind man helped in, and the wife and the three daughters following,
+with a servant to look after the books and other things they have taken
+with them, and the whole party driven away towards Giles-Chalfont."
+According to the same authority, Chalfont well deserves the name of
+Sleepy Hollow, lying at the bottom of a leafy dell. Milton's cottage,
+alone of his residences, still exists, though divided into two
+tenements. It is a two-storey dwelling, with a garden, is built of
+brick, with wooden beams, musters nine rooms--though a question arises
+whether some of them ought not rather to be described as closets; the
+porch in which Milton may have breathed the summer air is gone, but the
+parlour retains the latticed casement at which he sat, though through it
+he could not see. His infirmity rendered the confined situation less of
+a drawback, and there are abundance of pleasant lanes, along which he
+could be conducted in his sightless strolls:--
+
+   "As one who long in populous city pent,
+    Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
+    Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
+    Among the pleasant villages and farms
+    Adjoined, from each new thing conceives delight,
+    The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
+    Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound."
+
+Milton was probably no stranger to the neighbourhood, having lived
+within thirteen miles of it when he dwelt at Horton. Ellwood could not
+welcome him on his arrival, being in prison on account of an affray at
+what should have been the paragon of decorous solemnities--a Quaker
+funeral. When released, about the end of August or the beginning of
+September, he waited upon Milton, who, "after some discourses, called
+for a manuscript of his; which he delivered to me, bidding me take it
+home with me and read it at my leisure. When I set myself to read it, I
+found it was that excellent poem which he entitled 'Paradise Lost.'"
+Professor Masson justly remarks that Milton would not have trusted the
+worthy Quaker adolescent with the only copy of his epic; we may be sure,
+therefore, that other copies existed, and that the poem was at this
+date virtually completed and ready for press. When the manuscript was
+returned, Ellwood, after "modestly, but freely, imparting his judgment,"
+observed, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou
+to say of Paradise Found? He made no answer, but sat some time in a
+muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell on another subject." The
+plague was then at its height, and did not abate sufficiently for Milton
+to return to town with safety until about February in the following
+year, leaving, it has been asserted, a record of himself at Chalfont in
+the shape of a sonnet on the pestilence regarded as a judgment for the
+sins of the King, written with a diamond on a window-pane--as if the
+blind poet could write even with a pen! The verses, nevertheless, may
+not impossibly be genuine: they are almost too Miltonic for an imitator
+between 1665 and 1738, when they were first published.
+
+The public calamity of 1666 affected Milton more nearly than that of
+1665. The Great Fire came within a quarter of a mile of his house, and
+though he happily escaped the fate of Shirley, and did not make one of
+the helpless crowd of the homeless and destitute, his means were
+seriously abridged by the destruction of the house in Bread Street where
+he had first seen the light, and which he had retained through all the
+vicissitudes of his fortunes. He could not, probably, have published
+"Paradise Lost" without the co-operation of Samuel Symmons. Symmons's
+endeavours to push the sale of the book make the bibliographical history
+of the first edition unusually interesting. There were at least nine
+different issues, as fresh batches were successively bound up, with
+frequent alterations of title-page as reasonable cause became apparent
+to the strategic Symmons. First Milton's name is given in full, then he
+is reduced to initials, then restored; Symmons's own name, at first
+suppressed, by and by appears; his agents are frequently changed; and
+the title is altered to suit the year of issue, that the book may seem a
+novelty. The most important of all these alterations is one in which the
+author must have actively participated--the introduction of the Argument
+which, a hundred and forty years afterwards, was to cause Harriet
+Martineau to take up "Paradise Lost" at the age of seven, and of the
+Note on the metre conveying "a reason of that which stumbled many, why
+this poem rimes not." Partly, perhaps, by help of these devices,
+certainly without any aid from advertising or reviewing, the impression
+of thirteen hundred copies was disposed of within twenty months, as
+attested by Milton's receipt for his second five pounds, April 26,
+1669--two years, less one day, since the signature of the original
+contract. The first printed notice appeared after the edition had been
+entirely sold. It was by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, and was
+contained in a little Latin essay appended to Buchlerus's "Treasury of
+Poetical Phrases."
+
+      "John Milton, in addition to other most elegant writings of his,
+      both in English and Latin, has recently published 'Paradise Lost,'
+      a poem which, whether we regard the sublimity of the subject, or
+      the combined pleasantness and majesty of the style, or the
+      sublimity of the invention, or the beauty of its images and
+      descriptions of nature, will, if I mistake not, receive the name
+      of truly heroic, inasmuch as by the suffrages of many not
+      unqualified to judge, it is reputed to have reached the perfection
+      of this kind of poetry."
+
+The "many not unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the
+age, Dryden. Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer--pleasing
+anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of
+Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal.
+
+While "Paradise Lost" was thus slowly upbearing its author to the
+highest heaven of fame, Milton was achieving other titles to renown, one
+of which he deemed nothing inferior. We shall remember Ellwood's hint
+that he might find something to say about Paradise Found, and the "muse"
+into which it cast him. When, says the Quaker, he waited upon Milton
+after the latter's return to London, Milton "showed me his second poem,
+called 'Paradise Regained,' and in a pleasant tone said to me, 'This is
+owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me
+at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.'" Ellwood does not tell
+us the date of this visit, and Phillips may be right in believing that
+"Paradise Regained" was entirely composed after the publication of
+"Paradise Lost"; but it seems unlikely that the conception should have
+slumbered so long in Milton's mind, and the most probable date is
+between Michaelmas, 1665, and Lady-day, 1666. Phillips records that
+Milton could never hear with patience "Paradise Regained" "censured to
+be much inferior" to "Paradise Lost." "The most judicious," he adds,
+agreed with him, while allowing that "the subject might not afford such
+variety of invention," which was probably all that the injudicious
+meant. There is no external evidence of the date of his next and last
+poem, "Samson Agonistes," but its development of Miltonic mannerisms
+would incline us to assign it to the latest period possible. The poems
+were licensed by Milton's old friend, Thomas Tomkyns, July 2, 1670, but
+did not appear until 1671. They were published in the same volume, but
+with distinct title-pages and paginations; the publisher was John
+Starkey; the printer an anonymous "J.M.," who was far from equalling
+Symmons in elegance and correctness.
+
+"Paradise Regained" is in one point of view the confutation of a
+celebrated but eccentric definition of poetry as a "criticism of life."
+If this were true it would be a greater work than "Paradise Lost," which
+must be violently strained to admit a definition not wholly inapplicable
+to the minor poem. If, again, Wordsworth and Coleridge are right in
+pronouncing "Paradise Regained" the most perfect of Milton's works in
+point of execution, the proof is afforded that perfect execution is not
+the chief test of poetic excellence. Whatever these great men may have
+propounded in theory, it cannot be believed that they would not have
+rather written the first two books of "Paradise Lost" than ten such
+poems as "Paradise Regained," and yet they affirm that Milton's power is
+even more advantageously exhibited in the latter work than in the other.
+There can be no solution except that greatness in poetry depends mainly
+upon the subject, and that the subject of "Paradise Lost" is infinitely
+the finer. Perhaps this should not be. Perhaps to "the visual nerve
+purged with euphrasy and rue" the spectacle of the human soul
+successfully resisting supernatural temptation would be more impressive
+than the material sublimities of "Paradise Lost," but ordinary vision
+sees otherwise. Satan "floating many a rood" on the sulphurous lake, or
+"up to the fiery concave towering high," or confronting Death at the
+gate of Hell, kindles the imagination with quite other fire than the
+sage circumspection and the meek fortitude of the Son of God. "The
+reason," says Blake, "why Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
+Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he
+was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it." The
+passages in "Paradise Regained" which most nearly approach the
+magnificence of "Paradise Lost," are those least closely connected with
+the proper action of the poem, the episodes with which Milton's
+consummate art and opulent fancy have veiled the bareness of his
+subject. The description of the Parthian military expedition; the
+picture, equally gorgeous and accurate, of the Roman Empire at the
+zenith of its greatness; the condensation into a single speech of all
+that has made Greece dear to humanity--these are the shining peaks of
+the regained "Paradise," marvels of art and eloquence, yet, unlike
+"Paradise Lost," beautiful rather than awful. The faults inherent in the
+theme cannot be imputed to the poet. No human skill could make the
+second Adam as great an object of sympathy as the first: it is enough,
+and it is wonderful, that spotless virtue should be so entirely exempt
+from formality and dulness. The baffled Satan, beaten at his own
+weapons, is necessarily a much less interesting personage than the
+heroic adventurer of "Paradise Lost." Milton has done what can be done
+by softening Satan's reprobate mood with exquisite strokes of pathos:--
+
+                        "Though I have lost
+    Much lustre of my native brightness, lost
+    To be beloved of God, I have not lost
+    To love, at least contemplate and admire
+    What I see excellent in good or fair,
+    Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense."
+
+These words, though spoken with a deceitful intention, express a truth.
+Milton's Satan is a long way from Goethe's Mephistopheles. Profound,
+too, is the pathos of--
+
+   "I would be at the worst, worst is my best,
+    My harbour, and my ultimate repose."
+
+The general sobriety of the style of "Paradise Regained" is a fertile
+theme for the critics. It is, indeed, carried to the verge of baldness;
+frigidity, used by Pattison, is too strong a word. This does not seem to
+be any token of a decay of poetical power. As writers advance in life
+their characteristics usually grow upon them, and develop into
+mannerisms. In "Paradise Regained," and yet more markedly in "Samson
+Agonistes," Milton seems to have prided himself on showing how
+independent he could be of the ordinary poetical stock-in-trade. Except
+in his splendid episodical descriptions he seeks to impress by the massy
+substance of his verse. It is a great proof of the essentially poetical
+quality of his mind that though he thus often becomes jejune, he is
+never prosaic. He is ever unmistakably the poet, even when his beauties
+are rather those of the orator or the moralist. The following sound
+remark, for instance, would not have been poetry in Pope; it is poetry
+in Milton:--
+
+                              "Who reads
+    Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
+    A spirit and judgment equal or superior
+    (And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?)
+    Uncertain and unsettled still remains?
+    Deep versed in books and shallow in himself."
+
+Perhaps, too, the sparse flowers of pure poetry are more exquisite from
+their contrast with the general austerity:--
+
+   "The field, all iron, cast a gleaming brown."
+
+                                    "Morning fair
+    Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray."
+
+Poetic magic these, and Milton is still Milton.
+
+"I have lately read his Samson, which has more of the antique spirit
+than any production of any other modern poet. He is very great." Thus
+Goethe to Eckermann, in his old age. The period of life is noticeable,
+for "Samson Agonistes" is an old man's poem as respects author and
+reader alike. There is much to repel, little to attract a young reader;
+no wonder that Macaulay, fresh from college, put it so far below
+"Comus," to which the more mature taste is disposed to equal it. It is
+related to the earlier work as sculpture is to painting, but sculpture
+of the severest school, all sinewy strength; studious, above all, of
+impressive truth. "Beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock are
+fashioned, a rugged rock, whereon with might and main the old man drags
+a great net from his cast, as one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldest
+say that he is fishing with all the might of his limbs, so big the
+sinews swell all about his neck, grey-haired though he is, but his
+strength is as the strength of youth."[9] Behold here the Milton of
+"Samson Agonistes," a work whose beauty is of metal rather than of
+marble, hard, bright, and receptive of an ineffaceable die. The great
+fault is the frequent harshness of the style, principally in the
+choruses, where some strophes are almost uncouth. In the blank verse
+speeches perfect grace is often united to perfect dignity: as in the
+farewell of Dalila:--
+
+   "Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,
+    And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;
+    On both his wings, one black, the other white,
+    Bears greatest names in his wild aery flights.
+    My name perhaps among the circumcised,
+    In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes,
+    To all posterity may stand defamed,
+    With malediction mentioned, and the blot
+    Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced.
+    But in my country where I most desire,
+    In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath,
+    I shall be named among the famousest
+    Of women, sung at solemn festivals,
+    Living and dead recorded, who to save
+    Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose
+    Above the faith of wedlock-bands; my tomb
+    With odours visited and annual flowers."
+
+The scheme of "Samson Agonistes" is that of the Greek drama, the only
+one appropriate to an action of such extreme simplicity, admitting so
+few personages, and these only as foils to the hero. It is, but for its
+Miltonisms of style and autobiographic and political allusion, just such
+a drama as Sophocles or Euripides would have written on the subject, and
+has all that depth of patriotic and religious sentiment which made the
+Greek drama so inexpressibly significant to Greeks. Consummate art is
+shown in the invention of the Philistine giant, Harapha, who not only
+enriches the meagre action, and brings out strong features in the
+character of Samson, but also prepares the reader for the catastrophe.
+We must say reader, for though the drama might conceivably be acted with
+effect on a Court or University stage, the real living theatre has been
+no place for it since the days of Greece. Milton confesses as much when
+in his preface he assails "the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff
+with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar
+persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in
+without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." In his view
+tragedy should be eclectic; in Shakespeare's it should be all embracing.
+Shelley, perhaps, judged more rightly than either when he said: "The
+modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy is undoubtedly an
+extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in 'King
+Lear,' universal, ideal, and sublime." On the whole, "Samson Agonistes"
+is a noble example of a style which we may hope will in no generation be
+entirely lacking to our literature, but which must always be exotic,
+from its want of harmony with the more essential characteristics of our
+tumultous, undisciplined, irrepressible national life.
+
+In one point of view, however, "Samson Agonistes" deserves to be
+esteemed a national poem, pregnant with a deeper allusiveness than has
+always been recognized. Samson's impersonation of the author himself can
+escape no one. Old, blind, captive, helpless, mocked, decried, miserable
+in the failure of all his ideals, upheld only by faith and his own
+unconquerable spirit, Milton is the counterpart of his hero. Particular
+references to the circumstances of his life are not wanting: his bitter
+self-condemnation for having chosen his first wife in the camp of the
+enemy, and his surprise that near the close of an austere life he should
+be afflicted by the malady appointed to chastise intemperance. But, as
+in the Hebrew prophets Israel sometimes denotes a person, sometimes a
+nation, Samson seems no less the representative of the English people in
+the age of Charles the Second. His heaviest burden is his remorse, a
+remorse which could not weigh on Milton:--
+
+              "I do acknowledge and confess
+    That I this honour, I this pomp have brought
+    To Dagon, and advanced his praises high
+    Among the heathen round; to God have brought
+    Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths
+    Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal
+    To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt
+    In feeble hearts, propense enough before
+    To waver, to fall off, and join with idols;
+    Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow,
+    The anguish of my soul, that suffers not
+    My eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest."
+
+Milton might reproach himself for having taken a Philistine wife, but
+not with having suffered her to shear him. But the same could not be
+said of the English nation, which had in his view most foully
+apostatized from its pure creed, and most perfidiously betrayed the high
+commission it had received from Heaven. "This extolled and magnified
+nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed, to
+fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude
+would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship! To be
+ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds! To verify
+all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think
+they wisely discerned and justly censured us and all our actions as
+rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious!" These things, which Milton
+refused to contemplate as possible when he wrote his "Ready Way to
+establish a Free Commonwealth," had actually come to pass. The English
+nation is to him the enslaved and erring Samson--a Samson, however, yet
+to burst his bonds, and bring down ruin upon Philistia. "Samson
+Agonistes" is thus a prophetic drama, the English counterpart of the
+world-drama of "Prometheus Bound."
+
+Goethe says that our final impression of any one is derived from the
+last circumstances in which we have beheld him. Let us, therefore,
+endeavour to behold Milton as he appeared about the time of the
+publication of his last poems, to which period of his life the
+descriptions we possess seem to apply. Richardson heard of his sitting
+habitually "in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near
+Bunhill Fields, in warm sunny weather to enjoy the fresh air"--a
+suggestive picture. What thoughts must have been travelling through his
+mind, undisturbed by external things! How many of the passers knew that
+they flitted past the greatest glory of the age of Newton, Locke, and
+Wren? For one who would reverence the author of "Paradise Lost," there
+were probably twenty who would have been ready with a curse for the
+apologist of the killing of the King. In-doors he was seen by Dr.
+Wright, in Richardson's time an aged clergyman in Dorsetshire, who found
+him up one pair of stairs, in a room hung with rusty green "sitting in
+an elbow chair, black clothes, and neat enough, pale but not cadaverous;
+his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." Gout was the enemy
+of Milton's latter days; we have seen that he had begun to suffer from
+it before he wrote "Samson Agonistes." Without it, he said, he could
+find blindness tolerable. Yet even in the fit he would be cheerful, and
+would sing. It is grievous to write that, about 1670, the departure of
+his daughters promoted the comfort of his household. They were sent out
+to learn embroidery as a means of future support--a proper step in
+itself, and one which would appear to have entailed considerable expense
+upon Milton. But they might perfectly well have remained inmates of the
+family, and the inference is that domestic discord had at length grown
+unbearable to all. Friends, or at least visitors, were, on the other
+hand, more numerous than of late years. The most interesting were the
+"subtle, cunning, and reserved" Earl of Anglesey, who must have "coveted
+Milton's society and converse" very much if, as Phillips reports, he
+often came all the way to Bunhill Fields to enjoy it; and Dryden, whose
+generous admiration does not seem to have been affected by Milton's
+over-hasty sentence upon him as "a good rhymester, but no poet." One of
+Dryden's visits is famous in literary history, when he came with the
+modest request that Milton would let him turn his epic into an opera.
+"Aye," responded Milton, equal to the occasion, "tag my verses if you
+will"--to tag being to put a shining metal point--compared in Milton's
+fancy to a rhyme--at the end of a lace or cord. Dryden took him at his
+word, and in due time "Paradise Lost" had become an opera under the
+title of "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man," which may also be
+interpreted as referring to the condition of the poem before Dryden laid
+hands upon it and afterwards. It is a puzzling performance altogether;
+one sees not any more than Sir Walter Scott could see how a drama
+requiring paradisiacal costume could have been acted even in the age of
+Nell Gwyn; and yet it is even more unlikely that Dryden should have
+written a play not intended for the stage. The same contradiction
+prevails in the piece itself; it would not be unfair to call it the most
+absurd burlesque ever written without burlesque intention; and yet it
+displays such intellectual resources, such vigour, bustle, adroitness,
+and bright impudence, that admiration almost counterweighs derision.
+Dryden could not have made such an exhibition of Milton and himself
+twenty years afterwards, when he said that, much as he had always
+admired Milton, he felt that he had not admired him half enough. The
+reverence which he felt even in 1674 for "one of the greatest, most
+noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has
+produced," contrasts finely with the ordinary Restoration estimate of
+Milton conveyed in the complimentary verses by Lee, prefixed to "The
+State of Innocence":--
+
+   "To the dead bard your fame a little owes,
+    For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose,
+    And rudely cast what you could well dispose.
+    He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground,
+    A chaos, for no perfect world was found,
+    Till through the heap your mighty genius shined;
+    He was the golden ore, which you refined."
+
+These later years also produced several little publications of Milton's
+own, mostly of manuscripts long lying by him, now slightly revised and
+fitted for the press. Such were his miniature Latin grammar, published
+in 1669; and his "Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio; or The Method of
+Ramus," 1672. The first is insignificant; and the second even Professor
+Masson pronounces, "as a digest of logic, disorderly and unedifying."
+Both apparently belong to his school-keeping days: the little tract, "Of
+True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration," (1673) is, on the other
+hand, contemporary with a period of great public excitement, when
+Parliament (March, 1673) compelled the king to revoke his edict of
+toleration autocratically promulgated in the preceding year, and to
+assent to a severe Test Act against Roman Catholics. The good sense and
+good nature which inclined Charles to toleration were unfortunately
+alloyed with less creditable motives. Protestants justly suspected him
+of insidiously aiming at the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism, and
+even the persecuted Nonconformists patriotically joined with High
+Churchmen to adjourn their own deliverance until the country should be
+safe from the common enemy. The wisdom and necessity of this course were
+abundantly evinced under the next reign, and while we must regret that
+Milton contributed his superfluous aid to restrictions only defensible
+on the ground of expediency, we must admit that he could not well avoid
+making Roman Catholics an exception to the broad tolerance he claims for
+all denominations of Protestants. And, after all, has not the Roman
+Catholic Church's notion of tolerance always been that which Macaulay
+imputes to Southey, that everybody should tolerate her, and that she
+should tolerate nobody?
+
+A more important work, though scarcely worthy of Milton's industry, was
+his "History of Britain" (1670). This was a comparatively early labour,
+four of the six books having been written before he entered upon the
+Latin Secretaryship, and two under the Commonwealth. From its own point
+of view, this is a meritorious performance, making no pretensions to the
+character of a philosophical history, but a clear, easy narrative,
+sometimes interrupted by sententious disquisition, of transactions down
+to the Conquest. Like Grote, though not precisely for the same reason,
+Milton hands down picturesque legendary matter as he finds it, and it is
+to those who would see English history in its romantic aspect that, in
+these days of exact research, his work is chiefly to be recommended. It
+is also memorable for what he never saw himself, the engraved portrait,
+after Faithorne's crayon sketch.
+
+      "No one," says Professor Masson, "can desire a more impressive and
+      authentic portrait of Milton in his later life. The face is such
+      as has been given to no other human being; it was and is uniquely
+      Milton's. Underneath the broad forehead and arched temples there
+      are the great rings of eye-socket, with the blind, unblemished
+      eyes in them, drawn straight upon you by your voice, and
+      speculating who and what you are; there is a severe composure in
+      the beautiful oval of the whole countenance, disturbed only by the
+      singular pouting of the rich mouth; and the entire expression is
+      that of English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow."
+
+Milton's care to set his house in order extended to his poetical
+writings. In 1673 the poems published in 1645, both English and Latin,
+appeared in a second edition, disclosing _novas frondes_ in one or two
+of Milton's earliest unprinted poems, and such of the sonnets as
+political considerations did not exclude; and _non sua poma_ in the
+Tractate of Education, curiously grafted on at the end. An even more
+important publication was the second edition of "Paradise Lost" (1674)
+with the original ten books for the first time divided into twelve as we
+now have them. Nor did this exhaust the list of Milton's literary
+undertakings. He was desirous of giving to the world his correspondence
+when Latin Secretary, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" which had
+employed so much of his thoughts at various periods of his life. The
+Government, though allowing the publication of his familiar Latin
+correspondence (1674), would not tolerate the letters he had written as
+secretary to the Commonwealth, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"
+was still less likely to propitiate the licenser. Holland was in that
+day the one secure asylum of free thought, and thither, in 1675, the
+year following Milton's death, the manuscripts were taken or sent by
+Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriack's, to Daniel Elzevir, who agreed to
+publish them. Before publication could take place, however, a
+clandestine but correct edition of the State letters appeared in London,
+probably by the agency of Edward Phillips. Skinner, in his vexation,
+appealed to the authorities to suppress this edition: they took the
+hint, and suppressed his instead. Elzevir delivered up the manuscripts,
+which the Secretary of State pigeon-holed until their existence was
+forgotten. At last, in 1823, Mr. Robert Lemon, rummaging in the State
+Paper Office, came upon the identical parcel addressed by Elzevir to
+Daniel Skinner's father which contained his son's transcript of the
+State Letters and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine." Times had
+changed, and the heretical work was edited and translated by George the
+Fourth's favourite chaplain, and published at his Majesty's expense.
+
+The "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" is by far the most remarkable of
+all Milton's later prose publications, and would have exerted a great
+influence on opinion if it had appeared when the author designed.
+Milton's name would have been a tower of strength to the liberal
+eighteenth-century clergy inside and outside the Establishment. It
+should indeed have been sufficiently manifest that "Paradise Lost" could
+not have been written by a Trinitarian or a Calvinist; but theological
+partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it
+does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted
+until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of
+the book is undoubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with
+which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained
+by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward
+light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction;
+but practically this illumination seems seldom to have guided Milton to
+any sense but the most obvious. Hence, with the intrepid consistency
+that belongs to him, he is not only an Arian, but a tolerator of
+polygamy, finding that practice nowhere condemned in Scripture, but even
+recommended by respectable examples; an Anthropomorphist, who takes the
+ascription of human passion to the Deity in the sense certainly intended
+by those who made it; a believer in the materiality and natural
+mortality of the soul, and in the suspension of consciousness between
+death and the resurrection. Where less fettered by the literal Word he
+thinks boldly; unable to conceive creation out of nothing, he regards
+all existence as an emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to
+the designation of Pantheist. He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and
+is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself. On the Atonement and
+Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends
+public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual
+religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of
+social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and
+the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and
+method of composition he says:--
+
+      "It is with a friendly and benignant feeling towards mankind that
+      I give as wide a circulation as possible to what I esteem my best
+      and richest possession.... And whereas the greater part of those
+      who have written most largely on these subjects have been wont to
+      fill whole pages with explanations of their own opinions,
+      thrusting into the margin the texts in support of their doctrines,
+      I have chosen, on the contrary, to fill my pages even to
+      redundance with quotations from Scripture, so that as little space
+      as possible might be left for my own words, even when they arise
+      from the context of revelation itself."
+
+There is consequently little scope for eloquence in a treatise
+consisting to so large an extent of quotations; but it is pervaded by a
+moral sublimity, more easily felt than expressed. Particular opinions
+will be diversely judged; but if anything could increase our reverence
+for Milton it would be that his last years should have been devoted to a
+labour so manifestly inspired by disinterested benevolence and hazardous
+love of truth.
+
+His life's work was now finished, and finished with entire success as
+far as depended upon his own will and power. He had left nothing
+unwritten, nothing undone, nor was he ignorant what manner of monument
+he had raised for himself, It was only the condition of the State that
+afflicted him, and this, looking forward, he saw in more gloomy colours
+than it appears to us who look back. Had he attained his father's age
+his apprehensions would have been dispelled by the Revolution: but he
+had evidently for some time past been older in constitution than in
+years. In July, 1674, he was anticipating death; but about the middle of
+October, "he was very merry and seemed to be in good health of body."
+Early in November "the gout struck in," and he died on November 8th,
+late at night, "with so little pain that the time of his expiring was
+not perceived by those in the room." On November 12th, "all his learned
+and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar,
+accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where
+he was buried in the chancel." In 1864, the church was restored in
+honour of the great enemy of religious establishments. "The animosities
+die, but the humanities live for ever."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's resources had been greatly impaired in his latter years by
+losses, and the expense of providing for his daughters. He nevertheless
+left, exclusive of household goods, about £900, which, by a nuncupative
+will made in July, 1674, he had wholly bequeathed to his wife. His
+daughters, he told his brother Christopher (now a Roman Catholic, and on
+the road to become one of James the Second's judges, but always on
+friendly terms with John), had been undutiful, and he thought that he
+had done enough for them. They naturally thought otherwise, and
+threatened litigation. The interrogatories administered on this occasion
+afford the best clue to the condition of Milton's affairs and household.
+At length the dispute was compromised, the nuncupative will, a kind of
+document always regarded with suspicion, was given up, and the widow
+received two-thirds of the estate instead of the whole, probably the
+fairest settlement that could have been arrived at. After residing some
+years in London she retired to Nantwich in her native county, where
+divers glimpses reveal her as leading the decent existence of a poor but
+comfortable gentlewoman as late as August or September, 1727. The
+inventory of her effects, amounting to £38 8s. 4d., is preserved, and
+includes: "Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms, valued at ten
+guineas;" and "two Books of Paradise," valued at ten shillings. Of the
+daughters, Anne married "a master-builder," and died in childbirth some
+time before 1678; Mary was dead when Phillips wrote in 1694; and Deborah
+survived until August 24, 1727, dying within a few days of her
+stepmother. She had married Abraham Clarke, a weaver and mercer in
+Dublin, who took refuge in England during the Irish troubles under James
+the Second, and carried on his business in Spitalfields. She had several
+children by him, one of whom lived to receive, in 1750, the proceeds of
+a theatrical benefit promoted by Bishop Newton and Samuel Johnson.
+Deborah herself was brought into notice by Addison, and was visited by
+Professor Ward of Gresham College, who found her "bearing the
+inconveniences of a low fortune with decency and prudence." Her last
+days were made comfortable by the generosity of Princess Caroline and
+others: it is more pleasant still to know that her affection for her
+father had revived. When shown Faithorne's crayon portrait (not the one
+engraved in Milton's lifetime, but one exceedingly like it) she
+exclaimed, "in a transport, ''Tis my dear father, I see him, 'tis him!'
+and then she put her hands to several parts of her face, ''Tis the very
+man, here! here!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's character is one of the things which "securus judicat orbis
+terrarum." On one point only there seems to us, as we have frequently
+implied, to be room for modification. In the popular conception of
+Milton the poet and the man are imperfectly combined. We allow his
+greatness as a poet, but deny him the poetical temperament which alone
+could have enabled him to attain it. He is looked upon as a great, good,
+reverend, austere, not very amiable, and not very sensitive man. The
+author and the book are thus set at variance, and the attempt to
+conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and
+inconsistency. To us, on the contrary, Milton, with all his strength of
+will and regularity of life, seems as perfect a representative as any of
+his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical
+temperament. We appeal to his remarkable dependence upon external
+prompting for his compositions; to the rapidity of his work under
+excitement, and his long intervals of unproductiveness; to the heat and
+fury of his polemics; to the simplicity with which, fortunately for us,
+he inscribes small particulars of his own life side by side with
+weightiest utterances on Church and State; to the amazing precipitancy
+of his marriage and its rupture; to his sudden pliability upon appeal to
+his generosity; to his romantic self-sacrifice when his country demanded
+his eyes from him; above all, to his splendid ideals of regenerated
+human life, such as poets alone either conceive or realize. To overlook
+all this is to affirm that Milton wrote great poetry without being truly
+a poet. One more remark may be added, though not required by thinking
+readers. We must beware of confounding the essential with the accidental
+Milton--the pure vital spirit with the casual vesture of the creeds and
+circumstances of the era in which it became clothed with mortality:--
+
+         "They are still immortal
+          Who, through birth's orient portal
+    And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
+          Clothe their unceasing flight
+          In the brief dust and light
+    Gathered around their chariots as they go.
+          New shapes they still may weave,
+          New gods, new laws, receive."
+
+If we knew for certain which of the many causes that have enlisted noble
+minds in our age would array Milton's spirit "in brief dust and light,"
+supposing it returned to earth in this nineteenth century, we should
+know which was the noblest of them all, but we should be as far as ever
+from knowing a final and stereotyped Milton.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: A famous Presbyterian tract of the day, so called from the
+combined initials of the authors, one of whom was Milton's old
+instructor, Thomas Young. The "Remonstrant" to whom Milton replied was
+Bishop Hall.]
+
+[Footnote 2: This principle admitted of general application. For
+example, astrological books were to be licensed by John Booker, who
+could by no means see his way to pass the prognostications of his rival
+Lilly without "many impertinent obliterations," which made Lilly
+exceeding wroth.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Two persons of this uncommon name are mentioned in the
+State Papers of Milton's time--one a merchant who imported a cargo of
+timber; the other a leatherseller. The name also occurs once in Pepys.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Rossetti's sonnet, "On the Refusal of Aid between Nations,"
+is an almost equally remarkable instance.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The same is recorded of Friedrich Hebbel, the most original
+of modern German dramatists.]
+
+[Footnote 6: In his "Urim of Conscience," 1695. This curious book
+contains one of the first English accounts of Buddha, whom the author
+calls Chacabout (Sakhya Buddha, apparently), and of the "Christians of
+St. John" at Bassora.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Ariosto and Marcellus Palingenius. Both these wrote before
+Ronsard, to whom the thought is traced by Pattison, and Valvasone, to
+whom Hayley deems Milton indebted for it.]
+
+[Footnote 8: We cannot agree with Mr. Edmundson that Milton was in any
+respect indebted to Vondel's "Adam's Banishment," published in 1664.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Theocritus, Idyll I.; Lang's translation.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+A.
+
+Adam, not the hero of "Paradise Lost," 155
+
+Adonais compared with Lycidas, 51
+
+Aldersgate Street, Milton's home in, 67, 83
+
+"Allegro, L.," 49-50
+
+Andreini, his "Adamo" supposed to have suggested "Paradise Lost," 169
+
+Anglesey, Earl of, visits Milton, 186
+
+"Animadversions upon the Remonstrant," 72
+
+"Apology for Smectymnuus," 72
+
+"Arcades," 44
+
+"Areopagitica, the," 78;
+  argument of, 79-82
+
+Arian opinions of Milton, 159, 191
+
+Ariosto, Milton borrows from, 164
+
+Artillery Walk, Milton's last house, 144
+
+"At a Solemn Music," 33
+
+Aubrey's biographical notices of Milton, 14, 15, 19, 24, 129, 144, 145
+
+
+B.
+
+Ball's Life of Preston, 23
+
+Barbican, Milton's house in the, 96
+
+Baroni, Leonora, admired by Milton, 62
+
+Beddoes, T.L., on Milton and Vondel, 170
+
+Benrath on Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," 171
+
+Blake on Milton, 179
+
+Bradshaw, Milton's praise of, 120
+
+Bread Street, Milton born in, 16
+
+Bridgewater, Lord, "Comus" written in his honour, 45
+
+Bright, John, his admiration for Milton, 164.
+
+British Museum, copy of Milton's poems in, 97;
+  proclamation against Milton's books preserved in the, 139
+
+Buckhurst, Lord, his admiration of "Paradise Lost," 177
+
+
+C.
+
+Caedmon, question of Milton's indebtedness to, 169
+
+Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso" compared with "Comus," 54;
+  with "Paradise Lost," 163
+
+Cambridge in Milton's time, 22
+
+Cardinal Barberini receives Milton, 62
+
+Caroline, Princess, her kindness to Milton's daughter, 195
+
+Chalfont St. Giles, Milton's residence at, 173
+
+Chappell, W., Milton's college tutor, 24
+
+Charles I., illegal government of, 30;
+  expedition against the Scots, 67;
+  execution of, 100;
+  alleged authorship of "Eikon Basilike," 105-107;
+  a bad king, but not a bad man, 110
+
+Charles II., restoration of, 138;
+  favour to Roman Catholics, 188
+
+Christ's College, Milton at, 22
+
+"Christian Doctrine," Milton's treatise on, 99, 190-193
+
+"Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," 132
+
+Clarke, Deborah, Milton's youngest daughter;
+  her reminiscences of her father, 195
+
+Clarke, Mr. Hyde, his discoveries respecting Milton's ancestry, 14, 15
+
+Clarke, Sir T., Milton's MSS. preserved by, 129
+
+Coleridge, Milton compared with, 41;
+  on Milton's taste for music, 63;
+  on "Paradise Regained," 178
+
+Comenius, educational method of, 76
+
+Commonwealth, Milton's views of a free, 136
+
+"Comus," production of, 38, 44, 46;
+  criticism on, 53-55
+
+"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the
+Church," 133
+
+Copernican theory only partly adopted in "Paradise Lost," 158
+
+Cosmogony of Milton, 157
+
+Cromwell, Milton's character of, 121;
+  Milton's advice to, 122
+
+
+D.
+
+Dante and Milton compared, 160
+
+Daughters, character of Milton's, 142
+
+Davis, Miss, Milton's suit to, 94
+
+Deity, imperfect conception of, in "Paradise Lost," 154
+
+Denham, Sir J., his admiration of "Paradise Lost," 177
+
+Diodati, Milton's friendship with, 21;
+  verses to, 25;
+  letters to, 39, 41, 55;
+  death of, 65;
+  Milton's elegy on, 43, 67
+
+"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," 79, 87-91
+
+Dryden, on "Paradise Lost," 177;
+  visits Milton, 187;
+  dramatizes "Paradise Lost," 187
+
+Du Moulin, Peter, author of "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," 118
+
+
+E.
+
+Edmundson, Mr. G., on Milton and Vondel, 170
+
+Education, Milton's tract on, 75-77
+
+"Eikon Basilike," authorship of, 105-107
+
+"Eikonoklastes," Milton's reply to "Eikon Basilike," 108
+
+Ellwood, Thomas, the Quaker, reads to Milton, 145;
+  suggests "Paradise Regained," 175
+
+Elzevir, Daniel, receives and gives up the MS. of "State Letters" and
+the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 191
+
+
+F.
+
+Fairfax, Milton's character of, 120
+
+Faithorne's portrait of Milton, 189
+
+
+G.
+
+Galileo, Milton's visit to, 61
+
+Gauden, Bishop, author of "Eikon Basilike," 106
+
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, account of Horton in, 36
+
+Goethe on "Samson Agonistes," 181
+
+Gill, Mr., Milton's master at St. Paul's school, 20
+
+Gosse, Mr., on Milton and Vondel, 170
+
+Greek, influence of, on Milton, 33, 39
+
+Grotius, Hugo, Milton introduced to, 59;
+  Milton's study of, 169
+
+
+H.
+
+Hartlib, S., Milton's tract on Education inspired by, 75
+
+"History of Britain" by Milton, 99, 189
+
+Holstenius, Lucas, librarian of the Vatican, 63
+
+Homer and Shakespeare compared, 2;
+  and compared with Milton, 160, 165, 167
+
+Horton, Milton retires to, 33;
+ poems written at, 44
+
+Hunter, Rev. Joseph, on Milton's ancestors, 14
+
+"Hymn on the Nativity," 32
+
+
+I.
+
+Italian sonnets by Milton, 64
+
+Italy, Milton's journey to, 56-65
+
+
+J.
+
+Jansen, Cornelius, paints Milton's portrait, 19
+
+Jeffrey, Sarah, Milton's mother, 16
+
+Jewin Street, Milton's house in, 144
+
+Johnson, Dr., on "Lycidas," 51;
+  benefits Milton's granddaughter, 195
+
+
+K.
+
+Keats, Milton contrasted with, 41
+
+King, Edward, "Lycidas," an elegy on his death, 48
+
+
+L.
+
+Landor, his Latin verse compared with Milton's, 43
+
+Latin grammar by Milton, 188
+
+Latin Secretaryship to the Commonwealth, Milton's appointment to, 102
+
+Laud, Archbishop, Church government of, 30;
+  Milton's veiled attack on, 49
+
+Lawes, Henry, writes music to "Comus" and "Arcades," 44;
+  edits "Comus," 47
+
+Lee, Nathaniel, his verses on Milton, 188
+
+Lemon, Mr. Robert, discovers MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise
+on Christian Doctrine," 191
+
+Letters, Milton's official, 123
+
+Logic, Milton's tract on, 188
+
+Long Parliament, meeting of the, 68;
+  licensing of books by, 78
+
+Lucifer, Vondel's, 170
+
+Ludlow Castle, "Comus" first performed at, 46
+
+"Lycidas," origin of, 40, 48;
+  analysis of, criticism on, 50, 52
+
+
+M.
+
+Manso, Marquis, poem on, 64
+
+Marshall, Milton's portrait engraved by, 97
+
+Marriage, Milton's views on, 94
+
+Martineau, Harriet, reads "Paradise Lost" at seven years of age, 176
+
+Mason, C., Milton's MSS. preserved by, 129
+
+Masson, Prof. David, his monumental biography of Milton, 14;
+  on Milton's ancestors, _ib._;
+  on Milton's college career, 23, 25;
+  on the scenery of Horton, 35;
+  on date of Divorce pamphlet, 87;
+  on date of "Paradise Lost," 147;
+  on money received for "Paradise Lost," 150;
+  on Milton's cosmogony, 156;
+  his description of Chalfont, 173;
+  on Milton's portrait, 189
+
+Milton, Christopher, John Milton's younger brother, birth of, 16;
+  a Royalist, 91;
+  a Roman Catholic, and one of James the Second's judges, 194
+
+Milton, John, the elder, birth, 15;
+  a scrivener by profession, _ib._;
+  musical compositions of, 18;
+  retirement to Horton, 33;
+  his noble confidence in his son, 37, 45;
+  comes to live with his son, 91;
+  dies, 98
+
+Milton, John, birth, 11;
+  genealogy of, 14;
+  birthplace, 16;
+  his father, 17;
+  his education, 18-27;
+  knowledge of Italian, 21;
+  at Cambridge, 22-28;
+  rusticated, 25;
+  his degree, 1629; 25;
+  will not enter the church, 29;
+  early poems, 32;
+  writes "Comus," 38;
+  required incitement to write, 40, 48;
+  correctness of his early poems, 42;
+  his life at Horton, 44-55;
+  his "Comus" and "Arcades," 44-48;
+  his "Lycidas," 48;
+  his mother's death, 55;
+  goes to Italy, 56;
+  his Italian friends, 59;
+  visits Galileo, 61;
+  Italian sonnets, 64;
+  educates his nephews, 65;
+  elegy to Diodati, 67;
+  eighteen years' poetic silence, 68;
+  takes part with the Commonwealth, 68;
+  pamphlets on Church government, 72;
+  tract on Education, 75;
+  "Areopagitica," 79;
+  Italian sonnet, 85;
+  his first marriage, 86;
+  deserted by his wife, his treatise on Divorce, 87;
+  his pupils, 91;
+  return of his wife, 96;
+  his daughter born, 98;
+  becomes Secretary for Foreign Tongues, 102;
+  his State papers, 104;
+  licenses pamphlets, 105;
+  answers "Eikon Basilike," 108;
+  answers Salmasius, 111;
+  loses his sight, 114;
+  death of his wife, 116;
+  reply to Morus, 119;
+  his official duties 122;
+  his retirement and second marriage, 125;
+  projected ninety-nine themes preparatory to "Paradise Lost," 129;
+  wrote chiefly from autumn to spring, 132;
+  his views of a republic, 136;
+  escapes proscription at Restoration, 139;
+  unhappy relations with his daughters, 141;
+  third marriage, 143;
+  writing "Paradise Lost," 147-150;
+  analysis of his work, 152-172;
+  compared with modern poets, 166;
+  his indebtedness to earlier poets, 169;
+  retires to Chalfont to escape the plague, 173;
+  he suffers from the Great Fire, 175;
+  his "Paradise Regained," 177;
+  his "Samson Agonistes," 180-85;
+  his later life, 186;
+  his later tracts, 188, 190;
+  his "History of Britain," 189;
+  his Arian opinions, 192;
+  his death, 193;
+  his will, 194;
+  his widow and daughters, 195;
+  estimate of his character, 196
+
+Milton, Richard, Milton's grandfather, 14, 15
+
+Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's third wife, 143;
+  Milton's will in favour of, 194;
+  death, _ib._
+
+Monk, General, character of, 135
+
+Morland, Sir Samuel, on "Paradise Lost," 163
+
+Morus, A., his controversy with Milton, 118-119
+
+Myers, Mr. E., on Milton's views of marriage, 91
+
+
+N.
+
+Newton, Bishop, benefits Milton's granddaughter, 195
+
+
+O.
+
+Ochino, B., Milton's indebtedness to, 171
+
+"On a fair Infant," 33
+
+
+P.
+
+Paget, Dr., Milton's physician, 143, 145
+
+Palingenius, Marcellus, Milton borrows from, 164
+
+Pamphlets, Milton's, 72, 75, 78, 79, 87, 99, 100, 108, 113, 132, 133, 136-8
+
+"Paradise Lost," 128;
+  four schemes for, 129;
+  first conceived as drama, 130;
+  manner of composition, 147;
+  dates of, 147-150;
+  critique of, 152-172;
+  successive publications of, 176
+
+"Paradise Regained," 177;
+  criticism on, 178-180
+
+"Passion of Christ," 32
+
+Pattison, Mark, on "Lycidas," 51;
+  on Milton's political career, 68;
+  on fanaticism of Commonwealth, 133;
+  on "Paradise Lost," 159;
+  on Milton's diction, 165
+
+"Penseroso, Il," 40, 49
+
+Pepys, S., on Restoration, 135, 138
+
+Petty France, Westminster, Milton's home in, 117
+
+Philaras, Milton's Greek friend, 114
+
+Phillips, E., Milton's brother-in-law, 22, 65
+
+Phillips, Edward, Milton's nephew, on Milton's ancestry, 14;
+  educated by his uncle, 65;
+  his account of Milton's separation from his first wife, 87;
+  of their reconciliation, 96;
+  becomes a Royalist, 129;
+  his attention to his uncle, 145;
+  on "Paradise Lost," 176;
+  on "Paradise Regained," 177
+
+"Pilot of the Galilean Lake," 49
+
+"Plymouth Brethren," resemblance of Milton's views to, 133
+
+Powell, Mary, Milton marries, 86;
+  she leaves him, 87;
+  returns to him, 95;
+  her family live with Milton, 98;
+  her death, 116;
+  probable bad influence on her daughters, 163
+
+"Prelatical Episcopacy" pamphlet, 72
+
+"Pro Populo" pamphlet, 113
+
+Ptolemaic system followed by Milton in "Paradise Lost," 157
+
+Puckering, Sir H., gave Milton's MSS. to the University of Cambridge, 129
+
+
+R.
+
+Reading, surrender of to Parliamentary army, 91
+
+"Ready way to establish a Commonwealth," 136
+
+"Reason of Church Government" pamphlet, 72
+
+"Reformation touching Church Discipline" pamphlet, 72
+
+Restoration, consequences to Milton of the, 138-141
+
+Richardson, J., on Milton's later life, 186
+
+Rome, Milton in, 62
+
+Rump, burning of the, 136
+
+
+S.
+
+St. Bride's Churchyard, Milton lodges in, 65
+
+St. Giles's Cripplegate, Milton's grave in, 194
+
+St. Paul's school, Milton at, 19
+
+Salmasius, Claudius, his character, 109;
+  author of "Defensio Regia," 111;
+  Milton's controversy with, 112, 114
+
+Samson, Vondel's, 170
+
+"Samson Agonistes," 141, 178;
+  criticism on, 180-185
+
+Satan, the hero of "Paradise Lost," 155
+
+Shakespeare, 2;
+  Milton's panegyric on, 33, 38;
+  his view of tragedy compared with Milton's, 183
+
+Shelley, on poetical inspiration, 41;
+  his estimate of Milton, 156;
+  on tragedy and comedy, 183;
+  quoted, 17, 197
+
+Skinner, Cyriack, his loan to Milton, 138
+
+Skinner, David, endeavours to publish "State Letters" and
+  "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 191
+
+Sonnet, "When the assault was intended to the City," 84;
+  from the Italian, 85;
+  on Vaudois Protestants, 124;
+  to his second wife, 125;
+  to Henry Lawrence, 126;
+  inscribed on a window-pane, 175
+
+"State Letters," 191
+
+Stationers' Company and Milton, 92
+
+Symmons, S., publisher of "Paradise Lost," 149, 175
+
+Symonds, Mr. J.A., on metre of "Paradise Lost," 166
+
+
+T.
+
+Tennyson, on Milton's Eden, 162
+
+"Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," 100
+
+"Tina," by Antonio Malatesti, 68
+
+Tomkyns, Thomas, licenses "Paradise Lost," 151;
+  and the poems, 178
+
+Tovey, Nathaniel, Milton's college tutor, 25
+
+Treatise on Christian Doctrine, 190
+
+
+U.
+
+Ulster Protestants, Milton's subscription for, 83
+
+
+V.
+
+Vernon Lee, 57
+
+Vondel, Milton's indebtedness to, 170
+
+
+W.
+
+Wakefield, E.G., on the champions of great causes, 135
+
+Wood, Anthony, on Restoration, 133
+
+Woodcock, Katherine, Milton's second wife, her marriage and death, 125
+
+Wootton, Sir H., on "Comus," 47
+
+Wordsworth, quoted, 27, 65;
+  Milton contrasted with, 41;
+  on "Paradise Regained," 178
+
+Wright, Dr., reminiscence of his visit to Milton, 186
+
+
+Y.
+
+Young, Thomas, Milton's private tutor, 14
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY.
+
+BY
+
+JOHN P. ANDERSON
+
+(_British Museum_).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  I. WORKS.
+
+ II. POETICAL WORKS.
+
+III. PROSE WORKS.
+
+ IV. SINGLE WORKS.
+
+  V. SELECTIONS.
+
+ VI. APPENDIX--
+       Biography, Criticism, etc.
+       Magazine Articles, etc.
+
+VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. WORKS.
+
+The Works of John Milton in verse and prose, printed from the original
+editions, with a life of the author by J. Mitford. 8 vols. London, 1851,
+8vo.
+
+
+II. POETICAL WORKS.
+
+Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several
+times. Printed by his true copies. London [January 2], 1645, 8vo.
+      First collective edition, and the first work bearing Milton's
+      name.
+
+---- Poems, etc., upon several occasions, both English and Latin, etc.,
+composed at several times. With a small Tractate of Education to Mr.
+Hartlib. 2 parts. London, 1673, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Containing Paradise Lost,
+Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and his poems on several occasions.
+Together with explanatory notes on each book of the Paradise Lost [by
+P.H., _i.e._, Patrick Hume]. 5 parts. London, 1695, folio.
+
+---- The Poetical Remains of Mr Milton, etc. By C. Gildon. London, 1698,
+8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton. (Notes upon the twelve
+books of Paradise Lost, by Mr. Addison. A small Tractate of Education to
+Mr. Hartlib.) 2 vols. London, 1720, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1721, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1727, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1730, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1731, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1746, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, with notes of various authors, by Thomas Newton,
+bishop of Bristol. 3 vols. London, 1749-52, 4to.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Milton, etc. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1762, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition, by Newton. 4 vols. London, 1763, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1766, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Milton. With prefatory characters of the
+several pieces; the life of Milton, a glossary, etc. Edinburgh, 1767,
+8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols, London, 1770, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems on several occasions. (_British Poets_, vol. iv.) Edinburgh,
+1773, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1775, 4to.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. From the text of Dr. Newton.
+(_Bell's Poets of Great Britain_, vols. 35-38.) Edinburgh, 1776, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poems of Milton. (_Johnson's Works of the English Poets_, vols.
+3-5.) London, 1779, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems upon several occasions, English, Italian, and Latin, with
+translations: viz., Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus,
+Odes, Sonnets, Miscellanies, English Psalms, Elegiarum Liber,
+Epigrammatum Liber, Sylvarum Liber. With notes critical and explanatory,
+and other illustrations, by T. Warton. London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, with many alterations, and large additions. London,
+1791, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems. Another edition. (_Johnson's Works of the English Poets_,
+vols. 10-12.) London, 1790, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. To which is prefixed the life of
+the author. (_Anderson's Poets of Great Britain_, vol. v.) Edinburgh,
+1792, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life of the author, by W.
+Hayley [and engravings after Westall]. 3 vols. London, 1794-97, folio.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, from the text of Dr. Newton.
+With the life of the author, and a critique on Paradise Lost, by J.
+Addison. Cooke's edition. Embellished with engravings. 2 vols. London,
+1795-96, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the principal notes of
+various commentators. To which are added illustrations, with some
+account of the life of Milton. By H.J. Todd. (Mr. Addison's criticism on
+the Paradise Lost. Dr. Johnson's Remarks on Milton's Versification. Dr.
+C. Burney's observations on the Greek verses of Milton.) 6 vols. London,
+1801, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, with considerable additions, and with a verbal
+index to the whole of Milton's poetry, etc. 7 vols. London, 1809, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition, with other illustrations, etc. 6 vols. London, 1826,
+8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and
+critical, by J. Aikin. (Life of Milton by Dr. Johnson.) 3 vols. London,
+1805, 8vo.
+      Vols. xii.-xv. of an edition of "The Works of the English Poets.
+      With preface by Dr. Johnson."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and
+critical, by S. Johnson. Re-edited, with new biographical and critical
+matter, by J. Aikin, M.D. 3 vols. London, 1806, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1806, 16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 4 vols. (_Park's Works of the
+British Poets_, vols. i.-iii.) London, 1808, 16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with the life of the author. By
+S. Johnson. 3 vols. London, 1809, 16mo.
+
+---- Cowper's Milton. [Edited, with a life of Milton, by W. Hayley.
+Together with "Adam: a sacred drama, translated from the Italian of G.B.
+Andreini," by W. Cowper and W. Hayley.] 4 vols. Chichester, 1810, 8vo.
+      The British Museum copy contains MS. notes by J. Mitford.
+
+---- The Poems of John Milton. (_Chalmers' Works of the English Poets_,
+vol. vii.) London, 1810, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the life of the author, by
+S. Johnson. (_Select British Poets_.) London, 1810, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems on several occasions. Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso.
+London, 1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, with Fenton's life and Dr. Johnson's criticism. 2
+vols. London, 1817, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton; to which is prefixed the life of
+the author. London, 1818, 12mo.
+      This forms part of "Walker's British Classics."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a life of the author, by E.
+Sanford. (_Works of the British Poets_, vols. vii., viii.) 2 vols.
+Philadelphia, 1819, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poems of John Milton. (_British Poets_, vols. xvi.-xviii.)
+Chiswick, 1822, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes of various authors,
+principally from the editions of T. Newton, C. Dunster, and T. Warton;
+to which is prefixed Newton's life of Milton. By E. Hawkins. 4 vols.
+Oxford, 1824, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A new edition, with notes, critical and explanatory,
+by J.D. Williams. (Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and Poems.) 2
+vols. London, 1824, 12mo.
+      The British Museum copy contains copious MS. notes by the editor.
+
+---- Poetical Works, with Cowper's Translations of the Latin and
+Italian poems, and life of Milton by his nephew, E. Philips, etc. 3
+vols. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems on several occasions. [With Westall's plates.] London, 1827,
+16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. [Edited by J. Mitford, with life
+of Milton by the editor.] 3 vols. London, 1832, 8vo.
+      Part of the "Aldine Edition of the British Poets."
+
+---- Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1866, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Printed from the text of Todd
+and others. A new edition. With the poet's life by E. Philips. Leipzig,
+1834, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir Egerton Brydges,
+Bart. [With a life of Milton, by Sir E.B.] 6 vols. London, 1835, 8vo.
+
+---- The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton: with explanatory notes
+and a life of the author, by the Rev. H. Stebbing. To which is prefixed
+Dr. Channing's essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1839,
+12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, J. Thomson, and E. Young. Edited
+by H.F. Cary. With a biographical notice of each author. 3 pts. London,
+1841, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical
+remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred
+and twenty engravings from drawings by W. Harvey. 2 vols. London, 1843,
+8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: with life and notes. Edinburgh
+[1848], 24mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. (_Tauchnitz Collection of
+British Authors_, vol. 194.) Leipzig, 1850, 8vo.
+
+---- Poetical Works. (_Cabinet Edition of the British Poets_, vol. i.)
+London, 1851, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes and a life by the
+Rev. H. Stebbing, etc. London, 1851, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. (_Universal Library_. _Poetry_,
+vol. i.) London, 1853, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Poetical Works. With life, critical dissertation, and
+notes by G. Gilfillan. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1853, 8vo.
+      One of a series entitled, "Library Edition of the British Poets."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. London, 1853, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: with a life of the author,
+preliminary dissertations on each poem, notes critical and explanatory,
+and a verbal index. Edited by C.D. Cleveland. Philadelphia, 1853, 12mo.
+
+---- The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. Edinburgh
+[1855], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life by J. Mitford. 3
+vols. Boston [U.S.], 1856, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poems of John Milton, with notes by T. Keightley. 2 vols.
+London, 1859, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical
+remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred
+and twenty engravings. New edition, etc. 2 vols. (_Bohn's Illustrated
+Library_.) London, 1861, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With illustrations by C.H.
+Corbould and J. Gilbert. London, 1864, 8vo.
+
+---- English Poems by John Milton. Edited, with life, introduction, and
+selected notes, by R.C. Browne. (_Clarendon Press Series_.) 2 vols.
+Oxford, 1870, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Illustrated by F. Gilbert. [With
+life of Milton.] London, 1870, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with a critical memoir,
+by W.M. Rossetti. Illustrated by T. Seccombe. London [1871], 8vo.
+      Reprinted in 1880 and 1881.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life of the author, and an
+appendix containing Addison's Critique upon the Paradise Lost, and Dr.
+Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. With illustrations.
+London [1872], 8vo.
+
+---- The Complete Poetical Works of Milton and Young. London [1872], 8vo.
+      Part of "Blackwood's Universal Library of Standard Authors."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Reprinted from the Chandos
+Poets. With memoir, explanatory notes, etc. (_Chandos Classics_.) London
+[1872], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original
+editions, with a life of the author by A. Chalmers. London [1873], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, critical
+dissertation, and explanatory notes [by G. Gilfillan], The text edited
+by C.C. Clarke. 2 vols. London [1874], 8vo.
+      Part of "Cassell's Library Edition of British Poets."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: edited, with introductions,
+notes, and an essay on Milton's English, by D. Masson. [With portraits.]
+3 vols. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With introductions and notes by
+D. Masson. 2 vols. London, 1874, 8vo.
+      Forming part of the "Golden Treasury Series."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir E. Brydges, Bart.
+Illustrated. A new edition. London [1876], 8vo.
+
+---- The Globe edition. The Poetical Works of John Milton. With
+introductions by D. Masson. London, 1877, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. London [1878], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with Notes, explanatory
+and philological, by J. Bradshaw. 2 vols. London, 1878, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Milton and Marvell. With a memoir of each
+[that of Milton by D. Masson. With notes to the poems of Milton by J.
+Mitford]. 4 vols. in 2. Boston, 1878, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1880, 16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. A new edition revised from the
+text of T. Newton [by T.A.W. Buckley]. London [1880], 8vo.
+      Part of the "Excelsior Series."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, etc. Edinburgh
+[1881], 8vo.
+      Part of "The Landscape Series of Poets."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original
+editions. With a life of the author by A. Chalmers. With twelve
+illustrations by R. Westall. London, 1881, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton; edited, with memoir,
+introductions, notes, and an essay on Milton's English and
+Versification, by D. Masson. 3 vols. London, 1882, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With biographical notice. New
+York [1884], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by J. Bradshaw. Second
+edition. 2 vols. London, 1885, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London [1886], 24mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with biographical notice by J.
+Bradshaw. London, 1887, 12mo.
+      One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series.
+
+---- Poetical Works. 2 vols. London, 1887, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by J. Bradshaw. Paradise
+Regained. Minor Poems. London, 1888, 8vo.
+      One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paradise Lost, etc. The life of John Milton. [By E. Fenton.] Paradise
+Regained.--Poems upon several occasions.--Sonnets.--Of Education. 2
+vols. London, 1751, 12mo.
+      The copy in the British Museum Library contains MS. Notes by C.
+      Lamb.
+
+Milton's Italian Poems, translated and addressed to a gentleman of
+Italy. By Dr. Langhorne. London, 1776, 4to.
+
+Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. With explanatory notes by
+J. Edmondston. London, 1854, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1855, 16mo.
+
+Paradise Lost, etc. (Paradise Regained: and other Poems.--The Life of
+John Milton [by E. Fenton.]) 2 vols. London, 1855, 32mo.
+
+Paradise Regained. To which is added Samson Agonistes: and poems upon
+several occasions. A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to.
+
+Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Minor English Poems.
+London, 1886, 16mo.
+      Part of the "Religious Tract Society Library."
+
+Latin and Italian poems of Milton translated into English verse, and a
+fragment of a commentary on Paradise Lost, by the late W. Cowper, with a
+preface and notes by the Editor (W. Hayley), and notes of various
+authors. Chichester, 1808, 4to.
+
+The Latin and Italian Poems of Milton. Translated into English verse by
+J.G. Strutt. London, 1814, 8vo.
+
+Milton's Samson Agonistes and Lycidas. With illustrative notes by J.
+Hunter. London, 1870, 8vo.
+
+Milton's Earlier Poems, including the translations by William Cowper of
+those written in Latin and Italian. (_Cassell's National Library_, vol.
+xxxiv.) London, 1886, 8vo.
+
+Miscellaneous Poems, Sonnets, and Psalms, etc. London [1886], 8vo.
+      Part of "Ward, Lock, & Co.'s Popular Library of Literary
+      Treasures."
+
+The Minor Poems of John Milton, Edited, with notes, by W.J. Rolfe. New
+York, 1887, 8vo.
+
+The Sonnets of John Milton. Edited by Mark Pattison. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      Part of the "Parchment Library."
+
+L'Allegro, Il Penseroso [revised by C. Jennens], ed il Moderato [by C.
+Jennens]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1740, 4to.
+      The words only.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1740, 4to.
+
+---- L'Allegro, Il Penseroso as set to musick. [London, 1750], 8vo.
+
+---- L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. [Arranged for music.] [London, 1779], 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. And a song for St. Cecilia's day, by Dryden.
+Set to musick by G.F. Handel. London, 1754, 4to.
+      The words without the music.
+
+L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. Another edition. London [1754], 4to.
+
+L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Glasgow, 1751, 4to.
+
+L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With thirty illustrations designed expressly
+for the Art Union of London [by G. Scharf, H. O'Neil, and others].
+[London], 1848, 4to.
+
+Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated with [Thirty] Etchings
+on Steel by B. Foster. London, 1855, 8vo.
+      There is a copy in the British Museum Library which contains the
+      autographs and photographs of George Cruikshank and his wife.
+
+L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated by engravings on steel after
+designs by Birket Foster. London, 1860, 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and other poems. Illustrated. Boston, 1877,
+16mo.
+
+Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With notes by J. Aikin. Poona
+[1881], 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and the Hymn on the Nativity. Illustrated.
+London, 1885, 8vo.
+
+Milton's Comus, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. With numerous illustrative
+notes adapted for use in training colleges. By John Hunter. London,
+1864, 12mo.
+
+---- Revised edition. London [1874], 8vo.
+
+Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and selected Sonnets. With
+notes by H.R. Huckin. London, 1871, 16mo.
+
+Milton's Arcades and Sonnets. With notes by J. Hunter. London, 1880,
+12mo.
+
+The Lycidas and Epitaphium Damonis. Edited, with notes and introduction
+(including a reprint of the rare Latin version of the Lycidas, by W.
+Hogg, 1694), by C.S. Jarram. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, revised. London, 1881, 8vo.
+
+
+III. PROSE WORKS.
+
+The Works of Mr. John Milton. [In English Prose.] [London], 1697, fol.
+      Not mentioned by Lowndes or Watt, but a copy is in the British
+      Museum.
+
+A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous
+Works of John Milton, both English and Latin. With some papers never
+before publish'd. To which is prefixed the life of the author, etc. [By
+J. Toland]. 3 vols. Amsterdam [London], 1698, fol.
+
+A Complete Collection of Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works
+of John Milton, correctly printed from the original editions, with an
+account of the life and writings of the author (by T. Birch), containing
+several original papers of his never before published. 2 vols. London,
+1738, fol.
+
+The Works of John Milton, Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous. Now
+more correctly printed from the originals than in any former edition,
+and many passages restored which have been hitherto omitted. To which is
+prefixed an account of his life and writings (by T. Birch). (Edited by
+T. Birch and R. Barron?). London, 1753, 8vo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton; with a life of the author, interspersed
+with translations and critical remarks, by C. Symmons. 7 vols. London,
+1806, 8vo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton. With an introductory review by R.
+Fletcher. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+Select Prose Works of Milton. Account of his studies. Apology for his
+early life and writings. Tractate on Education. Areopagitica. Tenure of
+Kings. Eikonoclastes. Divisions of the Commonwealth. Delineation of a
+Commonwealth. Mode of establishing a Commonwealth. Familiar Letters.
+With a preliminary discourse and notes by J.A. St. John. (_Masterpieces
+of English Prose Literature._) 2 vols. London, 1836, 8vo.
+
+Extracts from the Prose Works of John Milton, containing the whole of
+his writings on the church question. Now first published separately.
+Edinburgh, 1836, 12mo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton. With a biographical introduction by R.W.
+Griswold. 2 vols. New York, 1847, 8vo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton, with a preface, preliminary remarks, and
+notes by J.A. St. John. 5 vols. (_Bohn's Standard Library._) London,
+1848-53, 8vo.
+
+Areopagitica, Letter on Education, Sonnets and Psalms. (_Cassell's
+National Library_, vol. cxxi.) London, 1888, 8vo.
+
+
+
+
+IV. SINGLE WORKS.
+
+Accedence commenc't Grammar, supply'd with sufficient rules, for the use
+of such as are desirous to attain the Latin tongue with little teaching
+and their own industry. London, 1669, 12mo.
+
+An account of an original autograph sonnet by John Milton, contained in
+a copy of Mel Heliconium written by Alexander Rosse, 1642, etc. London,
+1859, 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro, illustrated by the Etching Club. London, 1849, fol.
+
+---- L'Allegro. [With illustrations engraved by W.J. Linton.] London,
+1859, 8vo.
+
+---- L'Allegro. [With illustrations.] London [1875], 8vo.
+      Forming part of "The Choice Series."
+
+---- Milton's L'Allegro. Edited, with interpretation, notes, and
+derivations, by F. Main. London, 1877, 8vo.
+
+Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence [_i.e._, the defence of J.
+Hall, Bishop of Norwich?] against Smectymnuus. London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Apographum literarum serenissimi protectoris, etc. [Leyden?] 1656, 4to.
+
+An apology against a Pamphlet [by J. Hall?] called A Modest Confutation
+of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant against Smectymnuus. London,
+1641, 4to.
+
+Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of Unlicenc'd
+Printing, to the Parliament of England. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+---- Areopagitica Another edition. With a preface by another hand.
+London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition, with prefatory remarks, copious notes, and
+excursive illustrations, by T. Holt White, etc. London, 1819, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1772, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1780, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, edited by James Losh. London, 1791, 8vo.
+
+---- Areopagitica. (_Occasional Essays_, etc.) London, 1809, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1834], 8vo.
+
+---- Areopagitica, etc. London, 1840, 8vo.
+      _Tracts for the People_, No. 10.
+
+---- English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by
+Edward Arber. London, 1868, 18mo.
+
+---- English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by
+Edward Arber. London, 1869, 8vo.
+
+---- A Modern Version of Milton's Areopagitica: with notes, appendix,
+and tables. By S. Lobb. Calcutta, 1872, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton, Areopagitica. Edited, with introduction and notes, by J.W.
+Hales. Oxford, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Areopagitica. (_Morley's Universal Library_, vol. 43.)
+London, 1886, 8vo.
+
+Autobiography of John Milton: or Milton's Life in his own words. Edited
+by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1872, 8vo.
+
+A brief history of Moscovia; and other less known countries lying
+eastward of Russia as far as Cathay. Gather'd from the writings of
+several eye-witnesses. London, 1682, 8vo.
+
+The Cabinet-Council; containing the Chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries
+of State discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton.
+London, 1658, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. The Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State
+discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton. London,
+1692, 8vo.
+
+Colasterion, a reply to a nameles [_sic_] answer against "The Doctrine
+and Discipline of Divorce." By the former author, J[ohn] M[ilton].
+[London] 1645, 4to.
+
+A Common-Place Book of John Milton, and a Latin essay and Latin verses
+presumed to be by Milton. Edited from the original MSS. in the
+possession of Sir F.W. Graham, Bart., by A.J. Horwood. London, 1876, 4to.
+      Printed for the Camden Society.
+
+---- Revised edition. London, 1877, 4to.
+
+A Maske [Comus] presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: on Michaelmasse night,
+before the right honorable John, Earle of Bridgewater, Viscount Brackly,
+Lord President of Wales. [Edited by H. Lawes.] London, 1637, 4to.
+      The first edition of Comus.
+
+---- Comus: a mask, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Comus, a mask presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of
+Bridgewater, with notes critical and explanations by various
+commentators, and with preliminary illustrations; to which is added a
+copy of the mask from a manuscript belonging to his Grace the Duke of
+Bridgewater; by H.J. Todd. Canterbury, 1798, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus, a mask; presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634. To which are
+added, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and Mr. Warton's account of the
+origin of Comus. London, 1799, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a mask. With annotations. London, 1808, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. (_Cumberland's British Theatre_, vol. 32.) London
+[1829], 12mo.
+
+---- Comus. A mask with thirty illustrations by Pickersgill, B. Foster,
+H. Weir, etc. London, 1858, 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Comus. Published under the direction of the Committee
+appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London
+[1860], 12mo.
+
+---- Comus: a mask. With explanatory notes. Published under the
+direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London
+[1861], 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Comus. With notes [by W. Wallace]. London, 1871, 16mo.
+
+---- The Mask of Comus. Edited, with copious notes, by H.B. Sprague. New
+York, 1876, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's "Comus" annotated, with a glossary and notes. With three
+introductory essays upon the masque proper, and upon the origin and
+history of the poem. By B.M. Ranking and D.F. Ranking. London, 1878, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Comus, with introduction and notes. London, 1884, 8vo.
+      Forming part of "Chambers's Reprints of English Classics."
+
+---- Milton's Comus. Edited, with introduction and notes, by A.M.
+Williams. London, 1888, 8vo.
+
+---- ---- Songs, Duets, Choruses, etc., in Milton's Comus: a masque in
+two acts, with additions from the author's poem "L'Allegro," and from
+Dryden's opera of "King Arthur." London [1842], 8vo.
+
+Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of
+the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes, Church-Fees,
+Church-Revenues, and whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl'd
+by law. The author J. M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1717, 12mo.
+
+Another edition. London, 1723, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1834], 8vo.
+
+A Declaration, or Letters Patents of the Election of this present King
+of Poland, John the Third. Translated [by John Milton]. London, 1674,
+4to.
+
+The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restor'd to the good of both
+sexes from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes to Christian
+freedom, guided by the rule of charity, etc. London, 1643, 4to.
+
+---- The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Now the second time revis'd
+and much augmented. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1645, 4to.
+
+Eikonoklastes, in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon Basilike, the
+Portrature of his Sacred Majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. [By J.
+Gauden, Bishop of Exeter?] The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649,
+4to.
+
+---- Eikonoklastes. Published now the second time, and much enlarg'd.
+London, 1650, 4to.
+
+---- Eikonoklastes in answer to a book entitled Eikon Basilike, the
+Portraiture of his sacred majesty King Charles the first in his
+solitudes and sufferings. Amsterdam, 1690, 8vo.
+
+---- Eikonoklastes: in answer to a book intitled Eikon Basilikon, the
+portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. Now
+first published from the author's second edition, printed in 1650; with
+many enlargements, by R. Baron. With a preface shewing the transcendent
+excellency of Milton's prose works. To which is added an original Letter
+[from J. Wall] to Milton, never before published. London, 1756, 4to.
+
+---- A new edition, corrected by the late Reverend R. Baron. London,
+1770, 8vo.
+
+The History of Britain, that part especially now call'd England, from
+the first traditional beginning, continu'd to the Norman Conquest.
+Collected out of the antientest and best authors by John Milton. London,
+1670, 4to.
+
+The History of Britain. Another edition. London, 1677, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1678, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1695, 8vo.
+
+Il Penseroso. With designs by J.E.G.; etched by J.E.G. and H.P.G. on
+India paper. London, 1844, folio.
+
+---- Milton. Il Penseroso. (_Clarendon Press Series_.) Oxford, 1874,
+8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni Angli, Artis Logicæ Plenior Institutio, ad Petri Rami
+Methodum concinnata. Adjecta est Praxis Analytica and P. Rami vita.
+Londini, 1672, 12mo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni Angli de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi, quos ex
+schedis manuscriptis deprompsit, et typis mandari primus curavit C.R.
+Sumner. Cantabrigiæ, 1825, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. Brunsvigae, 1827, 8vo.
+
+---- A Treatise of Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures
+alone. Translated from the original by C.R. Sumner. Cambridge, 1825, 4to.
+
+---- John Milton's last thoughts on the Trinity. Extracted from his
+Treatise on Christian Doctrine. London, 1828, 12mo.
+
+---- New edition. London, 1859, 8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltonii Angli Epistolarum familiarium liber unus: quibus
+accesserunt ejusdem jam olim in collegio adolescentis prolusiones quædam
+oratoriæ. Londini, 1674, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's familiar letters. Translated from the Latin, with notes,
+by J. Hall. Philadelphia, 1829, 8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni Angli pro populo Anglicano defensio, contra Claudii
+Anonymi, aliàs Salmasii, defensionem regiam. Cum indice. Londini, 1651,
+12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Londini, 1651, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. Londini, 1651, 12mo.
+
+---- Editio emendatior. Londini, 1651, folio.
+
+---- Another edition. Londini, 1652, 12mo.
+
+---- Editio correctior et auctior, ab autore denuo recognita. Londini,
+1658, 8vo.
+
+---- A Defense of the People of England in answer to Salmasius's defence
+of the king. [Translated from the Latin by Mr. Washington, of the
+Temple.] [London?] 1692, 8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda. Contra infamem
+libellum anonymum [by P. Du Moulin] cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor
+ad coelum adversus parricidas Anglicanos. Londini, 1654, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. [With preface by G. Crantzius.] 2 parts. Hagæ
+Comitum, 1654, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Second Defence of the People of England [translated by
+Archdeacon Wrangham]. London, 1816, 8vo.
+      Included in _Scraps_ by the Rev. Francis Wrangham.
+
+Joanni Miltoni pro se defensio contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiastes [or
+rather P. Du Moulin] Libelli famosi, cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor
+ad coelum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos, authorem recte dictum.
+Londini, 1655, 8vo.
+
+The judgement of Martin Bucer concerning divorce, now Englisht [by John
+Milton]. Wherein a late book [by John Milton] restoring the doctrine and
+discipline of divorce is heer confirm'd, etc. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+A Letter written to a Gentleman in the Country, touching the dissolution
+of the late Parliament, and the reasons thereof. [By John Milton, signed
+N. Ll.] London [May 26], 1653, 4to.
+
+Literæ ab Olivario protectore ad sacram regiam majestem Sueciæ.
+[Leyden?] 1656, 4to.
+
+Literæ Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, reliquorumque Perduellium
+nomine ac jussu conscriptæ a Joanne Miltono. [London] 1676, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Literæ nomine Senatus Anglicani Cromwellii
+Richardique ad diversos in Europa principes et Respublicas exaratæ a
+Joanne Miltono, quas nunc primum in Germania recudi fecit J.G. Pritius.
+Lipsiæ Francofurti, 1690, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Republican-Letters, or a collection of such as were
+written by Comand of the late Commonwealth of England, etc. [Amsterdam?]
+1682, 4to.
+
+---- Letters of State written by Mr. John Milton to most of the
+Sovereign princes and Republicks of Europe, from the year 1649 till
+1659. To which is added an Account of his Life [by E. Phillips],
+together with several of his poems, etc. London, 1694, 12mo.
+      The "several poems" consist of four sonnets only.
+
+---- Oliver Cromwell's Letters to Foreign Princes and States for
+strengthening and preserving the Protestant Religion, etc. [Translated
+from the Latin of John Milton.] London, 1700, 4to.
+
+Lycidas. [First edition.] (_Justa Edouardo King naufrago, ab Amicis
+moerentibus_, etc.) 2 pts. Cantabrigiæ, 1638, 4to.
+      Part II., "Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King," has a
+      distinct title-page and pagination, and contains the first edition
+      of Lycidas.
+
+---- Milton's Lycidas, with notes, critical, explanatory, and
+grammatical, by a Graduate. Melbourne, 1869, 8vo.
+
+---- Lycidas. Reprinted from the first edition of 1638, and collated
+with the autograph copy in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
+With a version in Latin hexameters. By F.A. Paley. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton. Lycidas. With introduction and notes. By T.D. Hall.
+Manchester [1876], 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London [1880], 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Lycidas. Edited, with interpretation and notes, by F.
+Main, etc. London, 1876, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1876, 8vo.
+
+Mr. John Milton's character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of
+Divines, in 1641. Omitted in his other works, and never printed. [Edited
+by J. Tyrrell? or by Arthur, Earl of Anglesey?] London, 1681, 4to.
+
+Milton's Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. Illustrated by
+eminent artists. London, 1868, 8vo.
+
+Mr. John Milton's Satyre against hypocrites. Written whilst he was Latin
+secretary to Oliver Cromwell. [By John Phillips?] London, 1710, 8vo.
+
+Milton's unpublished Poem, corrected by J.E. Wall from a defective copy
+found by Mr. Morley in the British Museum. Epitaph on a Rose Tree
+confined in a Garden Tub. [London, 1873?] s. sh. 8vo.
+      The original is in the King's Library, British Museum, and is
+      written on the last leaf of a copy of "Poems of Mr. John Milton,"
+      1646.
+
+Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels, on the
+Letter of Ormond to Col. Jones, and the Representation of the Presbytery
+at Belfast. (_Articles of Peace made and concluded with the Irish
+Rebels, by James Earle of Ormond, etc._) London, 1649, 4to.
+
+Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib. [London, 1644] 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Tractate on Education. A facsimile reprint from the
+edition of 1673. Edited by Oscar Browning. (_Pitt Press Series_.)
+Cambridge, 1883, 8vo.
+
+Original Letters and Papers of State, addressed to Oliver Cromwell,
+concerning the affairs of Great Britain from 1649 to 1658, found among
+the political collections of John Milton, published from the originals.
+By John Nickolls. London, 1743, folio.
+
+Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduc'd from the
+Apostolical times by vertue of those Testimonies which are alledg'd to
+that purpose in some late Treatises of James, Archbishop of Armagh.
+London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England: and the causes
+that hitherto have hindred it. London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Of True Religion, Hæresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means may
+be used against the growth of Popery. The author J[ohn] M[ilton].
+London, 1673, 4to.
+
+---- New edition, with preface by Bp. Burgess. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Paradise Lost. A poem written in ten books by John Milton. Licensed and
+entred according to order. London, 1667, 4to.
+      First edition. Without argument or preface. There are nine
+      distinct variations of the title and preliminary pages.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author J. Milton. (The
+argument. The verse.) London, 1668, 4to.
+      The same edition as the preceding, with a new title-page, and with
+      the addition of the argument.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author John Milton. London,
+1669, 4to.
+      The same edition as the two preceding, with a new title-page and
+      some slight alterations in the text. There is another copy in the
+      British Museum which differs slightly. It has also the title-page
+      dated 1668, and Marvell's commendatory verses in MS.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem, in twelve books. The author John Milton.
+Second edition, revised and augmented by the same author. London,
+1674, 8vo.
+      To this edition are prefixed the commendatory verses of Barrow and
+      Marvell. In another copy in the British Museum conjectural
+      emendations from the quarto edition, 1749, and the octavo
+      edition, 1674, corrected by the quarto edition, 1668, printed on
+      two leaves, have been inserted.
+
+---- The third edition. Revised and augmented by the same author.
+London, 1678, 8vo.
+
+---- The fourth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1688, folio.
+      The first illustrated edition.
+
+---- Another edition [with cuts]. London, 1692, folio.
+
+---- Another edition. With copious and learned notes by P[atrick]
+H[ume]. London, 1695, folio.
+
+---- Seventh edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1705, 8vo.
+
+---- Eighth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo.
+
+---- Ninth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1711, 12mo.
+      The British Museum copy is said to be the only one on thick paper.
+
+---- Tenth edition. With sculptures. London, 1719, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Dublin, 1724, 8vo.
+
+---- Twelfth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1725, 12mo.
+
+---- Thirteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by
+E. Fenton]. London, 1727, 8vo.
+
+---- Fourteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by
+E. Fenton]. London, 1730, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition [with notes and proposed emendations] by R. Bentley.
+London, 1732, 4to.
+      One of the copies in the British Museum contains MS. notes by B.
+      Stillingfleet, and another MS. notes by W. Cole. A third copy has
+      inserted plates, a pencil sketch of Milton's house at Chalfont St.
+      Giles, and a cutting from the _Literary Gazette_, May 29th, 1830,
+      relating to Bentley.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1737, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition [with life by E. Fenton]. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. (The life of John Milton by E. Fenton.) 2 vols.
+London, 1746, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Dublin, 1747, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Compared and revised by John Hawkey. Dublin,
+1748, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. (The life
+of Milton [by the editor]. A critique on Paradise Lost. By Mr. Addison.)
+2 vols. London, 1749, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. According to the author's last edition, in the
+year 1672. Glasgow, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1754, 4to.
+
+Paradise Lost. Another edition. With notes, etymological, critical,
+classical, and explanatory; collected from Dr. Bentley, Dr. Pearce,
+Richardson and Son, Addison, Paterson, Newton, and other authors. By J.
+Marchant. London, 1751, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1752, 51, 12mo.
+      Vol. ii. is a duplicate of the corresponding vol. of the previous
+      edition.
+
+---- Another edition. [To which is prefixed the life of Milton, by E.
+Fenton.] London, 1753, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. [With the life of Milton, by E. Fenton, and a
+glossary.] 2 vols. Paris, 1754, 16mo.
+
+---- Another edition [in prose]. With historical, critical, and
+explanatory notes. From Raymond de St. Maur. London, 1755, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1758, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1759, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. (The life of Milton [by T. Newton]). London,
+1760, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. [With the life of John Milton, by E. Fenton.
+Illustrated.] London, 1761, 8vo.
+
+---- Sixth edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1763, 8vo.
+
+---- Seventh edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1770, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition. To which is added the life of the author, by E.
+Fenton. Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo.
+
+---- New edition. To which is added historical, philosophical, and
+explanatory notes, translated from the French of Raymond de St. Maur.
+[Edited by John Wood, and preceded by a life of Milton by E. Fenton.]
+Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition [in prose]. With historical, philosophical,
+critical, and explanatory notes, from Raymond de St. Maur. Embellished
+with fourteen copper-plates. London, 1767, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, adorned with copper-plates. London [1770], 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem. The author, John Milton. Glasgow, 1770,
+folio.
+      The copy in the British Museum was presented to George III. by the
+      binder, J. Scott.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (The life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1770,
+12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1771, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (_British Poets_, vols. i.-ii.) Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition. 2 vols. London, 1775, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, from the text of T. Newton. London, 1777, 12mo.
+
+---- Eighth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1778, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (The Life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1778,
+12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. With a biographical and critical account of the
+author and his writings [by E. Fenton]. Kilmarnock, 1785, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J. Gillies.
+[With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1788, 12mo.
+
+---- Ninth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton [and a
+portrait of Milton], 2 vols. London, 1790, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Printed from the first and second editions
+collated. The original system of orthography restored, the punctuation
+corrected and extended. With various readings; and notes, chiefly
+rythmical. By Capel Lofft. [Book i.] Bury St. Edmunds, 1792, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Books i.-iv. [London, 1792-95], 4to.
+      The British Museum copy contains the first four books only. With
+      illustrations after Stothard, engraved by Bartolozzi. Without
+      title-page.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J.
+Gillies. Second edition. [With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1793, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost; a poem, in twelve books. [With engravings.] London,
+1794, 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. (The Life of John Milton [by E. Fenton].
+Criticism on Paradise Lost by S. Johnson.) London, 1795, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711.
+With notes and the life of the author by T. Newton and others. [Edited
+by C.M.] 3 vols. London, 1795, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, with notes selected from Newton and others. With a
+critical dissertation on the poetical works of Milton by S. Johnson. 2
+vols. London, 1796, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by J. Evans]. To
+which is prefixed the celebrated critique by S. Johnson. London,
+1799, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. A new edition. Adorned with plates
+[engraved chiefly by F. Bartolozzi, from designs by W. Hamilton and H.
+Fuseli.] 2 vols. London, 1802, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by E. Fenton], and a
+critique on the poem [by S. Johnson]. A new edition. London, 1802, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A new edition. London, 1803, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture, by J.
+Gillies. Third edition, with additions. [Life of Milton, by E. Fenton.]
+London, 1804, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem. Printed from the text of Tonson's correct
+edition of 1711. London, 1804, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711. A
+new edition, with plates, etc. London, 1808, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem, etc. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].)
+London, 1805, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].) London,
+1812, 16mo.
+
+---- Another edition. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1813, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. [With the life of John
+Milton by E. Fenton, and "A critique upon the Paradise Lost" by J.
+Addison.] Romsey, 1816, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]; and a criticism on the poem by S. Johnson. London, 1817, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. London, 1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. [With engravings from the designs of R. Westall.] 2
+vols. London, 1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1818, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1820, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. [With a life of the author, by E. Fenton.] Boston,
+1820, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author by E.
+Fenton, and a criticism of the poem by Dr. Johnson. London, 1821, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, etc. 2 vols. London, 1825, 12mo.
+
+---- The Paradise Lost of Milton, with illustrations designed and
+engraved by J. Martin. 2 vols. London, 1827, folio.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, etc. [With the life of J. Milton, by E. Fenton.]
+London [1830], 16mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. With a memoir of the author [by E. Fenton]. New
+edition. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost: with copious notes, also a memoir of his life by J.
+Prendeville. London, 1840, 8vo.
+
+---- [Paradise Lost. Edited by A.J. Ellis? Phonetically printed.]
+[London], 1846, 16mo.
+
+---- The Paradise Lost, with notes explanatory and critical. Edited by
+J.R. Boyd. New York, 1851, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, with notes, critical and explanatory,
+original and selected, by J.R. Major. London, 1853, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Published under the direction of the
+Committee of General Literature and Education [appointed by the Society
+for Promoting Christian Knowledge]. London [1859], 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. In twelve books. London, 1861, 16mo.
+      One of "Bell & Daldy's Pocket Volumes."
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author, and Dr.
+Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1862, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Doré. Edited, with
+notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London [1866], folio.
+      A re-issue appeared in 1871-72.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, in ten books. The text exactly reproduced from the
+first edition of 1667. With an appendix containing the additions made in
+later issues and a monograph on the original publication of the poem.
+[By R.H.S., _i.e._, R.H. Shepherd?] London, 1873, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, as originally published, being a fac-simile of the
+first edition. With an introduction by D. Masson. London, 1877 [1876],
+4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Illustrated by thirty-eight designs in outline by F.
+Thrupp. [Containing only fragments of the text.] London, 1879, obl.
+folio.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Doré. Edited, with
+notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London, 1882, 4to.
+      Re-issued in 1888.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. The text emended, with notes and preface by M.
+Hull. London, 1884, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. London, 1887, 16 mo.
+      Part of "Routledge's Pocket Library."
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (_Cassell's National Library_, vols. 162, 163.)
+London, 1889, 8vo.
+
+---- ---- The Story of our first Parents; selected from Milton's
+Paradise Lost: for the use of young persons. By Mrs. Siddons. London,
+1822, 8vo.
+
+Paradise Regain'd. A Poem in four books. To which is added Samson
+Agonistes. The author, J. Milton. 2 pts. London, 1671, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes. London,
+1680, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1688, folio.
+
+---- Paradise Regained. Samson Agonistes, and the smaller poems. Sixth
+edition. London, 1695, folio.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, and poems
+upon several occasions, compos'd at several times. Fourth edition.
+London, 1705, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. The
+fifth edition. London, 1707, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. Fifth
+edition. Adorned with cuts. London, 1713, 12mo.
+
+---- Sixth edition, corrected. London, 1725, 8vo.
+
+---- Seventh edition, corrected. 3 pts. London, 1727, 8vo.
+
+---- Seventh edition, corrected. London, 1730, 12mo.
+
+---- Eighth edition. London, 1743, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. A new edition. With notes of various
+authors, by T. Newton. London, 1752, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1752, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. The second edition, with notes of various
+authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1753, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1753, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1756, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, etc. Birmingham, 1758, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1760, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd (_British Poets_, vol. iii.). Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1772, 12mo.
+
+---- A new edition. 2 vols. London, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to.
+
+---- A new edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1779, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Alnwick, 1793, 12mo.
+
+---- A new edition, with notes of various authors, by C. Dunster.
+London. 1795. 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1800], 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Regained; with select notes subjoined: to which
+is added a complete collection of his Miscellaneous Poems, both English
+and Latin. London, 1796, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained. With select notes subjoined, etc. London,
+1817, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. London,
+1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1823, 16mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. [With
+Westall's plates.] London, 1827, 16mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained; and other poems. London, 1832, 16mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1861, 16mo.
+      One of "Bell & Daldy's Pocket Volumes."
+
+The readie and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the
+excellence thereof, compar'd with the inconveniences and dangers of
+re-admitting Kingship in this nation. The author J[ohn] M[ilton].
+London, 1660, 4to.
+
+The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty. In two books.
+London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Samson Agonistes. London, 1688, folio.
+      First appeared with the Paradise Regained in 1671.
+
+---- Samson Agonistes. London, 1695, folio.
+      Reprinted from the preceding edition.
+
+---- Samson Agonistes. (_Bell's British Theatre_, vol. 34.) London,
+1797, 8vo.
+
+---- Samson Agonistes. London [1869], 8vo.
+
+---- Milton. Samson Agonistes. Edited by John Churton Collins.
+(_Clarendon Press Series_.) Oxford, 1883, 8vo.
+
+Scriptum Dom. Protectoris contra Hispanos. [By John Milton.] Londini,
+1655, 4to.
+
+---- A Manifesto of the Lord Protector against the Depredations of the
+Spaniards. Written in Latin by John Milton. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- A true Copy of Oliver Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated
+October 26, 1655 [written by John Milton]. London, 1741, 4to.
+
+The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates; proving that it is lawfull, and
+hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call
+to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose
+and put him to death, etc. The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649,
+4to.
+
+---- Another edition, with additions. London, 1650, 4to.
+
+Tetrachordon: expositions upon the foure chief places in Scripture which
+treat of mariage, or nullities in manage, wherein the doctrine and
+discipline of divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd. By the
+former author J. M[ilton]. London, 1645 [1644 O.S.], 4to.
+      The author's name appears in full at the end of the address "To
+      the Parliament."
+
+A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; shewing that it is
+not lawfull for any power on earth to compell in matter of religion.
+The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo.
+
+---- A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. First printed
+anno 1659. London, reprinted 1790, 8vo.
+
+---- A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, etc. London,
+1839, 8vo.
+      _Tracts for the People_, No. I.
+
+---- On the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; and on the likeliest
+means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. London, 1851, 8vo.
+      Part XI. of "Buried Treasures."
+
+
+V. SELECTIONS.
+
+The Beauties of Milton, Thomson, and Young. Dublin, 1783, 12mo.
+
+The Beauties of Milton; consisting of selections from his poetry and
+prose, by A. Howard. London [1834], 12mo.
+
+The Poetry of Milton's Prose; selected from his various writings; with
+notes, and an introductory essay [by C.]. London, 1827, 12mo.
+
+Readings from Milton. With an introduction by Bishop H.W. Warren.
+Boston, 1886, 8vo.
+      Part of the "Chatauqua Library--Garnet Series."
+
+Selected Prose Writings of John Milton, with an introductory essay by E.
+Myers. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      Fifty copies only printed.
+
+Selections from the Prose Writings of John Milton. Edited, with memoir,
+notes, and analyses, by S. Manning. London, 1862, 8vo.
+
+Selections from the Prose Works of John Milton. With critical remarks
+and elucidations. Edited by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1870, 8vo.
+
+Shakespeare and Milton Reader; being scenes and other extracts from the
+writings of Shakespeare and Milton, etc. London [1883], 8vo.
+
+
+VI. APPENDIX.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC.
+
+Acton, Rev. Henry.--Religious opinions and examples of Milton, Locke,
+and Newton. A lecture, with notes. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+Addison, Rt. Hon. Joseph.--Notes upon the twelve books of Paradise Lost.
+Collected from the _Spectator_. London, 1719, 12mo.
+      Appeared originally in the _Spectator_, Dec. 31, 1711--May 3,
+      1712.
+
+Ademollo, A.--La Leonora di Milton e di Clemente IX. Milano [1886], 8vo.
+
+Andrews, Samuel.--Our Great Writers; or, Popular chapters on some
+leading authors. London, 1884, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 84-112.
+
+Arnold, Matthew.--Mixed Essays. London, 1879, 8vo.
+      A French Critic on Milton, pp. 237-273.
+
+---- Essays in Criticism. Second Series. London, 1888, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 56-68.
+
+Bagehot, Walter.--Literary Studies. 2 vols. London, 1879, 8vo.
+      John Milton, vol. i., pp. 173-220.
+
+---- Third edition. 2 vols. London, 1884, 8vo.
+
+Balfour, Clara Lucas.--Sketches of English Literature, etc. London,
+1852, 8vo.
+      Milton and his Literary Contemporaries, pp. 151-173.
+
+Barron, William.--Lectures on Belles Lettres and Logic. 2 vols. London,
+1806, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. ii., pp. 281-300.
+
+Baumgarten, Dr.--John Milton und das Verlorene Paradies. Coburg [1875],
+4to.
+
+Bayne, Peter.--The Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution. London,
+1878, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 297-346.
+
+Bentley, Richard.--Dr. Bentley's emendations on the twelve books of
+Milton's Paradise Lost. London, 1732, 12mo.
+
+Bickersteth, E.H.--Milton's Paradise Lost. (_The St. James's Lectures,
+Second Series_.) London, 1876, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1877, 8vo.
+
+Birrell, Augustine.--Obiter Dicta. Second series. London, 1887, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 1-50.
+
+Blackburne, Francis.--Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton. To which are
+added Milton's Tractate of Education and Areopagitica. London, 1780, 16mo.
+
+Blair, Hugh.--Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, etc. 2 vols.
+London, 1783, 4to.
+      Paradise Lost, vol. ii., pp. 471-476.
+
+Bodmer, J. Jacob.--J.J. Bodmer's critische Abhandlung, von dem
+Wunderbaren in der Poesie in einer Vertheidigung des Gedichtes J.
+Milton's von dem verlohrnen Paradiese, etc. Zürich, 1740, 8vo.
+
+Bradburn, Eliza W.--The Story of Paradise Lost, for children. Portland,
+1830, 16mo.
+
+Brooke, Stopford A.--Milton. [An account of his life and works.]
+London, 1879, 8vo.
+      Part of the series entitled _Classical Writers_, ed. J.R. Green.
+
+Bruce, Archibald.--A critical account of the life, character, and
+discourses of Mr. Alexander Morus, in which the attack made upon him in
+the writings of Milton is particularly considered. Edinburgh, 1813, 8vo.
+
+Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton.--The Life of John Milton. London [1835], 8vo.
+
+Bulwer Lytton, E.--The Siamese Twins, etc. London, 1831, 8vo.
+      Milton, a poem, pp. 315-362.
+
+Burney, Charles.--Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton. [London, 1790],
+8vo.
+
+Buckland, Anna.--The Story of English Literature. London, 1882, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 230-296.
+
+Callander, John.--Letter and Report respecting the Unpublished
+Commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, by the late John Callander, of
+Craigforth, Esq., in the possession of the Society. (_Archæologia
+Scotica_, vol. iii., 1831, pp. 83-91.) Edinburgh, 1831, 4to.
+
+Camerini, Eugenio.--Profili Letterari. Firenze, 1870, 8vo.
+      Milton e l'Italia, pp. 264-274.
+
+Cann, Miss Christian.--A scriptural and allegorical glossary to
+Milton's Paradise Lost. London [1828], 8vo.
+
+Carpenter, William.--The Life and Times of John Milton. London [1836], 8vo.
+
+Channing, William Ellery.--Remarks on the Character and Writings of John
+Milton; occasioned by the publication of his lately discovered
+"Treatise on Christian Doctrine." From the _Christian Examiner_, vol.
+iii., No. 1. Boston, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Charles I.--By the King. A Proclamation for calling in and suppressing
+of two books written by John Milton: the one Intituled Johannis Miltoni
+Angli pro Populo Anglicano defensio, etc., and the other, The
+Pourtraicture of his Sacred Majesty, etc. London, 1660, s. sh. fol.
+
+---- The Life and Reigne of King Charls; or, the Pseudo-Martyr
+discovered, etc. London, 1651, 8vo.
+      In the Bodleian Catalogue this work is erroneously stated to be by
+      John Milton.
+
+Chassang, A., and Marcou, F.L.--Les Chefs-d'Oeuvre Épiques de tous les
+peuples. Paris, 1879, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 279-297.
+
+Clarke, Samuel.--Some reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor,
+or the defence of Milton's life, which relates to the writings of the
+primitive fathers, etc. (_Letter to Mr. Dodwell_, etc., pp. 451-475.)
+London, 1781, 8vo.
+
+Cleveland, C.D.--A Complete Concordance to the Poetical Works of John
+Milton. London, 1867, 8vo.
+
+Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.--Seven lectures on Shakespeare and Milton,
+etc. London, 1856, 8vo.
+
+Darby, Samuel.--A letter to T. Warton, on his late edition of Milton's
+Juvenile Poems [entitled "Poems upon several occasions, English,
+Italian, and Latin."] London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+Dawson, George.--Biographical Lectures. London, 1886, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 82-88.
+
+De Morgan, J.--John Milton considered as a Politician. (_Men of the
+Commonwealth_, No. 1.) [London, 1875], 16mo.
+
+Dennis, John.--Heroes of Literature. English Poets. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 114-147.
+
+De Quincey, T.--Works. 16 vols. London, 1853-60, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. vi., pp. 311-325; Life of Milton, vol. x., pp. 79-98.
+
+Des Essarts, E.--De Veterum poetarum tum Græciæ tum Romæ apud Miltonem
+imitatione thesim proponebat E. Des Essarts. Parisiis, 1871, 8vo.
+
+Diderot, Denis.--An Essay on Blindness, etc. Interspersed with several
+anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others. Translated from the French.
+London [1750], 12mo.
+
+Dobson, W.T.--The Classic Poets, their lives and their times, etc.
+London, 1879, 8vo.
+      Milton's Paradise Lost, pp. 394-446; Paradise Regained,
+      pp. 446-452.
+
+Donoughue, Edward Jones.--Milton: a lecture. London, 1843, 8vo.
+
+Douglas, John.--Milton vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought
+against him by Mr. Lauder, etc. London, 1751, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton no plagiary; or, a detection of the forgeries contained in
+Lauder's essay, etc. Second edition. London, 1756, 8vo.
+
+Dowden, Edward.--Transcripts and Studies. London, 1888, 8vo.
+      The Idealism of Milton, pp. 454-473.
+
+Dowling, William.--Poets and Statesmen; their homes and haunts in the
+neighbourhood of Eton and Windsor. London, 1857, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 1-39.
+
+Dryden, John.--The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man; an opera, etc.
+London, 1677, 4to.
+
+Du Moulin, P.--Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas
+Anglicanos. [A reply to Milton's "Defensio pro populo Anglicano."] Hagæ
+Comitum, 1652, 4to.
+
+---- Editio secunda. Hagæ Comitum, 1661, 12mo.
+
+Dunster, C.--Considerations on Milton's early reading, and the prima
+stamina of his Paradise Lost, etc. London, 1800, 8vo.
+
+Edmonds, Cyrus R.--John Milton; a biography. Especially designed to
+exhibit the ecclesiastical principles of that illustrious man. London,
+1851, 8vo.
+
+Edmundson, George.--Milton and Vondel. A curiosity of literature.
+London, 1885, 8vo.
+
+Ellwood, Thomas.--Reflections of [Thomas Ellwood] with John Milton
+(_Arber's English Garner_, vol. iii., pp. 473-486). London, 1880, 8vo.
+
+English Poets.--Cursory remarks on some of the ancient English poets,
+particularly Milton. [By P. Neve.] London, 1789, 8vo.
+
+Epigoniad.--A critical essay on the Epigoniad, wherein the author's
+abuse of Milton is examined. Edinburgh, 1757, 8vo.
+
+Eyre, Charles.--The Fall of Adam, from Milton's Paradise Lost. London
+[1852], 8vo.
+
+Filmer, Sir Robert.--Observations concerning the originall of Government
+upon Mr. Hobs Leviathan, Mr. Milton against Salmasius, H. Grotius De
+Jure Belli. London, 1652, 4to.
+
+---- The Free-holders grand inquest, etc. (Reflections concerning the
+Original of Government upon Mr. Milton against Salmasius.) London, 1679,
+8vo.
+
+Flatters, J.J.--The Paradise Lost of Milton, translated into fifty-four
+designs, by J.J. Flatters, sculptor. London, 1843, folio.
+      Without letterpress.
+
+Fry, Alfred A.--A lecture on the writings, prose and poetic, and the
+character, public and personal, of John Milton. London, 1838, 8vo.
+
+Geffroy, Mathieu A.--Étude sur les pamphlets politiques et religieux de
+Milton. Paris, 1848, 8vo.
+
+Gilfillan, George.--A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits. London,
+1850, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 1-39.
+
+---- Modern Christian Heroes, etc. London, 1869, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 81-118.
+
+Giraud, Jane E.--Flowers of Milton. London, 1850, 4to.
+
+Godwin, William.--Lives of E. and J. Philips, nephews and pupils of
+Milton, to which are added: I. Collections for the life of Milton, by J.
+Aubrey, printed from the manuscript copy in the Ashmolean Museum. II.
+The Life of Milton, by E. Philips, printed 1694. London, 1815, 4to.
+
+Goodwin, Thomas.--The Student's Practical Grammar of the English
+Language; together with a commentary on the first book of Milton's
+Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 12mo.
+
+Greenwood, F.W.P.--The Miscellaneous Writings of F.W.P. Greenwood.
+Boston, 1846, 8vo.
+      Milton's Prose Works, pp. 208-226.
+
+Grotius, H. de.--The Adamus Exul of Grotius; or, the prototype of
+Paradise Lost. Translated from the Latin, by Francis Barham. London,
+1839, 8vo.
+
+Guerle, Edmond de.--Milton, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1868, 8vo.
+
+Güntzer, C.--Dissertationis ad quaedam loca Miltoni pars posterior.
+Argentorati, 1657, 4to.
+
+Hamilton, W. Douglas.--Original Papers, illustrative of the life and
+writings of John Milton, including sixteen letters of State written by
+him, now first published from MSS. in the State Paper Office, etc.
+London, 1859, 4to.
+      Printed for the Camden Society.
+
+Hamilton, Walter.--Parodies of the Works of English and American
+Authors, collected and annotated by W. Hamilton. London, 1885, 4to.
+      John Milton, vol. ii., pp. 217-236.
+
+Hare, Julius Charles.--Essays and Tales. 2 vols. London, 1848, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. i., pp. 73-86.
+
+Harrington, James.--The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book,
+entitled The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.
+[Signed J. H(arrington); a satire.] London, 1660, 4to.
+      Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany.
+
+Hayley, William.--The Life of Milton; to which are added conjectures on
+the origin of Paradise Lost. (The second edition enlarged.) London,
+1796, 4to.
+      This life appeared originally in 1794 in vol. i. of Milton's
+      Poetical Works.
+
+Hillebrand, C.--De sacro apud Christianos carmine epico dissertationem
+seu Dantis, Miltonis, Klopstockii poetarum collationem proponebat C.
+Hillebrand, Parisiis, 1861, 8vo.
+
+Hodgson, Shadworth H.--Outcast Essays, etc. London, 1881, 8vo.
+      The supernatural in English poetry; Shakespere; Milton; Wordsworth
+      Tennyson, pp. 99-180.
+
+Holloway, Laura C.--The Mothers of Great Men and Women, etc. New York,
+1884, 8vo.
+      Milton's Wives, pp. 457-478.
+
+Hood, Edwin Paxton.--John Milton: the Patriot and Poet. London, 1852,
+18mo.
+
+Hopkins, J.--Milton's Paradise Lost, imitated in rhyme; in the fourth,
+sixth, and ninth books, etc. London, 1699, 8vo.
+
+Howitt, William.--Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets.
+Third edition. London, 1857, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 46-68.
+
+Huet, C.B.--Litterarische Fantasien en Kritieken. Haarlem [1883], 8vo.
+      Milton, 12th Deel, pp. 150-220.
+
+Hunt, Theodore W.--Representative English Prose and Prose Writers. New
+York, 1887, 8vo.
+      The prose style of John Milton, pp. 246-264.
+
+Hutton, Laurence.--Literary Landmarks of London. London, 1885, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 210-216, etc.
+
+Ivimey, Joseph.--John Milton; his life and times; religious and
+political opinions; with an appendix, containing animadversions upon Dr.
+Johnson's Life of Milton, etc. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+Jackson, W.--Lycidas: a musical entertainment. The words altered from
+Milton. London, 1767, 8vo.
+
+Jane, Joseph.--The Image Unbroaken a perspective of the Impudence,
+Falshood, Vanitie, and Prophannes, in a Libell entitled Eikonoklastes.
+[London], 1651, 4to.
+
+Johnson, Samuel.--Prefaces to Milton and Butler. (_Prefaces to the Works
+of the English Poets_, vol. ii.) London, 1779, 8vo.
+
+---- Court and Country: a paraphrase upon Milton. [In a dialogue.] By
+the author of Hurlothrumbo [_i.e._, Samuel Johnson]. London [1780], 8vo.
+
+Jortin, John.--Remarks on Spenser's Poems. London, 1734, 8vo.
+      Remarks on Milton, pp. 171-186.
+
+Keightley, Thomas.--An account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of
+John Milton. With an introduction to Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 8vo.
+
+Keogh, Rt. Hon. William.--Milton's Prose. (_Afternoon Lectures on
+Literature and Art, delivered in the Theatre of the Museum of Industry,
+Dublin_, 1865, 3rd Series.) London, 1866, 8vo.
+
+Lamartine, M.L.A. de.--Héloïse et Abélard [Biographies]. Paris, 1864, 12mo.
+      Includes a biography of Milton, pp. 113-215.
+
+Lauder, William.--An essay on Milton's use and imitation of the moderns
+in his Paradise Lost. [With a preface by Dr. Johnson.] London, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- A letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, occasioned by his vindication
+of Milton, etc. [Written by Dr. Johnson.] London, 1751, 4to.
+
+---- An apology for Mr. Lauder [written by himself] in a letter most
+humbly addressed to his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. London,
+1751, 8vo.
+
+---- Delectus auctorum sacrorum, Miltono facem prælucentium. 2 tom.
+London, 1752, 8vo.
+
+---- King Charles I. vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought
+against him by Milton, etc. To the whole is subjoined the Judgment of
+several learned and impartial authors concerning Milton's political
+writings. London, 1754, 8vo.
+
+L'Estrange, R.--No Blind Guides, in answer to a seditious pamphlet of
+Milton's, intituled Brief notes upon a late sermon titl'd The fear of
+God and the King, preach'd and since publish'd. By M. Griffith, etc.
+London, 1660, 4to.
+
+Letters.--Letters concerning poetical translations and Virgil's and
+Milton's Arts of Verse, etc. London, 1739, 8vo.
+
+Liebert, Gustav.--Milton. Studien zur Geschichte des englischen Geistes.
+Hamburg, 1860, 8vo.
+
+Lotheissen, Ferdinand.--Studien über John Milton's poetische Werke.
+Budingen, 1860, 4to.
+
+Lowell, James Russell.--Among my Books. Second series. London, 1876, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 252-302.
+
+M.J.A.--An introduction to the Study of Shakespeare and Milton. [By
+J.A.M. With selections from their works.] London [1884], 8vo.
+
+Macaulay, Thomas Babington.--Critical and historical essays contributed
+to the Edinburgh Review. 2 vols. London, 1854, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. i., pp. 1-28.
+
+---- The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay. London, 1860, 8vo.
+      Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton
+      touching the great Civil War, vol. i., pp. 101-124.
+
+---- An Essay on the Life and Works of John Milton, together with the
+imaginary conversation between him and H. Cowley. London, 1868, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Essay on Milton. From the Edinburgh Review. With
+introductory notice and notes. London, 1872, 16mo.
+
+---- John Milton. [A biographical sketch.] Boston, 1877, 16mo.
+
+---- Macaulay's Milton, edited to illustrate the laws of Rhetoric and
+Composition, by Alexander Mackie. London, 1884, 8vo.
+
+Maceuen, Malcolm.--Celebrities of the Past and Present. Philadelphia,
+1874, 8vo.
+      Milton and Poetry, pp. 195-202.
+
+Mackenzie, Sir George.--Jus Regium: or, the just and solid foundations
+of monarchy in general maintain'd against Buchanan, Dolman, Milton, etc.
+Edinburgh, 1684, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1684, 8vo.
+
+McNicoll, Thomas.--Essays on English Literature. London, 1861, 8vo.
+      Milton and Pollok, pp. 65-111.
+
+Marquis, G.A.--Select Poetical Pieces, with a logical arrangement, or
+practical commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost. Second edition enlarged.
+Paris, 1842, 12mo.
+
+Marsh, John F.--Papers connected with the affairs of Milton and his
+family. Edited by J.F. Marsh. Manchester, 1851, 4to.
+      In vol. i. of the Chetham Miscellanies, published by the Chetham
+      Society.
+
+---- Notice of the inventory of the effects of Mrs. Milton, widow of the
+poet. Liverpool, 1855, 8vo.
+      Extracted from the proceedings of the Historic Society of
+      Lancashire and Cheshire.
+
+---- On the engraved portrait and pretended portraits of Milton.
+Extracted from the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire
+and Cheshire. Liverpool, 1860, 8vo.
+
+Martyn, W. Carlos.--Life and Times of John Milton. [Published by the
+"American Tract Society." With portrait.] New York [1866], 12mo.
+
+Mason, W.--Musæus; a monody to the memory of Mr. Pope in imitation of
+Milton's Lycidas. London, 1747, 4to.
+
+Massey, William.--Remarks upon Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. London,
+1761, 12mo.
+
+Masson, David.--Essays biographical and critical: chiefly on English
+poets. Cambridge, 1856, 8vo.
+      Milton's Youth, pp. 37-52; The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's,
+      and Goethe's, pp. 53-87.
+
+---- The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- The Life of John Milton; narrated in connexion with the political,
+ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time. 6 vols. Cambridge,
+1859-80, 8vo.
+
+---- New and revised edition. London, 1881, etc., 8vo.
+
+---- John Milton. (_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. xvi., pp. 324-340.)
+London, 1883, 4to.
+
+Meadowcourt, Richard.--A critique on Milton's Paradise Regained. London,
+1732, 4to.
+
+---- A Critical Dissertation, with notes, on Milton's Paradise Regain'd.
+The second edition corrected. London, 1748, 8vo.
+
+Milton, John.--An answer to a book [by John Milton], intituled, The
+Divorce and Discipline of Divorce, etc. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+---- Carolus I. Britanniarum Rex, a Securi et Calamo Miltonii
+vindicatus. Dublini, 1652, 12mo.
+
+---- Areopagitica Secunda: or, speech of the shade of John Milton on Mr.
+Sergeant Talfourd's Copyright Extension Bill. London, 1838, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus, a mask: (now adapted to the stage) as alter'd [by J. Dalton]
+from Milton's Mask. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Dublin, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Sixth edition. London, 1741, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1759, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1760, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1762, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1777, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus, a masque [altered by J. Dalton from John Milton], London,
+1791, 8vo.
+      In vol. i. of "Bell's Theatre."
+
+---- Comus [altered from Milton by J. Dalton]. London, 1811, 8vo.
+      In the "Modern British Drama," vol. ii.
+
+---- Comus: a mask, altered from Milton. [By J. Dalton.] London, 1815,
+16mo.
+      In vol. x. of Dibdin's "London Theatre."
+
+---- Comus. [Adapted to the stage by J. Dalton.] London, 1826, 8vo.
+      In the "British Drama," vol. ii.
+
+---- Comus: a masque [in two acts]. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman].
+As performed at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden. The musick composed
+by Dr. Arne. London, 1772, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1774, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered by Mr. Colman. (_Bell's British Theatre_,
+vol. ix.) London, 1777, 12mo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. Edinburgh,
+1786, 12mo.
+      Vol. iv. of the "British Stage."
+
+---- Comus. Altered for the stage by Colman. (_Modern British Drama_,
+vol. v.) London, 1811, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton, by G. Colman. (_Inchbald's
+Collection of Farces_, vol. vii.) London, 1815, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Comus: a masque, in two acts [altered from Milton], as
+revised at Covent Garden, April 28, 1815. London, 1815, 8vo.
+      There is a copy in the British Museum with the autograph of Sir
+      Henry Bishop.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. London [1824],
+8vo.
+      Vol. ii. of "The London Stage."
+
+---- Comus. Altered from Milton. [By G. Colman, the elder.] London,
+1872, 8vo.
+      In the "British Drama," vol. xii.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton. (_Supplement to Bell's
+British Theatre_, vol. iv.) London, 1784, 12mo.
+
+---- Miltonis epistola ad Pollionem. Edidit et notis illustravit F.S.
+Cantabrigiensis. Londini, 1738, folio.
+
+---- Editio altera. Londini, 1738, folio.
+
+---- Milton's Epistle to Pollio. Translated from the Latin, and
+illustrated with notes. London, 1740, folio.
+
+---- Milton restor'd and Bentley depos'd, containing, I. Some
+observations on Dr. Bentley's preface. II. His various readings and
+notes on Paradise Lost and Milton's text, set in opposite columns, with
+remarks therein. III. Paradise Lost, attempted in rime. Book I., Numb.
+I. From Dean Swift. London, 1732, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost: a poem attempted in Rhime. [Altered from Milton.]
+London, 1740, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. An oratorio [in three acts and in verse] altered and
+adapted to the stage from Milton [by B. Stillingfleet]. London, 1760, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. An oratorio in four parts. The words selected from
+the works of Milton by J.L. Ellerton. London [1862], 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Oratorio in three parts, from the poem of Milton.
+English version by J. Pittman. London [1880], 8vo.
+
+---- The State of Innocence and Fall of Man described in Milton's
+Paradise Lost. Render'd into prose with notes from the French of Raymond
+[or rather Nicolas Francois Dupré] de St. Maur. By a gentleman of Oxford
+[George Smith Green?]. London, 1745, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Aberdeen, 1770, 12mo.
+
+---- A verbal Index to Milton's Paradise Lost; adapted to every edition
+but the first, etc. London, 1741, 12mo.
+
+---- An essay upon Milton's imitations of the Ancients in his Paradise
+Lost. With some observations on the Paradise Regain'd. London, 1741,
+8vo.
+
+---- A new occasional Oratorio [on the suppression of the Rebellion],
+the words taken from Milton, Spenser, etc., and set to musick by Mr.
+Handel. London, 1746, 4to.
+      The words only.
+
+---- The Progress of Envy, a poem occasioned by Lauder's attack on the
+character of Milton. London, 1751, 4to.
+
+---- A familiar explanation of the poetical works of Milton. To which is
+prefixed Mr. Addison's criticism on Paradise Lost. With a preface by
+Rev. Mr. Dodd. London, 1672, 12mo.
+
+---- The Recovery of Man: or, Milton's Paradise Regained. In Prose.
+After the manner of the Archbishop of Cambray. To which is prefixed the
+life of the author. [London], 1771, 12mo.
+
+---- Samson. An Oratorio [in three acts]. As it is performed at the
+Theatres-royal. Altered from the Samson Agonistes of Milton [by N.
+Hamilton]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London [1742], 8vo.
+      The words only.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1742], 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1742], 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1743, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1751, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1759, 4to.
+
+---- Samson: an oratorio [altered and adapted to the stage from the
+Samson Agonistes by N. Hamilton]. [Oxford], 1749, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1762, 4to.
+
+---- Samson. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1762, 4to.
+
+---- Samson. An oratorio [altered from the Samson Agonistes, by N.
+Hamilton]. Salisbury, 1765, 8vo.
+
+---- Handel's oratorio, Samson. The words chiefly from Milton. [Compiled
+by T. Morell.] London [1840], 4to.
+
+---- The Life of John Milton. Published under the direction of the
+Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London [1861], 8vo.
+
+---- A Milton Memorial. A sketch of the life of John Milton, compiled
+with reference to the proposed restoration of the Church of St. Giles,
+Cripplegate (where he was buried). By Antiquitatis historicæ studiosus.
+London, 1862, 8vo.
+
+Mirabeau, Count de.--Théorie de la Royauté d'après la Doctrine de
+Milton. [Translated from the Defence of the People of England. With a
+preliminary dissertation, "Sur Milton et ses ouvrages"; by H.G.
+Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau?] [Paris], 1789, 8vo.
+
+Moers, F. Josephus.--De fontibus Paradisi Amissi Miltoniani. Dissertatio
+philologica, etc. Bonnae [1865], 8vo.
+
+Morris, Joseph W.--John Milton: a vindication, specially from the charge
+of Arianism. London [1862], 8vo.
+
+Mortimer, Charles Edward.--An historical memoir of the Political Life of
+John Milton. London, 1805, 4to.
+
+Morus, Alexander.--A. Mori Fides Publica, contra calumnias Joannis
+Miltoni. Hagæ-Comitum, 1654, 12mo.
+
+Mouron, H.--Jean Milton. Conférence. Deuxième édition. Strasbourg, 1875,
+8vo.
+
+Munkácsy, M.--Opinions of the Continental Press on M. Munkácsy and his
+latest picture, "Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters."
+Paris, 1879, 8vo.
+
+Neve, Philip.--A narrative of the disinterment of Milton's coffin in the
+Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, 4th August 1790; and of the
+treatment of the corpse during that and the following day. London, 1790,
+8vo.
+
+Nicoll, Henry J.--Landmarks of English Literature. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 112-125.
+
+Paterson, James.--A complete commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, etc.
+London, 1744, 8vo.
+
+Pattison, Mark.--Milton. [An account of his life and works.] London,
+1879, 8vo.
+      One of the "English Men of Letters" series.
+
+Pauli, Reinhold.--Aufsätze zur Englischen Geschichte. Leipzig, 1869, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 348-391.
+
+Pearce, Z., _Bishop of Rochester_.--A review of the text of Milton's
+Paradise Lost; in which the chief of Dr. Bentley's Emendations are
+consider'd; and several other emendations and observations are offer'd
+to the public. London, 1732, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1733, 8vo.
+
+Peck, Francis.--New Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John
+Milton, etc. London, 1740, 4to.
+
+---- Memoirs of the life and actions of Oliver Cromwell: as delivered in
+three panegyrics of him. The first, as said, by Don Juan Rodriguez de
+Saa Meneses; the second, as affirmed by a certain Jesuit; yet both, it
+is thought, composed by Mr. John Milton, as was the third, etc. London,
+1740, 4to.
+
+Penn, John.--Critical, poetical, and dramatic works. 2 vols. London,
+1798, 8vo.
+      Samson Agonistes, vol. ii., pp. 213-263.
+
+Philips, John.--Poems attempted in the style of Milton, etc. London,
+1762, 12mo.
+
+Philo-Milton, _pseud._--Milton's Sublimity asserted: in a poem
+occasion'd by a late piece entituled Cyder, a poem [by J. Philips]. In
+blank verse. London, 1709, 4to.
+
+---- A vindication of the Paradise Lost from the charge of exculpating
+Lord Byron's "Cain, a Mystery." London, 1822, 8vo.
+
+Plaint.--The Plaint of Freedom. (To the Memory of Milton. In verse.)
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1852, 4to.
+
+Prendergast, G.L.--A complete concordance to the poetical works of
+Milton. Madras, 1856-57, 4to.
+
+Prodromus.--Verax Prodromus in Delirum. [An invective against John
+Milton.] [Amsterdam? 1656?] 4to.
+
+R * *--Lettres critiques à Mr. le comte * * * sur le Paradis perdu, et
+reconquis, de Milton, par R * * [outh]. Paris, 1731, 8vo.
+
+Reed, Henry.--Lectures on the British Poets. 2 vols. Philadelphia,
+1858, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 199-232.
+
+Rice, Allen Thorndike.--Essays from the North American Review. New York,
+1879, 8vo.
+      John Milton, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 99-122.
+
+Richardson, Jonathan.--Explanatory notes and remarks on Milton's
+Paradise Lost. By J. Richardson, father and son. London, 1734, 8vo.
+
+Richardson, Jonathan.--Zoilomastix; or, a vindication of Milton from
+all the invidious charges of W. Lauder. With several new remarks on
+Paradise Lost. London, 1747, 8vo.
+
+Ring, Max.--John Milton und seine Zeit. Historischer Roman. Frankfurt a.
+Main, 1857, 8vo.
+
+---- John Milton and his times, a historical novel. Translated by J.
+Jefferson. Manchester, 1889, 8vo.
+
+Rolli, P.--Sabrina; an opera [in three acts and in verse. Founded on the
+"Comus" of Milton]. _Ital._ and _Eng._ London, 1737, 8vo.
+
+Rossetti, William Michael.--Lives of Famous Poets. London, 1878, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 65-79.
+
+Rowland, J.--Pro Rege et Populo Anglicano apologia, contra Joannis
+Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni Angli) defensionem destructivam Regis et
+Populi Anglicani. Antwerpiæ, 1651, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Antwerpiæ, 1652, 12mo.
+
+S.G.--The dignity of Kingship asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's Ready
+and Easie way to establish a free Commonwealth. By G.S. (George
+Searle?), a lover of loyalty. London, 1660, 8vo.
+
+Saintsbury, George.--A History of Elizabethan Literature. London,
+1887, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 315-329.
+
+Salmasius, Claudius de.--Claudii Salmasii ad Johannem Miltonum
+Responsio. Opus posthumum. Londini, 1660, 12mo.
+
+Say, Samuel.--Poems on several occasions: and two critical Essays--viz.,
+the first on the harmony, variety, and power of numbers, whether in
+prose or verse; the second, on the numbers of Paradise Lost. [With a
+portrait of Milton, etched by J. Richardson.] London, 1745, 4to.
+
+Scherer, Edmond.--Études sur la Littérature Contemporaine. Paris,
+1882, 8vo.
+      Milton et le _Paradis Perdu_, tom. vi., pp. 161-194.
+
+Scolari, Filippo.--Saggio di Critica sul Paradiso Perduto, Poema di
+Giovanni Milton, e sulle annotazioni a quello di Giuseppe Addison.
+Aggiuntovi l'Adamo sacra rappresentazione di G.B. Andreini, etc.
+Venezia, 1818, 8vo.
+
+Scott, John.--Critical Essays on some of the poems of several English
+poets, etc. London, 1785, 8vo.
+      On Milton's Lycidas, pp. 37-64.
+
+Seeley, J.R.--Lectures and Essays. London, 1870, 8vo.
+      Milton's Political Opinions, pp. 89-119; Milton's Poetry,
+      pp. 120-154.
+
+Shenston, J.B.--The Authority of Jehovah asserted, ... with some remarks
+on the article on Milton's Essay on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day,
+which appeared in the Evangelical Review, 1826. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Smectymnuus, _pseud._ [_i.e._, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy etc.]--A
+modest confutation of a slanderous and scurrilous libell, entituled,
+Animadversions [by John Milton] upon the remonstrants' defense against
+Smectymnuus. [London] 1642, 4to.
+
+Sotheby, Samuel Leigh.--Ramblings in the elucidation of the Autograph
+of Milton. [With plates.] London, 1861, 4to.
+
+Steel, David.--Elements of Punctuation, and critical observations on
+some passages in Milton. London, 1786, 8vo.
+
+Stern, Alfred.--Milton und seine Zeit. 2 Thle. Leipzig, 1877-79, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton und Cromwell. Berlin, 1875, 8vo.
+      Serie x., Hft. 236 of Virchow and Holtzendorff's "Sammlung
+      gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, etc."
+
+Symmons, Charles.--The Life of John Milton, etc. London, 1806, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1810, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition. London, 1882, 8vo.
+
+Taine, H.A.--Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise. 4 tom. Paris, 1863-4,
+8vo.
+      Milton, tom, ii., pp. 327-435.
+
+---- History of English Literature. Translated by H. Van Laun. 4 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1873-4, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. ii., pp. 239-318.
+
+Tasso, Torquato.--Il Tasso, a dialogue. The speakers, John Milton,
+Torquato Tasso. London, 1762, 8vo.
+
+Todd, Henry John.--Some account of the life and writings of John Milton.
+Second edition, with additions, and with a verbal index to the whole of
+Milton's poetry. London, 1809, 8vo.
+      This forms vol. i. of the 1809 edition of Todd's Milton; a certain
+      number of copies being printed off with a distinct title-page.
+
+---- Some account of the life and writings of John Milton, derived
+principally from documents in His Majesty's State-paper Office, now
+first published. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Toland, John.--The Life of John Milton, containing, besides the history
+of his works, several extraordinary characters of men and books, sects,
+parties, and opinions. [Signed J.T., _i.e._ J. Toland.] London, 1699, 8vo.
+
+---- Amyntor; or, a Defence of Milton's Life, etc. London, 1699, 8vo.
+
+---- The Life of John Milton; with Amyntor; or a Defence of Milton's
+Life, etc. London, 1761, 8vo.
+
+Tomlinson, John.--Three Household Poets--viz., Milton, Cowper, Burns,
+etc. London, 1869, 8vo.
+
+Tulloch, John.--English Puritanism and its leaders, Cromwell, Milton,
+Baxter, Bunyan. Edinburgh, 1861, 8vo.
+
+Vericour, Raymond de.--Milton et la poésie épique, etc. Paris, 1838, 8vo.
+
+Ward, Thomas H.--The English Poets; selections, with critical
+introductions, etc. 4 vols. London, 1880, 8vo.
+      John Milton, by Mark Pattison, vol. ii., pp. 293-379.
+
+Warton, Thomas.--A Letter to T. Warton on his editon of Milton's
+juvenile poems. [By S. Darby?] London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+White, Thomas Holt.--A Review of Johnson's criticism on the style of
+Milton's English Prose, etc. London, 1818, 8vo.
+
+Wilson, J.--Vindiciæ Carolinæ; or a defence of Eikon Basilike, etc.
+London, 1692, 8vo.
+
+Yonge, Charles Duke.--Three Centuries of English Literature. London,
+1872, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 185-210.
+
+Zicari da Paola, F.--Sulla scoverta dell' originale Italiano da cui
+Milton trasse il suo poema del Paradiso Perduto. Napoli, 1844, 12mo.
+
+Ziegler, C.--C. Ziegleri circa regicidium Anglorum exercitationes.
+Accedit Jacobi Schalleri Dissertatio ad loca quædam Miltoni. Lugd.
+Batavorum, 1653, 12mo.
+
+
+
+
+MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC.
+
+
+Milton, John.--Edinburgh Review, by T.B. Macaulay, vol. 42, 1825,
+pp. 304-346.
+  --Christian Examiner, by W.E. Channing, vol. 3, 1826, pp. 29-77;
+    same article, Pamphleteer, vol. 29, pp. 507-547.
+  --United States Literary Gazette, vol. 4, 1826, pp. 278-293.
+  --Quarterly Review, by J.J. Blunt, vol. 36, 1827, pp. 29-61.
+  --American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310.
+  --American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1, 1833, pp. 115-125.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 9, 1833, pp. 193-211.
+  --North American Review, by R.W. Emerson, vol. 47, 1838, pp. 56-73.
+  --Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 46, 1839, pp. 775-780.
+  --Penny Magazine, vol. 10, 1841, pp. 97-101.
+  --National Review, vol. 9, 1859, pp. 150-186.
+  --Chambers's Journal, vol. 11, 1859, pp. 117-119.
+  --Radical, by B.W. Wall, vol. 3, 1868, pp. 718-723.
+  --Contemporary Review, by P. Bayne, vol. 22, 1873, pp. 427-460;
+    same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18 N.S., pp. 565-585;
+    Littell's Living Age, vol. 3, 5th ser., pp. 643-662.
+  --New Monthly Magazine, vol. 4 N.S., 1873, pp. 27-35.
+  --Congregationalist, by T.H. Gill, vol. 3, 1874, pp. 705-714.
+  --Macmillan's Magazine, by Mark Pattison, vol. 31, 1875, pp. 380-387;
+    same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 10, 5th ser., pp. 323-329.
+  --Western, by H.H. Morgan, vol. 5, 1879, pp. 107-138.
+  --Modern Review, by H. New, vol. 2, 1881, pp. 103-128;
+    same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 148, pp. 515-525.
+
+---- _and the Commonwealth_. British Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1849,
+pp. 224-254;
+    same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18, pp. 346-362.
+
+---- _and Dante_. St. James's Magazine, vol. 15, 1866, pp. 243-250.
+
+---- _and Galileo_. Fraser's Magazine, by Sir Richard Owen, vol. 79,
+1869, pp. 678-684.
+
+---- _and his daughters_. People's Journal, by Mrs. Leman Gillies,
+vol. 5, 1848, pp. 227, 228.
+
+---- _and Homer contrasted_. Analectic Magazine, vol. 14, 1819,
+pp. 224-229.
+
+---- _and Macaulay_. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 28, 1860,
+pp. 667-679.
+
+---- _and Masenius_. Month, vol. 8, 1868, pp. 542-550.
+
+---- _and the Daughters of Eve_. St. Paul's, vol. 13, 1873, pp. 405-418.
+
+---- _and Vondel_. Academy, by Edmund Gosse and G. Edmundson, vol. 28,
+1885, pp. 265, 266, 293, 294, 342; and by J.R. Mac Ilraith, pp. 308, 309.
+  --Athenæum, Nov. 7, 1885, pp. 599, 600.
+  --Nation, vol. 42, 1886, pp. 264, 265.
+
+---- _and Wordsworth_. Temple Bar, vol. 60, 1880, pp. 106-115.
+
+---- _Angels of_. New Englander, by John A. Himes, vol. 43, 1884,
+pp. 527-543.
+
+---- _Areopagitica_. Retrospective Review, vol. 9, 1824, pp. 1-19.
+
+---- _as a Reformer_. Methodist Quarterly Review, by F.H. Newhall,
+vol. 39, 1857, pp. 542-559.
+
+---- _At Cambridge_. American Journal of Education, vol. 28, 1878,
+pp. 383-400.
+
+---- _Bibliographical account of his works_. Retrospective Review,
+vol. 14, 1826, pp. 282-305.
+
+---- _Blank Verse of_. Fortnightly Review, by J.A. Symonds, vol. 16
+N.S., 1874, pp. 767-781.
+
+---- _Blindness of_. Chambers's Journal, vol. 3 N.S., 1845, pp. 392-394.
+
+---- _Byron and Southey_. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 29,
+1860, pp. 430-440.
+
+---- _Channing on_. Edinburgh Review, by H. Brougham, vol. 69, 1839,
+pp. 214-230.
+  --Monthly Review, vol. 7 N.S., 1828, pp. 471-478.
+  --Fraser's Magazine, vol. 17, 1838, pp. 627-635.
+
+---- _Christian Doctrine_. Quarterly Review, vol. 32, 1835, pp. 442-457.
+  --North American Review, by S. Willard, vol. 22, 1826, pp. 364-373.
+  --United States Literary Gazette, vol. 3, 1826, pp. 321-327.
+  --Monthly Review, vol. 107, 1825, pp. 273-294.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 8, 1825, pp. 588-592.
+  --Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1826, pp. 1-18, 114-141.
+
+---- _Comus_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 7, 1823, pp. 222-229.
+
+---- _Comus_, _and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess_. Manchester
+Quarterly, by W.E.A. Axon, vol. 1, 1882, pp. 285-295.
+
+---- _Dante and Æschylus_. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 20 N.S.,
+1853, pp. 513-525, 577-587, 641-650.
+
+---- _De Vericour's Lectures on_. Monthly Review, vol. 2 N.S., 1838,
+pp. 342-351.
+
+---- _Doctrinal Error of his later life_. Bibliotheca Sacra, by T. Hunt,
+vol. 42, 1885, pp. 251-269.
+
+---- _Doctrine of Divorce_. Monthly Review, vol. 93, 1820, pp. 144-158.
+
+---- _Early Life_. Methodist Quarterly Review, by P. Church, vol. 48,
+1866, pp. 580-595.
+
+---- _Effigies of_. Historical Magazine, vol. 2, 1858, pp. 230-233.
+
+---- _Familiar Letters_. Southern Review, vol. 6, 1830, pp. 198-206.
+  --American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310.
+
+---- _French Critic on_. Quarterly Review, vol. 143, 1877, pp. 186-204;
+  same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 132, pp. 579-589.
+
+---- _Genius of_. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, by G. Gilfillan, vol. 15
+N.S., 1848, pp. 511-522;
+  same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 15, pp. 196-212.
+
+---- _History of England_. Retrospective Review, vol. 6, 1822,
+pp. 87-100.
+
+---- _Hollis' Bust of_. Scribner's Monthly, by C. Cook, vol. 11, 1876,
+pp. 472-476.
+
+---- _Home, School, and College Training of_. American Journal of
+Education, vol. 14, 1864, pp. 159-190.
+
+---- _Idealism of_. Contemporary Review, by E. Dowden, vol. 19, 1872,
+pp. 198-209;
+  same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 112, 1872, pp. 408-414.
+
+---- _in our Day_. Christian Examiner, by S. Good, vol. 57, 1854,
+pp. 323-340.
+
+---- _Italian Element in_. Penn Monthly Magazine, by O.H. Kendall,
+vol. 1, 1870, pp. 388-400.
+
+---- _Keble's Estimate of_. Macmillan's Magazine, by J.C. Shairp,
+vol. 31, 1875, pp. 554-560.
+
+---- _Keightley's Life of_. North American Review, by H.A. Whitney, vol.
+82, 1856, pp. 388-404. Littell's Living Age (from the _Saturday
+Review_), vol. 63, 1859, pp. 226-229.
+
+---- _Lamartine on_. Littell's Living Age (from the _Literary Gazette_),
+vol. 44, 1855, pp. 497-499.
+
+---- _Latin Poems of, Cowper's Translations_. Eclectic Review, Sept.
+1808, pp. 780-791.
+
+---- _Life of_. North British Review, by D. Masson, vol. 16, 1852,
+pp. 295-335;
+  same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 25, 1852, pp. 433-447.
+  --New Quarterly Review, vol. 8, 1859, pp. 40-54.
+
+---- _Life and Poetry of_. Hogg's Instructor, vol. 1 N.S., 1853, pp.
+234-242;
+  same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 30, pp. 364-372.
+
+---- _Lycidas_. American Monthly Magazine, vol. 5 N.S., 1838, pp. 341-353.
+  --Quarterly Review, vol. 158, 1884, pp. 162-183.
+
+---- ---- _Language of Lycidas_. Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 25 N.S.,
+1864, pp. 293-296.
+
+---- ---- _Notes on Lycidas_. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, by A.C.
+Brackett, vol. 1, 1867, pp. 87-90.
+
+---- _Masson's Life of_. British Quarterly Review, vol. 29, 1859, pp.
+185-214; vol. 59, 1874, pp. 81-100.
+  --North British Review, vol. 30, 1859, pp. 281-308;
+    same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 61, pp. 731-747.
+  --Dublin University Magazine, vol. 53, 1859, pp. 609-623.
+  --New Monthly Magazine, vol. 115, 1859, pp. 163-172.
+  --Eclectic Review, vol. 1 N.S., 1859, pp. 1-21.
+  --Christian Examiner, by G.E. Ellis, vol. 66, 1859, pp. 401-431.
+  --Old and New, vol. 4, 1871, pp. 704-708.
+  --Nation, by W.F. Allen, vol. 13, 1871, pp. 91, 92; vol. 17, 1873,
+    pp. 165, 166; vol. 31, 1880, pp. 15, 16.
+  --International Review, by H.C. Lodge, vol. 9, 1880, pp. 125-135.
+  --Quarterly Review, vol. 132, 1872, pp. 393-423.
+  --Presbyterian Quarterly, by E.H. Gillett, vol. 1, 1872, pp. 382-394.
+  --North American Review, by J.R. Lowell, vol. 114, 1872, pp. 204-218.
+  --Macmillan's Magazine, by G.B. Smith, vol. 28, 1873, pp. 536-547.
+  --Christian Observer, vol. 73, 1873, pp. 815-834.
+  --International Review, vol. 1, 1874, pp. 131-135.
+  --North American Review, vol. 126, 1878, pp. 537-542.
+  --Nation, by J.L. Dyman, vol. 26, 1878, pp. 342-344.
+  --Westminster Review, vol. 57 N.S., 1880, pp. 365-385.
+
+---- _Minor Poems_. Dublin University Magazine, vol. 63, 1864,
+pp. 619-625.
+
+---- _Mitford's Life of_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 34, 1832,
+pp. 581, 582.
+
+---- _Nephews of_. Edinburgh Review, by Sir J. Mackintosh, vol. 25,
+1815, pp. 485-501.
+
+---- _Newly-discovered Prose Writings of_. Hours at Home, by E.H.
+Gillett, vol. 9, 1869, pp. 532-536.
+
+---- _Ode to_. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, by A.A. Lipscomb, vol. 20,
+1860, pp. 771-778.
+
+---- _On the Divinity of Christ_. Christian Examiner, vol. 2, 1825,
+pp. 423-429.
+
+---- _Paradise Lost_. Journal of Sacred Literature, by F.A. Cox, vol. 1,
+1848, pp. 236-257.
+
+---- ---- _Chateaubriand's Translation of Paradise Lost_. Foreign
+Quarterly Review, vol. 19, 1837, pp. 35-50.
+
+---- ---- _Cosmology of Paradise Lost_. Lutheran Quarterly, by J.A.
+Himes, vol. 6, p. 187, etc.
+
+---- ---- _De Lille's Translation of Paradise Lost_. Edinburgh Review,
+vol. 8, 1806, pp. 167-190.
+
+---- ---- _First Edition of Paradise Lost_. Book-Lore, vol. 3, 1886, pp.
+72-75. Leisure Hour, April 28, 1877, pp. 269, 270.
+
+---- ---- _Moral Estimate of the Paradise Lost_. Christian Observer,
+vol. 22, 1822, pp. 211-218, 278-284.
+
+---- ---- _Mull's edition of Paradise Lost_. Spectator, December 6,
+1884, pp. 1635, 1636.
+  --Saturday Review, vol. 58, pp. 570, 571.
+
+---- ---- _Origin of the Paradise Lost_. North American Review, by L.E.
+Dubois, vol. 91, 1860, pp. 539-555.
+
+---- ---- _Plan of Paradise Lost_. New Englander, by Professor Himes,
+vol. 42, 1883, pp. 196-211.
+
+---- ---- _Prendeville's edition of Paradise Lost_. Blackwood's
+Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 47, 1840, pp. 691-716.
+
+---- ---- _Sorelli's Italian Translation of Paradise Lost_. Foreign
+Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1832, pp. 508-513.
+
+---- ---- _Theism of the Paradise Lost_. Unitarian Review, by H.
+Carpenter, vol. 5, pp. 302, etc.
+
+---- _Poetry of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 304-324.
+  --Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 34-64.
+  --Macmillan's Magazine, by J.R. Seeley, vol. 17, 1868, pp. 299-311;
+    vol. 19, pp. 407-421.
+  --Temple Bar, vol. 39, 1873, pp. 458-473.
+
+---- _Political Writings_. Nation, by Goldwin Smith, vol. 30, 1880,
+pp. 30-32.
+
+---- _Prose Writings of_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40, 1834, pp. 39-50.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 10 N.S., 1834, pp. 217-224.
+  --American Monthly Magazine, vol. 1 N.S., 1836, pp. 142-146.
+  --Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1849, pp. 507-521.
+  --Spectator, Oct. 3, 1885, pp. 1317, 1318.
+  --Athenæum, Sept. 20, 1884, pp. 359, 360.
+
+---- _Public Conduct of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 324-346.
+    --Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 48-64.
+
+---- _Relics of, at Cambridge_. Chambers's Journal, vol. 8, 1857, pp.
+319, 320.
+
+---- _Religious Life and Opinions of_. Bibliotheca Sacra, by A.D.
+Barber, vol. 16, 1859, pp. 557-603; vol. 17, pp. 1-42.
+
+---- _Rural Scenes of_. Fraser's Magazine, vol. 23, 1841, pp. 519-528.
+
+---- _Satan of._ Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 1, 1817, pp. 140-142.
+
+---- ---- _and Lucifer of Byron Compared._ Knickerbocker, vol. 30, 1847,
+pp. 150-155.
+
+---- ---- _Satan of Paradise Lost._ Dublin University Magazine, vol. 88,
+1876, pp. 707-714.
+
+---- _Select Prose Works._ Boston Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1842,
+pp. 322-342.
+
+---- _Shadow of the Puritan War in._ Catholic Presbyterian, by A.
+Macleod, vol. 9, 1883, pp. 169-176, 321-330.
+
+---- _Sonnets of, Pattison's edition._ Academy, by J.A. Noble, vol. 24,
+1883, pp. 57, 58.
+  --Saturday Review, vol. 56, 1883, pp. 252, 253.
+  --Spectator, Aug. 18, 1883, pp. 1062, 1063.
+  --Athenæum, Sept. 1, 1883, pp. 263-265.
+
+---- _Spenser, and Shakspere._ Victoria Magazine, vol. 25, 1875, pp.
+856-868, 1059-1065; vol. 26, pp. 24-31, 108-117.
+
+---- _State Papers relating to._ London Magazine, vol. 6 N.S., 1826,
+pp. 377-396.
+
+---- _Theology of._ Boston Monthly Magazine, vol. 1, 1825, pp. 489-491.
+
+---- _Todd's Life of._ Quarterly Review, vol. 36, 1827, pp. 29-61.
+  --Monthly Review, vol. 3 N.S., 1826, pp. 258-273.
+  --Museum of Foreign Literature, vol. 10, p. 67, etc.; vol. 11, pp. 114,
+    etc., 385, etc.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 3, 1827, pp. 33-40.
+
+---- _Treatise on Christian Doctrine._ Evangelical Magazine, vol. 4
+N.S., 1826, pp. 371-375.
+
+---- _versus Robert Montgomery._ Knickerbocker, vol. 3, 1834, pp.
+120-134.
+
+---- _Works of._ American Church Review, by J.H. Hanson, vol. 2, pp.
+153, etc.
+
+---- _Youth of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 111, 1860, pp. 312-347;
+  same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 65, pp. 579-597.
+  --Argosy, vol. 6, 1868, pp. 267-273.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.
+
+A Maske [Comus]                                                     1637
+
+Lycidas                                                             1638
+  (In _Justa Edouardo King Naufrago_)
+
+Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England                1641
+
+Of Prelatical Episcopacy                                            1641
+
+Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence against Smectymnuus   1641
+
+The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty               1641
+
+Apology against a Pamphlet called A Modest Confutation of the
+Animadversions, etc.                                                1641
+
+Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce                                  1643
+
+Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib                                  1644
+
+The Judgment of Martin Bucer, now Englisht                          1644
+
+Areopagitica                                                        1644
+
+Tetrachordon                                                        1644
+
+Colasterion                                                         1645
+
+Poems                                                               1645
+
+Tenure of Kings and Magistrates                                     1649
+
+Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels
+(_Articles of Peace_, etc.)                                         1649
+
+Eikonoklastes                                                       1649
+
+Pro populo Anglicano defensio contra Salmasium                      1651
+
+A Letter touching the Dissolution of the late Parliament            1653
+
+Pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda                               1654
+
+Scriptum Dom-Protectoris contra Hispanos                            1655
+
+Pro se defensio contra A. Morum                                     1655
+
+Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes                    1659
+
+Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings
+out of the Church                                                   1659
+
+Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth                 1660
+
+Paradise Lost                                                       1667
+
+Accedence commenc't Grammar                                         1669
+
+History of Britain                                                  1670
+
+Paradise Regained                                                   1671
+
+Samson Agonistes                                                    1671
+  (_With preceding work_)
+
+Artis Logicæ plenior Institutio                                     1672
+
+Of true Religion, Heresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means
+may be used against the growth of Popery                            1673
+
+Epistolarum familiarium liber                                       1674
+
+Declaration or Letters Patents of the Election of this present
+King of Poland, John the Third                                      1674
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Literæ Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, etc.                   1676
+
+Character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines in 1641    1681
+
+Brief History of Moscovia                                           1682
+
+Works [in prose]                                                    1697
+
+Historical, political, and miscellaneous works                      1698
+
+Original Letters and Papers of State addressed to Oliver Cromwell   1743
+
+De Doctrina Christiana                                              1825
+
+Common Place Book                                                   1876
+
+
+_Printed by _WALTER SCOTT_, Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne._
+
+
+
+
+
+_Crown 8vo, Cloth. Price 3s. 6d. per Vol.; Hlf. Mor. 6s. 6d._
+
+THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES.
+
+EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.
+
+_Most of the vols. will be illustrated, containing between 300 and 400
+pp. The first vol. will be issued on Oct. 25, 1889. Others to follow at
+short intervals._
+
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+
+The contemporary science series will bring within general reach of the
+English-speaking public the best that is known and thought in all
+departments of modern scientific research. The influence of the
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+accurate knowledge,--knowledge which is, in many departments, not yet
+open to the English reader. In the Contemporary Science Series all the
+questions of modern life--the various social and politico-economical
+problems of to-day, the most recent researches in the knowledge of man,
+the past and present experiences of the race, and the nature of its
+environment--will be frankly investigated and clearly presented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
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+
+THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and J. ARTHUR
+THOMSON. With 90 Illustrations, and about 300 pages. [_Now Ready._
+
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+Illustrations. [_Ready 25th November._
+
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+Illustrations. [_Ready 25th December._
+
+The following Writers, among others, are preparing volumes for this
+Series:--
+
+Prof. E.D. Cope, Prof. G.F. Fitzgerald, Prof. J. Geikie, G.L. Gomme,
+E.C.K. Gonner, Prof. J. Jastrow (Wisconsin), E Sidney Hartland, Prof.
+C.H. Herford, J. Bland Sutton, Dr. C. Mercier, Sidney Webb, Dr. Sims
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+
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+
+
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+"A most readable little work."--_Liverpool Mercury._
+
+LIFE OF COLERIDGE. By Hall Caine.
+"Brief and vigorous, written throughout with spirit and great literary
+skill."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF DICKENS. By Frank T. Marzials.
+"Notwithstanding the mass of matter that has been printed relating to
+Dickens and his works ... we should, until we came across this volume,
+have been at a loss to recommend any popular life of England's most
+popular novelist as being really satisfactory. The difficulty is removed
+by Mr. Marzials's little book."--_Athenæum._
+
+LIFE OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI By J. Knight.
+"Mr. Knight's picture of the great poet and painter is the fullest and
+best yet presented to the public."--_The Graphic._
+
+LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. By Colonel F. Grant.
+"Colonel Grant has performed his task with diligence, sound judgment
+good taste, and accuracy."--_Illustrated London News._
+
+LIFE OF DARWIN. By G.T. Bettany.
+"Mr. G.T. Bettany's _Life of Darwin_ is a sound and conscientious
+work."--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË. By A. Birrell.
+"Those who know much of Charlotte Brontë will learn more, and those who
+know nothing about her will find all that is best worth learning in Mr.
+Birrell's pleasant book."--_St. James' Gazette._
+
+LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. By R. Garnett, LL.D.
+"This is an admirable book. Nothing could be more felicitous and fairer
+than the way in which he takes us through Carlyle's life and
+works."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. By R.B. Haldane, M.P.
+"Written with a perspicuity seldom exemplified when dealing with
+economic science."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF KEATS. By W.M. Rossetti.
+"Valuable for the ample information which it contains."--_Cambridge
+Independent._
+
+LIFE OF SHELLEY. By William Sharp.
+"The criticisms ... entitle this capital monograph to be ranked with the
+best biographies of Shelley."--_Westminster Review._
+
+LIFE OF SMOLLETT. By David Hannay.
+"A capable record of a writer who still remains one of the great masters
+of the English novel"--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. By Austin Dobson.
+"The story of his literary and social life in London, with all its
+humorous and pathetic vicissitudes, is here retold, as none could tell
+it better."-_Daily News._
+
+LIFE OF SCOTT. By Professor Yonge.
+"For readers and lovers of the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott,
+this is a most enjoyable boot."--_Aberdeen Free Press._
+
+LIFE OF BURNS. By Professor Blackie.
+"The editor certainly made a hit when he persuaded Blackie to write
+about Burns."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+LIFE OF VICTOR HUGO-By Frank T. Marzials.
+"Mr. Marzials's volume presents to us, in a more handy form than any
+English, or even French handbook gives, the summary of what, up to the
+moment in which we write, is known or conjectured about the life of the
+great poet."--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF EMERSON. By Richard Garnett, LL.D.
+"As to the larger section of the public, ... no record of Emerson's life
+and work could be more desirable, both in breadth of treatment and
+lucidity of style, than Dr. Garnett's."--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF GOETHE. By James Sime.
+"Mr. James Sime's competence as a biographer of Goethe, both in respect
+of knowledge of his special subject, and of German literature generally,
+is beyond question."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+LIFE OF CONGREVE. By Edmund Gosse.
+"Mr. Gosse has written an admirable and most interesting biography of a
+man of letters who is of particular interest to other men of
+letters."-_The Academy._
+
+LIFE OF BUNYAN. By Canon Venables.
+"A most intelligent, appreciative, and valuable memoir."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF CRABBE. By T.E. Kebbel.
+"No English poet since Shakespeare has observed certain aspects of
+nature and of human life more closely; ... Mr. Kebbel's monograph is
+worthy of the subject."--_Athenæum._
+
+LIFE OF HEINE. By William Sharp.
+"This is an admirable monograph ... more fully written up to the level
+of recent knowledge and criticism of its theme than any other English
+work."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF MILL. By W.L. Courtney.
+"A most sympathetic and discriminating memoir."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+LIFE OF SCHILLER. By Henry W. Nevinson.
+"Presents the leading facts of the poet's life in a neatly rounded
+picture, and gives an adequate critical estimate of each of Schiller's
+separate works and the effect of the whole upon literature."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRYAT. By David Hannay.
+"We have nothing but praise for the manner in which Mr. Hannay has done
+justice to him whom he well calls 'one of the most brilliant and the
+least fairly recognised of English novelists.'"--_Saturday Review._
+
+Complete Bibliography to each volume, by J.P. ANDERSON, British Museum.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Volumes are in preparation by Goldwin Smith, Frederick Wedmore, Oscar
+Browning, Arthur Symons, W.E. Henley, Hermann Merivale, H.E. Watts, T.W.
+Rolleston, Cosmo Monkhouse, Dr. Garnett, Frank T. Marzials, W.H.
+Pollock, John Addington Symonds, Stepniak, etc., etc.
+
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+THOREAU'S WALDEN.                 Edited by W.H. Dircks.
+ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.              Edited by William Sharp.
+LANDOR'S CONVERSATIONS.           Edited by H. Ellis.
+PLUTARCH'S LIVES.                 Edited by B.J. Snell, M.A.
+RELIGIO MEDICI, &c.               Edited by J.A. Symonds.
+SHELLEY'S LETTERS.                Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+PROSE WRITINGS OF SWIFT.          Edited by W. Lewin.
+MY STUDY WINDOWS.                 Edited by R. Garnett, LL.D.
+GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS.           Edited by W. Sharp.
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+GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS.          Edited by E. Sharp.
+MARCUS AURELIUS.                  Edited by Alice Zimmern.
+SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA.         By Walt Whitman.
+WHITE'S SELBORNE.                 Edited by Richard Jefferies.
+DEFOE'S SINGLETON.                Edited by H. Halliday Sparling.
+MAZZINI'S ESSAYS.                 Edited by William Clarke.
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+REYNOLDS' DISCOURSES.             Edited by Helen Zimmern.
+PAPERS OF STEELE & ADDISON.       Edited by W. Lewin.
+BURNS'S LETTERS.                  Edited by J. Logie Robertson, M.A.
+VOLSUNGA SAGA.                    Edited by H.H. Sparling.
+SARTOR RESARTUS.                  Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+WRITINGS OF EMERSON.              Edited by Percival Chubb.
+SENECA'S MORALS.                  Edited by Walter Clode.
+DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.                By Walt Whitman.
+LIFE OF LORD HERBERT.             Edited by Will H. Dircks.
+ENGLISH PROSE.                    Edited by Arthur Gallon.
+IBSEN'S PILLARS OF SOCIETY.       Edited by H. Ellis.
+FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.             Edited by W.B. Yeats.
+EPICTETUS.                        Edited by T.W. Rolleston.
+THE ENGLISH POETS.                By James Russell Lowell.
+ESSAYS OF DR. JOHNSON.            Edited by Stuart T. Reid.
+ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.        Edited by F. Carr.
+LANDOR'S PENTAMERON, &c.          Edited by H. Ellis.
+POE'S TALES AND ESSAYS.           Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.               By Oliver Goldsmith.
+POLITICAL ORATIONS.               Edited by William Clarke.
+CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS.           Selected by C. Sayle.
+THOREAU'S WEEK.                   Edited by Will H. Dircks.
+STORIES from CARLETON.            Edited by W.B. Yeats.
+Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.  By O.W. Holmes.
+JANE EYRE.                        By Charlotte Brontë.
+
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+
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+
+KEBLE'S CHRISTIAN YEAR.
+COLERIDGE.                     Ed. by J. Skipsey.
+LONGFELLOW.                    Ed. by E. Hope.
+CAMPBELL.                      Ed. by J. Hogben.
+SHELLEY.                       Edited by J. Skipsey.
+WORDSWORTH.                    Edited by A.J. Symington.
+BLAKE.                         Ed. by Joseph Skipsey.
+WHITTIER.                      Ed. by Eva Hope.
+POE.                           Edited by Joseph Skipsey.
+CHATTERTON.                    Edited by John Richmond.
+BURNS. Poems}                    Edited by
+BURNS. Songs}                  Joseph Skipsey.
+MARLOWE.                       Ed. by P.E. Pinkerton.
+KEATS.                         Edited by John Hogben.
+HERBERT.                       Edited by E. Rhys.
+HUGO.                          Trans. by Dean Carrington.
+COWPER.                        Edited by Eva Hope.
+SHAKESPEARE.
+  Songs, Poems, and Sonnets.   Edited by William Sharp.
+EMERSON.                       Edited by W. Lewin.
+SONNETS of this CENTURY.       Edited by William Sharp.
+WHITMAN.                       Edited by E. Rhys.
+SCOTT. Marmion, etc.
+SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc.  Edited by William Sharp.
+PRAED.                         Edited by Fred. Cooper.
+HOGG.                          By his Daughter, Mrs Garden.
+GOLDSMITH.                     Ed. by W. Tirebuck.
+MACKAY'S LOVE LETTERS.
+SPENSER.                       Edited by Hon. R. Noel
+CHILDREN OF THE POETS.         Edited by Eric S. Robertson.
+JONSON.                        Edited by J.A. Symonds.
+BYRON (2 Vols.)                Ed. by M. Blind.
+THE SONNETS OF EUROPE.         Edited by S. Waddington.
+RAMSAY.                        Ed. by J.L. Robertson
+DOBELL.                        Edited by Mrs. Dobell.
+DAYS OF THE YEAR.              With Introduction by Wm. Sharp.
+POPE.                          Edited by John Hogben.
+HEINE.                         Edited by Mrs. Kroeker.
+BEAUMONT & FLETCHER.           Edited by J.S. Fletcher.
+BOWLES, LAMB, &c.              Edited by William Tirebuck.
+EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.          Edited by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon.
+SEA MUSIC.                     Edited by Mrs Sharp.
+HERRICK.                       Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+BALLADES AND RONDEAUS.         Edited by J. Gleeson White.
+IRISH MINSTRELSY.              Edited by H. Halliday Sparling.
+MILTON'S PARADISE LOST.        Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D.
+JACOBITE BALLADS.              Edited by G.S. Macquoid.
+AUSTRALIAN BALLADS.            Edited by D.B.W. Sladen, B.A.
+MOORE.                         Edited by John Dorrian.
+BORDER BALLADS.                Edited by Graham R. Tomson.
+SONG-TIDE.                     By P.B. Marston.
+ODES OF HORACE.                Translations by Sir S. de Vere, Bt.
+OSSIAN.                        Edited by G.E. Todd.
+ELFIN MUSIC.                   Ed. by A. Waite.
+SOUTHEY.                       Ed. by S.R. Thompson.
+CHAUCER.                       Edited by F.N. Paton.
+POEMS OF WILD LIFE.            Edited by Chas. G.D. Roberts, M.A.
+PARADISE REGAINED.             Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D.
+CRABBE.                        Edited by E. Lamplough.
+DORA GREENWELL.                Edited by William Dorling.
+FAUST.                         Edited by E. Craigmyle.
+AMERICAN SONNETS.              Edited by William Sharp.
+LANDOR'S POEMS.                Selected and Edited by E. Radford.
+GREEK ANTHOLOGY.               Edited by Graham R. Tomson.
+HUNT AND HOOD.                 Edited by J. Harwood Panting.
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+_Crown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2s. 6d. per vol.
+Half-polished Morocco, gilt top, 5s._
+
+COUNT TOLSTOÏ'S WORKS.
+
+Arrangements have been made to publish, in Monthly Volumes, a series of
+translations of works by the eminent Russian Novelist, Count Lyof. N.
+Tolstoï. The English reading public will be introduced to an entirely
+new series of works by one who is probably the greatest living master of
+fiction in Europe. To those unfamiliar with the charm of Russian
+fiction, and especially with the works of Count Tolstoï, these volumes
+will come as a new revelation of power.
+
+_The following Volumes are already issued_--
+
+A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR.
+THE COSSACKS.
+IVAN ILYITCH, AND OTHER STORIES.
+THE INVADERS, AND OTHER STORIES.
+MY RELIGION.
+LIFE.
+MY CONFESSION.
+CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH.
+THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR.
+ANNA KARÉNINA. (2 VOLS.)
+WHAT TO DO?
+WAR AND PEACE. (4 VOLS.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Ready November 25th._
+
+THE LONG EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES FOR CHILDREN.
+
+OTHERS TO FOLLOW.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+Small Crown 8vo.
+Printed on Antique Laid Paper. Cloth Elegant, Gilt Edges, Price 3/6.
+
+SUMMER LEGENDS.
+
+BY RUDOLPH BAUMBACH.
+
+TRANSLATED BY MRS. HELEN B. DOLE.
+
+This is a collection of charming fanciful stories translated from the
+German. In Germany they have enjoyed remarkable popularity, a large
+number of editions having been sold. Rudolph Baumbach deals with a
+wonderland which is all his own, though he suggests Hans Andersen in his
+simplicity of treatment, and Heine in his delicacy, grace, and humour.
+These are stories which will appeal vividly to the childish imagination,
+while the older reader will discern the satirical or humorous
+application that underlies them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane.
+
+
+
+
+Windsor Series of Poetical Anthologies.
+
+_Printed on Antique Paper. Crown 8vo. Bound in Blue Cloth, each with
+suitable Emblematic Design on Cover, Price 3s. 6d. Also in various Calf
+and Morocco Bindings._
+
+
+Women's Voices. An Anthology of the most Characteristic Poems by
+English, Scotch, and Irish Women. Edited by Mrs. William Sharp.
+
+Sonnets of this Century. With an Exhaustive Essay on the Sonnet. Edited
+by Wm. Sharp.
+
+The Children of the Poets. An Anthology from English and American
+Writers of Three Centuries. Edited by Professor Eric S. Robertson.
+
+Sacred Song. A Volume of Religious Verse. Selected and arranged by
+Samuel Waddington.
+
+A Century of Australian Song. Selected and Edited by Douglas B.W.
+Sladen, B.A., Oxon.
+
+Jacobite Songs and Ballads. Selected and Edited, with Notes, by G.S.
+Macquoid.
+
+Irish Minstrelsy. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by H. Halliday
+Sparling.
+
+The Sonnets of Europe. A Volume of Translations. Selected and arranged
+by Samuel Waddington.
+
+Early English and Scottish Poetry. Selected and Edited by H. Macaulay
+Fitzgibbon.
+
+Ballads of the North Countrie. Edited, with Introduction, by Graham R.
+Tomson.
+
+Songs and Poems of the Sea. An Anthology of Poems Descriptive of the
+Sea. Edited by Mrs. William Sharp.
+
+Songs and Poems of Fairyland. An Anthology of English Fairy Poetry,
+selected and arranged, with an Introduction, by Arthur Edward Waite.
+
+Songs and Poems of the Great Dominion. Edited by W.D. Lighthall, of
+Montreal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+_RECENT VOLUMES OF VERSE._
+
+
+Edition de Luxe. Crown 4to, on Antique Paper, Price 12s. 6d.
+SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY.
+BY WILLIAM SHARP.
+
+Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, Price 3s. 6d. each.
+IN FANCY DRESS.
+"IT IS THYSELF."
+BY MARK ANDRE RAFFALOVICH.
+
+Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, Price 3s. 6d.
+CAROLS FROM THE COAL-FIELDS: AND OTHER SONGS AND BALLADS.
+BY JOSEPH SKIPSEY.
+
+Cloth Gilt, Price 3s.
+LAST YEAR'S LEAVES.
+BY JOHN JERVIS BERESFORD, M.A.
+
+Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, Price 3s. 6d.
+BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS.
+BY GEORGE ROBERTS HEDLEY.
+
+Fourth Edition, Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, Price 3s. 6d.
+TALES AND BALLADS OF WEARSIDE.
+BY JOHN GREEN.
+
+Second Edition. Price 3s.
+ROMANTIC BALLADS AND POEMS OF PHANTASY.
+BY WILLIAM SHARP.
+
+Parchment Limp, 3s.
+DEATH'S DISGUISES AND OTHER SONNETS.
+BY FRANK T. MARZIALS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+NEW BOOKLETS.
+
+_Crown 8vo, in White Embossed Boards, Gilt Lettering,
+One Shilling each._
+
+BY COUNT LEO TOLSTOÏ.
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO.
+THE TWO PILGRIMS.
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY.
+
+Published originally in Russia, as tracts for the people, these little
+stories, which Mr. Walter Scott will issue separately early in February,
+in "booklet" form, possess all the grace, naïveté, and power which
+characterise the work of Count Tolstoï, and while inculcating in the
+most penetrating way the Christian ideas of love, humility, and charity,
+are perfect in their art form as stories pure and simple.
+
+_ADAPTED FOR PRESENTATION AT EASTER._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of John Milton, by Richard Garnett
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of John Milton, by Richard Garnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life of John Milton
+
+Author: Richard Garnett
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2005 [EBook #16757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN MILTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Louise Pryor and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+Produced from page images provided by Internet
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+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a><span class="pagenum">1</span></p>
+<p class="center large bolder">"Great Writers."</p>
+
+<p class="center littler">EDITED BY</p>
+
+<p class="center">PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A.</p>
+
+<hr  />
+
+<h1 class="large unbold">LIFE OF MILTON.</h1>
+
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a><span class="pagenum">2</span></p>
+<p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a><br /><span class="pagenum">3</span></p>
+<p class="center larger gap">LIFE</p>
+
+<p class="center little">OF</p>
+
+<p class="center largest">JOHN MILTON</p>
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">BY</p>
+
+<p class="center large">RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D.</p>
+
+<hr class="biggap" />
+
+<p class="center little biggap">LONDON</p>
+
+<p class="center">WALTER SCOTT, 24, WARWICK LANE</p>
+
+<p class="center">1890</p>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>All rights reserved</i>.)
+</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a><span class="pagenum">4</span></p>
+<p><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a><br /><span class="pagenum">5</span></p>
+<p class="center biggap larger">NOTE.</p>
+
+
+<p>The number of miniature "Lives" of Milton is great; great also is the
+merit of some of them. With one exception, nevertheless, they are all
+dismissed to the shelf by the publication of Professor Masson's
+monumental and authoritative biography, without perpetual reference to
+which no satisfactory memoir can henceforth be composed. One recent
+biography has enjoyed this advantage. Its author, the late Mark
+Pattison, wanted neither this nor any other qualification except a
+keener sense of the importance of the religious and political
+controversies of Milton's time. His indifference to matters so momentous
+in Milton's own estimation has, in our opinion, vitiated his conception
+of his hero, who is represented as persistently yielding to party what
+was meant for mankind. We think, on the contrary, that such a mere man
+of letters as Pattison wishes that Milton had been, could never have
+produced a "Paradise Lost." If this view is well-founded, there is not
+only room but need for yet another miniature "Life of Milton,"
+notwithstanding the intellectual subtlety <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a><span class="pagenum">6</span>and scholarly refinement
+which render Pattison's memorable. It should be noted that the recent
+German biography by Stern, if adding little to Professor Masson's facts,
+contributes much valuable literary illustration; and that Keighley's
+analysis of Milton's opinions occupies a position of its own, of which
+no subsequent biographical discoveries can deprive it. The present
+writer has further to express his deep obligations to Professor Masson
+for his great kindness in reading and remarking upon the proofs&mdash;not
+thereby rendering himself responsible for anything in these pages; and
+also to the helpful friend who has provided him with an index.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  />
+<p><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a><span class="pagenum">7</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+  <li>CHAPTER I. <span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></span>
+<p>Milton born in Bread Street, Cheapside, December 9, 1608;
+condition of English literature at his birth; part in its
+development assigned to him; materials available for his
+biography; his ancestry; his father; influences that surrounded
+his boyhood; enters St. Paul's School, 1620; distinguished for
+compositions in prose and verse; matriculates at Cambridge, 1625;
+condition of the University at the period; his misunderstandings
+with his tutor; graduates B.A., 1629, M.A., 1632; his relations
+with the University; declines to take orders or follow a
+profession; his first poems; retires to Horton, in
+Buckinghamshire, where his father had settled, 1632.  </p>
+  </li>
+
+<li>CHAPTER II. <span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></span>
+
+<p>Horton, its scenery and associations with Milton; Milton's studies
+and poetical aspirations; exceptional nature of his poetical
+development; his Latin poems; "Arcades" and "Comus" composed and
+represented at the instance of Henry Lawes, 1633 and 1634; "Comus"
+printed in 1637; Sir Henry Wootton's opinion of it; "Lycidas"
+written in the same year, on occasion of the death of Edward King;
+published in 1638; criticism on "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso,"
+"Lycidas" and "Comus"; Milton's departure for Italy, April, 1638.
+</p>
+</li>
+
+
+
+<li><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a><span
+class="pagenum">8</span>CHAPTER III. <span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></span>
+
+<p>State of Italy at the period of Milton's visit; his acquaintance
+with Italian literati at Florence; visit to Galileo; at Rome and
+Naples; returns to England, July, 1639; settles in St. Bride's
+Churchyard, and devotes himself to the education of his nephews;
+his elegy on his friend Diodati; removes to Aldersgate Street,
+1640; his pamphlets on ecclesiastical affairs, 1641 and 1642; his
+tract on Education his "Areopagitica," November, 1644; attacks the
+Presbyterians.</p>
+</li>
+
+<li>CHAPTER IV.<span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></span>
+
+<p>Milton as a Parliamentarian; his sonnet, "When the Assault was
+intended to the City," November, 1642; goes on a visit to the
+Powell family in Oxfordshire, and returns with Mary Powell as his
+wife, May and June, 1643; his domestic unhappiness; Mary Milton
+leaves him, and refuses to return, July to September, 1643;
+publication of his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," August,
+1643, and February, 1644; his father comes to live with him; he
+takes additional pupils; his system of education; he courts the
+daughter of Dr. Davis; his wife, alarmed, returns, and is
+reconciled to him, August, 1645; he removes to the Barbican,
+September, 1645; publication of his collected poems, January,
+1646; he receives his wife's relatives under his roof; death of
+his father, March, 1647; he writes "The Tenure of Kings and
+Magistrates," February, 1649; becomes Latin Secretary to the
+Commonwealth, March, 1649.
+</p>
+</li>
+
+<li>CHAPTER V.<span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></span>
+
+<p>Milton's duties as Latin Secretary; he drafts manifesto on the
+state of Ireland; occasionally employed as licenser of the press;
+commissioned to answer "Eikon Basilike"; controversy on the
+authorship of this work; Milton's "Eikonoklastes" published,
+October, 1649; Salmasius and his "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I.";
+Milton undertakes to answer Salmasius, February, 1650; publication
+of his "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio," March, 1651; character and
+complete controversial success of this work; Milton becomes
+totally blind, March, 1652; his wife dies, <a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a><span class="pagenum">9</span>leaving him three
+daughters, May, 1652; his controversy with Morus and other
+defenders of Salmasius, 1652-1655; his characters of the eminent
+men of the Commonwealth; adheres to Cromwell; his views on
+politics; general character of his official writings: his marriage
+to Elizabeth Woodcock, and death of his wife, November,
+1656-March, 1658; his nephews; his friends and recreations.
+</p>
+</li>
+
+<li>CHAPTER VI.<span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></span>
+
+<p>Milton's poetical projects after his return from Italy; drafts of
+"Paradise Lost" among them; the poem originally designed as a
+masque or miracle-play; commenced as an epic in 1658; its
+composition speedily interrupted by ecclesiastical and political
+controversies; Milton's "Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical
+Causes," and "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove
+Hirelings out of the Church"; Royalist reaction in the winter of
+1659-60; Milton writes his "Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free
+Commonwealth"; conceals himself in anticipation of the
+Restoration, May 7, 1660; his writings ordered to be burned by the
+hangman, June 16; escapes proscription, nevertheless; arrested by
+the Serjeant-at-Arms, but released by order of the Commons,
+December 15; removes to Holborn; his pecuniary losses and
+misfortunes; the undutiful behaviour of his daughters; marries
+Elizabeth Minshull, February, 1663; lives successively in Jewin
+Street and in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields; particulars of his
+private life; "Paradise Lost" completed in or about 1663;
+agreement for its publication with Samuel Symmons; difficulties
+with the licenser; poem published in August, 1667.
+</p>
+</li>
+
+<li>CHAPTER VII. <span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></span>
+
+
+<p>Place of "Paradise Lost" among the great epics of the world; not
+rendered obsolete by changes in belief; the inevitable defects of
+its plan compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion
+of his age; Milton's conception of the physical universe; his
+theology; magnificence of his poetry; his similes; his
+descriptions of Paradise; inevitable falling off of the later
+books; minor critical objections mostly groundless; his diction;
+his indebtedness to other <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a><span class="pagenum">10</span>poets for thoughts as well as phrases;
+this is not plagiarism; his versification; his Satan compared with
+Calderon's Lucifer; plan of his epic, whether in any way suggested
+by Andreini, Vondel, or Ochino; his majestic and unique position
+in English poetry.</p>
+</li>
+
+<li>CHAPTER VIII.<span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></span>
+
+<p>Milton's migration to Chalfont St. Giles to escape the plague in
+London, July, 1665; subject of "Paradise Regained" suggested to
+him by the Quaker Ellwood; his losses by the Great Fire, 1666;
+first edition of "Paradise Lost" entirely sold by April, 1669;
+"Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes" published, 1671;
+criticism on these poems; Samson partly a personification of
+Milton himself, partly of the English people; Milton's life in
+Bunhill Fields; his daughters live apart from him; Dryden adapts
+"Paradise Lost" as an opera; Milton's "History of Britain," 1670;
+second editions of his poems, 1673, and of "Paradise Lost," 1674;
+his "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"; fate of the manuscript;
+Milton's mature religious opinions; his death and burial, 1674;
+subsequent history of his widow and descendants; his personal
+character.
+</p>
+</li>
+
+<li>INDEX <span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>BIBLIOGRAPHY <span style="font-size:80%">(<i>by John P. Anderson</i>)</span><span class="tocno"><a href="#Page_i">i</a></span>
+</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr />
+<p><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a><span class="pagenum">11</span></p>
+<p class="center larger gap">LIFE OF MILTON.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<h2 style="margin-top:2em;"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, when Shakespeare had lately
+produced "Antony and Cleopatra," when Bacon was writing his "Wisdom of
+the Ancients" and Ralegh his "History of the World," when the English
+Bible was hastening into print; when, nevertheless, in the opinion of
+most foreigners and many natives, England was intellectually unpolished,
+and her literature almost barbarous.</p>
+
+<p>The preposterousness of this judgment as a whole must not blind us to
+the fragment of truth which it included. England's literature was, in
+many respects, very imperfect and chaotic. Her "singing masons" had
+already built her "roofs of gold"; Hooker and one or two other great
+prose-writers stood like towers: but the less exalted portions of the
+edifice were still half hewn. Some literatures, like the Latin and the
+French, rise gradually to the crest of their perfection; others, like
+the Greek and the English, place themselves almost from the first on
+their loftiest pinnacle, leaving vast gaps to be subsequently filled in.
+Homer was not less the supreme <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a><span class="pagenum">12</span>poet because history was for him
+literally an old song, because he would have lacked understanding for
+Plato and relish for Aristophanes. Nor were Shakespeare and the
+translators of the Bible less at the head of European literature because
+they must have failed as conspicuously as Homer would have failed in all
+things save those to which they had a call, which chanced to be the
+greatest. Literature, however, cannot remain isolated at such altitudes,
+it must expand or perish. As Homer's epic passed through Pindar and the
+lyrical poets into drama history and philosophy, continually fitting
+itself more and more to become an instrument in the ordinary affairs of
+life, so it was needful that English lettered discourse should become
+popular and pliant, a power in the State as well as in the study. The
+magnitude of the change, from the time when the palm of popularity
+decorated Sidney's "Arcadia" to that when it adorned Defoe and Bunyan,
+would impress us even more powerfully if the interval were not engrossed
+by a colossal figure, the last of the old school in the erudite
+magnificence of his style in prose and verse; the first of the new,
+inasmuch as English poetry, hitherto romantic, became in his hands
+classical. This "splendid bridge from the old world to the new," as
+Gibbon has been called in a different connection, was John Milton: whose
+character and life-work, carefully analyzed, resolve themselves into
+pairs of equally vivid contrasts. A stern Puritan, he is none the less a
+freethinker in the highest and best sense of the term. The recipient of
+direct poetical inspiration in a measure vouchsafed to few, he
+notwithstanding studies to make himself a poet; writes <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a><span class="pagenum">13</span>little until no
+other occupation than writing remains to him; and, in general, while
+exhibiting even more than the usual confidence, shows less than the
+usual exultation and affluence of conscious genius. Professing to
+recognize his life's work in poetry, he nevertheless suffers himself to
+be diverted for many a long year into political and theological
+controversy, to the scandal and compassion of one of his most competent
+and attached biographers. Whether this biographer is right or wrong, is
+a most interesting subject for discussion. We deem him wrong, and shall
+not cease to reiterate that Milton would not have been Milton if he
+could have forgotten the citizen in the man of letters. Happy, at all
+events, it is that this and similar problems occupy in Milton's life the
+space which too frequently has to be spent upon the removal of
+misconception, or the refutation of calumny. Little of a sordid sort
+disturbs the sentiment of solemn reverence with which, more even than
+Shakespeare's, his life is approached by his countrymen; a feeling
+doubtless mainly due to the sacred nature of his principal theme, but
+equally merited by the religious consecration of his whole existence. It
+is the easier for the biographer to maintain this reverential attitude,
+inasmuch as the prayer of Agur has been fulfilled in him, he has been
+given neither poverty nor riches. He is not called upon to deal with an
+enormous mass of material, too extensive to arrange, yet too important
+to neglect. Nor is he, like Shakespeare's biographer, reduced to choose
+between the starvation of nescience and the windy diet of conjecture. If
+a humbling thought intrudes, it is how largely he is <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a><span class="pagenum">14</span>indebted to a
+devoted diligence he never could have emulated; how painfully Professor
+Masson's successors must resemble the Turk who builds his cabin out of
+Grecian or Roman ruins.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's genealogy has taxed the zeal and acumen of many investigators.
+He himself merely claims a respectable ancestry (<i>ex genere honesto</i>).
+His nephew Phillips professed to have come upon the root of the family
+tree at Great Milton, in Oxfordshire, where tombs attested the residence
+of the clan, and tradition its proscription and impoverishment in the
+Wars of the Roses. Monuments, station, and confiscation have vanished
+before the scrutiny of the Rev. Joseph Hunter; it can only be safely
+concluded that Milton's ancestors dwelt in or near the village of
+Holton, by Shotover Forest, in Oxfordshire, and that their rank in life
+was probably that of yeomen. Notwithstanding Aubrey's statement that
+Milton's grandfather's name was John, Mr. Hyde Clarke's researches in
+the registers of the Scriveners' Company have proved that Mr. Hunter and
+Professor Masson were right in identifying him with Richard Milton, of
+Stanton St. John, near Holton; and Professor Masson has traced the
+family a generation further back to Henry Milton, whose will, dated
+November 21, 1558, attests a condition of plain comfort, nearer poverty
+than riches. Henry Milton's goods at his death were inventoried at &pound;6
+19s.; when his widow's will is proved, two years afterwards, the
+estimate is &pound;7 4s. 4d. Richard, his son, is stated, but not proved, to
+have been an under-ranger of Shotover Forest. He appears to have married
+a widow named Jeffrey, whose maiden name had been Haughton, <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a><span class="pagenum">15</span>and who had
+some connection with a Cheshire family of station. He would also seem to
+have improved his circumstances by the match, which may account for the
+superior education of his son John, whose birth is fixed by an affidavit
+to 1562 or 1563. Aubrey, indeed, next to Phillips and Milton himself,
+the chief contemporary authority, says that he was for a time at Christ
+Church, Oxford&mdash;a statement in itself improbable, but slightly confirmed
+by his apparent acquaintance with Latin, and the family tradition that
+his course of life was diverted by a quarrel with his father. Queen
+Mary's stakes and faggots had not affected Richard Milton as they
+affected most Englishmen. Though churchwarden in 1582, he must have
+continued to adhere to the ancient faith, for he was twice fined for
+recusancy in 1601, which lends credit to the statement that his son was
+cast off by him for Protestantism. "Found him reading the Bible in his
+chamber," says Aubrey, who adds that the younger Milton never was a
+scrivener's apprentice; but this is shown to be an error by Mr. Hyde
+Clarke's discovery of his admission to the Scriveners' Company in 1599,
+where he is stated to have been apprentice to James Colborn. Colborn
+himself had been only four years in business, instead of the seven which
+would usually be required for an apprentice to serve out his
+indenture&mdash;which suggests that some formalities may have been dispensed
+with on account of John Milton's age. A scrivener was a kind of cross
+between an attorney and a law stationer, whose principal business was
+the preparation of deeds, "to be well and truly done after my learning,
+skill, and science,"<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a><span class="pagenum">16</span> and with due regard to the interests of more
+exalted personages. "Neither for haste nor covetousness I shall take
+upon me to make any deed whereof I have not cunning, without good advice
+and information of counsel." Such a calling offered excellent
+opportunities for investments; and John Milton, a man of strict
+integrity and frugality, came to possess a "plentiful estate." Among his
+possessions was the house in Bread Street destroyed in the Great Fire.
+The tenement where the poet was born, being a shop, required a sign, for
+which he chose The Spread Eagle, either from the crest of such among the
+Miltons as had a right to bear arms, among whom he may have reckoned
+himself; or as the device of the Scriveners' Company. He had been
+married about 1600 to a lady whose name has been but lately ascertained
+to have been Sarah Jeffrey. John Milton the younger was the third of six
+children, only three of whom survived infancy. He grew up between a
+sister, Anne, several years older, and a brother, Christopher, seven
+years younger than himself.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's birth and nurture were thus in the centre of London; but the
+London of that day had not half the population of the Liverpool of ours.
+Even now the fragrance of the hay in far-off meadows may be inhaled in
+Bread Street on a balmy summer's night; then the meadows were near the
+doors, and the undefiled sky was reflected by an unpolluted stream.
+There seems no reason to conclude that Milton, in his early boyhood,
+enjoyed any further opportunities of resort to rural scenery than the
+vicinity of London could afford; but if the city is his native element,
+natural beauty never <a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a><span class="pagenum">17</span>appeals to him in vain. Yet the influences which
+moulded his childhood must have been rather moral and intellectual than
+merely <span class="together">natural:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>played a greater part in the education of this poet than</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The murmur of the unreposing brooks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the green light which, shifting overhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Paramount to all other influences must have been the character of his
+father, a "mute" but by no means an "inglorious" Milton, the preface and
+foreshadowing of the son. His great step in life had set the son the
+example from which the latter never swerved, and from him the younger
+Milton derived not only the independence of thought which was to lead
+him into moral and social heresy, and the fidelity to principle which
+was to make him the Abdiel of the Commonwealth, but no mean share of his
+poetical faculty also. His mastery of verbal harmony was but a new phase
+of his father's mastery of music, which he himself recognizes as the
+complement of his own poetical <span class="together">gift:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ipse volens Ph&oelig;bus se dispertire duobus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As a composer, the circumspect, and, as many no doubt thought prosaic
+scrivener, took rank among the <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a><span class="pagenum">18</span>best of his day. One of his
+compositions, now lost, was rewarded with a gold medal by a Polish
+prince (Aubrey says the Landgrave of Hesse), and he appears among the
+contributors to <i>The Triumphs of Oriana</i>, a set of twenty-five madrigals
+composed in honour of Queen Elizabeth. "The Teares and Lamentations of a
+Sorrowful Soule"&mdash;dolorous sacred songs, Professor Masson calls
+them&mdash;were, according to their editor, the production of "famous
+artists," among whom Byrd, Bull, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, certainly
+figure, and three of them were composed by the elder Milton. He also
+harmonized the Norwich and York psalm tunes, which were adapted to six
+of the Psalms in Ravenscroft's Collection. Such performance bespeaks not
+only musical accomplishment, but a refined nature; and we may well
+believe that Milton's love of learning, as well as his love of music,
+was hereditary in its origin, and fostered by his contact with his
+father. Aubrey distinctly affirms that Milton's skill on the organ was
+directly imparted to him by his father, and there would be nothing
+surprising if the first rudiments of knowledge were also instilled by
+him. Poetry he may have taught by precept, but the one extant specimen
+of his Muse is enough to prove that he could never have taught it by
+example.</p>
+
+<p>We have therefore to picture Milton growing up in a narrow street amid a
+strict Puritan household, but not secluded from the influences of nature
+or uncheered by melodious recreations; and tenderly watched over by
+exemplary parents&mdash;a mother noted, he tells us, for her charities among
+her neighbours, and a father who had discerned his promise from the very
+first. Given this <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a><span class="pagenum">19</span>perception in the head of a religious household, it
+almost followed in that age that the future poet should receive the
+education of a divine. Happily, the sacerdotal caste had ceased to
+exist, and the education of a clergyman meant not that of a priest, but
+that of a scholar. Milton was instructed daily, he says, both at grammar
+schools and under private masters, "as my age would suffer," he adds, in
+acknowledgment of his father's considerateness. Like Disraeli two
+centuries afterwards (perhaps the single point of resemblance), he went
+for schooling to a Nonconformist in Essex, "who," says Aubrey, "cut his
+hair short." His own hair? or his pupil's? queries Biography. We boldly
+reply, Both. Undoubtedly Milton's hair is short in the miniature painted
+of him at the age of ten by, as is believed, Cornelius Jansen. A
+thoughtful little face, that of a well-nurtured, towardly boy; lacking
+the poetry and spirituality of the portrait of eleven years later, where
+the long hair flows down upon the ruff.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving his Essex pedagogue, Milton came under the private tuition
+of Thomas Young, a Scotchman from St. Andrews, who afterwards rose to be
+master of Jesus College, Cambridge. It would appear from the elegies
+subsequently addressed to him by his pupil that he first taught Milton
+to write Latin verse. This instruction was no doubt intended to be
+preliminary to the youth's entrance at St. Paul's School, where he must
+have been admitted by 1620 at the latest.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of Milton's entry, St. Paul's stood high among the schools
+of the metropolis, competing with Merchant Taylors', Westminster, and
+the now extinct St. Anthony's. The headmaster, Dr. Gill, was an
+<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a><span class="pagenum">20</span>admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping
+fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the
+systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's schoolmaster
+when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom Fuller approvingly
+records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon
+where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed
+with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing
+than mitigating his severity on their offending children." Milton's
+father, though by no means "cockering," would not have tolerated such
+discipline, and the passionate ardour with which Milton threw himself
+into the studious life of the school is the best proof that he was
+exempt from tyranny. "From the twelfth year of my age," he says, "I
+scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight." The ordinary
+school tasks cannot have exacted so much time from so gifted a boy: he
+must have read largely outside the regular curriculum, and probably he
+practised himself diligently in Latin verse. For this he would have the
+prompting, and perhaps the aid, of the younger Gill, assistant to his
+father, who, while at the University, had especially distinguished
+himself by his skill in versification. Gill must also have been a man of
+letters, affable and communicative, for Milton in after-years reminds
+him of their "almost constant conversations," and declares that he had
+never left his company without a manifest accession of literary
+knowledge. The Latin school exercises have perished, but two English
+productions of the period, paraphrases of Psalms executed at fifteen,
+remain to <a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a><span class="pagenum">21</span>attest the boy's proficiency in contemporary English
+literature. Some of the unconscious borrowings attributed to him are
+probably mere coincidences, but there is still enough to evince
+acquaintance with "Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer,
+Fairfax, and Buchanan." The literary merit of these versions seems to us
+to have been underrated. There may be no individual phrase beyond the
+compass of an apt and sensitive boy with a turn for verse-making; but
+the general tone is masculine and emphatic. There is not much to say,
+but what is said is delivered with a "large utterance," prophetic of the
+"os magna soniturum," and justifying his own report of his youthful
+promise:&mdash;"It was found that whether aught was imposed me by them that
+had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice, in English or
+other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly by this latter, the style,
+by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live."</p>
+
+<p>Among the incidents of Milton's life at St. Paul's School should not be
+forgotten his friendship with Charles Diodati, the son of a Genevese
+physician settled in England, whose father had been exiled from Italy
+for his Protestantism. A friendship memorable not only as Milton's
+tenderest and his first, but as one which quickened his instinctive love
+of Italian literature, enhanced the pleasure, if it did not suggest the
+undertaking, of his Italian pilgrimage, and doubtless helped to inspire
+the execration which he launched in after years against the slayers of
+the Vaudois. The Italian language is named by him among three which,
+about the time of his migration to the University, he had added to the
+<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a><span class="pagenum">22</span>classical and the vernacular, the other two being French and Hebrew. It
+has been remarked, however, that his use of "Penseroso," incorrect both
+in orthography and signification, shows that prior to his visit to Italy
+he was unacquainted with the niceties of the language. He entered as "a
+lesser pensioner" at Christ's College, Cambridge, on February 12, 1625;
+the greatest poetic name in an University roll already including
+Spenser, and destined to include Dryden, Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+Byron, and Tennyson. Why Oxford was not preferred has been much debated.
+The father may have taken advice from the younger Gill, whose Liberalism
+had got him into trouble at that University. He may also have been
+unwilling to place his son in the neighbourhood of his estranged
+relatives. Shortly before Milton's matriculation his sister had married
+Mr. Edward Phillips, of the office of the Clerk of the Crown, now
+abolished, then charged with the issue of Parliamentary and judicial
+writs. From this marriage were to spring the young men who were to find
+an instructor in Milton, as he in one of them a biographer.</p>
+
+<p>The external aspect of Milton's Cambridge is probably not ill
+represented by Lyne's coloured map of half a century earlier, now
+exhibited in the King's Library at the British Museum. Piles of stately
+architecture, from King's College Chapel downward, tower all about, over
+narrow, tortuous, pebble-paved streets, bordered with diminutive,
+white-fronted, red-tiled dwellings, mere dolls' houses in comparison. So
+modest, however, is the chartographer's standard, that a flowery Latin
+inscription assures the men of Cambridge <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a><span class="pagenum">23</span>they need but divert
+Trumpington Brook into Clare Ditch to render their town as elegant as
+any in the universe. Sheep and swine perambulate the environs, and green
+spaces are interspersed among the colleges, sparsely set with trees, so
+pollarded as to justify Milton's taunt when in an ill-humour with his
+ <span class="together">university:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quam male Ph&oelig;bicolis convenit ille locus!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His own college stands conspicuous at the meeting of three ways, aptly
+suggestive of Hecate and infernal things. Its spiritual and intellectual
+physiognomy, and that of the university in general, must be learned from
+the exhaustive pages of Professor Masson. A book unpublished when he
+wrote, Ball's life of Dr. John Preston, Master of Emmanuel, vestige of
+an entire continent of submerged Puritanism, also contributes much to
+the appreciation of the place and time. We can here but briefly
+characterize the University as an institution undergoing modification,
+rather by the decay of the old than by the intrusion of the new. The
+revolution by which mathematics became the principal instrument of
+culture was still to be deferred forty years. Milton, who tells us that
+he delighted in mathematics, might have been nearly ignorant of that
+subject if he pleased, and hardly could become proficient in it by the
+help of his Alma Mater. The scholastic philosophy, however, still
+reigned. But even here tradition was shaky and undermined; and in
+matters of discipline the rigid code which nominally <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a><span class="pagenum">24</span>governed the
+University was practically much relaxed. The teaching staff was
+respectable in character and ability, including many future bishops. But
+while the academical credentials of the tutors were unimpeachable,
+perhaps not one among them all could show a commission from the Spirit.
+No one then at Cambridge seems to have been in the least degree capable
+of arousing enthusiasm. It might not indeed have been easy for a Newman
+or a Green to captivate the independent soul of Milton, even at this
+susceptible period of his life; failing any approach to such external
+influence, he would be likely to leave Cambridge the same man as he
+entered it. Ere, indeed, he had completed a year's residence, his
+studies were interrupted by a temporary rupture with the University,
+probably attributable to his having been at first placed under an
+uncongenial tutor. William Chappell was an Arminian and a tool of Laud,
+who afterwards procured him preferment in Ireland, and, as Professor
+Masson judges from his treatise on homiletics, "a man of dry, meagre
+nature." His relations with such a pupil could not well be harmonious;
+and Aubrey charges him with unkindness, a vague accusation rendered
+tangible by the interlined gloss, "Whipt him." Hence the legend, so dear
+to Johnson, that Milton was the last man to be flogged at college. But
+Aubrey can hardly mean anything more than that Chappell on some occasion
+struck or beat his pupil, and this interpretation is supported by
+Milton's verses to Diodati, written in the spring of 1626, in which,
+while acknowledging that he had been directed to withdraw from Cambridge
+("<i>nec dudum vetiti me<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a><span class="pagenum">25</span> laris angit amor</i>") he expresses his intention
+of speedily  <span class="together">returning:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Atque iterum raucae murmur adire scholae."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A short rustication would be just the notice the University would be
+likely to take of the conduct of a pupil who had been engaged in a
+scuffle with his tutor, in which the fault was not wholly or chiefly
+his. Formal corporal punishment would have rendered rustication
+unnecessary. That Milton was not thought wholly in the wrong appears
+from his not having been mulcted of a term's residence, his absence
+notwithstanding, and from the still more significant fact that Chappell
+lost his pupil. His successor was Nathaniel Tovey, in whom his
+patroness, the Countess of Bedford, had discerned "excellent talent."
+What Milton thought of him there is nothing to show.</p>
+
+<p>This temporary interruption of the smoothness of Milton's University
+life occurred, as has been seen, quite early in its course. Had it
+indeed implied a stigma upon him or the University, the blot would in
+either case have been effaced by the perfect regularity of his
+subsequent career. He went steadily through the academic course, which
+to attain the degree of Master of Arts, then required seven years'
+residence. He graduated as Bachelor at the proper time, March, 1629, and
+proceeded Master in July, 1632. His general relations with the
+University during the period may be gathered partly from his own account
+in after years, when perhaps he in some degree<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a><span class="pagenum">26</span> "confounded the present
+feelings with the past," partly from a remarkable passage in one of his
+academical exercises, fortunately preserved to us, the importance of
+which was first discerned by his editor and biographer Mitford.
+Professor Masson, however, ascertained the date, which is all important.
+We must picture Milton "affable, erect, and manly," as Wood describes
+him, speaking from a low pulpit in the hall of Christ's College, to an
+audience of various standing, from grave doctors to skittish
+undergraduates, with most of whom he was in daily intercourse. The term
+is the summer of 1628, about nine months before his graduation; the
+words were Latin, but we resort to the version of Professor  <span class="together">Masson:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Then also there drew and invited me, in no ordinary degree, to
+undertake this part your very recently discovered graciousness to
+me. For when, some few months ago, I was about to perform an
+oratorical office before you, and was under the impression that
+any lucubrations whatsoever of mine would be the reverse of
+agreeable to you, and would have more merciful judges in Aeacus
+and Minos than almost any of you would prove, truly, beyond my
+fancy, beyond my hope if I had any, they were, as I heard, nay, as
+I myself felt, received with the not ordinary applause of
+all&mdash;yea, of those who at other times were, on account of
+disagreements in our studies, altogether of an angry and
+unfriendly spirit towards me. A generous mode of exercising
+rivalry this, and not unworthy of a royal breast, if, when
+friendship itself is wont often to mis<a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a><span class="pagenum">27</span>construe much that is
+blamelessly done, yet then sharp and hostile enmity did not grudge
+to interpret much that was perchance erroneous, and not a little,
+doubtless, that was unskilfully said, more clemently than I
+merited."</p></div>
+
+<p>It is sufficiently manifest from this that after two years' residence
+Milton had incurred much anger and unpopularity "on account of
+disagreements in our studies," which can scarcely mean anything else
+than his disapprobation of the University system. Notwithstanding this
+he had been received on a former occasion with unexpected favour, and on
+the present is able to say, "I triumph as one placed among the stars
+that so many men, eminent for erudition, and nearly the whole University
+have flocked hither." We have thus a miniature history of Milton's
+connection with his Alma Mater. We see him giving offence by the freedom
+of his strictures on the established practices, and misliking them so
+much as to write in 1642, "Which [University] as in the time of her
+better health and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so
+now much less." But, on the other hand, we see his intellectual revolt
+overlooked on account of his unimpeachable conduct and his brilliant
+talents, and himself selected to represent his college on an occasion
+when an able representative was indispensable. Cambridge had all
+imaginable complacency in the scholar, it was towards the reformer that
+she assumed, as afterwards towards Wordsworth, the attitude of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">"Blind Authority beating with his staff<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The child that would have led him."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a><span class="pagenum">28</span>The University and Milton made a practical covenant like Frederick the
+Great and his subjects: she did what she pleased, and he thought what he
+pleased. In sharp contrast with his failure to influence her educational
+methods is "that more than ordinary respect which I found above any of
+my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows
+of that College wherein I spent seven years; who, at my parting, after I
+had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much
+better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters full
+of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I
+was assured of their singular good affection toward me." It may be added
+here that his comeliness and his chastity gained him the appellation of
+"Lady" from his fellow collegians: and the rooms at Christ's alleged to
+have been his are still pointed out as deserving the veneration of poets
+in any event; for whether Milton sacrificed to Apollo in them or not, it
+is certain that in them Wordsworth sacrificed to Bacchus.</p>
+
+<p>For Milton's own sake and ours his departure from the University was the
+best thing that could have happened to him. It saved him from wasting
+his time in instructing others when he ought to be instructing himself.
+From the point of view of advantage to the University, it is perhaps the
+most signal instance of the mischief of strictly clerical fellowships,
+now happily things of the past. Only one fellowship at Christ's was
+tenable by a layman: to continue in academical society, therefore, he
+must have taken orders. Such had been his intention when he first
+repaired to Cambridge, but the young man <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a><span class="pagenum">29</span>of twenty-three saw many
+things differently from the boy of sixteen. The service of God was still
+as much as ever the aim of his existence, but he now thought that not
+all service was church service. How far he had become consciously
+alienated from the Church's creed it is difficult to say. He was able,
+at all events, to subscribe the Articles on taking his degree, and no
+trace of Arianism appears in his writings for many years. As late as
+1641 he speaks of "the tri-personal Deity." Curiously enough, indeed,
+the ecclesiastical freethought of the day was then almost entirely
+confined to moderate Royalists, Hales, Chillingworth, Falkland. But he
+must have disapproved of the Church's discipline, for he disapproved of
+all discipline. He would not put himself in the position of those Irish
+clergymen whom Strafford frightened out of their conscientious
+convictions by reminding them of their canonical obedience. This was
+undoubtedly what he meant when he afterwards wrote: "Perceiving that he
+who would take orders must subscribe slave." Speaking of himself a
+little further on as "Church-outed by the prelates," he implies that he
+would not have refused orders if he could have had them on his own
+terms. As regarded Milton personally this attitude was reasonable, he
+had a right to feel himself above the restraints of mere formularies;
+but he spoke unadvisedly if he meant to contend that a priest should be
+invested with the freedom of a Prophet. His words, however, must be
+taken in connection with the peculiar circumstances of the time. It was
+an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful
+persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a><span class="pagenum">30</span> Williams, had for
+years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning,
+but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused
+to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But
+if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; he
+had the Church completely under his control, he was fast filling it with
+his partisans and creatures, he was working it for every end which
+Milton most abhorred, and was, in particular, allying it with a king who
+in 1632 had governed three years without a Parliament. The mere thought
+that he must call this hierarch his Father in God, the mere foresight
+that he might probably come into collision with him, and that if he did
+his must be the fate of the earthen vessel, would alone have sufficed to
+deter Milton from entering the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Even so resolute a spirit as Milton's could hardly contemplate the
+relinquishment of every definite calling in life without misgiving, and
+his friends could hardly let it pass without remonstrance. There exists
+in his hand the draft of a letter of reply to the verbal admonition of
+some well-wisher, to whom he evidently feels that he owes deference. His
+friend seems to have thought that he was yielding to the allurements of
+aimless study, neglecting to return as service what he had absorbed as
+knowledge. Milton pleads that his motive must be higher than the love of
+lettered ease, for that alone could never overcome the incentives that
+urge him to action. "Why should not all the hopes that forward youth and
+vanity are afledge with, together with gain, pride, and ambition, call
+me forward more powerfully than a poor, <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a><span class="pagenum">31</span>regardless, and unprofitable
+sin of curiosity should be able to withhold?" And what of the "desire of
+honour and repute and immortal fame seated in the breast of every true
+scholar?" That his correspondent may the better understand him, he
+encloses a "Petrarchean sonnet," recently composed, on his twenty-third
+birthday, not one of his best, but precious as the first of his frequent
+reckonings with <span class="together">himself:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My hasting days fly on with full career;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That I to manhood am arrived so near;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And inward ripeness doth much less appear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than some more timely-happy spirits indu'th.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It shall be still in strictest measure even<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To that same lot, however mean or high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Towards which Time leads me, and the Will of Heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All is, if I have grace to use it so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poetical temperament is especially liable to misgiving and
+despondency, and from this Milton evidently was not exempt. Yet he is
+the same Milton who proclaimed a quarter of a century  <span class="together">afterwards&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"I argue not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right onward."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is something very fine in the steady resolution <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a><span class="pagenum">32</span>with which, after
+so fully admitting to himself that his promise is yet unfulfilled, and
+that appearances are against him, he recurs to his purpose, frankly
+owning the while that the gift he craves is Heaven's, and his only the
+application. He had received a lesson against over-confidence in the
+failure of his solitary effort up to this time to achieve a work on a
+large scale. To the eighth and last stanza of his poem, "The Passion of
+Christ," is appended the note: "This subject the author finding to be
+above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what
+was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but soon
+deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The "Hymn on
+the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of far-fetched
+prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through strophes of
+ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and Child seem
+in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity; when
+suddenly, by an exquisite turn, the poet sinks back into his original
+key, and finally harmonizes his strain by the divine repose of
+concluding picture worthy of  <span class="together">Correggio:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"But see, the Virgin blest<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Hath laid the Babe to rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time is our tedious song should here have ending;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Heaven's youngest-teemed star<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Hath fixed her polished car,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all about the courtly stable<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In some degree this magnificent composition loses force in our day from
+its discordance with modern senti<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a><span class="pagenum">33</span>ment. We look upon religions as
+members of the same family, and are more interested in their
+resemblances than their antagonisms. Moloch and Dagon themselves appear
+no longer as incarnate fiends, but as the spiritual counterparts of
+antediluvian monsters; and Milton's treatment of the Olympian deities
+jars upon us who remember his obligations to them. If the most Hebrew of
+modern poets, he still owed more to Greece than to Palestine. How living
+a thing Greek mythology was to him from his earliest years appears from
+his college vacation exercise of 1628, where there are lines which, if
+one did not know to be Milton's, one would declare to be Keats's. Among
+his other compositions by the time of his quitting Cambridge are to be
+named the superb verses, "At a Solemn Music," perhaps the most perfect
+expression of his ideal of song; the pretty but over fanciful lines, "On
+a fair Infant dying of a cough;" and the famous panegyric of
+Shakespeare, a fancy made impressive by dignity and sonority of
+utterance.</p>
+
+<p>With such earnest of a true vocation, Milton betook himself to
+retirement at Horton, a village between Colnbrook and Datchet, in the
+south-eastern corner of Buckinghamshire, county of nightingales, where
+his father had settled himself on his retirement from business. This
+retreat of the elder Milton may be supposed to have taken place in 1632,
+for in that year he took his clerk into partnership, probably devolving
+the larger part of the business upon him. But it may have been earlier,
+for in 1626 Milton tells  <span class="together">Diodati&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a><span class="pagenum">34</span></p>
+<span class="i0">"Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus ulmo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And in a college declamation, which cannot have been later than 1632, he
+"calls to witness the groves and rivers, and the beloved village elms,
+under which in the last past summer I remember having had supreme
+delight with the Muses, when I too, among rural scenes and remote
+forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden
+eternity."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a><span class="pagenum">35</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Doctor Johnson deemed "the knowledge of nature half the task of a poet,"
+but not until he had written all his poetry did he repair to the
+Highlands. Milton allows natural science and the observation of the
+picturesque no place among the elements of a poetical self-education,
+and his practice differs entirely from that which would in our day be
+adopted by an aspirant happy in equal leisure. Such an one would
+probably have seen no inconsiderable portion of the globe ere he could
+resolve to bury himself in a tiny hamlet for five years. The poems which
+Milton composed at Horton owe so much of their beauty to his country
+residence as to convict him of error in attaching no more importance to
+the influences of scenery. But this very excellence suggests that the
+spell of scenery need not be exactly proportioned to its grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>The beauties of Horton are characterized by Professor Masson as those of
+"rich, teeming, verdurous flat, charming by its appearance of plenty,
+and by the goodly show of wood along the fields and pastures, in the
+nooks where the houses nestle, and everywhere <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a><span class="pagenum">36</span>in all directions to the
+sky-bound verge of the landscape." He also notices "the canal-like
+abundance and distribution of water. There are rivulets brimming through
+the meadows among rushes and water-plants; and by the very sides of the
+ways, in lieu of ditches, there are slow runnels, in which one can see
+the minnows swimming." The distant keep of Windsor, "bosomed high in
+tufted trees," is the only visible object that appeals to the
+imagination, or speaks of anything outside of rural peace and
+contentment. Milton's house, as Todd was informed by the vicar of the
+parish, stood till about 1798. If so, however, it is very remarkable
+that the writer of an account of Horton in the <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>
+for August, 1791, who speaks of Milton with veneration, and transcribes
+his mother's epitaph, does not allude to the existence of his house. Its
+site is traditionally identified with that of Berkyn Manor, near the
+church, and an old pigeon-house is asserted to be a remnant of the
+original building. The elder Milton was no doubt merely the tenant; his
+landlord is said to have been the Earl of Bridgewater, but as there is
+no evidence of the Earl having possessed property in Horton, the
+statement may be merely an inference from Milton's poetical connection
+with the family. If not Bridgewater, the landlord was probably
+Bulstrode, the lord of the manor, and chief personage in the village.
+The Miltons still kept a footing in the metropolis. Christopher Milton,
+on his admission to the Inner Temple in September, 1632, is described as
+second son of John Milton of London, and subsequent legal <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a><span class="pagenum">37</span>proceedings
+disclose that the father, with the aid of his partner, was still doing
+business as a scrivener in 1637. It may be guessed that the veteran cit
+would not be sorry to find himself occasionally back in town. What with
+social exclusiveness, political and religious controversy, and
+uncongeniality of tastes, the Miltons' country circle of acquaintance
+was probably narrow. After five years of country life the younger Milton
+at all events thought seriously of taking refuge in an Inn of Court,
+"wherever there is a pleasant and shady walk," and tells Diodati, "Where
+I am now I live obscurely and in a cramped manner." He had only just
+made the acquaintance of his distinguished neighbour, Sir Henry Wotton,
+Provost of Eton, by the beginning of 1638, though it appears that he was
+previously acquainted with John Hales.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's five years at Horton were nevertheless the happiest of his
+life. It must have been an unspeakable relief to him to be at length
+emancipated from compulsory exercises, and to build up his mind without
+nod or beck from any quarter. For these blessings he was chiefly
+indebted to his father, whose industry and prudence had procured his
+independence and his rural retirement, and whose tender indulgence and
+noble confidence dispensed him from what most would have deemed the
+reasonable condition that he should at least earn his own living. "I
+will not," he exclaims to his father, "praise thee for thy fulfilment of
+the ordinary duties of a parent, my debt is heavier (<i>me poscunt
+majora</i>). Thou hast neither made me a merchant nor a  <span class="together">barrister":&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a><span class="pagenum">38</span></p>
+<span class="i3">"Neque enim, pater, ire jubebas<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qua via lata patet, qua pronior area lucri,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Certaque condendi fulget spes aurea nummi:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nec rapis ad leges, male custoditaque gentis<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jura, nec insulsis damnas clamoribus aures."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The stroke at the subserviency of the lawyers to the Crown (<i>male
+custodita jura gentis</i>) would be appreciated by the elder Milton, nor
+can we doubt that the old Puritan fully approved his son's resilience
+from a church denied by Arminianism and prelacy. He would not so easily
+understand the dedication of a life to poetry, and the poem from which
+the above citation is taken seems to have been partly composed to smooth
+his repugnance away. He was soon to have stronger proofs that his son
+had not mistaken his vocation: it would be pleasant to be assured that
+the old man was capable of valuing "Comus" and "Lycidas" at their worth.
+The circumstances under which "Comus" was produced, and its subsequent
+publication with the extorted consent of the author, show that Milton
+did not wholly want encouragement and sympathy. The insertion of his
+lines on Shakespeare in the Second Folio (1632) also denotes some
+reputation as a wit. In the main, however, remote from urban circles and
+literary cliques, with few correspondents and no second self in
+sweetheart or friend, he must have led a solitary intellectual life,
+alone with his great ambition, and probably pitied by his acquaintance.
+"The world," says Emerson to the Poet, "is full of renunciations and
+apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool and a
+churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a><span class="pagenum">39</span> Pan has
+protected his well-beloved flower." The special nature of Milton's
+studies cannot now be exactly ascertained. Of his manner of studying he
+informs Diodati, "No delay, no rest, no care or thought almost of
+anything holds me aside until I reach the end I am making for, and round
+off, as it were, some great period of my studies." Of his object he
+says: "God has instilled into me, at all events, a vehement love of the
+beautiful. Not with so much labour is Ceres said to have sought
+Proserpine as I am wont day and night to seek for the idea of the
+beautiful through all the forms and faces of things, and to follow it
+leading me on as with certain assured traces." We may be sure that he
+read the classics of all the languages which he understood. His copies
+of Euripides, Pindar, Aratus, and Lycophron, are, or have been recently,
+extant, with marginal notes, proving that he weighed what he read. A
+commonplace book contains copious extracts from historians, and he tells
+Diodati that he has read Greek history to the fall of Constantinople. He
+speaks of having occasionally repaired to London for instruction in
+mathematics and music. His own programme, promulgated eight years later,
+but without doubt perfectly appropriate to his Horton period, names
+before all else&mdash;"Devout prayer to the Holy Spirit, that can enrich with
+all utterance and knowledge, and send out His Seraphim with the hallowed
+fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases. To
+this must be added select reading, steady observation, and insight into
+all seemly and generous arts and affairs, till which in some measure be
+compassed, I refuse not to sustain this <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a><span class="pagenum">40</span>expectation." This is not the
+ideal of a mere scholar, as Mark Paulson thinks he at one time was, and
+would wish him to have remained. "Affairs" are placed fully on a level
+with "arts." Milton was kept from politics in his youth, not by any
+notion of their incompatibility with poetry; but by the more cogent
+arguments at their command "under whose inquisitious and tyrannical
+duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish."</p>
+
+<p>Milton's poetical development is, in many respects, exceptional. Most
+poets would no doubt, in theory, agree with Landor, "febriculis non
+indicari vires, impatientiam ab ignorantia non differre," but their
+faith will not be proved by lack of works, as Landor's precept and
+example require. He, who like Milton lisps in numbers usually sings
+freely in adolescence; he who is really visited by a true inspiration
+generally depends on mood rather than on circumstance. Milton, on the
+other hand, until fairly embarked on his great epic, was comparatively
+an unproductive, and literally an occasional poet. Most of his pieces,
+whether English or Latin, owe their existence to some impulse from
+without: "Comus" to the solicitation of a patron, "Lycidas" to the death
+of a friend. The "Allegro" and the "Penseroso" seem almost the only two
+written at the urgency of an internal impulse; and perhaps, if we knew
+their history, we should discover that they too were prompted by
+extraneous suggestion or provoked into being by accident. Such is the
+way with Court poets like Dryden and Claudian; it is unlike the usual
+procedure of Milton's spiritual kindred. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, write
+incessantly; whatever care they <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a><span class="pagenum">41</span>may bestow upon composition, the
+impulse to produce is never absent. With Milton it is commonly dormant
+or ineffectual; he is always studying, but the fertility of his mind
+bears no apparent proportion to the pains devoted to its cultivation. He
+is not, like Wordsworth, labouring at a great work whose secret progress
+fills him with a majestic confidence; or, like Coleridge, dreaming of
+works which he lacks the energy to undertake; or, save once, does he
+seem to have felt with  <span class="together">Keats:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fears that I may cease to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before that books, in high piled charactery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hold in rich garners the full ripened grain."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He neither writes nor wishes to write; he simply studies, piling up the
+wood on the altar, and conscious of the power to call down fire from
+Heaven when he will. There is something sublime in this assured
+confidence; yet its wisdom is less evident than its grandeur. "No man,"
+says Shelley, "can say, 'I will compose poetry.'" If he cannot say this
+of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He
+cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly;
+whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious
+blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an
+uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he
+told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my
+Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air."
+But the danger of this protracted preparation was shown by his narrow
+escape from poetical <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a><span class="pagenum">42</span>shipwreck when the duty of the patriot became
+paramount to that of the poet. The Civil War confounded his
+anticipations of leisurely composition, and but for the disguised
+blessing of his blindness, the mountain of his attainment might have
+been Pisgah rather than Parnassus.</p>
+
+<p>It is in keeping with the infrequency of Milton's moods of overmastering
+inspiration, and the strength of will which enabled him to write
+steadily or abstain from writing at all, that his early compositions
+should be, in general, so much more correct than those of other English
+poets of the first rank. The childish bombast of "Titus Andronicus," the
+commonplace of Wordsworth, the frequent inanity of the youthful
+Coleridge and the youthful Byron, Shelley's extravagance, Keats's
+cockneyism, Tennyson's mawkishness, find no counterpart in Milton's
+early compositions. All these great writers, though the span of some of
+them was but short, lived long enough to blush for much of what they had
+in the days of their ignorance taken for poetry. The mature Milton had
+no cause to be ashamed of anything written by the immature Milton,
+reasonable allowance being made for the inevitable infection of
+contemporary false taste. As a general rule, the youthful exuberance of
+a Shakespeare would be a better sign; faults, no less than beauties,
+often indicate the richness of the soil. But Milton was born to confute
+established opinions. Among other divergencies from usage, he was at
+this time a rare example of an English poet whose faculty was, in large
+measure, to be estimated by his essays in Latin verse. England had up to
+this time produced no <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a><span class="pagenum">43</span>distinguished Latin poet, though Scotland had:
+and had Milton's Latin poems been accessible, they would certainly have
+occupied a larger place in the estimation of his contemporaries than his
+English compositions. Even now they contribute no trifling addition to
+his fame, though they cannot, even as exercises, be placed in the
+highest rank. There are two roads to excellence in Latin verse&mdash;to write
+it as a scholar, or to write it as a Roman. England has once, and only
+once, produced a poet so entirely imbued with the Roman spirit that
+Latin seemed to come to him like the language of some prior state of
+existence, rather remembered than learned. Landor's Latin verse is hence
+greatly superior to Milton's, not, perhaps, in scholarly elegance, but
+in absolute vitality. It would be poor praise to commend it for fidelity
+to the antique, for it is the antique. Milton stands at the head of the
+numerous class who, not being actually born Romans, have all but made
+themselves so. "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." His Latin
+compositions are delightful, but precisely from the qualities least
+characteristic of his genius as an English poet. Sublimity and
+imagination are infrequent; what we have most commonly to admire are
+grace, ease, polish, and felicitous phrases rather concise in expression
+than weighty with matter. Of these merits the elegies to his friend
+Diodati, and the lines addressed to his father and to Manso, are
+admirable examples. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is in a higher strain, and
+we shall have to recur to it.</p>
+
+<p>Except for his formal incorporation with the University of Oxford, by
+proceeding M.A. there in 1635, and the <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a><span class="pagenum">44</span>death of his mother on April 3,
+1637, Milton's life during his residence at Horton, as known to us, is
+entirely in his writings. These comprise the "Sonnet to the
+Nightingale," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," all probably written in 1633;
+"Arcades," probably, and "Comus" certainly written in 1634; "Lycidas" in
+1637. The first three only are, or seem to be, spontaneous overflowings
+of the poetic mind: the others are composed in response to external
+invitations, and in two instances it is these which stand highest in
+poetic desert. Before entering on any criticism, it will be convenient
+to state the originating circumstances of each piece.</p>
+
+<p>"Arcades" and "Comus" both owe their existence to the musician Henry
+Lawes, unless the elder Milton's tenancy of his house from the Earl of
+Bridgewater can be accepted as a fact. Both were written for the
+Bridgewater family, and if Milton felt no special devotion to this
+house, his only motive could have been to aid the musical performance of
+his friend Henry Lawes, whose music is discommended by Burney, but who,
+Milton declares:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"First taught our English music how to span<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Words with just note and accent."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Masques were then the order of the day, especially after the splendid
+exhibition of the Inns of Court in honour of the King and Queen,
+February, 1634. Lawes, as a Court musician, took a leading part in this
+representation, and became in request on similar occasions. The person
+intended to be honoured by the "Arcades" was the dowager Countess of
+Derby, mother-<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a><span class="pagenum">45</span>in-law of the Earl of Bridgewater, whose father, Lord
+Keeper Egerton, she had married in 1600. The aged lady, to whom more
+than forty years before Spenser had dedicated his "Teares of the Muses,"
+and who had ever since been an object of poetic flattery and homage,
+lived at Harefield, about four miles from Uxbridge; and there the
+"Arcades" were exhibited, probably in 1634. Milton's melodious verses
+were only one feature in a more ample entertainment. That they pleased
+we may be sure, for we find him shortly afterwards engaged on a similar
+undertaking of much greater importance, commissioned by the Bridgewater
+family. In those days Milton had no more of the Puritanic aversion to
+the  <span class="together">theatre&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Then to the well-trod stage anon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If Jonson's learned sock be on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warble his native wood-notes wild,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>than to the pomps and solemnities of cathedral  <span class="together">ritual:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But let my due feet never fail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To walk the studious cloisters pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And love the high-embowed roof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With antique pillars massy proof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And storied windows richly dight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Casting a dim religious light:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There let the pealing organ blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the full-voic'd quire below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In service high and anthems clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As may with sweetness through mine ear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dissolve me into ecstacies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bring all heaven before mine eyes."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He therefore readily fell in with Lawes's proposal to write a masque to
+celebrate Lord Bridgewater's assump<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a><span class="pagenum">46</span>tion of the Lord Presidency of the
+Welsh Marches. The Earl had entered upon the office in October, 1633,
+and "Comus" was written some time between this and the following
+September. Singular coincidences frequently linked Milton's fate with
+the north-west Midlands, from which his grandmother's family and his
+brother-in-law and his third wife sprung, whither the latter retired,
+where his friend Diodati lived, and his friend King died, and where now
+the greatest of his early works was to be represented in the
+time-hallowed precincts of Ludlow Castle, where it was performed on
+Michaelmas night, in 1634. If, as we should like to think, he was
+himself present, the scene must have enriched his memory and his mind.
+The castle&mdash;in which Prince Arthur had spent with his Spanish bride the
+six months of life which alone remained to him, in which eighteen years
+before the performance Charles the First had been installed Prince of
+Wales with extraordinary magnificence, and which, curiously enough, was
+to be the residence of the Cavalier poet, Butler&mdash;would be a place of
+resort for English tourists, if it adorned any country but their own.
+The dismantled keep is still an imposing object, lowering from a steep
+hill around whose base the curving Teme alternately boils and gushes
+with tumultuous speed. The scene within must have realized the lines in
+the "Allegro ":</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Pomp, and feast, and revelry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mask and antique pageantry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where throngs of knights and barons bold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With store of ladies, whose bright eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rain influence."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a><span class="pagenum">47</span>Lawes himself acted the attendant Spirit, the Lady and the Brothers
+were performed by Lord Bridgewater's youthful children, whose own
+nocturnal bewilderment in Haywood Forest, could we trust a tradition,
+doubted by the critics, but supported by the choice of the neighbourhood
+of Severn as the scene of the drama, had suggested his theme to Milton.
+He is evidently indebted for many incidents and ideas to Peele's "Old
+Wives' Tale," and the "Comus" of Erycius Puteanus; but there is little
+morality in the former production and little fancy in the latter. The
+peculiar blending of the highest morality with the noblest imagination
+is as much Milton's own as the incomparable diction. "I," wrote Sir
+Henry Wootton on receiving a copy of the anonymous edition printed by
+Lawes in 1637, "should much commend the tragical part if the lyrical did
+not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes,
+whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in
+our language." "Although not openly acknowledged by the author," says
+Lawes in his apology for printing prefixed to the poem, "it is a
+legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired that the often
+copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction,
+and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view." The
+publication is anonymous, and bears no mark of Milton's participation
+except a motto, which none but the author could have selected,
+intimating a fear that publication is premature. The title is simply "A
+Maske presented at Ludlow Castle," nor did the piece receive the name of
+"Comus" until after Milton's death.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a><span class="pagenum">48</span>It has been remarked that one of the most characteristic traits of
+Milton's genius, until he laid hand to "Paradise Lost," is the
+dependence of his activity upon promptings from without. "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  <span class="together">weather:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The air was calm, and on the level brine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleek Panope and all her sisters played."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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. Of
+the elegy's relation to Milton's biography it may be said that it sums
+up the two influences which had been chiefly moulding his mind of late
+years, the natural influences of which he had been the passive recipient
+during his residence at Horton, and the political and theological
+passion with <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a><span class="pagenum">49</span>which he was becoming more and more inspired by the
+circumstances of the time. By 1637 the country had been eight years
+without a parliament, and the persecution of Puritans had attained its
+acme. In that year Laud's new Episcopalian service book was forced, or
+rather was attempted to be forced, upon Scotland; Prynne lost his ears;
+and Bishop Williams was fined eighteen thousand pounds and ordered to be
+imprisoned during the King's pleasure. Hence the striking, if
+incongruous, introduction of "The pilot of the Galilean lake," to
+bewail, in the character of a shepherd, the drowned swain in conjunction
+with Triton, Hippotades, and Camus. "The author," wrote Milton
+afterwards, "by occasion, foretells the ruin of the corrupted clergy,
+then in their height." It was a Parthian dart, for the volume was
+printed at the University Press in 1638, probably a little before his
+departure for Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The "Penseroso" and the "Allegro," notwithstanding that each piece is
+the antithesis of the other, are complementary rather than contrary, and
+may be, in a sense, regarded as one poem, whose theme is the praise of
+the reasonable life. It resembles one of those pictures in which the
+effect is gained by contrasted masses of light and shade, but each is
+more nicely mellowed and interfused with the qualities of the other than
+it lies within the resources of pictorial skill to effect. Mirth has an
+undertone of gravity, and melancholy of cheerfulness. There is no
+antagonism between the states of mind depicted; and no rational lover,
+whether of contemplation or of recreation, would find any difficulty in
+combining <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a><span class="pagenum">50</span>the two. The limpidity of the diction is even more striking
+than its beauty. Never were ideas of such dignity embodied in verse so
+easy and familiar, and with such apparent absence of effort. The
+landscape-painting is that of the seventeenth century, absolutely true
+in broad effects, sometimes ill-defined and even inaccurate in minute
+details. Some of these blemishes are terrible in nineteenth-century
+eyes, accustomed to the photography of our Brownings and Patmores.
+Milton would probably have made light of them, and perhaps we owe him
+some thanks for thus practically refuting the heresy that inspiration
+implies infallibility. Yet the poetry of his blindness abounds with
+proof that he had made excellent use of his eyes while he had them, and
+no part of his poetry wants instances of subtle and delicate observation
+worthy of the most scrutinizing  <span class="together">modern:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thee, chantress, oft the woods among,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I woo, to hear thy evensong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, missing thee, I walk unseen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the dry, smooth-shaven green."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The song of the nightingale," remarks Peacock, "ceases about the time
+the grass is mown." The charm, however, is less in such detached
+beauties, however exquisite, than in the condensed opulence&mdash;"every
+epithet a text for a canto," says Macaulay&mdash;and in the general
+impression of "plain living and high thinking," pursued in the midst of
+every charm of nature and every refinement of culture, combining the
+ideal of Horton with the ideal of Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Lycidas" is far more boldly conventional, not merely <a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a><span class="pagenum">51</span>in the treatment
+of landscape, but in the general conception and machinery. An initial
+effort of the imagination is required to feel with the poet; it is not
+wonderful that no such wing bore up the solid Johnson. Talk of Milton
+and his fellow-collegian as shepherds! "We know that they never drove
+afield, and that they had no flocks to batten." There is, in fact,
+according to Johnson, neither nature nor truth nor art nor pathos in the
+poem, for all these things are inconsistent with the introduction of a
+shepherd of souls in the character of a shepherd of sheep. A
+nineteenth-century reader, it may be hoped, finds no more difficulty in
+idealizing Edward King as a shepherd than in personifying the ocean calm
+as "sleek Panope and all her sisters," which, to be sure, may have been
+a trouble to Johnson. If, however, Johnson is deplorably prosaic,
+neither can we agree with Pattison that "in 'Lycidas' we have reached
+the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production."
+Its innumerable beauties are rather exquisite than magnificent. It is an
+elegy, and cannot, therefore, rank as high as an equally consummate
+example of epic, lyric, or dramatic art. Even as elegy it is surpassed
+by the other great English masterpiece, "Adonais," in fire and grandeur.
+There is no incongruity in "Adonais" like the introduction of "the pilot
+of the Galilean lake"; its invective and indignation pour naturally out
+of the subject; their expression is not, as in "Lycidas," a splendid
+excrescence. There is no such example of sustained eloquence in
+"Lycidas" as the seven concluding stanzas of "Adonais" beginning, "Go
+thou to Rome." But the balance is <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a><span class="pagenum">52</span>redressed by the fact that the
+beauties of "Adonais" are the inimitable. Shelley's eloquence is even
+too splendid for elegy. It wants the dainty thrills and tremors of
+subtle versification, and the witcheries of verbal magic in which
+"Lycidas" is so rich&mdash;"the opening eyelids of the morn;" "smooth-sliding
+Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds;" Camus's garment, "inwrought with
+figures dim;" "the great vision of the guarded mount;" "the tender stops
+of various quills;" "with eager thought warbling his Doric lay." It will
+be noticed that these exquisite phrases have little to do with Lycidas
+himself, and it is a fact not to be ignored, that though Milton and
+Shelley doubtless felt more deeply than Dryden when he composed his
+scarcely inferior threnody on Anne Killegrew, whom he had never seen,
+both might have found subjects of grief that touched them more nearly.
+Shelley tells us frankly that "in another's woe he wept his own." We
+cannot doubt of whom Milton was thinking when he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(That last infirmity of noble mind)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To scorn delights, and live laborious days;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And think to burst out into sudden blaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ph&oelig;bus replied, and touched my trembling ears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor in the glistering foil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;<br /></span>
+<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a><span class="pagenum">53</span>
+<span class="i0">As he pronounces lastly on each deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Comus," the richest fruit of Milton's early genius, is the epitome of
+the man at the age at which he wrote it. It bespeaks the scholar and
+idealist, whose sacred enthusiasm is in some danger of contracting a
+taint of pedantry for want of acquaintance with men and affairs. The
+Elder Brother is a prig, and his dialogues with his junior reveal the
+same solemn insensibility to the humorous which characterizes the
+kindred genius of Wordsworth, and would have provoked the kindly smile
+of Shakespeare. It is singular to find the inevitable flaw of "Paradise
+Lost" prefigured here, and the wicked enchanter made the real hero of
+the piece. These defects are interesting, because they represent the
+nature of Milton as it was then, noble and disinterested to the height
+of imagination, but self-assertive, unmellowed, angular. They disappear
+entirely when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the
+introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina.
+They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with
+the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with
+virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely
+avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one
+need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of
+thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly than in
+"Comus." No drama out of Shakespeare has furnished such a number of the
+noblest familiar quotations. It is, indeed, true that many of these
+jewels are fetched from <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a><span class="pagenum">54</span>the mines of other poets: great as Milton's
+obligations, to Nature were, his obligations to books were greater. But
+he has made all his own by the alchemy of his genius, and borrows little
+but to improve. The most remarkable coincidence is with a piece
+certainly unknown to him&mdash;Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso," which was
+first acted in 1637, the year of the publication of "Comus," a great
+year in the history of the drama, for the "Cid" appeared in it also. The
+similarity of the situations of Justina tempted by the Demon, and the
+Lady in the power of Comus, has naturally begotten a like train of
+thought in both poets.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">"<i>Comus</i>. Nay, Lady, sit; if I but wave this wand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you a statue, or, as Daphne was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Root-bound, that fled Apollo.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Lady</i>. <span style="margin-left: 8em;">Fool, do not boast</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou can'st not touch the freedom of my mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all thy charms, although this corporal rind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem gap"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">"<i>Justina</i>. Thought is not in my power, but action is.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not move my foot to follow thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Demon</i>. But a far mightier wisdom than thine own<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exerts itself within thee, with such power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Compelling thee to that which it inclines<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it shall force thy step; how wilt thou then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Resist, Justina?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Justina</i>. <span style="margin-left:2em;">By my free will.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Demon</i>. <span style="margin-left:9em;">I</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must force thy will.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Justina</i>. It is invincible.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It were not free if thou had'st power upon it."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a><span class="pagenum">55</span>It must be admitted that where the Spaniard and the Englishman come
+directly into competition the former excels. The dispute between the
+Lady and Comus may be, as Johnson says it is, "the most animating and
+affecting scene in the drama;" but, tried by the dramatic test which
+Calderon bears so well, it is below the exigencies and the possibilities
+of the subject. Nor does the poetry here, quite so abundantly as in the
+other scenes in this unrivalled "suite of speeches," atone for the
+deficiencies of the play.</p>
+
+<p>It is a just remark of Pattison's that "in a mind of the consistent
+texture of Milton's, motives are secretly influential before they emerge
+in consciousness." In September, 1637, Milton had complained to Diodati
+of his cramped situation in the country, and talked of taking chambers
+in London. Within a few months we find this vague project matured into a
+settled scheme of foreign travel. One tie to home had been severed by
+the death of his mother in the preceding April; and his father was to
+find another prop of his old age in his second son, Christopher, about
+to marry and reside with him. "Lycidas" had appeared meanwhile, or was
+to appear, and its bold denunciation of the Romanizing clergy might well
+offend the ruling powers. The atmosphere at home was, at all events,
+difficult breathing for an impotent patriot; and Milton may have come to
+see what we so clearly see in "Comus," that his asperities and
+limitations needed contact with the world. Why speak of the charms of
+Italy, in themselves sufficient allurement to a poet and scholar? His
+father, trustful and unselfish as of old, found the considerable sum
+requisite <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a><span class="pagenum">56</span>for a prolonged foreign tour; and in April, 1638, Milton,
+provided with excellent introductions from Sir Henry Wootton and others,
+seeks the enrichment and renovation of his genius in  <span class="together">Italy:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a><span class="pagenum">57</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Four times has a great English poet taken up his abode in "the paradise
+of exiles," and remained there until deeply imbued with the spirit of
+the land. The Italian residence of Byron and Shelley, of Landor and
+Browning, has infused into English literature a new element which has
+mingled with its inmost essence. Milton's brief visit could not be of
+equal moment. Italian letters had already done their utmost for him; and
+he did not stay long enough to master the secret of Italian life. A real
+enthusiasm for Italy's classical associations is indicated by his
+original purpose of extending his travels to Greece, an enterprise at
+that period requiring no little disdain of hardship and peril. But it
+would have been an anachronism if he could have contemplated the
+comprehensive and scientific scheme of self-culture by Italian
+influences of every kind which, a hundred and fifty years later, was
+conceived and executed by Goethe. At the time of Milton's visit Italian
+letters and arts sloped midway in their descent from the Renaissance to
+the hideous but humorous rococo so graphically described by Vernon Lee.
+Free thought had perished along with free institutions in the preceding
+century, and <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a><span class="pagenum">58</span>as a consequence, though the physical sciences still
+numbered successful cultivators, originality of mind was all but
+extinct. Things, nevertheless, wore a gayer aspect than of late. The
+very completeness of the triumph of secular and spiritual despotism had
+made them less suspicious, surly, and austere. Spanish power was visibly
+decaying. The long line of <i>zelanti</i> Popes had come to an end; and it
+was thought that if the bosom of the actual incumbent could be
+scrutinized, no little complacency in Swedish victories over the Faith's
+defenders would be found. An atmosphere of toleration was diffusing
+itself, bigotry was imperceptibly getting old-fashioned, the most
+illustrious victim of the Inquisition was to be well-nigh the last. If
+the noble and the serious could not be permitted, there was no ban upon
+the amiable and the frivolous: never had the land been so full of petty
+rhymesters, antiquarian triflers, and gregarious literati, banded to
+play at authorship in academies, like the seven Swabians leagued to kill
+the hare. For the rest, the Italy of Milton's day, its superstition and
+its scepticism, and the sophistry that strove to make the two as one;
+its monks and its bravoes; its processions and its pantomimes; its cult
+of the Passion and its cult of Paganism; the opulence of its past and
+the impotence of its present; will be found depicted by sympathetic
+genius in the second volume of "John Inglesant."</p>
+
+<p>Milton arrived in Paris about the end of April or beginning of May. Of
+his short stay there it is only known that he was received with
+distinction by the English Ambassador, Lord Scudamore, and owed to <a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a><span class="pagenum">59</span>him
+an introduction to one of the greatest men in Europe, Hugo Grotius, then
+residing at Paris as envoy from Christina of Sweden. Travelling by way
+of Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, he arrived about the beginning of
+August at Florence; where, probably by the aid of good recommendations,
+he "immediately contracted the acquaintance of many noble and learned,"
+and doubtless found, with the author of "John Inglesant," that "nothing
+can be more delightful than the first few days of life in Italy in the
+company of polished and congenial men." The Florentine academies, he
+implies answered one of the purposes of modern clubs, and enabled the
+traveller to multiply one good introduction into many. He especially
+mentions Gaddi, Dati, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei, Chimentelli,
+and Francini, of all of whom a full account will be found in Masson. Two
+of them, Dati and Francini, have linked their names with Milton's by
+their encomiums on him inserted in his works. The key-note of these
+surprising productions is struck by Francini when he remarks that the
+heroes of England are accounted in Italy superhuman. If this is so, Dati
+may be justified in comparing a young man on his first and last foreign
+tour to the travelled Ulysses; and Francini in declaring that Thames
+rivals Helicon in virtue of Milton's Latin poems, which alone the
+panegyrist could read. Truly, as Smollett says, Italian is the language
+of compliments. If ludicrous, however, the flattery is not nauseous, for
+it is not wholly insincere. Amid all conventional exaggerations there is
+an under-note of genuine feeling, showing that the writers really had
+received a deep <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a><span class="pagenum">60</span>impression from Milton, deeper than they could well
+explain or understand. The bow drawn at a venture did not miss the mark,
+but it is a curious reflection that those of his performances which
+would really have justified their utmost enthusiasm were hieroglyphical
+to them. Such of his literary exercises as they could understand
+consisted, he says, of "some trifles which I had in memory composed at
+under twenty or thereabout; and other things which I had shifted, in
+scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch up among them." The former
+class of compositions may no doubt be partly identified with his college
+declamations and Latin verses. What the "things patched up among them"
+may have been is unknown. It is curious enough that his acquaintance
+with the Italian literati should have been the means of preserving one
+of their own compositions, the "Tina" of Antonio Malatesti, a series of
+fifty sonnets on a mistress, sent to him in manuscript by the author,
+with a dedication to the <i>illustrissimo signore et padrone
+osservatissimo</i>. The pieces were not of a kind to be approved by the
+laureate of chastity, and annoyance at the implied slur upon his morals
+may account for his omission of Malatesti from the list of his Italian
+acquaintance. He carried the MS. home, nevertheless, and a copy of it,
+finding its way back to Italy in the eighteenth century, restored
+Malatesti's fifty indiscretions to the Italian Parnassus. That his
+intercourse with men of culture involved freedom of another sort we
+learn from himself. "I have sate among their learned men," he says, "and
+been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as
+they supposed England <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a><span class="pagenum">61</span>was, while they themselves did nothing but bemoan
+the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought, that
+this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had
+been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian." Italy
+had never acquiesced in her degradation, though for a century and a half
+to come she could only protest in such conventicles as those frequented
+by Milton.</p>
+
+<p>The very type and emblem of the free spirit of Italy, crushed but not
+conquered, then inhabited Florence in the person of "the starry
+Galileo," lately released from confinement at Arcetri, and allowed to
+dwell in the city under such severe restraint of the Inquisition that no
+Protestant should have been able to gain access to him. It may not have
+been until Milton's second visit in March, 1639, when Galileo had
+returned to his villa, that the English stranger stood unseen before
+him. The meeting between the two great blind men of their century is one
+of the most picturesque in history; it would have been more pathetic
+still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in
+"Paradise Lost," or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen
+years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity
+which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How
+deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison
+of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic
+glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of
+"Paradise Lost," of the points at issue between Ptolemy and
+ <span class="together">Copernicus:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a><span class="pagenum">62</span>
+<span class="i0">"Whether the sun predominant in heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He from the east his flaming road begin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or she from west her silent course advance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On her soft axle, while she paces even,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bears thee soft with the smooth air along."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to know if Milton's Florentine acquaintance
+included that romantic adventurer, Robert Dudley, strange prototype of
+Shelley in face and fortune, whom Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Dean
+Bargrave encountered at Florence, but whom Milton does not mention. The
+next stage in his pilgrimage was the Eternal City, by this time resigned
+to live upon its past. The revenues of which Protestant revolt had
+deprived it were compensated by the voluntary contributions of the
+lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the
+centres of European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid
+architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was
+well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser
+of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a
+tribe of nephews, inordinately enriched by their indulgent uncle. Milton
+arrived early in October. The most vivid trace of his visit is his
+presence at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, who,
+"himself waiting at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd,
+nay, almost laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly
+most honourable manner." There he heard the singer, Leonora Baroni, to
+whom he inscribed <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a><span class="pagenum">63</span>three Latin epigrams, omitted from the fifty-six
+compositions in honour of her published in the following year. But we
+may see her as he saw her in the frontispiece, reproduced in Ademollo's
+monograph upon her. The face is full of sensibility, but not handsome.
+She lived to be a great lady, and if any one spoke of her artist days
+she would say, <i>Chi le ricercava queste memorie?</i> Next to hers, the name
+most entwined with Milton's Roman residence is that of Lucas Holstenius,
+a librarian of the Vatican. Milton can have had little respect for a man
+who had changed his religion to become the dependant of Cardinal
+Barberini, but Holstenius's obliging reception of him extorted his
+gratitude, expressed in an eloquent letter. Of the venerable ruins and
+masterpieces of ancient and modern art which have inspired so many
+immortal compositions, Milton tells us nothing, and but one allusion to
+them is discoverable in his writings. The study of antiquity, as
+distinguished from that of classical authors, was not yet a living
+element in European culture: there is also truth in Coleridge's
+observation that music always had a greater attraction for Milton than
+plastic art.</p>
+
+<p>After two months' stay in Rome, Milton proceeded to Naples, whence,
+after two months' residence, he was recalled by tidings of the impending
+troubles at home, just as he was about to extend his travels to Sicily
+and Greece. The only name associated with his at Naples is that of the
+Marquis Manso, then passing his seventy-ninth year with the halo of
+reverence due to a veteran who fifty years ago had soothed and shielded
+Tasso, and since had protected Marini. He now entertained<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a><span class="pagenum">64</span> Milton with
+equal kindness, little dreaming that in return for hospitality he was
+receiving immortality. Milton celebrated his desert as the friend of
+poets, in a Latin poem of singular elegance, praying for a like guardian
+of his own fame, in lines which should never be absent from the memory
+of his biographers. He also unfolded the project which he then cherished
+of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly
+barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets. He is
+silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare. Manso requited the eulogium with an
+epigram and two richly-wrought cups, and told Milton that he would have
+shown him more observance still if he could have abstained from
+religious controversy. Milton had not acted on Sir Henry Wootton's
+advice to him, <i>il volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti</i>. "I had made this
+resolution with myself," he says, "not of my own accord to introduce
+conversation about religion; but, if interrogated respecting the faith,
+whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing." To this resolution he
+adhered, he says, during his second two months' visit to Rome,
+notwithstanding threats of Jesuit molestation, which probably were not
+serious. At Florence his friends received him with no less warmth than
+if they had been his countrymen, and with them he spent another two
+months. His way to Venice lay through Bologna and Ferrara, and if his
+sonnets in the Italian language were written in Italy, and all addressed
+to the same person, it was probably at Bologna, since the lady is spoken
+of as an inhabitant of "Reno's grassy vale," and the Reno is a river
+between Bologna and Ferrara. But there are many <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a><span class="pagenum">65</span>difficulties in the way
+of this theory, and, on the whole, it seems most reasonable to conclude
+that the sonnets were composed in England, and that their
+autobiographical character is at least doubtful. That nominally
+inscribed to Diodati, however, would well suit Leonora Baroni. Diodati
+had been buried in Blackfriars on August 27, 1638, but Milton certainly
+did not learn the fact until after his visit to Naples, and possibly not
+until he came to pass some time at Geneva with Diodati's uncle. He had
+come to Geneva from Venice, where he had made some stay, shipping off to
+England a cargo of books collected in Italy, among which were many of
+"immortal notes and Tuscan air." These, we may assume, he found awaiting
+him when he again set foot on his native soil, about the end of July,
+1639.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's conduct on his return justifies Wordsworth's  <span class="together">commendation:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Thy heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lowliest duties on herself did lay."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Full, as his notebooks of the period attest, of magnificent aspiration
+for "flights above the Aonian mount," he yet quietly sat down to educate
+his nephews, and lament his friend. His brother-in-law Phillips had been
+dead eight years, leaving two boys, Edward and John, now about nine and
+eight respectively. Mrs. Phillips's second marriage had added two
+daughters to the family, and from whatever cause, it was thought best
+that the education of the sons should be conducted by their uncle. So it
+came to pass that "he took him a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, at
+the house of one Russel, a <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a><span class="pagenum">66</span>tailor;" Christopher Milton continuing to
+live with his father.</p>
+
+<p>We may well believe that when the first cares of resettlement were over,
+Milton found no more urgent duty than the bestowal of a funeral tribute
+upon his friend Diodati. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is the finest of his
+Latin poems, marvellously picturesque in expression, and inspired by
+true manly grief. In Diodati he had lost perhaps the only friend whom,
+in the most sacred sense of the term, he had ever possessed; lost him
+when far away and unsuspicious of the already accomplished stroke; lost
+him when returning to his side with aspirations to be imparted, and
+intellectual treasures to be shared. <i>Bis ille miser qui serus amavit.</i>
+All this is expressed with earnest emotion in truth and tenderness,
+surpassing "Lycidas," though void of the varied music and exquisite
+felicities which could not well be present in the conventionalized idiom
+of a modern Latin poet. The most pathetic passage is that in which he
+contrasts the general complacency of animals in their kind with man's
+dependence for sympathy on a single breast; the most biographically
+interesting where he speaks of his plans for an epic on the story of
+Arthur, which he seems about to undertake in earnest. But the impulses
+from without which generally directed the course of this seemingly
+autocratic, but really susceptible, nature, urged him in quite a
+different direction: for some time yet he was to live, not make a poem.</p>
+
+<p>The tidings which, arriving at Naples about Christmas, 1638, prevailed
+upon Milton to abandon his projected visit to Sicily and Greece, were no
+doubt those of the <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a><span class="pagenum">67</span>revolt of Scotland, and Charles's resolution to
+quell it by force of arms. Ere he had yet quitted Italy, the King's
+impotence had been sufficiently demonstrated, and about a month ere he
+stood on English soil the royal army had "disbanded like the break-up of
+a school." Milton may possibly have regretted his hasty return, but
+before many months had passed it was plain that the revolution was only
+beginning. Charles's ineffable infatuation brought on a second Scottish
+war, ten times more ridiculously disastrous than the first, and its
+result left him no alternative but the convocation (November, 1640) of
+the Long Parliament, which sent Laud to the Tower and Strafford to the
+block, cleared away servile judges and corrupt ministers, and made the
+persecuted Puritans persecutors in their turn. Not a member of this
+grave assemblage, perhaps, but would have laughed if told that not its
+least memorable feat was to have prevented a young schoolmaster from
+writing an epic.</p>
+
+<p>Milton had by this time found the lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard
+insufficient for him, and had taken a house in Aldersgate Street, beyond
+the City wall, and suburban enough to allow him a garden. "This street,"
+writes Howell, in 1657, "resembleth an Italian street more than any
+other in London, by reason of the spaciousness and uniformity of the
+buildings and straightness thereof, with the convenient distance of the
+houses." He did not at this time contemplate mixing actively in
+political or religious controversy.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I looked about to see if I could get any place that would hold
+<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a><span class="pagenum">68</span>myself and my books, and so I took a house of sufficient size in
+the city; and there with no small delight I resumed my intermitted
+studies; cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to
+God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that
+task."</p></div>
+
+<p>But this was before the convocation of the Long Parliament. When it had
+met,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Perceiving that the true way to liberty followed on from these
+beginnings, inasmuch also as I had so prepared myself from my
+youth that, above all things, I could not be ignorant what is of
+Divine and what of human right, I resolved, though I was then
+meditating certain other matters, to transfer into this struggle
+all my genius and all the strength of my industry."</p></div>
+
+<p>Milton's note-books, to be referred to in another place, prove that he
+did not even then cease to meditate themes for poetry, but practically
+he for eighteen years ceased to be a poet.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt something grating and unwelcome in the descent of the
+scholar from regions of serene culture to fierce political and religious
+broils. But to regret with Pattison that Milton should, at this crisis
+of the State, have turned aside from poetry to controversy is to regret
+that "Paradise Lost" should exist. Such a work could not have proceeded
+from one indifferent to the public weal, and if Milton had been capable
+of forgetting the citizen in the man of letters we may be sure that "a
+little grain of conscience" would ere long have "made him sour." It is
+sheer literary fanaticism to speak with Pattison of "the prostitution of
+genius to political party." Milton is as much the idealist in his prose
+as in his verse; and although in his pamphlets he <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a><span class="pagenum">69</span>sides entirely with
+one of the two great parties in the State, it is not as its instrument,
+but as its prophet and monitor. He himself tells us that controversy is
+highly repugnant to him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I trust to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure
+to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a
+calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident
+thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse
+disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in
+the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come in to the
+dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk."</p></div>
+
+<p>But he felt that if he allowed such motives to prevail with him, it
+would be said to him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now again at the
+foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest, What matters it
+for thee or thy bewailing? When time was, thou would'st not find a
+syllable of all that thou hast read or studied to utter on her
+behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired
+thoughts, but of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence,
+the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be
+adorned or beautified; but when the cause of God and His Church
+was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee
+which thou hast, God listened if He could hear thy voice among His
+zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward
+be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee."</p></div>
+
+<p>A man with "Paradise Lost" in him must needs so think and act, and, much
+as it would have been to have had another "Comus" or "Lycidas," were not
+even such well exchanged for a hymn like this, the high-water mark of
+English impassioned prose ere Milton's mantle fell upon Ruskin?</p>
+<p><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a><span class="pagenum">70</span></p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable.
+Parent of angels and men! next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King,
+Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume,
+ineffable and everlasting Love! And Thou, the third subsistence of
+Divine Infinitude, illuminating Spirit, the joy and solace of
+created things! one Tri-personal godhead! look upon this Thy poor
+and almost spent and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to
+these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they
+devour Thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broke into Thy
+vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls
+of Thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs
+that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting
+the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and
+scorpions to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal
+darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth
+again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird
+of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this
+our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes, and
+struggling against the grudges of more dreaded calamities.</p>
+
+<p>"O Thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody
+inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking
+the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless
+revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were
+quite breathless of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of
+covenant with us; and, having first well-nigh freed us from
+anti-Christian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic Empire to a
+glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about
+her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our
+half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of
+sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat
+through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive
+spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom:
+that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how, for
+us, the northern ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered
+with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw
+of Hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction,
+ere she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast.</p>
+
+<p>"O how much more glorious will those former deliverances <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a><span class="pagenum">71</span>appear,
+when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest
+miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest happiness to
+come? Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from
+the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes, now unite us entirely
+and appropriate us to Thyself, tie us everlastingly in willing
+homage to the prerogative of Thy eternal throne.</p>
+
+<p>"And now we know, O Thou, our most certain hope and defence, that
+Thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great
+whore, and have joined their plots with that sad, intelligencing
+tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies
+thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas:
+but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought;
+let them decree, and do Thou cancel it; let them gather
+themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be
+broken; let them embattle, and be broken, for Thou art with us.</p>
+
+<p>"Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may
+perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty
+measures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous
+judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and
+warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual
+practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the
+rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy
+emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian
+people at that day, when Thou, the Eternal and shortly-expected
+King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the
+world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious
+and just commonwealths, shall put an end to all earthly tyrannies,
+proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and
+earth; where they undoubtedly, that by their labours, counsels,
+and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion,
+and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the
+blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and
+thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of
+beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle
+of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in
+over-measure for ever.</p>
+
+<p>"But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the
+<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a><span class="pagenum">72</span>true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire
+to high dignity, rule and promotion here, after a shameful end in
+this life (which God grant them), shall be thrown down eternally
+into the darkest and deepest gulf of Hell, where, under the
+despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned,
+that in the anguish of their torture, shall have no other ease
+than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their
+slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the
+basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and
+down-trodden vassals of perdition."</p></div>
+
+<p>The five pamphlets in which Milton enunciated his views on Church
+Government fall into two well-marked chronological divisions. Three&mdash;"Of
+Reformation touching Church Discipline in England," "Of Prelatical
+Episcopacy," "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against
+Smectymnuus"&mdash;which appeared almost simultaneously, belong to the
+middle of 1641, when the question of episcopacy was fiercely agitated.
+Two&mdash;"The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy," and "The
+Apology for Smectymnuus,"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> belong to the early part of 1642, when the
+bishops had just been excluded from the House of Lords. To be just to
+Milton we must put ourselves in his position. At the present day forms
+of church government are usually debated on the ground of expediency,
+and even those to whom they seem important cannot regard them as they
+were regarded by Milton's contemporaries. Many may protest against
+Episcopacy receiving especial recog<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a><span class="pagenum">73</span>nition from the State, but no one
+dreams of abolishing it, or of endowing another form of ecclesiastical
+administration in its room. It is no longer contended that the national
+religion should be changed, the contention is that no religion should be
+national, but that all should be placed on an impartial footing. But
+Milton at this time desired a theocracy, and nothing doubted that he
+could produce a pattern agreeable in every respect to the Divine will if
+only Prelacy could be hurled after Popery. The controversy, therefore,
+assumed far grander proportions than would be possible in our day, when
+it is three-fourths a protest against the airs of superiority which the
+alleged successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards
+teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than
+their own to the Apostolic model. What would seem exaggerated now was
+then perfectly in place. Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for
+which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the
+tongues of angels too melodious. As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry
+the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor
+ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the
+interminable period must not unfold itself in heights and hollows like
+the incoming tide of ocean, nor peal forth melodious thunder like a
+mighty organ. But, considered as argumentative compositions, they are
+exceedingly weak. No masculine head could be affected by them; but a
+manly heart may easily imbibe the generous contagion of their noble
+enthusiastic idealism. No man with a single fibre of ideality or
+enthusiasm can help confessing that Milton <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a><span class="pagenum">74</span>has risen to a transcendent
+height, and he may imagine that it has been attained by the ladder of
+reason rather than the pinion of poetry. Such an one may easily find
+reasons for agreeing with Milton in many inspired outbursts of eloquence
+simulating the logic that is in fact lacking to them. The following
+splendid passage, for instance, and there are very many like it, merely
+proves that a seat in the House of Lords is not essential to the
+episcopal office, which no one ever denied. It would have considerable
+force if the question involved the nineteenth century one of the Pope's
+temporal  <span class="together">sovereignty:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Certainly there is no employment more honourable, more worthy to
+take up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free
+nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of heavenly truth
+from God to man, and by the faithful work of holy doctrine to
+procreate a number of faithful men, making a kind of creation like
+to God's by infusing his spirit and likeness into them, to their
+salvation, as God did into him; arising to what climate soever he
+turn him, like that Sun of Righteousness that sent him, with
+healing in his wings, and new light to break in upon the chill and
+gloomy hearts of his hearers, raising out of darksome barrenness a
+delicious and fragrant spring of saving knowledge and good works.
+Can a man thus employed find himself discontented or dishonoured
+for want of admittance to have a pragmatical voice at sessions and
+jail deliveries? or because he may not as a judge sit out the
+wrangling noise of litigious courts to shrive the purses of
+unconfessing and unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be
+discouraged though men call him not lord, whereas the due
+performance of his office would gain him, even from lords and
+princes, the voluntary title of father?"</p></div>
+
+<p>When it was said of Robespierre, <i>cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit
+tout ce qu'il dit</i>, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief
+place in the State. It <a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a><span class="pagenum">75</span>might have been said of Milton in the literal
+sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity
+to family life, to the horror of many nominal allies. His treatise on
+Divorce was the next of his publications in chronological order, but is
+so entwined with his domestic life that it will be best to postpone it
+until we again take up the thread of his personal history, and to pass
+on for the present to his next considerable writings, his tracts on
+education and on the freedom of the press.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's tract on Education, like so many of his performances, was the
+fruit of an impulse from without. "Though it be one of the greatest and
+noblest designs that can be thought on, and for want of which this
+nation perishes, I had not at this time been induced but by your earnest
+entreaties and serious conjurements." The efficient cause thus referred
+to existed in the person of Samuel Hartlib, philanthropist and
+polypragmatist, precursor of the Franklins and Rumfords of the
+succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction,
+Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country
+behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour
+applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal
+hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather
+however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by
+any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings to
+which he devoted himself were two of no less moment than the union of
+British and foreign Protestants, and the reform of English education by
+the introduction of <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a><span class="pagenum">76</span>the methods of Comenius. This Moravian pastor, the
+Pestalozzi of his age, had first of men grasped the idea that the
+ordinary school methods were better adapted to instil a knowledge of
+words than a knowledge of things. He was, in a word, the inventor of
+object lessons. He also strove to organize education as a connected
+whole from the infant school to the last touch of polish from foreign
+travel. Milton alludes almost scornfully to Comenius in his preface to
+Hartlib, but his tract is nevertheless imbued with the Moravian's
+principles. His aim, like Comenius's, is to provide for the instruction
+of all, "before the years of puberty, in all things belonging to the
+present and future life." His view is as strictly utilitarian as
+Comenius's. "Language is but the instrument conveying to us things
+useful to be known." Of the study of language as intellectual discipline
+he says nothing, and his whole course of instruction is governed by the
+desire of imparting useful knowledge. Whatever we may think of the
+system of teaching which in our day allows a youth to leave school
+disgracefully ignorant of physical and political geography, of history
+and foreign languages, it cannot be denied that Milton goes into the
+opposite extreme, and would overload the young mind with more
+information than it could possibly digest. His scheme is further
+vitiated by a fault which we should not have looked for in him,
+indiscriminate reverence for the classical writers, extending to
+subjects in which they were but children compared with the moderns. It
+moves something more than a smile to find ingenuous youth referred to
+Pliny and Solinus for instruction in physical science; and one wonders
+what the agricultural Hartlib <a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a><span class="pagenum">77</span>thought of the proposed course of "Cato,
+Varro, and Columella," whose precepts are adapted for the climate of
+Italy. Another error, obvious to any dunce, was concealed from Milton by
+his own intellectual greatness. He legislates for a college of Miltons.
+He never suspects that the course he is prescribing would be beyond the
+abilities of nine hundred and ninety-nine scholars in a thousand, and
+that the thousandth would die of it. If a difficulty occurs he
+contemptuously puts it aside. He has not provided for Italian, but can
+it not "be easily learned at any odd hour"? "Ere this time the Hebrew
+tongue" (of which we have not hitherto heard a syllable), "might have
+been gained, whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldee and
+the Syrian dialect." This sublime confidence in the resources of the
+human intellect is grand, but it marks out Milton as an idealist, whose
+mission it was rather to animate mankind by the greatness of his
+thoughts than to devise practical schemes for human improvement. As an
+ode or poem on education, Milton's tract, doubtless, has delivered many
+a teacher and scholar from bondage to routine; and no man's aims are so
+high or his thoughts so generous that he might not be further profited
+and stimulated by reading it. As a practical treatise it is only
+valuable for its emphatic denunciation of the folly of teasing youth,
+whose element is the concrete, with grammatical abstractions, and the
+advice to proceed to translation as soon as possible, and to keep it up
+steadily throughout the whole course. Neglect of this precept is the
+principal reason why so many youths not wanting in capacity, and
+assiduously taught, leave <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a><span class="pagenum">78</span>school with hardly any knowledge of
+languages. Milton's scheme is also remarkable for its bold dealing with
+day schools and universities, which it would have entirely superseded.</p>
+
+<p>The next publication of Milton's is another instance of the dependence
+of his intellectual workings upon the course of events outside him. We
+owe the "Areopagitica," not to the lonely overflowings of his soul, or
+even to the disinterested observation of public affairs, but to the real
+jeopardy he had incurred by his neglect to get his books licensed. The
+Long Parliament had found itself, in 1643, with respect to the Press,
+very much in the position of Lord Canning's government in India at the
+time of the Mutiny. It marks the progress of public opinion that,
+whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent
+inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure,
+the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous,
+seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had
+no right to exist, and should be nipped in the bud by the appointment of
+licensers. Twelve London ministers, therefore, were nominated to license
+books in divinity, which was equivalent to enacting that nothing
+contrary to Presbyterian orthodoxy should be published in England.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+Other departments, not forgetting poetry and <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a><span class="pagenum">79</span>fiction, were similarly
+provided for. The ordinance is dated June 14, 1643. Milton had always
+contemned the licensing regulations previously existing, and within a
+month his brain was busy with speculations which no reverend licenser
+could have been expected to confirm with an imprimatur. About August 1st
+the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" appeared, with no recognition
+of or from a licenser; and the second edition, published in the
+following February, equally infringed the Parliamentary ordinance. No
+notice appears to have been taken until the election of a new Master of
+the Stationers' Company, about the middle of 1644. The Company had an
+interest in the enforcement of the ordinance, which was aimed at piracy
+as well as sedition and heresy; and whether for this reason, or at the
+instigation of Milton's adversaries, they (August 24th) petitioned
+Parliament to call him to account. The matter was referred to a
+committee, but more urgent business thrust it out of sight. Milton,
+nevertheless, had received his marching orders, and on November 24,
+1644, appeared "Areopagitica; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
+Printing": itself unlicensed.</p>
+
+<p>The "Areopagitica" is by far the best known of Milton's prose writings,
+being the only one whose topic is not obsolete. It is also composed with
+more care and art than the others. Elsewhere he seeks to overwhelm, but
+here to persuade. He could without insincerity profess veneration for
+the Lords and Commons to whom his discourse is addressed, and he spares
+no pains to give them a favourable opinion both of his dutifulness and
+his reasonableness. More than anywhere else he affects the <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a><span class="pagenum">80</span>character of
+a practical man, pressing home arguments addressed to the understanding
+rather than to the pure reason. He points out sensibly, and for him
+calmly, that the censorship is a Papal invention, contrary to the
+precedents of antiquity; that while it cannot prevent the circulation of
+bad books, it is a grievous hindrance to good ones; that it destroys the
+sense of independence and responsibility essential to a manly and
+fruitful literature. We hear less than might have been expected about
+first principles, of the sacredness of conscience, of the obligation on
+every man to manifest the truth as it is within him. He does not dispute
+that the magistrate may suppress opinions esteemed dangerous to society
+after they have been published; what he maintains is that publication
+must not be prevented by a board of licensers. He strikes at the censor,
+not at the Attorney-General. This judicious caution cramped Milton's
+eloquence; for while the "Areopagitica" is the best example he has given
+us of his ability as an advocate, the diction is less magnificent than
+usual. Yet nothing penned by him in prose is better known than the
+passage beginning, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant
+nation;" and none of his writings contain so many seminal sentences,
+pithy embodiments of vital truths. "Revolutions of ages do not oft
+recover the loss of a rejected truth." "A dram of well-doing should be
+preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil
+doing. For God more esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
+person than the restraint of ten vicious." "Opinion in good men is but
+knowledge in the making." "A man maybe a heretic in <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a><span class="pagenum">81</span>the truth." Towards
+the end the argument takes a wider sweep, and Milton, again the poet and
+the seer, hails with exultation the approach of the time he thinks he
+discerns when all the Lord's people shall be prophets. "Behold now this
+vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed
+and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more
+anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of
+armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and
+heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching,
+revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their
+homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation." He clearly
+indicates that he regards the licensing ordinance as not really the
+offspring of an honest though mistaken concern for religion and
+morality, but as a device of Presbyterianism to restrain this outpouring
+of the spirit and silence Independents as well as Royalists.
+Presbyterianism had indeed been weighed in the balance and found
+wanting, and Milton's pamphlet was the handwriting on the wall. The fine
+gold must have become very dim ere a Puritan pen could bring itself to
+indite that scathing satire on the "factor to whose care and credit the
+wealthy man may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some
+divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres; resigns
+the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys into
+his custody; and, indeed, makes the very person of that man his
+religion&mdash;esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and
+commendation of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now
+<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a><span class="pagenum">82</span>no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and
+comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He
+entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him, his religion
+comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped and sumptuously laid to
+sleep, rises, is saluted; and after the malmsey or some well-spiced
+brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would
+have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his
+religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the
+shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling
+passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless,
+congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was
+humour. And now, surely as ever Saul was among the prophets, behold
+Milton among the wits.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a><span class="pagenum">83</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Ranging with Milton's spirit over the "fresh woods and pastures new,"
+foreshadowed in the closing verse of "Lycidas," we have left his mortal
+part in its suburban dwelling in Aldersgate Street, which he seems to
+have first inhabited shortly before the convocation of the Long
+Parliament in November, 1640. His visible occupations are study and the
+instruction of his nephews; by and by he becomes involved in the
+revolutionary tempest that rages around; and, while living like a
+pedagogue, is writing like a prophet. He is none the less cherishing
+lofty projects for epic and drama; and we also learn from Phillips that
+his society included "some young sparks," and may assume that he then,
+as  <span class="together">afterwards&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Disapproved that care, though wise in show,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That with superfluous burden loads the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is eloquent testimony of his interest in public affairs in his
+subscription of four pounds, a large sum in those days, for the relief
+of the homeless Protestants of Ulster. The progress of events must have
+filled him <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a><span class="pagenum">84</span>with exultation, and when at length civil war broke out in
+September, 1642, Parliament had no more zealous champion. His zeal,
+however, did not carry him into the ranks, for which some biographers
+blame him. But if he thought that he could serve his cause better with a
+pamphlet than with a musket, surely he had good reason for what he
+thought. It should seem, moreover, that if Milton detested the enemy's
+principles, he respected his pikes and  <span class="together">guns:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<h4 >WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY [NOVEMBER, 1642.]</h4>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If deed of honour did thee ever please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Guard them, and him within protect from harms.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He can requite thee, for he knows the charms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That call fame on such gentle acts as these,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The great Emathian conqueror bid spare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Went to the ground; and the repeated air<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of sad Electra's poet had the power<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>If this strain seems deficient in the fierceness befitting a besieged
+patriot, let it be remembered that Milton's doors were literally
+defenceless, being outside the rampart of the City.</p>
+
+<p>We now approach the most curious episode of Milton's life, and the most
+irreconcilable with the conventional opinion of him. Up to this time
+this <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a><span class="pagenum">85</span>heroic existence must have seemed dull to many, for it has been a
+life without love. He has indeed, in his beautiful Sonnet to the
+Nightingale (about 1632), professed himself a follower of Love: but if
+so, he has hitherto followed at a most respectful distance. Yet he had
+not erred, when in the Italian sonnet, so finely rendered in Professor
+Masson's biography, he declared the heart his vulnerable  <span class="together">point:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Young, gentle-natured, and a simple wooer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Offer devoutly; and by tokens sure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In its conceptions graceful, good, and high.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the world roars, and flames the startled sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In its own adamant it rests secure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As free from chance and malice ever found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As it is loyal to each manly thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Only in that part is it not so sound<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is highly probable that the very reaction from party strife turned
+the young man's fancies to thoughts of love in the spring of 1643.
+Escorted, we must fear, by a chorus of mocking cuckoos, Milton, about
+May 21st, rode into the country on a mysterious errand. It is a ghoulish
+and ogreish idea, but it really seems as if the elder Milton quartered
+his progeny upon his debtors, as the ichneumon fly quarters hers upon
+caterpillars. Milton had, at all events for the last sixteen years, been
+regularly drawing interest from an Oxfordshire <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a><span class="pagenum">86</span>squire, Richard Powell
+of Forest Hill, who owed him &pound;500, which must have been originally
+advanced by the elder Milton. The Civil War had no doubt interfered with
+Mr. Powell's ability to pay interest, but, on the other hand, must have
+equally impaired Milton's ability to exact it; for the Powells were
+Cavaliers, and the Parliament's writ would run but lamely in loyal
+Oxfordshire. Whether Milton went down on this eventful Whitsuntide in
+the capacity of a creditor cannot now be known; and a like uncertainty
+envelops the precise manner of the metamorphosis of Mary Powell into
+Mary Milton. The maiden of seventeen may have charmed him by her
+contrast to the damsels of the metropolis, she may have shielded him
+from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the
+Royalist headquarters, she may have won his heart while pleading for her
+harassed father; he may have fancied hers a mind he could mould to
+perfect symmetry and deck with every accomplishment, as the Gods
+fashioned and decorated Pandora. Milton also seems to imply that his, or
+his bride's, better judgment was partly overcome by "the persuasion of
+friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all." It is
+possible, too, that he had long been intimate with his debtor's family,
+and that Mary had previously made an impression upon him. If not, his
+was the most preposterously precipitate of poets' marriages; for a month
+after leaving home he presented a mistress to his astounded nephews and
+housekeeper. The newly-wedded pair were accompanied or quickly followed
+by a bevy of the bride's friends and relatives, who danced <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a><span class="pagenum">87</span>and sang and
+feasted for a week in the quiet Puritan house, then departed&mdash;and after
+a few weeks Milton finds himself moved to compose his tract on the
+"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce."</p>
+
+<p>How many weeks? The story seemed a straightforward one until Professor
+Masson remarked what had before escaped attention. According to
+Phillips, an inmate of the house at the period&mdash;"By that time she had
+for a month, or thereabouts, led a philosophical life (after having been
+used to a great house, and much company and joviality), her friends,
+possibly incited by her own desire, made earnest suit by letter to have
+her company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, on
+condition of her return at the time appointed, Michaelmas or thereabout.
+Michaelmas being come, and no news of his wife's return, he sent for her
+by letter, and receiving no answer sent several other letters, which
+were also unanswered, so that at last he dispatched down a
+foot-messenger; but the messenger came back without an answer. He
+thought it would be dishonourable ever to receive her again after such a
+repulse, and accordingly wrote two treatises," &amp;c. Here we are
+distinctly assured that Mary Milton's desertion of her husband, about
+Michaelmas, was the occasion of his treatise on divorce. It follows that
+Milton's tract must have been written after Michaelmas. But the copy in
+the British Museum belonged to the bookseller Thomason, who always
+inscribed the date of publication on every tract in his collection, when
+it was known to him, and his date, as Professor Masson discovered, is
+August 1. Must we believe that Phillips's account <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a><span class="pagenum">88</span>is a
+misrepresentation? Must we, in Pattison's words, "suppose that Milton
+was occupying himself with a vehement and impassioned argument in favour
+of divorce for incompatibility of temper, during the honeymoon"? It
+would certainly seem so, and if Milton is to be vindicated it can only
+be by attention to traits in his character, invisible on its surface,
+but plainly discoverable in his actions.</p>
+
+<p>The grandeur of Milton's poetry, and the dignity and austerity of his
+private life, naturally incline us to regard him as a man of iron will,
+living by rule and reason, and exempt from the sway of passionate
+impulse. The incident of his marriage, and not this incident alone,
+refutes this conception of his character; his nature was as lyrical and
+mobile as a poet's should be. We have seen "Comus" and "Lycidas" arise
+at another's bidding, we shall see a casual remark beget "Paradise
+Regained." He never attempts to utter his deepest religious convictions
+until caught by the contagious enthusiasm of a revolution. If any
+incident in his life could ever have compelled him to speak or die it
+must have been the humiliating issue of his matrimonial adventure. To be
+cast off after a month's trial like an unsatisfactory servant, to
+forfeit the hope of sympathy and companionship which had allured him
+into the married state, to forfeit it, unless the law could be altered,
+for ever! The feelings of any sensitive man must find some sort of
+expression in such an emergency. At another period what Milton learned
+in suffering would no doubt have been taught in song. But pamphlets were
+then the order of the day, and Milton's "Doctrine and<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a><span class="pagenum">89</span> Discipline of
+Divorce," in its first edition, is as much the outpouring of an
+overburdened heart as any poem could have been. It bears every mark of a
+hasty composition, such as may well have been written and printed within
+the last days of July, following Mary Milton's departure. It is short.
+It deals with the most obvious aspects of the question. It is meagre in
+references and citations; two authors only are somewhat vaguely alleged,
+Grotius and Beza. It does not contain the least allusion to his domestic
+circumstances, nor anything unless the thesis itself, that could hinder
+his wife's return. Everything betokens that it was composed in the
+bitterness of wounded feeling upon the incompatibility becoming
+manifest; but that he had not yet arrived at the point of demanding the
+application of his general principle to his own special case. That point
+would be reached when Mary Milton deliberately refused to return, and
+the chronology of the greatly enlarged second edition, published in the
+following February, entirely confirms Phillips's account. In one point
+only he must be wrong. Mary Milton's return to her father's house cannot
+have been a voluntary concession on Milton's part, but must have been
+wrung from him after bitter contentions. Could we look into the
+household during those weeks of wretchedness, we should probably find
+Milton exceedingly deficient in consideration for the inexperienced girl
+of half his age, brought from a gay circle of friends and kindred to a
+grave, studious house. But it could not well have been otherwise. Milton
+was constitutionally unfit "to soothe and fondle," and his theories
+cannot <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a><span class="pagenum">90</span>have contributed to correct his practice. His "He for God only,
+she for God in him," condenses every fallacy about woman's true relation
+to her husband and her Maker. In his Tractate on Education there is not
+a word on the education of girls, and yet he wanted an intellectual
+female companion. Where should the woman be found at once submissive
+enough and learned enough to meet such inconsistent exigencies? It might
+have been said to him as afterwards to Byron: "You talk like a
+Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in
+the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe
+for not containing a sylph."</p>
+
+<p>If Milton's first tract on divorce had not been a mere impromptu,
+extorted by the misery of finding "an image of earth and phlegm" in her
+"with whom he looked to be the co-partner of a sweet and gladsome
+society," he would certainly have rendered his argument more cogent and
+elaborate. The tract, in its inspired portions, is a fine impassioned
+poem, fitter for the Parliament of Love than the Parliament at
+Westminster. The second edition is far more satisfactory as regards that
+class of arguments which alone were likely to impress the men of his
+generation, those derived from the authority of the Scriptures and of
+divines. In one of his principal points all Protestants and philosophers
+will confess him to be right, his reference of the matter to Scripture
+and reason, and repudiation of the medi&aelig;val canon law. It is not here,
+nevertheless, that Milton is most at home. The strength of his position
+is his lofty idealism, his magnificent conception of the <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a><span class="pagenum">91</span>institution he
+discusses, and his disdain for whatever degrades it to conventionality
+or mere expediency. "His ideal of true and perfect marriage," says Mr.
+Ernest Myers, "appeared to him so sacred that he could not admit that
+considerations of expediency might justify the law in maintaining sacred
+any meaner kind, or at least any kind in which the vital element of
+spiritual harmony was not." Here he is impregnable and above criticism,
+but his handling of the more sublunary departments of the subject must
+be unsatisfactory to legislators, who have usually deemed his sublime
+idealism fitter for the societies of the blest than for the imperfect
+communities of mankind. When his "doctrine and discipline" shall have
+been sanctioned by lawgivers, we may be sure that the world is already
+much better, or much worse.</p>
+
+<p>As the girl-wife vanishes from Milton's household her place is taken by
+the venerable figure of his father. The aged man had removed with his
+son Christopher to Reading, probably before August, 1641, when the birth
+of a child of his name&mdash;Christopher's offspring as it should
+seem&mdash;appears in the Reading register. Christopher was to exemplify the
+law of reversion to a primitive type. Though not yet a Roman Catholic
+like his grandfather, he had retrograded into Royalism, without becoming
+on that account estranged from his elder brother. The surrender of
+Reading to the Parliamentary forces in April, 1643, involved his
+"dissettlement," and the migration of his father to the house of John,
+with whom he was moreover better in accord in religion and politics.
+Little external change resulted,<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a><span class="pagenum">92</span> "the old gentleman," says Phillips,
+"being wholly retired to his rest and devotion, with the least trouble
+imaginable." About the same time the household received other additions
+in the shape of pupils, admitted, Phillips is careful to assure us, by
+way of favour, as M. Jourdain selected stuffs for his friends. Milton's
+pamphlet was perhaps not yet published, or not generally known to be
+his, or his friends were indifferent to public sentiment. Opinion was
+unquestionably against Milton, nor can he have profited much by the
+support, however practical, of a certain Mrs. Attaway, who thought that
+"she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified
+husband, that did not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of
+Canaan," and by and by actually did what Milton only talked of doing. We
+have already seen that he had incurred danger of prosecution from the
+Stationers' Company, and in July, 1644, he was denounced by name from
+the pulpit by a divine of much note, Herbert Palmer, author of a book
+long attributed to Bacon. But, if criticised, he was read. By 1645 his
+Divorce tract was in the third edition, and he had added three more
+pamphlets&mdash;one to prove that the revered Martin Bucer had agreed with
+him; two, the "Tetrachordon" and "Colasterion," directed against his
+principal opponents, Palmer, Featley, Caryl, Prynne, and an anonymous
+pamphleteer, who seems to have been a somewhat contemptible person, a
+serving-man turned attorney, but whose production contains some not
+unwelcome hints on the personal aspects of Milton's controversy. "We
+believe you count no woman to due conversation acces<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a><span class="pagenum">93</span>sible, as to you,
+except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, and dispute
+against the canon law as well as you." Milton's later tracts are not
+specially interesting, except for the reiteration of his fine and bold
+idealism on the institution of marriage, qualified only by his no less
+strenuous insistance on the subjection of woman. He allows, however,
+that "it is no small glory to man that a creature so like him should be
+made subject to him," and that "particular exceptions may have place, if
+she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly
+yield; for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser
+should govern the less wise, whether male or female."</p>
+
+<p>Milton's seminary, meanwhile, was prospering to such a degree as to
+compel him to take a more commodious house. Was it necessity or
+enthusiasm that kept him to a task so little compatible with the repose
+he must have needed even for such intellectual exercise as the
+"Areopagitica," much more for the high designs he had not ceased to
+meditate in verse? Enthusiasm, one would certainly say, only that it is
+impossible to tell to what extent his father's income, chiefly derived
+from money out at interest, may have been impaired by the confusion of
+the times. Whether he had done rightly or wrongly in taking the duties
+of a preceptor upon himself, his nephew's account attests the
+self-sacrificing zeal with which he discharged them: we groan as we read
+of hours which should have been devoted to lonely musing or noble
+composition passed in "increasing as it were by proxy" his knowledge of
+"Frontinus his Stratagems, with the two egregious poets<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a><span class="pagenum">94</span> Lucretius and
+Manilius." He might also have been better employed than in dictating "A
+tractate he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines who have
+written on that subject of atheism, Amesius, Wollebius," &amp;c. Here should
+be comfort for those who fear with Pattison that Milton's addiction to
+politics deprived us of unnumbered "Comuses." The excerpter of Amesius
+and Wollebius, as we have so often insisted, needed great stimulus for
+great achievements. Such stimulus would probably have come
+superabundantly if he could at this time have had his way, for the most
+moral of men was bent on assuming a direct antagonism to conventional
+morality. He had maintained that marriage ought to be dissolved for mere
+incompatibility; his case must have seemed much stronger now that
+incompatibility had produced desertion. He was not the man to shrink
+from acting on his opinion when the fit season seemed to him to have
+arrived; and in the summer of 1645 he was openly paying his addresses to
+"a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, one of Dr. Davis's daughters."
+Considering the consequences to the female partner to the contract, it
+is clear that Miss Davis could not be expected to entertain Milton's
+proposals unless her affection for him was very strong indeed. It is
+equally clear that he cannot be acquitted of selfishness in urging his
+suit unless he was quite sure of this, and his own heart also was deeply
+interested. An event was about to occur which seems to prove that these
+conditions were wanting.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly two years have passed since we have heard of Mary Milton, who has
+been living with her parents <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a><span class="pagenum">95</span>in Oxfordshire. Her position as a nominal
+wife must have been most uncomfortable, but there is no indication of
+any effort on her part to alter it, until the Civil War was virtually
+terminated by the Battle of Naseby, June, 1645. Obstinate malignants had
+then nothing to expect but fine and forfeiture, and their son-in-law's
+Puritanism may have presented itself to the Powells in the light of a
+merciful dispensation. Rumours of Milton's suit to Miss Davis may also
+have reached them; and they would know that an illegal tie would be as
+fatal to all hopes of reconciliation as a legal one. So, one day in July
+or August, 1645, Milton, paying his usual call on a kinsman named
+Blackborough,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> not otherwise mentioned in his life, who lived in St.
+Martin's-le-Grand Lane, where the General Post Office now stands, "was
+surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making
+submission and begging pardon on her knees before him." There are two
+similar scenes in his writings, of which this may have formed the
+groundwork, Dalila's visit to her betrayed husband in "Samson
+Agonistes," and Eve's repentance in the tenth book of "Paradise Lost."
+Samson replies, "Out, out, hy&aelig;na!" Eve's "lowly plight"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"in Adam wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commiseration;...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a><span class="pagenum">96</span>Phillips appears to intimate that the penitent's reception began like
+Dalila's and ended like Eve's. "He might probably at first make some
+show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more
+inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge,
+and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon
+brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for the
+future." With a man of his magnanimous temper, conscious no doubt that
+he had himself been far from blameless, such a result was to be
+expected. But it was certainly well that he had made no deeper
+impression than he seems to have done upon "the handsome and witty
+gentlewoman." One would like to know whether she and Mistress Milton
+ever met, and what they said to and thought of each other. For the
+present, Mary Milton dwelt with Christopher's mother-in-law, and about
+September joined her husband in the more commodious house in the
+Barbican whither he was migrating at the time of the reconciliation. It
+stood till 1864, when it was destroyed by a railway company.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after removing to the Barbican, Milton set his Muse's house in
+order, by publishing such poems, English and Latin, as he deemed worthy
+of presentation. It is a remarkable proof both of his habitual
+cunctativeness and his dependence on the suggestions of others, that he
+should so long have allowed such pieces to remain uncollected, and
+should only have collected them at all at the solicitation of the
+publisher, Humphrey Moseley. The transaction is most honourable to the
+latter. "It is not any private respect of <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a><span class="pagenum">97</span>gain," he affirms; "for the
+slightest pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of
+learnedest men, but it is the love I bear to our own language.... I know
+not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy
+soul is: perhaps more trivial airs may please better.... Let the event
+guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing
+forth into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth
+since our famous Spenser wrote." The volume was published on Jan. 2,
+1646. It is divided into two parts, with separate title-pages, the first
+containing the English poems, the second the Latin. They were probably
+sold separately. The frontispiece, engraved by Marshall, is
+unfortunately a sour and silly countenance, passing as Milton's, but
+against which he protests in four lines of Greek appended, which the
+worthy Marshall seems to have engraved without understanding them. The
+British Museum copy in the King's Library contains an additional MS.
+poem of considerable merit, in a hand which some have thought like
+Milton's, but few now believe it to have been either written or
+transcribed by him. It is dated 1647, but for which circumstance one
+might indulge the fancy that the copy had been a gift from him to some
+Italian friend, for the binding is Italian, and the book must have seen
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Milton was now to learn what he afterwards taught, that "they also serve
+who only stand and wait." He had challenged obloquy in vindication of
+what he deemed right: the cross actually laid upon him was to fill his
+house with inimical and uncongenial depen<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a><span class="pagenum">98</span>dants on his bounty and
+protection. The overthrow of the Royalist cause was utterly ruinous to
+the Powells. All went to wreck on the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646.
+The family estate was only saved from sequestration by a friendly
+neighbour taking possession of it under cover of his rights as creditor;
+the family mansion was occupied by the Parliamentarians, and the
+household stuff sold to the harpies that followed in their train; the
+"malignant's" timber went to rebuild the good town of Banbury. It was
+impossible for the Powells to remain in Oxfordshire, and Milton opened
+his doors to them as freely as though there had never been any
+estrangement. Father, mother, several sons and daughters came to dwell
+in a house already full of pupils, with what inconvenience from want of
+room and disquiet from clashing opinions may be conjectured. "Those whom
+the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless
+kind," he says to Dati, "has closely conjoined with me, whether by
+accident or the tie of law, they are the persons who sit daily in my
+company, weary me, nay, by heaven, almost plague me to death whenever
+they are jointly in the humour for it." Milton's readiness to receive
+the mother, deemed the chief instigator of her daughter's "frowardness,"
+may have been partly due to the situation of the latter, who gave him a
+daughter on July 29, 1646. In January, 1647, Mr. Powell died, leaving
+his affairs in dire confusion. Two months afterwards Milton's father
+followed him at the age of eighty-four, partly cognisant, we will hope,
+of the gift he had bestowed on his country in his son. It was probably
+owing to <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a><span class="pagenum">99</span>the consequent improvement in Milton's circumstances that he
+about this time gave up his pupils, except his nephews, and removed to a
+smaller house in High Holborn, not since identified; the Powells also
+removing to another dwelling. "No one," he says of himself at this
+period, "ever saw me going about, no one ever saw me asking anything
+among my friends, or stationed at the doors of the Court with a
+petitioner's face. I kept myself almost entirely at home, managing on my
+own resources, though in this civil tumult they were often in great part
+kept from me, and contriving, though burdened with taxes in the main
+rather oppressive, to lead my frugal life." The traces of his literary
+activity at this time are few&mdash;preparations for a history of England,
+published long afterwards, an ode, a sonnet, correspondence with Dati,
+some not very successful versions of the Psalms. He seems to have been
+partly engaged in preparing the treatise on Christian Doctrine, which
+was fortunately reserved for a serener day. In undertaking it at this
+period he was missing a great opportunity. He might have been the
+apostle of toleration in England, as Roger Williams had been in America.
+The moment was most favourable. Presbyterianism had got itself
+established, but could not pretend to represent the majority of the
+nation. It had been branded by Milton himself in the memorable line:
+"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The Independents were for
+toleration, the Episcopalians had been for the time humbled by
+adversity, the best minds in the nation, including Cromwell, were
+Seekers or Latitude men, or sceptics.<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a><span class="pagenum">100</span> Here was invitation enough for a
+work as much greater than the "Areopagitica" as the principle of freedom
+of thought is greater than the most august particular application of it.
+Milton might have added the better half of Locke's fame to his own, and
+compelled the French philosophers to sit at the feet of a Bible-loving
+Englishman. But unfortunately no external impulse stirred him to action,
+as in the case of the "Areopagitica." Presbyterians growled at him
+occasionally; they did not fine or imprison him, or put him out of the
+synagogue. Thus his pen slumbered, and we are in danger of forgetting
+that he was, in the ordinary sense of that much-abused term, no Puritan,
+but a most free and independent thinker, the vast sweep of whose thought
+happened to coincide for a while with the narrow orbit of so-called
+Puritanism.</p>
+
+<p>Impulse to work of another sort was at hand. On January 30, 1649,
+Charles the First's head rolled on the scaffold. On February 13th was
+published a pamphlet from Milton's hand, which cannot have been begun
+before the King's trial, another proof of his feverish impetuosity when
+possessed by an overmastering idea. The title propounds two theses with
+very different titles to acceptance. "The Tenure of Kings and
+Magistrates proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all
+ages, for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked
+king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death: if the
+ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it." That kings have
+no more immunity than others from the consequences of evil doing is a
+proposition which <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a><span class="pagenum">101</span>seemed monstrous to many in Milton's day, but which
+will command general assent in ours. But to lay it down that "any who
+has the power" may interpose to correct what he chooses to consider the
+laches of the lawful magistrate is to hand over the administration of
+the law to Judge Lynch&mdash;rather too high a price to pay for the
+satisfaction of bringing even a bad king to the block. Milton's sneer at
+"vulgar and irrational men, contesting for privileges, customs, forms,
+and that old entanglement of iniquity, their gibberish laws," is
+equivalent to an admission that his party had put itself beyond the pale
+of the law. The only defence would be to show that it had acted under
+great and overwhelming necessity; but this he takes for granted, though
+knowing well that it was denied by more than half the nation. His
+argument, therefore, is inconclusive, except that portion of it which
+modern opinion allows to pass without argument. He seems indeed to admit
+in his "Defensio Secunda" that the tract was written less to vindicate
+the King's execution than to saddle the protesting Presbyterians with a
+share of the responsibility. The diction, though robust and spirited, is
+not his best, and, on the whole, the most admirable feature in his
+pamphlet is his courage in writing it. He was to speak yet again on this
+theme as the mouthpiece of the Commonwealth, thus earning honour and
+reward; it was well to have shown first that he did not need this
+incentive to expose himself to Royalist vengeance, but had prompting
+enough in the intensity of his private convictions.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a><span class="pagenum">102</span>He had flung himself into a perilous breach. "Eikon Basilike"&mdash;most
+timely of manifestoes&mdash;had been published only four days before the
+appearance of "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." Between its
+literary seduction and the horror generally excited by the King's
+execution, the tide of public opinion was turning fast. Milton no doubt
+felt that no claim upon him could be equal to that which the State had a
+right to prefer. He accepted the office of "Secretary for Foreign
+Tongues" to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, a delegation from the
+Council of State of forty-one members, by which the country was at that
+time governed. Vane, Whitelocke, and Marten were among the members of
+the committee. The specified duties of the post were the preparation and
+translation of despatches from and to foreign governments. These were
+always in Latin,&mdash;the Council, says that sturdy Briton, Edward Phillips,
+"scorning to carry on their affairs in the wheedling, lisping jargon of
+the cringing French." But it must have been understood that Milton's pen
+would also be at the service of the Government outside the narrow range
+of official correspondence. The salary was handsome for the time&mdash;&pound;288,
+equivalent to about &pound;900 of our money. It was an honourable post, on the
+manner of whose discharge the credit of England abroad somewhat
+depended; the foreign chanceries were full of accomplished Latinists,
+and when Blake's cannon was not to be the mouthpiece, the Commonwealth's
+message needed a silver trumpet. It was also as likely as any employment
+to make a scholar a statesman. If in some respects it opposed new
+obstacles to the <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a><span class="pagenum">103</span>fulfilment of Milton's aspirations as a poet, he might
+still feel that it would help him to the experience which he had
+declared to be essential: "He who would not be frustrate of his hope to
+write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true
+poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest
+things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous
+cities, unless he have within himself the experience and the practice of
+all that which is praiseworthy." Up to this time Milton's experience of
+public affairs had been slight; he does not seem to have enjoyed the
+intimate acquaintance of any man then active in the making of history.
+In our day he would probably have entered Parliament, but that was
+impossible under a dispensation which allowed a Parliament to sit till a
+Protector turned it out of doors. He was, therefore, only acting upon
+his own theory, and he seems to us to have been acting wisely as well as
+courageously, when he consented to become a humble but necessary wheel
+of the machinery of administration, the Orpheus among the Argonauts of
+the Commonwealth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a><span class="pagenum">104</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Milton was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues on March 15, 1649. He
+removed from High Holborn to Spring Gardens to be near the scene of his
+labours, and was soon afterwards provided with an official residence in
+Whitehall Palace, a huge intricacy of passages and chambers, of which
+but a fragment now remains. His first performance was in some measure a
+false start; for the epistle offering amity to the Senate of Hamburg,
+clothed in his best Latin, was so unamiably regarded by that body that
+the English envoy never formally delivered it. An epistle to the Dutch
+on the murder of the Commonwealth's ambassador, Dorislaus, by refugee
+Cavaliers, had a better reception; and Milton was soon engaged in
+drafting, not merely translating, a State paper designed for the
+press&mdash;observations on the peace concluded by Ormond, the Royalist
+commander in Ireland, with the confederated Catholics in that country,
+and on the protest against the execution of Charles I. volunteered by
+the Presbytery of Belfast. The commentary was published in May, along
+with the documents. It is a spirited manifesto, cogent in enforcing the
+necessity of the campaign about to be undertaken by<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a><span class="pagenum">105</span> Cromwell. Ireland
+had at the moment exactly as many factions as provinces; and never,
+perhaps, since the days of Strongbow had been in a state of such utter
+confusion. Employed in work like this, Milton did not cease to be "an
+eagle towering in his pride of place," but he may seem to have
+degenerated into the "mousing owl" when he pounced upon newswriters and
+ferreted unlicensed pamphlets for sedition. True, there was nothing in
+this occupation formally inconsistent with anything he had written in
+the "Areopagitica"; yet one wishes that the Council of State had
+provided otherwise for this particular department of the public service.
+Nothing but a sense of duty can have reconciled him to a task so
+invidious; and there is some evidence of what might well have been
+believed without evidence&mdash;that he mitigated the severity of the
+censorship as far as in him lay. He was not to want for better
+occupation, for the Council of State was about to devolve upon him the
+charge of answering the great Royalist manifesto, "Eikon Basilike."</p>
+
+<p>The controversy respecting the authorship of the "Eikon Basilike" is a
+remarkable instance of the degree in which literary judgment may be
+biassed by political prepossession. In the absence of other testimony
+one might almost stamp a writer as Royalist or Parliamentarian according
+as his verdict inclined to Charles I. or Bishop Gauden. In fact, it is
+no easy matter to balance the respective claims of two entirely
+different kinds of testimony. The external evidence of Charles's
+authorship is worth nothing. It is almost confined to the assertions,
+forty years after the publication, of a few <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a><span class="pagenum">106</span>aged Cavaliers, who were
+all morally certain that Charles wrote the book, and to whom a fiction
+supplying the accidental lack of external testimony would have seemed
+laudable and pious. The only wonder is that such legends are not far
+more numerous. On the other hand, the internal evidence seems at first
+sight to make for the king. The style is not dissimilar to that of the
+reputed royal author; the sentiments are such as would have well become
+him; the assumed character is supported throughout with consistency; and
+there are none of the slips which a fabricator might have been thought
+hardly able to avoid. The supposed personator of the King was
+unquestionably an unprincipled time-server. Is it not an axiom that a
+worthy book can only proceed from a worthy mind?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"If this fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pillared firmament is rottenness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And earth's base built on stubble!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Against such considerations we have to set the stubborn facts that
+Bishop Gauden did actually claim the authorship that he preferred his
+claim to the very persons who had the strongest interest in exploding
+it; that he invoked the testimony of those who must have known the
+truth, and could most easily have crushed the lie; that he convinced not
+only Clarendon, but Charles's own children, and received a substantial
+reward. In the face of these undeniable facts, the numerous
+circumstances used with skill and ingenuity by Dr. Wordsworth to
+invalidate his claim, are of little weight. The stronger the apparent
+objections, the more certain that the proofs in Gauden's hands must have
+been overwhelming, and the <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a><span class="pagenum">107</span>greater the presumption that he was merely
+urging what had always been known to several persons about the late
+king. When, with this conviction, we recur to the "Eikon," and examine
+it in connection with Gauden's acknowledged writings, the internal
+testimony against him no longer seems so absolutely conclusive. Gauden's
+style is by no means so bad as Hume represents it. Many remarkable
+parallels between it and the diction of the "Eikon" have been pointed
+out by Todd, and the most searching modern investigator, Doble. We may
+also discover one marked intellectual resemblance. Nothing is more
+characteristic in the "Eikon" than its indirectness. The writer is full
+of qualifications, limitations, allowances; he fences and guards
+himself, and seems always on the point of taking back what he has said,
+but never does; and veers and tacks, tacks and veers, until he has
+worked himself into port. The like peculiarity is very observable in
+Gauden, especially in his once-popular "Companion to the Altar." There
+is also a strong internal argument against Charles's authorship in the
+preponderance of the theological element. That this should occupy an
+important place in the writings of a martyr for the Church of England
+was certainly to be expected, but the theology of the "Eikon" has an
+unmistakably professional flavour. Let any man read it with an unbiassed
+mind, and then say whether he has been listening to a king or to a
+chaplain. "One of <i>us</i>," pithily comments Archbishop Herring. "I write
+rather like a divine than a prince," the assumed author acknowledges, or
+is made to acknowledge. When to these considerations is added that any
+scrap of the "Eikon" in the<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a><span class="pagenum">108</span> King's handwriting would have been
+treasured as an inestimable relic, and that no scrap was ever produced,
+there can be little question as to the verdict of criticism. For all
+practical purposes, nevertheless, the "Eikon" in Milton's time was the
+King's book, for everybody thought it so. Milton hints some vague
+suspicions, but refrains from impugning it seriously, and indeed the
+defenders of its authenticity will be quite justified in asserting that
+if Gauden had been dumb, Criticism would have been blind.</p>
+
+<p>According to Selden's biographer, Cromwell was at first anxious that the
+"Eikon" should be answered by that consummate jurist, and it was only on
+his declining the task that it came into Milton's hands. That he also
+would have declined it but for his official position may be inferred
+from his own words: "I take it on me as a work assigned, rather than by
+me chosen or affected." His distaste may further be gauged by his
+tardiness; while "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" had been written
+in little more than a week, his "Eikonoklastes," a reply to a book
+published in February, did not appear until October 6th. His reluctance
+may be partly explained by his feeling that "to descant on the
+misfortunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity, who hath also
+paid his final debt both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself
+a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discourse." The intention
+it may not have been, but it was necessarily the performance. The scheme
+of the "Eikon" required the respondent to take up the case article by
+article, a thing impossible to be done without abundant "descant" of the
+kind which Milton deprecates. He is <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a><span class="pagenum">109</span>compelled to fight the adversary on
+the latter's chosen ground, and the eloquence which might have swept all
+before it in a discussion of general principles is frittered away in
+tiresome wrangling over a multitude of minuti&aelig;. His vigorous blows avail
+but little against the impalpable ideal with which he is contending; his
+arguments might frequently convince a court of justice, but could do
+nothing to dispel the sorcery which enthralled the popular imagination.
+Milton's "Eikonoklastes" had only three editions, including a
+translation, within the year; the "Eikon Basilike" is said to have had
+fifty.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's reputation as a political controversialist, however, was not to
+rest upon "Eikonoklastes," or to be determined by a merely English
+public. The Royalists had felt the necessity of appealing to the general
+verdict of Europe, and had entrusted their cause to the most eminent
+classical scholar of the age. To us the idea of commissioning a
+political manifesto from a philologist seems eccentric; but erudition
+and the erudite were never so highly prized as in the seventeenth
+century. Men's minds were still enchained by authority, and the
+precedents of Agis, or Brutus, or Nehemiah, weighed like dicta of
+Solomon or Justinian. The man of Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew learning
+was, therefore, a person of much greater consequence than he is now, and
+so much the more if he enjoyed a high reputation and wrote good Latin.
+All these qualifications were combined in Claudius Salmasius, a
+Frenchman, who had laid scholars under an eternal obligation by his
+discovery of the Palatine MS. of the Anthology at Heidelberg, and <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a><span class="pagenum">110</span>who,
+having embraced Protestantism from conviction, lived in splendid style
+at Leyden, where the mere light of his countenance&mdash;for he did not
+teach&mdash;was valued by the University at three thousand livres a year. It
+seems marvellous that a man should become dictator of the republic of
+letters by editing "Solinus" and "The Augustan History," however ably;
+but an achievement like this, not a "Paradise Lost" or a "Werther" was
+the <i>sic itur ad astra</i> of the time. On the strength of such Salmasius
+had pronounced <i>ex cathedra</i> on a multiplicity of topics, from
+episcopacy to hair-powder, and there was no bishop and no perfumer
+between the Black Sea and the Irish who would not rather have the
+scholar for him than against him. A man, too, to be named with respect;
+no mere annotator, but a most sagacious critic; peevish, it might be,
+but had he not seven grievous disorders at once? One who had shown such
+independence and integrity in various transactions of his life, that we
+may be very sure that Charles II.'s hundred Jacobuses, if ever given or
+even promised, were the very least of the inducements that called him
+into the field against the executioners of Charles I.</p>
+
+<p>Whether, however, the hundred Jacobuses were forthcoming or not,
+Salmasius's undertaking was none the less a commission from Charles II.,
+and the circumstance put him into a false position, and increased the
+difficulty of his task. Human feeling is not easily reconciled to the
+execution of a bad magistrate, unless he has also been a bad man.
+Charles I. was by no means a bad man, only a mistaken one. He had been
+guilty of many usurpations and much perfidy: but he had <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a><span class="pagenum">111</span>honestly
+believed his usurpations within the limits of his prerogative; and his
+breaches of faith were committed against insurgents whom he regarded as
+seamen look upon pirates, or shepherds upon wolves. Salmasius, however,
+pleading by commission from Charles's son, can urge no such mitigating
+plea. He is compelled to maintain the inviolability even of wicked
+sovereigns, and spends two-thirds of his treatise in supporting a
+proposition to state which is to refute it in the nineteenth century. In
+the latter part he is on stronger ground. Charles had unquestionably
+been tried and condemned by a tribunal destitute of legal authority, and
+executed contrary to the wish and will of the great majority of his
+subjects. But this was a theme for an Englishman to handle. Salmasius
+cannot think himself into it, nor had he sufficient imagination to be
+inspired by Charles as Burke (who, nevertheless, has borrowed from him)
+was to be inspired by Marie Antoinette.</p>
+
+<p>His book&mdash;entitled "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I."&mdash;appeared in October
+or November, 1649. On January 8, 1650, it was ordered by the Council of
+State "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the Book of
+Salmasius, and when he hath done it bring it to the Council." There were
+many reasons why he should be entrusted with this commission, and only
+one why he should not; but one which would have seemed conclusive to
+most men. His sight had long been failing. He had already lost the use
+of one eye, and was warned that if he imposed this additional strain
+upon his sight, that of the other would follow. He had seen the greatest
+astronomer of the age condemned to inactivity <a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a><span class="pagenum">112</span>and helplessness, and
+could measure his own by the misery of Galileo. He calmly accepted his
+duty along with its penalty, without complaint or reluctance. If he
+could have performed his task in the spirit with which he undertook it,
+he would have produced a work more sublime than "Paradise Lost."</p>
+
+<p>This, of course, was not possible. The efficiency of a controversialist
+in the seventeenth century was almost estimated in the ratio of his
+scurrility, especially when he wrote Latin. From this point of view
+Milton had got his opponent at a tremendous disadvantage. With the best
+will in the world, Salmasius had come short in personal abuse, for, as
+the initiator of the dispute, he had no personal antagonist. In
+denouncing the general herd of regicides and parricides he had hurt
+nobody in particular, while concentrating all Milton's lightnings on his
+own unlucky head. They seared and scathed a literary dictator whom
+jealous enemies had long sighed to behold insulted and humiliated, while
+surprise equalled delight at seeing the blow dealt from a quarter so
+utterly unexpected. There is no comparison between the invective of
+Milton and of Salmasius; not so much from Milton's superiority as a
+controversialist, though this is very evident, as because he writes
+under the inspiration of a true passion. His scorn of the presumptuous
+intermeddler who has dared to libel the people of England is ten
+thousand times more real than Salmasius's official indignation at the
+execution of Charles. His contempt for Salmasius's pedantry is quite
+genuine; and he revels in ecstasies of savage glee when taunting the
+apologist of tyranny with his <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a><span class="pagenum">113</span>own notorious subjection to a tyrannical
+wife. But the reviler in Milton is too far ahead of the reasoner. He
+seems to set more store by his personalities than by his principles. On
+the question of the legality of Charles's execution he has indeed little
+argument to offer; and his views on the wider question of the general
+responsibility of kings, sound and noble in themselves, suffer from the
+mass of irrelevant quotation with which it was in that age necessary to
+prop them up. The great success of his reply ("Pro Populo Anglicano
+Defensio") arose mainly from the general satisfaction that Salmasius
+should at length have met with his match. The book, published in or
+about March, 1651, instantly won over European public opinion, so far as
+the question was a literary one. Every distinguished foreigner then
+resident in London, Milton says, either called upon him to congratulate
+him, or took the opportunity of a casual meeting. By May, says Heinsius,
+five editions were printed or printing in Holland, and two translations.
+"I had expected nothing of such quality from the Englishman," writes
+Vossius. The Diet of Ratisbon ordered "that all the books of Miltonius
+should be searched for and confiscated." Parisian magistrates burned it
+on their own responsibility. Salmasius himself was then at Stockholm,
+where Queen Christina, who did not, like Catherine II., recognize the
+necessity of "standing by her order," could not help letting him see
+that she regarded Milton as the victor. Vexation, some thought,
+contributed as much as climate to determine his return to Holland. He
+died in September, 1653, at Spa, as, remote from books, but making his
+memory his library, he was penning his answer.<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a><span class="pagenum">114</span> This unfinished
+production, edited by his son, appeared after the Restoration, when the
+very embers of the controversy had grown cold, and the palm of literary
+victory had been irrevocably adjudged to Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Milton could hear the plaudits, he could not see the wreaths. The total
+loss of his sight may be dated from March, 1652, a year after the
+publication of his reply. It was then necessary to provide him with an
+assistant&mdash;that no change should have been made in his position or
+salary shows either the value attached to his services or the feeling
+that special consideration was due to one who had voluntarily given his
+eyes for his country. "The choice lay before me," he writes, "between
+dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I
+could not listen to the physician, not if &AElig;sculapius himself had spoken
+from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not
+what, that spoke to me from heaven." In September, 1654, he described
+the symptoms of his infirmity to his friend, the Greek Philaras, who had
+flattered him with hopes of cure from the dexterity of the French
+oculist Thevenot. He tells him how his sight began to fail about ten
+years before; how in the morning he felt his eyes shrinking from the
+effort to read anything; how the light of a candle appeared like a
+spectrum of various colours; how, little by little, darkness crept over
+the left eye; and objects beheld by the right seemed to waver to and
+fro; how this was accompanied by a kind of dizziness and heaviness which
+weighed upon him throughout the afternoon. "Yet the darkness which is
+perpetually before me seems always nearer to a whitish than to a
+blackish, and such <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a><span class="pagenum">115</span>that, when the eye rolls itself, there is admitted,
+as through a small chink, a certain little trifle of light." Elsewhere
+he says that his eyes are not disfigured:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Clear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To outward view of blemish or of spot."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These symptoms have been pronounced to resemble those of glaucoma.
+Milton himself, in "Paradise Lost," hesitates between amaurosis ("drop
+serene") and cataract ("suffusion"). Nothing is said of his having been
+recommended to use glasses or other precautionary contrivances.
+Cheselden was not yet, and the oculist's art was probably not well
+understood. The sufferer himself, while not repining or despairing of
+medical assistance, evidently has little hope from it. "Whatever ray of
+hope may be for me from your famous physician, all the same, as in a
+case quite incurable, I prepare and compose myself accordingly. My
+darkness hitherto, by the singular kindness of God, amid rest and
+studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, has been much easier
+to bear than that deathly one. But if, as is written, 'Man doth not live
+by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
+God,' what should prevent me from resting in the belief that eyesight
+lies not in eyes alone, but enough for all purposes in God's leading and
+providence? Verily, while only He looks out for me, and provides for me,
+as He doth; teaching me and leading me forth with His hand through my
+whole life, I shall willingly, since it hath seemed good to Him, have
+given my eyes their long holiday. And to you I now bid farewell, with a
+mind not less brave and steadfast than if I <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a><span class="pagenum">116</span>were Lynceus himself for
+keenness of sight." Religion and philosophy, of which no brighter
+example was ever given, did not, in this sore trial, disdain the support
+of a manly  <span class="together">pride:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"What supports me, dost thou ask?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In liberty's defence, my noble task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O! which all Europe rings from side to side;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Content though blind, had I no better guide."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Noble words, and Milton might well triumph in his victory in the field
+of intellectual combat. But if his pamphlet could have put Charles the
+First's head on again, then, and then only, could it have been of real
+political service to his party.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's loss of sight was accompanied by domestic sorrow, though
+perhaps not felt with special acuteness. Since the birth of his eldest
+daughter in 1646, his wife had given him three more children&mdash;a
+daughter, born in October, 1648; a son, born in March, 1650, who died
+shortly afterwards; and another daughter, born in May, 1652. The birth
+of this child may have been connected with the death of the mother in
+the same or the following month. The household had apparently been
+peaceful, but it is unlikely that Mary Milton can have been a companion
+to her husband, or sympathized with such fraction of his mind as it was
+given her to understand. She must have become considerably emancipated
+from the creeds of her girlhood if his later writings could have been
+anything but detestable to her; and, on the whole, much as one pities
+her probably wasted life, <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a><span class="pagenum">117</span>her disappearance from the scene, if tragic
+in her ignorance to the last of the destiny that might have been hers,
+is not unaccompanied with a sense of relief. Great, nevertheless, must
+have been the blind poet's embarrassment as the father of three little
+daughters. Much evil, it is to be feared, had already been sown; and his
+temperament, his affliction, and his circumstances alike nurtured the
+evil yet to come. He was then living in Petty France, Westminster,
+having been obliged, either by the necessities of his health or of the
+public service, to give up his apartments in Whitehall. The house stood
+till 1877, a forlorn tenement in these latter years; far different,
+probably, when the neighbourhood was fashionable and the back windows
+looked on St. James's Park. It is associated with other celebrated
+names, having been owned by Bentham and occupied by Hazlitt.</p>
+
+<p>The controversy with Salmasius had an epilogue, chiefly memorable in so
+far as it occasioned Milton to indulge in autobiography, and to record
+his estimate of some of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Among various
+replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of
+especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad C&oelig;lum," published about
+August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the
+bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set
+him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been
+answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed with Italian
+vices: he would have been accused of cannibalism had his path lain
+towards the Caribee Islands. A fulsome <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a><span class="pagenum">118</span>dedication to Salmasius tended
+to fix the suspicion of authorship upon Alexander Morus, a Frenchman of
+Scotch extraction, Professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, and pastor
+of the Walloon Church, then an inmate of Salmasius's house, who actually
+had written the dedication and corrected the proof. The real author,
+however, was Peter Du Moulin, ex-rector of Wheldrake, in Yorkshire. The
+dedicatory ink was hardly dry ere Morus was involved in a desperate
+quarrel with Salmasius through the latter's imperious wife, who accused
+Morus of having been over-attentive to her English waiting-maid, whose
+patronymic is lost to history under the Latinized form of Bontia.
+Failing to make Morus marry the damsel, she sought to deprive him of his
+ecclesiastical and professorial dignities. The correspondence of
+Heinsius and Vossius shows what intense amusement the affair occasioned
+to such among the scholars of the period as were unkindly affected
+towards Salmasius. Morus was ultimately acquitted, but his position in
+Holland had become uncomfortable, and he was glad to accept an
+invitation from the congregation at Charenton, celebrated for its
+lunatics. Understanding, meanwhile, that Milton was preparing a reply,
+and being naturally unwilling to brave invective in the cause of a book
+which he had not written, and of a patron who had cast him off, he
+protested his innocence of the authorship, and sought to ward off the
+coming storm by every means short of disclosing the writer. Milton,
+however, esteeming his Latin of much more importance than Morus's
+character, and justly considering with Voltaire, "que cet Habacuc &eacute;tait
+capable de tout," persisted in ex<a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a><span class="pagenum">119</span>hibiting himself as the blind Cyclop
+dealing blows amiss. His reply appeared in May, 1654, and a rejoinder by
+Morus produced a final retort in August, 1655. Both are full of
+personalities, including a spirited description of the scratching of
+Morus's face by the injured Bontia. These may sink into oblivion, while
+we may be grateful for the occasion which led Milton to express himself
+with such fortitude and dignity on his affliction and its
+alleviations:&mdash;"Let the calumniators of God's judgments cease to revile
+me, and to forge their superstitious dreams about me. Let them be
+assured that I neither regret my lot nor am ashamed of it, that I remain
+unmoved and fixed in my opinion, that I neither believe nor feel myself
+an object of God's anger, but actually experience and acknowledge His
+fatherly mercy and kindness to me in all matters of greatest
+moment&mdash;especially in that I am able, through His consolation and His
+strengthening of my spirit, to acquiesce in His divine will, thinking
+oftener of what He has bestowed upon me than of what He has withheld:
+finally, that I would not exchange the consciousness of what I have done
+with that of any deed of theirs, however righteous, or part with my
+always pleasant and tranquil recollection of the same." He adds that his
+friends cherish him, study his wants, favour him with their society more
+assiduously even than before, and that the Commonwealth treats him with
+as much honour as if, according to the customs of the Athenians of old,
+it had decreed him public support for his life in the Prytaneum.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's tract is also interesting for its pen-portraits of some of the
+worthies of the Commonwealth, and its <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a><span class="pagenum">120</span>indications of his own views on
+the politics of his troubled times. Bradshaw is eulogized with great
+elegance and equal truth for his manly courage and strict consistency.
+"Always equal to himself, and like a consul re-elected for another year,
+so that you would say he not only judged the King from his tribunal, but
+is judging him all his life." This was matter of notoriety: one may hope
+that Milton had equal reason for his praise of Bradshaw's affability,
+munificence, and placability. The comparison of Fairfax to the elder
+Scipio Africanus is more accurate than is always or often the case with
+historical parallels, and by a dexterous turn, surprising if we have
+forgotten the scholar in the controversialist, Fairfax's failure in
+statesmanship, as Milton deemed it, is not only extenuated, but is made
+to usher in the more commanding personality of Cromwell. C&aelig;sar, says
+Johnson, had not more elegant flattery than Cromwell received from
+Milton: nor Augustus, he might have added, encomiums more heartfelt and
+sincere. Milton was one of the innumerable proofs that a man may be very
+much of a Republican without being anything of a Liberal. He was as firm
+a believer in right divine as any Cavalier, save that in his view such
+right was vested in the worthiest; that is, practically, the strongest.
+An admirable doctrine for 1653,&mdash;how unfit for 1660 remained to be
+discovered by him. Under its influence he had successively swallowed
+Pride's Purge, the execution of Charles I. by a self-constituted
+tribunal, and Cromwell's expulsion of the scanty remnant of what had
+once seemed the more than Roman senate of 1641.<a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a><span class="pagenum">121</span> There is great reason
+to believe with Professor Masson that a tract vindicating this violence
+was actually taken down from his lips. It is impossible to say that he
+was wrong. Cromwell really was standing between England and anarchy. But
+Milton might have been expected to manifest some compunction at the
+disappointment of his own brilliant hopes, and some alarm at the
+condition of the vessel of the State reduced to her last plank.
+Authority actually had come into the hands of the kingliest man in
+England, valiant and prudent, magnanimous and merciful. But Cromwell's
+life was precarious, and what after Cromwell? Was the ancient
+constitution, with its halo of antiquity, its settled methods, and its
+substantial safeguards, wisely exchanged for one life, already the mark
+for a thousand bullets? Milton did not reflect, or he kept his
+reflections to himself. The one point on which he does seem nervous is
+lest his hero should call himself what he is. The name of Protector even
+is a stumbling-block, though one <i>can</i> get over it. "You have, by
+assuming a title likest that of Father of your Country, allowed yourself
+to be, one cannot say elevated, but rather brought down so many stages
+from your real sublimity, and as it were forced into rank for the public
+convenience." But there must be no question of a higher  <span class="together">title:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"You have, in your far higher majesty, scorned the title of King.
+And surely with justice: for if in your present greatness you were
+to be taken with that name which you were able when a private man
+to reduce and bring to nothing, it would be almost as if, when by
+the help of the true God you had subdued some idolatrous nation,
+you were to worship the gods you had yourself overcome."</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a><span class="pagenum">122</span>This warning, occurring in the midst of a magnificent panegyric,
+sufficiently vindicates Milton against the charge of servile flattery.
+The frank advice which he gives Cromwell on questions of policy is less
+conclusive evidence: for, except on the point of disestablishment, it
+was such as Cromwell had already given himself. Professor Masson's
+excellent summary of it may be further condensed thus&mdash;1. Reliance on a
+council of well-selected associates. 2. Absolute voluntaryism in
+religion. 3. Legislation not to be meddlesome or over-puritanical. 4.
+University and scholastic endowments to be made the rewards of approved
+merit. 5. Entire liberty of publication at the risk of the publisher. 6.
+Constant inclination towards the generous view of things. The advice of
+an enthusiastic idealist, Puritan by the accident of his times, but
+whose true affinities were with Mill and Shelley and Rousseau.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting question arises in connection with Milton's official
+duties: had he any real influence on the counsels of Government? or was
+he a mere secretary? It would be pleasing to conceive of him as Vizier
+to the only Englishman of the day whose greatness can be compared with
+his; to imagine him playing Aristotle to Cromwell's Alexander. We have
+seen him freely tendering Cromwell what might have been unpalatable
+advice, and learn from Du Moulin's lampoon that he was accused of having
+behaved to the Protector with something of dictatorial rudeness. But it
+seems impossible to point to any direct influence of his mind in the
+administration; and his own depart<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a><span class="pagenum">123</span>ment of Foreign Affairs was neither
+one which he was peculiarly qualified to direct, nor one in which he was
+likely to differ from the ruling powers. "A spirited foreign policy" was
+then the motto of all the leading men of England. Before Milton's loss
+of sight his duties included attendance upon foreign envoys on State
+occasions, of which he must afterwards have been to a considerable
+extent relieved. The collection of his official correspondence published
+in 1676 is less remarkable for the quantity of work than the quality.
+The letters are not very numerous, but are mostly written on occasions
+requiring a choice dignity of expression. "The uniformly Miltonic style
+of the greater letters," says Professor Masson, "utterly precludes the
+idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him." We
+seem to see him sitting down to dictate, weighing out the fine gold of
+his Latin sentences to the stately accompaniment, it may be, of his
+chamber-organ. War is declared against the Dutch; the Spanish ambassador
+is reproved for his protraction of business; the Grand Duke of Tuscany
+is warmly thanked for protecting English ships in the harbour of
+Leghorn; the French king is admonished to indemnify English merchants
+for wrongful seizure; the Protestant Swiss cantons are encouraged to
+fight for their religion; the King of Sweden is felicitated on the birth
+of a son and heir, and on the Treaty of Roeskilde; the King of Portugal
+is pressed to use more diligence in investigating the attempted
+assassination of the English minister; an ambassador is accredited to
+Russia; Mazarin is congratulated on the capture of<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a><span class="pagenum">124</span> Dunkirk. Of all his
+letters, none can have stirred Milton's personal feelings so deeply as
+the epistle of remonstrance to the Duke of Savoy on the atrocious
+massacre of the Vaudois Protestants (1655); but the document is
+dignified and measured in tone. His emotion found relief in his greatest
+sonnet; blending, as Wordsworth implies, trumpet notes with his habitual
+organ-music; the most memorable example in our language of the fire and
+passion which may inspire a poetical form which some have deemed only
+fit to celebrate a  <span class="together">"mistress's eyebrow"<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forget not: in Thy book record their groans<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The vales redoubled to the hills, and they<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The triple tyrant; that from these may grow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A hundredfold, who, having learned Thy way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Early may fly the Babylonian woe."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is what Johnson calls "carving heads upon cherry-stones!"</p>
+
+<p>Milton's calamity had, of course, required special assistance. He had
+first had Weckherlin as coadjutor, then Philip Meadows, finally Andrew
+Marvell. His <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a><span class="pagenum">125</span>emoluments had been reduced, in April, 1655, from &pound;288 to
+&pound;150 a year, but the diminished allowance was made perpetual instead of
+annual, and seems to have been intended as a retiring pension. He
+nevertheless continued to work, drawing salary at the rate of &pound;200 a
+year, and his pen was never more active than during the last months of
+Oliver's Protectorate. He continued to serve under Richard, writing
+eleven letters between September, 1658, and February, 1659. With two
+letters for the restored Parliament after Richard's abdication, written
+in May, 1659, Milton, though his formal supersession was yet to come,
+virtually bade adieu to the Civil  <span class="together">Service:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"God doth not need<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And post o'er land and ocean without rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They also serve who only stand and wait."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The principal domestic events in Milton's life, meanwhile, had been his
+marriage with Katherine, daughter of an unidentified Captain Woodcock,
+in November, 1656; and the successive loss of her and an infant daughter
+in February and March, 1658. It is probable that Milton literally never
+saw his wife, whose worth and the consequent happiness of the fifteen
+months of their too brief union, are sufficiently attested by his sonnet
+on the dream in which he fancied her restored to him, with the striking
+conclusion, "Day brought back my night." Of his daughters at the time,
+much may <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a><span class="pagenum">126</span>be conjectured, but nothing is known; his nephews, whose
+education had cost him such anxious care, though not undutiful in their
+personal relations with him, were sources of uneasiness from their own
+misadventures, and might have been even more so as sinister omens of the
+ways in which the rising generation was to walk. The fruits of their
+bringing up upon the egregious Lucretius and Manilius were apparently
+"Satyr against Hypocrites," <i>i.e.</i>, Puritans; "Mysteries of Love and
+Eloquence;" "Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment," which last brought the
+Council down upon John Phillips as a propagator of immorality. In his
+nephews Milton might have seen, though we may be sure he did not see,
+how fatally the austerity of the Commonwealth had alienated those who
+would soon determine whether the Commonwealth should exist. Unconscious
+of the "engine at the door," he could spend happy social hours with
+attached friends&mdash;Andrew Marvell, his assistant in the secretaryship and
+poetical satellite; his old pupil Cyriack Skinner; Lady Ranelagh;
+Oldenburg, the Bremen envoy, destined to fame as Secretary of the Royal
+Society and the correspondent of Spinoza; and a choice band of
+"enthusiastic young men who accounted it a privilege to read to him, or
+act as his amanuenses, or hear him talk." A sonnet inscribed to one of
+these, Henry Lawrence, gives a pleasing picture of the British Homer in
+his Horatian  <span class="together">hour:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Help waste a sullen day, what may be won<br /></span><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a><span class="pagenum">127</span>
+<span class="i0">From the hard season gaining? Time will run<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He who of those delights can judge, and spare<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To interpose them oft, is not unwise."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a><span class="pagenum">128</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As flake by flake is piled, till some great truth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is loosened, and the nations echo round."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the
+slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of
+those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation. In
+most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep.
+In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen
+years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest. After
+two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to
+consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country
+might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals
+of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than
+Thamyris and M&aelig;onides. Yet the material of his immortal poem must have
+gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so
+soon have been transmuted into song. It can hardly be doubted that his
+cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life.
+Remanded thus to solemn medi<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a><span class="pagenum">129</span>tation, he would gradually rise to the
+height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in
+comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation
+he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point
+when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing,
+as always hitherto, the impulse of others. We cannot tell what influence
+finally launched this high-piled avalanche of thrice-sifted snow. The
+time is better ascertained. Aubrey refers it to 1658, the last year of
+Oliver's Protectorate. As Cromwell's death virtually closed Milton's
+official labours, a Genie, overshadowing land and sea, arose from the
+shattered vase of the Latin Secretaryship.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more interesting than to observe the first gropings of genius
+in pursuit of its aim. Ample insight, as regards Milton, is afforded by
+the precious manuscripts given to Trinity College, Cambridge, by Sir
+Henry Newton Puckering (we know not how he got them), and preserved by
+the pious care of Charles Mason and Sir Thomas Clarke. By the portion of
+the MSS. relating to Milton's drafts of projected poems, which date
+about 1640-1642, we see that the form of his work was to have been
+dramatic, and that, in respect of subject, the swift mind was divided
+between Scripture and British History. No fewer than ninety-nine
+possible themes&mdash;sixty-one Scriptural, and thirty-eight historical or
+legendary&mdash;are jotted down by him. Four of these relate to "Paradise
+Lost." Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are "Sodom" (the
+plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently
+im<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a><span class="pagenum">130</span>practicable, is interesting as a counterpart of "Comus"), "Samson
+Marrying," "Ahab," "John the Baptist," "Christus Patiens," "Vortigern,"
+"Alfred the Great," "Harold," "Athirco" (a very striking subject from a
+Scotch legend), and "Macbeth," where Duncan's ghost was to have appeared
+instead of Banquo's, and seemingly taken a share in the action.
+"Arthur," so much in his mind when he wrote the "Epitaphium Damonis,"
+does not appear at all. Two of the drafts of "Paradise Lost" are mere
+lists of <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i>, but the others indicate the shape which the
+conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a
+religious drama on the pattern of the medi&aelig;val mystery or miracle play.
+Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the
+second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer
+bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's
+temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which
+Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope
+for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion,
+"the Angel causes to pass before his eyes a masque of all the evils of
+this life and world," a conception traceable in the eleventh book of
+"Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the
+freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked
+upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by
+Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech
+which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the
+exordium of his tragedy. Of the <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a><span class="pagenum">131</span>literary sources which may have
+originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's
+mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark
+that his purpose had from the first been didactic. This is particularly
+visible in the notes of alternative subjects in his manuscripts, many of
+which palpably allude to the ecclesiastical and political incidents of
+his time, while one is strikingly prophetic of his own defence of the
+execution of Charles I. "The contention between the father of Zimri and
+Eleazar whether he ought to have slain his son without law; next the
+ambassadors of the Moabites expostulating about Cosbi, a stranger and a
+noblewoman, slain by Phineas. It may be argued about reformation and
+punishment illegal, and, as it were, by tumult. After all arguments
+driven home, then the word of the Lord may be brought, acquitting and
+approving Phineas." It was his earnest aim at all events to compose
+something "doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." "Whatsoever," he says
+in 1641, "whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
+or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
+that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
+refluxes of man's thoughts from within&mdash;all these things with a solid
+and treatable smoothness to paint out and describe; teaching over the
+whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example,
+with much delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper who
+will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her
+elegantly drest, that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear
+more rugged and difficult, though <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a><span class="pagenum">132</span>they be indeed easy and pleasant,
+they would then appear to all men easy and pleasant though they were
+rugged and difficult in deed." An easier task than that of "justifying
+the ways of God to man" by the cosmogony and anthropology of "Paradise
+Lost."</p>
+
+<p>If it is true&mdash;and the fact seems well attested&mdash;that Milton's poetical
+vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to the vernal<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>, he cannot
+well have commenced "Paradise Lost" before the death of Cromwell, or
+have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty
+called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on
+which he had irreconcilably differed from Cromwell was that of a State
+Church; Cromwell, the practical man, perceiving its necessity, and
+Milton, the idealist, seeing only its want of logic. Unfortunately, this
+inconsequence existed only for the few thinkers who could in that age
+rise to the acceptance of Milton's premises. In his "Treatise of Civil
+Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," published in February, 1659, he
+emphatically insists that the civil magistrate has neither the right nor
+the power to interfere in matters of religion, and concludes: "The
+defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt
+not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour
+might be spared and the commonwealth better tended." It is to be
+regretted that he had not entered upon this great subject at an earlier
+period. The little tract, addressed to the Republican members of
+Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a><span class="pagenum">133</span>
+Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of
+resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument,
+in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable
+in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the
+following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title,
+"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the
+Church." The recipe is simple and efficacious&mdash;cease to hire them, and
+they will cease to be hirelings. Suppress all ecclesiastical endowments,
+and let the clergyman be supported by free-will offerings. The fact that
+this would have consigned about half the established clergy to beggary
+does not trouble him; nor were they likely to be greatly troubled by a
+proposal so sublimely impracticable. Vested interests can only be
+over-ridden in times of revolution, and 1659, in outward appearance a
+year of anarchy, was in truth a year of reaction. For the rest, it is to
+be remarked that Milton scarcely allowed the ministry to be followed as
+a profession, and that his views on ecclesiastical organization had come
+to coincide very nearly with those now held by the Plymouth Brethren.</p>
+
+<p>There is much plausibility in Pattison's comparison of the men of the
+Commonwealth disputing about matters of this sort on the eve of the
+Restoration, to the Greeks of Constantinople contending about the
+Azymite controversy while the Turks were breaching their walls. In fact,
+however, this blindness was not confined to one party. Anthony Wood, a
+Royalist, writing thirty years afterwards, speaks of the Restoration as
+an event which no man expected in September, 1659.<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a><span class="pagenum">134</span> The Commonwealth was
+no doubt dead as a Republic. "Pride's Purge," the execution of Charles,
+and Cromwell's expulsion of the remnant of the Commons, had long ago
+given it mortal wounds. It was not necessarily defunct as a
+Protectorate, or a renovated Monarchy: the history of England might have
+been very different if Oliver had bequeathed his power to Henry instead
+of to Richard. No such vigorous hand taking the helm, and the vessel of
+the State drifting more and more into anarchy, the great mass of
+Englishmen, to the frustration of many generous ideals, but to the
+credit of their practical good sense, pronounced for the restoration of
+Charles the Second. It is impossible to think without anger and grief of
+the declension which was to ensue, from Cromwell enforcing toleration
+for Protestants to Charles selling himself to France for a pension, from
+Blake at Tunis to the Dutch at Chatham. But the Restoration was no
+national apostasy. The people as a body did not decline from Milton's
+standard, for they had never attained to it; they did not accept the
+turpitudes of the new government, for they did not anticipate them. So
+far as sentiment inspired them, it was not love of license, but
+compassion for the misfortunes of an innocent prince. Common sense,
+however, had much more to do with prompting their action, and common
+sense plainly informed them that they had no choice between a restored
+king and a military despot. They would not have had even that if the
+leading military chief had not been a man of homely sense and vulgar
+aims; such an one as Milton afterwards drew  <span class="together">in&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a><span class="pagenum">135</span>
+<span class="i0">"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were always downward bent, admiring more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier,
+acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually. In his
+political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of
+the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot. Such are they for
+whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually
+find that they have laboured. "Great things," said Edward Gibbon
+Wakefield, "are begun by men with great souls and little
+breeches-pockets, and ended by men with great breeches-pockets and
+little souls."</p>
+
+<p>Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever
+so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the
+course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his
+blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot
+hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither
+and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested
+reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or
+misrepresent. On February 11th, about ten at night, Mr. Samuel Pepys,
+being in Cheapside, heard "all the bells in all the churches a-ringing.
+But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of
+bonfires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and
+at Strand Bridge I could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King
+Street, <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a><span class="pagenum">136</span>seven or eight; and all around burning, roasting, and drinking
+for rumps. There being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down.
+The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a merry peal with their
+knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill
+there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied upon it, and
+another basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the
+greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would
+think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to
+keep on the further side." This burning of the Rump meant that the
+attempt of a miserable minority to pose as King, Lords, and Commons, had
+broken down, and that the restoration of Charles, for good or ill, was
+the decree of the people. A modern Republican might without disgrace
+have bowed to the gale, for such an one, unless hopelessly fanatical,
+denies the divine right of republics equally with that of kings, and
+allows no other title than that of the consent of the majority of
+citizens. But Milton had never admitted the rights of the majority: and
+in his supreme effort for the Republic, "The Ready and Easy Way to
+establish a free Commonwealth," he ignores the Royalist plurality, and
+assumes that the virtuous part of the nation, to whom alone he allows a
+voice, is as desirous as himself of the establishment of a Republic, and
+only needs to be shown the way. As this was by no means the case, the
+whole pamphlet rests upon sand: though in days when public opinion was
+guided not from the press but from the rostrum, many might have been won
+by the eloquence of Milton's <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a><span class="pagenum">137</span>invectives against the inhuman pride and
+hollow ceremonial of kingship, and his encomiums of the simple order
+when the ruler's main distinction from the ruled is the severity of his
+toil. "Whereas they who are the greatest are perpetual servants and
+drudges to the public at their own cost and charges, neglect their own
+affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in
+their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely,
+familiarly, friendly without adoration." Whatever generous glow for
+equality such words might kindle, was only too likely to be quenched
+when the reader came to learn on what conditions Milton thought it
+attainable. His panacea was a permanent Parliament or Council of State,
+self-elected for life, or renewable at most only in definite
+proportions, at stated times. The whole history of England for the last
+twelve years was a commentary on the impotence of a Parliament that had
+outlived its mandate, and every line of the lesson had been lost upon
+Milton. He does indeed, near the end, betray a suspicion that the people
+may object to hand over the whole business of legislation to a
+self-elected and irresponsible body, and is led to make a remarkable
+suggestion, prefiguring the federal constitution of the United States,
+and in a measure the Home Rule and Communal agitations of our own day.
+He would make every county independent in so far as regards the
+execution of justice between man and man. The districts might make their
+own laws in this department, subject only to a moderate amount of
+control from the supreme council. This must have seemed to Milton's
+contemporaries the official enthrone<a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a><span class="pagenum">138</span>ment of anarchy, and, in fact, his
+proposal, thrown off at a heat with the feverish impetuosity that
+characterizes the whole pamphlet, is only valuable as an aid to
+reflection. Yet, in proclaiming the superiority of healthy municipal
+life to a centralized administration, he has anticipated the judgment of
+the wisest publicists of our day, and shown a greater insight than was
+possessed by the more scientific statesmen of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>One quality of Milton's pamphlet claims the highest admiration, its
+audacious courage. On the very eve of the Restoration, and with full
+though tardy recognition of its probable imminence, he protests as
+loudly as ever the righteousness of Charles's execution, and of the
+perpetual exclusion of his family from the throne. When all was lost, it
+was no disgrace to quit the field. His pamphlet appeared on March 3,
+1660; a second edition, with considerable alterations, was for the time
+suppressed. On March 28th the publisher was imprisoned for vending
+treasonable books, among which the pamphlet was no doubt included. Every
+ensuing day added something to the discomfiture of the Republicans,
+until on May 1st, "the happiest May-day," says that ardent Royalist <i>du
+lendemain</i>, Pepys, "that hath been many a year to England," Charles
+II.'s letter was read to a Parliament that none could deny to have been
+freely chosen, and acclaimed, "without so much as one No." On May 7th,
+as is conjectured by the date of an assignment made to Cyriack Skinner
+as security for a loan, Milton quitted his house, and concealed himself
+in Bartholomew Close, Smithfield. Charles re-entered his kingdom on May
+29th, and the hue and cry after regicides and their abettors <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a><span class="pagenum">139</span>began. The
+King had wisely left the business to Parliament, and, when the
+circumstances of the times, and the sincere horror in which good men
+held what they called regicide and sacrilege are duly considered, it
+must be owned that Parliament acted with humanity and moderation. Still,
+in the nature of things, proscription on a small scale was inevitable.
+Besides the regicides proper, twenty persons were to be named for
+imprisonment and permanent incapacitation for office then, and liable to
+prosecution and possibly capital punishment hereafter. It seemed almost
+inevitable that Milton should be included. On June 16th his writings
+against Charles I. were ordered to be burned by the hangman, which
+sentence was performed on August 27th. A Government proclamation
+enjoining their destruction had been issued on August 13th, and may now
+be read in the King's Library at the British Museum. He had not, then,
+escaped notice, and how he escaped proscription it is hard to say.
+Interest was certainly made for him. Andrew Marvell, Secretary Morrice,
+and Sir Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, are named as active on
+his behalf; his brother and his nephew both belonged to the Royalist
+party, and there is a romantic story of Sir William Davenant having
+requited a like obligation under which he lay to Milton himself. More to
+his honour this than to have been the offspring of Shakespeare, but one
+tale is no better authenticated than the other. The simplest explanation
+is that twenty people were found more hated than Milton: it may also
+have seemed invidious to persecute a blind man. It is certainly
+remarkable that the authorities should <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a><span class="pagenum">140</span>have failed to find the
+hiding-place of so recognizable a person, if they really looked for it.
+Whether by his own adroitness or their connivance, he avoided arrest
+until the amnesty resolution of August 29th restored him to the world
+without even being incapacitated from office. He still had to run the
+gauntlet of the Serjeant-at-Arms, who at some period unknown arrested
+him as obnoxious to the resolution of June 16th, and detained him,
+charging exorbitant fees, until compelled to abate his demands by the
+Commons' resolution of December 15th. Milton relinquished his house in
+Westminster, and formed a temporary refuge on the north side of Holborn.
+His nerves were shaken; he started in his broken sleep with the
+apprehension and bewilderment natural to one for whom, physically and
+politically, all had become darkness.</p>
+
+<p>His condition, in sooth, was one of well-nigh unmitigated misfortune,
+and his bearing up against it is not more of a proof of stoic fortitude
+than of innate cheerfulness. His cause lost, his ideals in the dust, his
+enemies triumphant, his friends dead on the scaffold, or exiled, or
+imprisoned, his name infamous, his principles execrated, his property
+seriously impaired by the vicissitudes of the times. He had been
+deprived of his appointment and salary as Latin Secretary, even before
+the Restoration: and he was now fleeced of two thousand pounds, invested
+in some kind of Government security, which was repudiated in spite of
+powerful intercession. Another "great sum" is said by Phillips to have
+been lost "by mismanagement and want of good advice," whether at this
+precise time is uncertain. The<a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a><span class="pagenum">141</span> Dean and Chapter of Westminster
+reclaimed a considerable property which had passed out of their hands in
+the Civil War. The Serjeant-at-Arms had no doubt made all out of his
+captive that the Commons would let him. On the whole, Milton appears to
+have saved about &pound;1500 from the wreck of his fortunes, and to have
+possessed about &pound;200 income from the interest of this fund and other
+sources, destined to be yet further reduced within a few years. The
+value of money being then about three and a half times as great as now,
+this modest income was still a fair competence for one of his frugal
+habits, even when burdened with the care of three daughters. The history
+of his relations with these daughters is the saddest page of his life.
+"I looked that my vineyard should bring forth grapes, and it brought
+forth wild grapes." If any lot on earth could have seemed enviable to an
+imaginative mind and an affectionate heart, it would have been that of
+an Antigone or a Romola to a Milton. Milton's daughters chose to reject
+the fair repute that the simple fulfilment of evident duty would have
+brought them, and to be damned to everlasting fame, not merely as
+neglectful of their father, but as embittering his existence. The
+shocking speech attributed to one of them is, we may hope, not a fact;
+and it may not be true to the letter that they conspired to rob him, and
+sold his books to the ragpickers. The course of events down to his
+death, nevertheless, is sufficient evidence of the unhappiness of his
+household. Writing "Samson Agonistes" in calmer days, he lets us see how
+deep the iron had entered into his soul:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a><span class="pagenum">142</span>
+<span class="i8">"I dark in light exposed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within doors, or without, still as a fool<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In power of others, never in my own."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He probably never understood how greatly he was himself to blame. He
+had, in the first place, neglected to give his daughters the education
+which might have qualified them in some measure to appreciate him. The
+eldest, Anne, could not even write her name; and it is but a poor excuse
+to say that, though good-looking, she was deformed, and afflicted with
+an impediment in her speech. The second, Mary, who resembled her mother,
+and the third, Deborah, the most like her father, were better taught;
+but still not to the degree that could make them intelligent doers of
+the work they had to perform for him. They were so drilled in foreign
+languages, including Greek and Latin (Hebrew and Syriac are also
+mentioned, but this is difficult of belief), that they could read aloud
+to him without any comprehension of the meaning of the text. Sixty years
+afterwards, passages of Homer and Ovid were found lingering as melodious
+sounds in the memory of the youngest. Such a task, inexpressibly
+delightful to affection, must have been intolerably repulsive to dislike
+or indifference: we can scarcely wonder that two of these children (of
+the youngest we have a better report), abhorred the father who exacted
+so much and imparted so little. Yet, before visiting any of the parties
+with inexorable condemnation, we should consider the strong probability
+that much of the misery grew out of an antecedent state of things, for
+which none of them were responsible. The infant <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a><span class="pagenum">143</span>minds of two of the
+daughters, and the two chiefly named as undutiful, had been formed by
+their mother. Mistress Milton cannot have greatly cherished her husband,
+and what she wanted in love must have been made up in fear. She must
+have abhorred his principles and his writings, and probably gave free
+course to her feelings whenever she could have speech with a
+sympathizer, without caring whether the girls were within hearing.
+Milton himself, we know, was cheerful in congenial society, but he were
+no poet if he had not been reserved with the uncongenial. To them the
+silent, abstracted, often irritable, and finally sightless father would
+seem awful and forbidding. It is impossible to exaggerate the
+susceptibility of young minds to first impressions. The probability is
+that ere Mistress Milton departed this life, she had intentionally or
+unintentionally avenged all the injuries she could imagine herself to
+have received from her husband, and furnished him with a stronger
+argument than any that had found a place in the "Doctrine and Discipline
+of Divorce."</p>
+
+<p>It is something in favour of the Milton girls that they were at least
+not calculating in their undutifulness. Had they reflected, they must
+have seen that their behaviour was little to their interest. If they
+brought a stepmother upon themselves, the blame was theirs. Something
+must certainly be done to keep Milton's library from the rag-women; and
+in February, 1663, by the advice of his excellent physician Dr. Paget,
+he married Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of a yeoman of Wistaston in
+Cheshire, a distant relation of Dr. Paget's own, and exactly thirty
+years younger than Milton. "A genteel person, <a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a><span class="pagenum">144</span>a peaceful and agreeable
+woman," says Aubrey, who knew her, and refutes by anticipation
+Richardson's anonymous informant, perhaps Deborah Clarke, who libelled
+her as "a termagant." She was pretty, and had golden hair, which one
+connects pleasantly with the late sunshine she brought into Milton's
+life. She sang to his accompaniment on the organ and bass-viol, but is
+not recorded to have read or written for him; the only direct testimony
+we have of her care of him is his verbal acknowledgment of her attention
+to his creature comforts. Yet Aubrey's memoranda show that she could
+talk with her husband about Hobbes, and she treasured the letters he had
+received from distinguished foreigners. At the time of their marriage
+Milton was living in Jewin Street, Aldersgate, from which he soon
+afterwards removed to Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, his last
+residence. He lodged in the interim with Millington, the book
+auctioneer, a man of superior ability, whom an informant of Richardson's
+had often met in the streets leading his inmate by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>It is at this era of Milton's history that we obtain the fullest details
+of his daily life, as being nearer to the recollection of those from
+whom information was sought after his death. His household was larger
+than might have been expected in his reduced circumstances; he had a
+man-servant, Greene, and a maid, named Fisher. That true
+hero-worshipper, Aubrey, tells us that he generally rose at four, and
+was even then attended by his "man" who read to him out of the Hebrew
+Bible. Such erudition in a serving-man almost surpasses credibility: the
+English Bible probably sufficed <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a><span class="pagenum">145</span>both. It is easier to believe that some
+one read to him or wrote for him from seven till dinner time: if,
+however, "the writing was nearly as much as the reading," much that
+Milton dictated must have been lost. His recreations were walking in his
+garden, never wanting to any of his residences, where he would continue
+for three or four hours at a time; swinging in a chair when weather
+prevented open-air exercise; and music, that blissful resource of
+blindness. His instrument was usually the organ, the counterpart of the
+stately harmony of his own verse. To these relaxations must be added the
+society of faithful friends, among whom Andrew Marvell, Dr. Paget, and
+Cyriack Skinner are particularly named. Nor did Edward Phillips neglect
+his uncle, finding him, as Aubrey implies, "most familiar and free in
+his conversation to those to whom most sour in his way of education."
+Milton had made him "a songster," and we can imagine the "sober, silent,
+and most harmless person" (Evelyn) opening his lips to accompany his
+uncle's music. Of Milton's manner Aubrey says, "Extreme pleasant in his
+conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc., but satirical." Visitors
+usually came from six till eight, if at all, and the day concluded with
+a light supper, sometimes of olives, which we may well imagine fraught
+for him with Tuscan memories, a pipe, and a glass of water. This picture
+of plain living and high thinking is confirmed by the testimony of the
+Quaker Thomas Ellwood, who for a short time read to him, and who
+describes the kindness of his demeanour, and the pains he took to teach
+the foreign method of pronouncing Latin. Even more; "having a curious
+ear, he understood by my tone when I <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a><span class="pagenum">146</span>understood what I read and when I
+did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most
+difficult passages to me." Milton must have felt a special tenderness
+for the Quakers, whose religious opinions, divested of the shell of
+eccentricity which the vulgar have always mistaken for the kernel, had
+become substantially his own. He had outgrown Independency as formerly
+Presbyterianism. His blindness served to excuse his absence from public
+worship; to which, so long at least as Clarendon's intolerance prevailed
+in the councils of Charles the Second, might be added the difficulty of
+finding edification in the pulpit, had he needed it. But these reasons,
+though not imaginary, were not those which really actuated him. He had
+ceased to value rites and forms of any kind, and, had his religious
+views been known, he would have been "equalled in fate" with his
+contemporary Spinoza. Yet he was writing a book which orthodox
+Protestantism has accepted as but a little lower than the Scriptures.</p>
+
+<p>"The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." We know but little
+of the history of the greatest works of genius. That something more than
+usual should be known of "Paradise Lost" must be ascribed to the
+author's blindness, and consequent dependence upon amanuenses. When
+inspiration came upon him any one at hand would be called upon to
+preserve the precious verses, hence the progress of the poem was known
+to many, and Phillips can speak of "parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty
+verses at a time." We have already heard from him that Milton's season
+of inspiration lasted from the autumnal equinox to the <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a><span class="pagenum">147</span>vernal: the
+remainder of the year doubtless contributed much to the matter of his
+poem, if nothing to the form. His habits of composition appear to be
+shadowed forth by himself in the induction to the Third  <span class="together">Book:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nightly I visit&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tunes her nocturnal note."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is something more precise than a mere poetical allusion to his
+blindness, and the inference is strengthened by the anecdote that when
+"his celestial patroness" "Deigned nightly visitation unimplored," his
+daughters were frequently called at night to take down the verses, not
+one of which the whole world could have replaced. This was as it should
+be. Grand indeed is the thought of the unequalled strain poured forth
+when every other voice was hushed in the mighty city, to no meaner
+accompaniment than the music of the spheres. Respecting the date of
+composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced
+in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered
+("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible
+hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks,
+completed by 1663. It would still require mature revision, which we know
+from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665. Internal
+evidence of the chronology of the poem is very scanty. Professor Masson
+thinks that the first <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a><span class="pagenum">148</span>two books were probably written before the
+Restoration. In support of this view it may be urged that lines 500-505
+of Book i. wear the appearance of an insertion after the Restoration,
+and that in the invocation to the Third Book Milton may be thought to
+allude to the dangers his life and liberty had afterwards encountered,
+figured by the regions of nether darkness which he had traversed as a
+poet.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Hail holy Light!...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through utter and through middle darkness borne."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The only other passage important in this respect is the famous one from
+the invocation to the Seventh Book, manifestly describing the poet's
+condition under the  <span class="together">Restoration:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On evil days though fallen and evil tongues;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And solitude; yet not alone, while thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Urania, and fit audience find, though few.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But drive far off the barbarous dissonance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This allusion to the licentiousness of the Restoration literature could
+hardly have been made until its tenden<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a><span class="pagenum">149</span>cies had been plainly developed.
+At this time "Paradise Lost" was half finished. ("Half yet remains
+unsung.") The remark permits us to conclude that Milton conceived and
+executed his poem as a whole, going steadily through it, and not leaving
+gaps to be supplied at higher or lower levels of inspiration. There is
+no evidence of any resort to older material, except in the case of
+Satan's address to the Sun.</p>
+
+<p>The publication of "Paradise Lost" was impeded like the birth of
+Hercules. In 1665 London was a city of the dying and the dead; in 1666
+the better part of it was laid in ashes. One remarkable incident of the
+calamity was the destruction of the stocks of the booksellers, which had
+been brought into the vaults of St. Paul's for safety, and perished with
+the cathedral. "Paradise Lost" might have easily, like its  <span class="together">hero&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"In the singing smoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uplifted spurned the ground."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but the negotiations for its publication were not complete until April
+27, 1667, on which day John Milton, "in consideration of five pounds to
+him now paid by Samuel Symmons, and other the considerations herein
+mentioned," assigned to the said Symmons, "all that book, copy, or
+manuscript of a poem intituled 'Paradise Lost,' or by whatsoever ether
+title or name the same is or shall be called or distinguished, now
+lately licensed to be printed." The other considerations were the
+payment of the like sum of five pounds upon the entire sale of each of
+the first three impressions, each impression to consist of thirteen
+hundred copies. "According to the present <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a><span class="pagenum">150</span>value of money," says
+Professor Masson, "it was as if Milton had received &pound;17 10s. down, and
+was to expect &pound;70 in all. That was on the supposition of a sale of 3,900
+copies." He lived to receive ten pounds altogether; and his widow in
+1680 parted with all her interest in the copyright for eight pounds,
+Symmons shortly afterwards reselling it for twenty-five. He is not,
+therefore, to be enumerated among those publishers who have fattened
+upon their authors, and when the size of the book and the
+unfashionableness of the writer are considered, his enterprise may
+perhaps appear the most remarkable feature of the transaction. As for
+Milton, we may almost rejoice that he should have reaped no meaner
+reward than immortality.</p>
+
+<p>It will have been observed that in the contract with Symmons "Paradise
+Lost" is said to have been "lately licensed to be printed." The
+censorship named in "Areopagitica" still prevailed, with the difference
+that prelates now sat in judgment upon Puritans. The Archbishop gave or
+refused license through his chaplains, and could not be ignored as
+Milton had ignored the little Presbyterian Popes; Geneva in his person
+must repair to Lambeth. Chaplain Tomkyns, who took cognisance of
+"Paradise Lost," was fortunately a broad-minded man, disposed to live
+and let live, though scrupling somewhat when he found "perplexity" and
+"fear of change" imputed to "monarchs." His objections were overcome,
+and on August 20, 1667&mdash;three weeks after the death of Cowley, and eight
+days after Pepys had heard the deceased extolled as the greatest of
+English poets&mdash;John Milton came forth clad as with adamantine mail in
+the approbation <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a><span class="pagenum">151</span>of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it
+was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for
+weighing evil against good were  <span class="together">hung&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister.
+The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other
+hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with
+Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity
+of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move,
+if not, as Milton would have wished, "a noble and puissant nation
+rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and
+weary nation creeping slowly&mdash;Tomkyns and all&mdash;towards an era of liberty
+and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's
+impertinence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a><span class="pagenum">152</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The world's great epics group themselves in two divisions, which may be
+roughly defined as the natural and the artificial. The spontaneous or
+self-created epic is a confluence of traditions, reduced to symmetry by
+the hand of a master. Such are the Iliad, the Odyssey, the great Indian
+and Persian epics, the Nibelungen Lied. In such instances it may be
+fairly said that the theme has chosen the poet, rather than the poet the
+theme. When the epic is a work of reflection, the poet has deliberately
+selected his subject, and has not, in general, relied so much upon the
+wealth of pre-existing materials as upon the capabilities of a single
+circumstance. Such are the epics of Virgil, Camoens, Tasso, Milton;
+Dante, perhaps, standing alone as the one epic poet (for we cannot rank
+Ariosto and Spenser in this class) who owes everything but his creed to
+his own invention. The traditional epic, created by the people and only
+moulded by the minstrel, is so infinitely the more important for the
+history of culture, that, since this new field of investigation has
+become one of paramount interest, the literary epic has been in danger
+of neglect. Yet it must be allowed that to evolve an epic out of a
+<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a><span class="pagenum">153</span>single incident is a greater intellectual achievement than to weave one
+out of a host of ballads. We must also admit that, leaving the unique
+Dante out of account, Milton essayed a more arduous enterprise than any
+of his predecessors, and in this point of view may claim to stand above
+them all. We are so accustomed to regard the existence of "Paradise
+Lost" as an ultimate fact, that we but imperfectly realize the gigantic
+difficulty and audacity of the undertaking. To paint the bloom of
+Paradise with the same brush that has depicted the flames and blackness
+of the nether world; to make the Enemy of Mankind, while preserving this
+character, an heroic figure, not without claims on sympathy and
+admiration; to lend fit speech to the father and mother of humanity, to
+angels and archangels, and even Deity itself;&mdash;these achievements
+required a Michael Angelo shorn of his strength in every other province
+of art, that all might be concentrated in song.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to represent "Paradise Lost" as obsolete by pointing out that
+its demonology and angelology have for us become mere mythology. This
+criticism is more formidable in appearance than in reality. The vital
+question for the poet is his own belief, not the belief of his readers.
+If the Iliad has survived not merely the decay of faith in the Olympian
+divinities, but the criticism which has pulverized Achilles as a
+historical personage, "Paradise Lost" need not be much affected by
+general disbelief in the personality of Satan, and universal disbelief
+in that of Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. A far more vulnerable point is
+the failure of the purpose so ostentatiously proclaimed, "To justify the
+<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a><span class="pagenum">154</span>ways of God to men." This problem was absolutely insoluble on Milton's
+data, except by denying the divine foreknowledge, a course not open to
+him. The conduct of the Deity who allows his adversary to ruin his
+innocent creature from the purely malignant motive</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"That with reiterated crimes he might<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heap on himself damnation,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>without further interposition than a warning which he foresees will be
+fruitless, implies a grievous deficiency either in wisdom or in
+goodness, or at best falsifies the declaration:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Necessity and chance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Approach me not, and what I will is fate."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The like flaw runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is
+resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic
+guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to
+drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial
+portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat,
+considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and
+advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the
+intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take all
+possible pains to prevent his gaining an entrance into Paradise, but
+omit to keep Adam and Eve themselves in sight, notwithstanding the
+strong hint they have received by finding the intruder</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a><span class="pagenum">155</span></p>
+<span class="i0">"Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Assaying by his devilish art to reach<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The organs of her fancy, and with them forge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If anything more infatuated can be imagined, it is the simplicity of the
+All-Wise Himself in entrusting the wardership of the gate of Hell, and
+consequently the charge of keeping Satan <i>in</i>, to the beings in the
+universe most interested in letting him <i>out</i>. The sole but sufficient
+excuse is that these faults are inherent in the subject. If Milton had
+not thought that he could justify the ways of Jehovah to man he would
+not have written at all; common sense on the part of the angels would
+have paralysed the action of the poem; we should, if conscious of our
+loss, have lamented the irrefragable criticism that should have stifled
+the magnificent allegory of Sin and Death. Another critical thrust is
+equally impossible to parry. It is true that the Evil One is the hero of
+the epic. Attempts have been made to invest Adam with this character. He
+is, indeed, a great figure to contemplate, and such as might represent
+the ideal of humanity till summoned to act and suffer. When, indeed, he
+partakes of the forbidden fruit in disobedience to his Maker, but in
+compassion to his mate, he does seem for a moment to fulfil the canon
+which decrees that the hero shall not always be faultless, but always
+shall be noble. The moment, however, that he begins to wrangle with Eve
+about their respective shares of blame, he forfeits his estate of
+heroism more irretrievably than his estate of holiness&mdash;a fact of which
+Milton cannot have been unaware, but he had no liberty to forsake the
+Scripture <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a><span class="pagenum">156</span>narrative. Satan remains, therefore, the only possible hero,
+and it is one of the inevitable blemishes of the poem that he should
+disappear almost entirely from the latter books.</p>
+
+<p>These defects, and many more which might be adduced, are abundantly
+compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion of his age. No
+poet whose fame is co-extensive with the civilised world, except
+Shakespeare and Goethe, has ever been greatly in advance of his times.
+Had Milton been so, he might have avoided many faults, but he would not
+have been a representative poet; nor could Shelley have classed him with
+Homer and Dante, and above Virgil, as "the third epic poet; that is, the
+third poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible
+relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which
+he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itself in
+correspondence with their development." Hence it is that in the
+"Adonais," Shelley calls Milton "the third among the sons of light."</p>
+
+<p>A clear conception of the universe as Milton's inner eye beheld it, and
+of his religious and philosophical opinions in so far as they appear in
+the poem, is indispensable for a correct understanding of "Paradise
+Lost." The best service to be rendered to the reader within such limits
+as ours is to direct him to Professor Masson's discussion of Milton's
+cosmology in his "Life of Milton," and also in his edition of the
+Poetical Works. Generally speaking, it may be said that Milton's
+conception of the universe is Ptolemaic, that for him sun and moon and
+planets revolve around the central earth, <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a><span class="pagenum">157</span>rapt by the revolution of the
+crystal spheres in which, sphere enveloping sphere, they are
+successively located. But the light which had broken in upon him from
+the discoveries of Galileo has led him to introduce features not
+irreconcilable with the solar centre and ethereal infinity of
+Copernicus; so that "the poet would expect the effective permanence of
+his work in the imagination of the world, whether Ptolemy or Copernicus
+should prevail." So Professor Masson, who finely and justly adds that
+Milton's blindness helped him "by having already converted all external
+space in his own sensations into an infinite of circumambient blackness
+through which he could flash brilliance at his pleasure." His
+inclination as a thinker is evidently towards the Copernican theory, but
+he saw that the Ptolemaic, however inferior in sublimity, was better
+adapted to the purpose of a poem requiring a definite theatre of action.
+For rapturous contemplation of the glory of God in nature, the
+Copernican system is immeasurably the more stimulating to the spirit,
+but when made the theatre of an action the universe fatigues with its
+ <span class="together">infinitude&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Millions have meaning; after this<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cyphers forget the integer."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>An infinite sidereal universe would have stultified the noble
+description how  <span class="together">Satan&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"In the emptier waste, resembling air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide<br /></span><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a><span class="pagenum">158</span>
+<span class="i0">In circuit, undetermined square or round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With opal towers and battlements adorned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of living sapphire, once his native seat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This pendant world, in bigness as a star<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of smallest magnitude close by the moon."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This pendant world, observe, is not the earth, as Addison understood it,
+but the entire sidereal universe, depicted not as the infinity we now
+know it to be, but as a definite object, so insulated in the vastness of
+space as to be perceptible to the distant Fiend as a minute star, and no
+larger in comparison with the courts of Heaven&mdash;themselves not wholly
+seen&mdash;than such a twinkler matched with the full-orbed moon. Such a
+representation, if it diminishes the grandeur of the universe accessible
+to sense, exalts that of the supersensual and extramundane regions where
+the action takes its birth, and where Milton's gigantic imagination is
+most perfectly at home.</p>
+
+<p>There is no such compromise between religious creeds in Milton's mind as
+he saw good to make between Ptolemy and Copernicus. The matter was, in
+his estimation, far too serious. Never was there a more unaccountable
+misstatement than Ruskin's, that "Paradise Lost" is a poem in which
+every artifice of invention is consciously employed&mdash;not a single fact
+being conceived as tenable by any living faith. Milton undoubtedly
+believed most fully in the actual existence of all his chief personages,
+natural and supernatural, and was sure that, however he might have
+indulged his imagination in the invention of incidents, he had
+represented <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a><span class="pagenum">159</span>character with the fidelity of a conscientious historian.
+His religious views, moreover, are such as he could never have thought
+it right to publish if he had not been intimately convinced of their
+truth. He has strayed far from the creed of Puritanism. He is an Arian;
+his Son of God, though an unspeakably exalted being, is dependent,
+inferior, not self-existent, and could be merged in the Father's person
+or obliterated entirely without the least diminution of Almighty
+perfection. He is, moreover, no longer a Calvinist: Satan and Adam both
+possess free will, and neither need have fallen. The reader must accept
+these views, as well as Milton's conception of the materiality of the
+spiritual world, if he is to read to good purpose. "If his imagination,"
+says Pattison, pithily, "is not active enough to assist the poet, he
+must at least not resist him."</p>
+
+<p>This is excellent advice as respects the general plan of "Paradise
+Lost," the materiality of its spiritual personages, and its system of
+philosophy and theology. Its poetical beauties can only be resisted
+where they are not perceived. They have repeated the miracles of Orpheus
+and Amphion, metamorphosing one most bitterly obnoxious, of whom so late
+as 1687 a royalist wrote that "his fame is gone out like a candle in a
+snuff, and his memory will always stink," into an object of universal
+veneration. From the first instant of perusal the imagination is led in
+captivity, and for the first four books at least stroke upon stroke of
+sublimity follows with such continuous and undeviating regularity that
+sublimity seems this Creation's first law, and we feel like pigmies
+transported to a world of giants. There is <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a><span class="pagenum">160</span>nothing forced or affected
+in this grandeur, no visible effort, no barbaric profusion, everything
+proceeds with a severe and majestic order, controlled by the strength
+that called it into being. The similes and other poetical ornaments,
+though inexpressibly magnificent, seem no more so than the greatness of
+the general conception demands. Grant that Satan in his fall is not
+"less than archangel ruined," and it is no exaggeration but the simplest
+truth to depict his  <span class="together">mien&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"As when the sun, new risen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looks through the horizontal misty air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On half the nations."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When such a being voyages through space it is no hyperbole to compare
+him to a whole fleet, judiciously shown at such distance as to suppress
+every minute detail that could diminish the grandeur of the  <span class="together">image&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As when far off at sea a fleet descried<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ply stemming nightly towards the pole: so seemed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far off the flying Fiend."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These similes, and an infinity of others, are grander than anything in
+Homer, who would, however, have equalled them with an equal subject.
+Dante's treatment is altogether different; the microscopic intensity of
+perception in which he so far surpasses Homer and<a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a><span class="pagenum">161</span> Milton affords, in
+our opinion, no adequate compensation for his inferiority in
+magnificence. That the theme of "Paradise Lost" should have evoked such
+grandeur is a sufficient compensation for its incurable flaws and the
+utter breakdown of its ostensible moral purpose. There is yet another
+department of the poem where Milton writes as he could have written on
+nothing else. The elements of his under-world are comparatively simple,
+fire and darkness, fallen angels now huddled thick as leaves in
+Vallombrosa; anon,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A forest huge of spears and thronging helms,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>charming their painful steps over the burning marl by</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"The Dorian mood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of flutes and soft recorders;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the dazzling magnificence of Pandemonium; the ineffable welter of Chaos;
+proudly eminent over all like a tower, the colossal personality of
+Satan. The description of Paradise and the story of Creation, if making
+less demand on the poet's creative power, required greater resources of
+knowledge, and more consummate skill in combination. Nature must yield
+up her treasures, whatever of fair and stately the animal and vegetable
+kingdoms can afford must be brought together, blended in gorgeous masses
+or marshalled in infinite procession. Here Milton is as profuse as he
+has hitherto been severe, and with good cause; it is possible to make
+Hell too repulsive for art, it is not possible to make Eden too
+enchanting. In his descriptions of the former the effect <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a><span class="pagenum">162</span>is produced by
+a perpetual succession of isolated images of awful majesty; in his
+Paradise and Creation the universal landscape is bathed in a general
+atmosphere of lustrous splendour. This portion of his work is
+accordingly less great in detached passages, but is little inferior in
+general greatness. No less an authority than Tennyson, indeed, expresses
+a preference for the "bowery loneliness" of Eden over the "Titan angels"
+of the "deep-domed Empyrean." If this only means that Milton's Eden is
+finer than his war in heaven, we must concur; but if a wider application
+be intended, it does seem to us that his Pandemonium exalts him to a
+greater height above every other poet than his Paradise exalts him above
+his predecessor, and in some measure, his exemplar, Spenser.</p>
+
+<p>To remain at such an elevation was impossible. Milton compares
+unfavourably with Homer in this; his epic begins at its zenith, and
+after a while visibly and continually declines. His genius is
+unimpaired, but his skill transcends his stuff. The fall of man and its
+consequences could not by any device be made as interesting as the fall
+of Satan, of which it is itself but a consequence. It was, moreover,
+absolutely inevitable that Adam's fall, the proper catastrophe of the
+poem, should occur some time before the conclusion, otherwise there
+would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption,
+equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art. The
+effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius C&aelig;sar,"
+which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the
+conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes com<a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a><span class="pagenum">163</span>paratively tame and
+languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the
+contention between Brutus and Cassius. It is to be regretted that
+Milton's extreme devotion to the letter of Scripture has not permitted
+him to enrich his latter books with any corresponding episode. It is not
+until the very end that he is again truly  <span class="together">himself&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world was all before them, where to choose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through Eden took their solitary way."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Some minor objections may be briefly noticed. The materiality of
+Milton's celestial warfare has been censured by every one from the days
+of Sir Samuel Morland,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> a splenetic critic, who had incurred Milton's
+contempt by his treachery to Cromwell and Thurloe. Warfare, however,
+there must be: war cannot be made without weapons; and Milton's only
+fault is that he has rather exaggerated than minimized the difficulties
+of his subject. A sense of humour would have spiked his celestial
+artillery, but a lively perception of the ridiculous is scarcely to be
+demanded from a Milton. After <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a><span class="pagenum">164</span>all, he was borrowing from good poets,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+whose thought in itself is correct, and even profound; it is only when
+artillery antedates humanity that the ascription of its invention to the
+Tempter seems out of place. The metamorphosis of the demons into
+serpents has been censured as grotesque; but it was imperatively
+necessary to manifest by some unmistakable outward sign that victory did
+not after all remain with Satan, and the critics may be challenged to
+find one more appropriate. The bridge built by Sin and Death is equally
+essential. Satan's progeny must not be dismissed without some exploit
+worthy of their parentage. The one passage where Milton's taste seems to
+us entirely at fault is the description of the Paradise of Fools (iii.,
+481-497), where his scorn  <span class="together">of&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Reliques, beads,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>has tempted him to chequer the sublime with the ludicrous.</p>
+
+<p>No subject but a Biblical one would have insured Milton universal
+popularity among his countrymen, for his style is that of an ancient
+classic transplanted, like Aladdin's palace set down with all its
+magnificence in the heart of Africa; and his diction, the delight of the
+educated, is the despair of the ignorant man. Not that this diction is
+in any respect affected or pedantic. Milton was the darling poet of our
+greatest modern <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a><span class="pagenum">165</span>master of unadorned Saxon speech, John Bright. But it
+is freighted with classic allusion&mdash;not alone from the ancient
+classics&mdash;and comes to us rich with gathered sweets, like a wind laden
+with the scent of many flowers. "It is," says Pattison, "the elaborated
+outcome of all the best words of all antecedent poetry&mdash;the language of
+one who lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of past
+time." "Words," the same writer reminds us, "over and above their
+dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has gathered
+round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations
+of song." So it is, every word seems instinct with its own peculiar
+beauty, and fraught with its own peculiar association, and yet each
+detail is strictly subordinate to the general effect. No poet of
+Milton's rank, probably, has been equally indebted to his predecessors,
+not only for his vocabulary, but for his thoughts. Reminiscences throng
+upon him, and he takes all that comes, knowing that he can make it
+lawfully his own. The comparison of Satan's shield to the moon, for
+instance, is borrowed from the similar comparison of the shield of
+Achilles in the Iliad, but what goes in Homer comes out Milton. Homer
+merely says that the huge and massy shield emitted a lustre like that of
+the moon in heaven. Milton heightens the resemblance by giving the
+shield shape, calls in the telescope to endow it with what would seem
+preternatural dimensions to the naked eye, and enlarges even these by
+the suggestion of more than the telescope can  <span class="together">disclose&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"His ponderous shield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round<br /></span><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a><span class="pagenum">166</span>
+<span class="i0">Behind him cast; the broad circumference<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At evening, from the top of Fesole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus does Milton appropriate the wealth of past literature, secure of
+being able to recoin it with his own image and superscription. The
+accumulated learning which might have choked the native fire of a
+feebler spirit was but nourishment to his. The polished stones and
+shining jewels of his superb mosaic are often borrowed, but its plan and
+pattern are his own.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest charms of "Paradise Lost" is the incomparable metre,
+which, after Coleridge and Tennyson have done their utmost, remains
+without equal in our language for the combination of majesty and music.
+It is true that this majesty is to a certain extent inherent in the
+subject, and that the poet who could rival it would scarcely be well
+advised to exert his power to the full unless his theme also rivalled
+the magnificence of Milton's. Milton, on his part, would have been quite
+content to have written such blank verse as Wordsworth's "Yew Trees," or
+as the exordium of "Alastor," or as most of Coleridge's idylls, had his
+subject been less than epical. The organ-like solemnity of his verbal
+music is obtained partly by extreme attention to variety of pause, but
+chiefly, as Wordsworth told Klopstock, and as Mr. Addington Symonds
+points out more at length, by the period, not the individual line, being
+made the metrical unit, "so that each line in a period shall <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a><span class="pagenum">167</span>carry its
+proper burden of sound, but the burden shall be differently distributed
+in the successive verses." Hence lines which taken singly seem almost
+unmetrical, in combination with their associates appear indispensable
+parts of the general harmony. Mr. Symonds gives some striking instances.
+Milton's versification is that of a learned poet, profound in thought
+and burdened with the further care of ordering his thoughts: it is
+therefore only suited to sublimity of a solemn or meditative cast, and
+most unsuitable to render the unstudied sublimity of Homer. Perhaps no
+passage is better adapted to display its dignity, complicated artifice,
+perpetual retarding movement, concerted harmony, and grave but ravishing
+sweetness than the description of the coming on of Night in the Fourth
+ <span class="together">Book:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Now came still evening on, and twilight grey<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had in her sober livery all things clad;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She all night long her amorous descant sung;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With living sapphires; Hesperus that led<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stary host rose brightest, till the moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rising in clouded majesty, at length<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How exquisite the indication of the pauseless continuity of the
+nightingale's song by the transition from short sentences, cut up by
+commas and semicolons, to the "linked sweetness long drawn out" of "She
+all night <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a><span class="pagenum">168</span>long her amorous descant sung"! The poem is full of similar
+felicities, none perhaps more noteworthy than the sequence of
+monosyllables that paints the enormous bulk of the prostrate  <span class="together">Satan:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is a most interesting subject for inquiry from what sources, other
+than the Scriptures, Milton drew aid in the composition of "Paradise
+Lost." The most striking counterpart is Calderon, to whom he owed as
+little as Calderon can have owed to him. "El Magico Prodigioso," already
+cited as affording a remarkable parallel to "Comus," though performed in
+1637, was not printed until 1663, when "Paradise Lost" was already
+completed.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> The two great religious poets have naturally conceived the
+Evil One much in the same manner, and Calderon's Lucifer,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Like the red outline of beginning Adam,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>might well have passed as the original draft of Milton's  <span class="together">Satan:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"In myself I am<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A world of happiness and misery;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This I have lost, and that I must lament<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ever. In my attributes I stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So high and so heroically great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In lineage so supreme, and with a genius<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which penetrated with a glance the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A King&mdash;whom I may call the King of Kings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because all others tremble in their pride<br /></span><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a><span class="pagenum">169</span>
+<span class="i0">Before the terrors of his countenance&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of living light&mdash;call them the stars of heaven&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Named me his counsellor. But the high praise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In mighty competition, to ascend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His seat, and place my foot triumphantly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The depth to which ambition falls. For mad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Repentance of the irrevocable deed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of not to be subdued, before the shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of reconciling me with him who reigns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By coward cession. Nor was I alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there was hope, and there may still be hope;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For many suffrages among his vassals<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hailed me their lord and king, and many still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are mine, and many more perchance shall be."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A striking proof that resemblance does not necessarily imply plagiarism.
+Milton's affinity to Calderon has been overlooked by his commentators;
+but four luminaries have been named from which he is alleged to have
+drawn, however sparingly, in his golden urn&mdash;Caedmon, the Adamus Exul of
+Grotius, the Adamo of the Italian dramatist Andreini, and the Lucifer of
+the Dutch poet Vondel. Caedmon, first printed in 1655, it is but barely
+possible that he should have known, and ere he could have known him the
+conception of "Paradise Lost" was firmly implanted in his mind. External
+evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his
+knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the
+Italian drama, we can easily believe <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a><span class="pagenum">170</span>with Hayley that "his fancy caught
+fire from that spirited, though irregular and fantastic composition."
+Vondel's Lucifer&mdash;whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of
+Satan&mdash;was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have
+been studying Dutch, but when the plan of "Paradise Lost" must have been
+substantially formed. There can, nevertheless, be no question of the
+frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel's Lucifer and
+"Paradise Lost," but between his Samson and "Samson Agonistes." Milton's
+indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English
+poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his
+lightning-speech, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," was a
+thunderbolt condensed from a brace of Vondel's clumsy Alexandrines,
+which Beddoes renders  <span class="together">thus:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And rather the first prince at an inferior court<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than in the blessed light the second or still less."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Gosse followed up the inquiry, which eventually became the subject
+of a monograph by Mr. George Edmundson ("Milton and Vondel," 1885). That
+Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel's works translated
+aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the
+enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet.
+Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be
+overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and
+expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject.
+<i>Je l'aurais bien pris sans toi.</i> When, as in the instance above quoted,
+he borrows any<a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a><span class="pagenum">171</span>thing more recondite, he so exalts and transforms it that
+it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has
+entertained unawares. This may not entirely apply to the Italian
+reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems
+indebted for the conception of his diabolical council. Ochino, in many
+respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as
+the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the
+lawfulness of polygamy. In Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," which he may have
+read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of
+Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate. "The
+introduction to the first dialogue," says Ochino's biographer Benrath,
+"is highly dramatic, and reminds us of Job and Faust." Ochino's
+arch-fiend, like Milton's, announces a masterstroke of genius. "God sent
+His Son into the world, and I will send my son." Antichrist accordingly
+comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until
+Henry VIII. is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture. It is a
+token, not only of Milton's, but of Vondel's, indebtedness, that, with
+Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council,
+and even admonishes his leader. "I fear me," he remarks, "lest when
+Antichrist shall die, and come down hither to hell, that as he passeth
+us in wickedness, so he will be above us in dignity." Prescience worthy
+of him who</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"In his rising seemed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deliberation sat, and public care;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And princely counsel in his face yet shone."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a><span class="pagenum">172</span>Milton's borrowings, nevertheless, nowise impair his greatness. The
+obligation is rather theirs, of whose stores he has condescended to
+avail himself. He may be compared to his native country, which, fertile
+originally in little but enterprise, has made the riches of the earth
+her own. He has given her a national epic, inferior to no other, and
+unlike most others, founded on no merely local circumstance, but such as
+must find access to every nation acquainted with the most
+widely-circulated Book in the world. He has further enriched his native
+literature with an imperishable monument of majestic diction, an example
+potent to counteract that wasting agency of familiar usage by which
+language is reduced to vulgarity, as sea-water wears cliffs to shingle.
+He has reconciled, as no other poet has ever done, the Hellenic spirit
+with the Hebraic, the Bible with the Renaissance. And, finally, as we
+began by saying, his poem is the mighty  <span class="together">bridge&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>across which the spirit of ancient poetry has travelled to modern times,
+and by which the continuity of great English literature has remained
+unbroken.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a><span class="pagenum">173</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In recording the publication of "Paradise Lost" in 1667, we have passed
+over the interval of Milton's life immediately subsequent to the
+completion of the poem in 1663. The first incident of any importance is
+his migration to Chalfont St. Giles, near Beaconsfield, in
+Buckinghamshire, about July, 1665, to escape the plague then devastating
+London. Ell wood, whose family lived in the neighbourhood of Chalfont,
+had at his request taken for him "a pretty box" in that village; and we
+are, says Professor Masson, "to imagine Milton's house in Artillery Walk
+shuttered up, and a coach and a large waggon brought to the door, and
+the blind man helped in, and the wife and the three daughters following,
+with a servant to look after the books and other things they have taken
+with them, and the whole party driven away towards Giles-Chalfont."
+According to the same authority, Chalfont well deserves the name of
+Sleepy Hollow, lying at the bottom of a leafy dell. Milton's cottage,
+alone of his residences, still exists, though divided into two
+tenements. It is a two-storey dwelling, with a garden, is built of
+brick, with wooden beams, musters nine rooms&mdash;though a question arises
+whether <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a><span class="pagenum">174</span>some of them ought not rather to be described as closets; the
+porch in which Milton may have breathed the summer air is gone, but the
+parlour retains the latticed casement at which he sat, though through it
+he could not see. His infirmity rendered the confined situation less of
+a drawback, and there are abundance of pleasant lanes, along which he
+could be conducted in his sightless  <span class="together">strolls:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As one who long in populous city pent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the pleasant villages and farms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adjoined, from each new thing conceives delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Milton was probably no stranger to the neighbourhood, having lived
+within thirteen miles of it when he dwelt at Horton. Ellwood could not
+welcome him on his arrival, being in prison on account of an affray at
+what should have been the paragon of decorous solemnities&mdash;a Quaker
+funeral. When released, about the end of August or the beginning of
+September, he waited upon Milton, who, "after some discourses, called
+for a manuscript of his; which he delivered to me, bidding me take it
+home with me and read it at my leisure. When I set myself to read it, I
+found it was that excellent poem which he entitled 'Paradise Lost.'"
+Professor Masson justly remarks that Milton would not have trusted the
+worthy Quaker adolescent with the only copy of his epic; we may be sure,
+therefore, that other copies <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a><span class="pagenum">175</span>existed, and that the poem was at this
+date virtually completed and ready for press. When the manuscript was
+returned, Ellwood, after "modestly, but freely, imparting his judgment,"
+observed, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou
+to say of Paradise Found? He made no answer, but sat some time in a
+muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell on another subject." The
+plague was then at its height, and did not abate sufficiently for Milton
+to return to town with safety until about February in the following
+year, leaving, it has been asserted, a record of himself at Chalfont in
+the shape of a sonnet on the pestilence regarded as a judgment for the
+sins of the King, written with a diamond on a window-pane&mdash;as if the
+blind poet could write even with a pen! The verses, nevertheless, may
+not impossibly be genuine: they are almost too Miltonic for an imitator
+between 1665 and 1738, when they were first published.</p>
+
+<p>The public calamity of 1666 affected Milton more nearly than that of
+1665. The Great Fire came within a quarter of a mile of his house, and
+though he happily escaped the fate of Shirley, and did not make one of
+the helpless crowd of the homeless and destitute, his means were
+seriously abridged by the destruction of the house in Bread Street where
+he had first seen the light, and which he had retained through all the
+vicissitudes of his fortunes. He could not, probably, have published
+"Paradise Lost" without the co-operation of Samuel Symmons. Symmons's
+endeavours to push the sale of the book make the bibliographical history
+of the first edition unusually interesting. There were at least nine
+<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a><span class="pagenum">176</span>different issues, as fresh batches were successively bound up, with
+frequent alterations of title-page as reasonable cause became apparent
+to the strategic Symmons. First Milton's name is given in full, then he
+is reduced to initials, then restored; Symmons's own name, at first
+suppressed, by and by appears; his agents are frequently changed; and
+the title is altered to suit the year of issue, that the book may seem a
+novelty. The most important of all these alterations is one in which the
+author must have actively participated&mdash;the introduction of the Argument
+which, a hundred and forty years afterwards, was to cause Harriet
+Martineau to take up "Paradise Lost" at the age of seven, and of the
+Note on the metre conveying "a reason of that which stumbled many, why
+this poem rimes not." Partly, perhaps, by help of these devices,
+certainly without any aid from advertising or reviewing, the impression
+of thirteen hundred copies was disposed of within twenty months, as
+attested by Milton's receipt for his second five pounds, April 26,
+1669&mdash;two years, less one day, since the signature of the original
+contract. The first printed notice appeared after the edition had been
+entirely sold. It was by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, and was
+contained in a little Latin essay appended to Buchlerus's "Treasury of
+Poetical Phrases."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"John Milton, in addition to other most elegant writings of his,
+both in English and Latin, has recently published 'Paradise Lost,'
+a poem which, whether we regard the sublimity of the subject, or
+the combined pleasantness and majesty of the style, or the
+sublimity of the invention, or the beauty of its images and
+descriptions of nature, will, if I mistake not, receive the name
+of truly heroic, <a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a><span class="pagenum">177</span>inasmuch as by the suffrages of many not
+unqualified to judge, it is reputed to have reached the perfection
+of this kind of poetry."</p></div>
+
+<p>The "many not unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the
+age, Dryden. Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer&mdash;pleasing
+anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of
+Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal.</p>
+
+<p>While "Paradise Lost" was thus slowly upbearing its author to the
+highest heaven of fame, Milton was achieving other titles to renown, one
+of which he deemed nothing inferior. We shall remember Ellwood's hint
+that he might find something to say about Paradise Found, and the "muse"
+into which it cast him. When, says the Quaker, he waited upon Milton
+after the latter's return to London, Milton "showed me his second poem,
+called 'Paradise Regained,' and in a pleasant tone said to me, 'This is
+owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me
+at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.'" Ellwood does not tell
+us the date of this visit, and Phillips may be right in believing that
+"Paradise Regained" was entirely composed after the publication of
+"Paradise Lost"; but it seems unlikely that the conception should have
+slumbered so long in Milton's mind, and the most probable date is
+between Michaelmas, 1665, and Lady-day, 1666. Phillips records that
+Milton could never hear with patience "Paradise Regained" "censured to
+be much inferior" to "Paradise Lost." "The most judicious," he adds,
+agreed with him, while allowing that "the subject might not afford such
+variety of invention," which <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a><span class="pagenum">178</span>was probably all that the injudicious
+meant. There is no external evidence of the date of his next and last
+poem, "Samson Agonistes," but its development of Miltonic mannerisms
+would incline us to assign it to the latest period possible. The poems
+were licensed by Milton's old friend, Thomas Tomkyns, July 2, 1670, but
+did not appear until 1671. They were published in the same volume, but
+with distinct title-pages and paginations; the publisher was John
+Starkey; the printer an anonymous "J.M.," who was far from equalling
+Symmons in elegance and correctness.</p>
+
+<p>"Paradise Regained" is in one point of view the confutation of a
+celebrated but eccentric definition of poetry as a "criticism of life."
+If this were true it would be a greater work than "Paradise Lost," which
+must be violently strained to admit a definition not wholly inapplicable
+to the minor poem. If, again, Wordsworth and Coleridge are right in
+pronouncing "Paradise Regained" the most perfect of Milton's works in
+point of execution, the proof is afforded that perfect execution is not
+the chief test of poetic excellence. Whatever these great men may have
+propounded in theory, it cannot be believed that they would not have
+rather written the first two books of "Paradise Lost" than ten such
+poems as "Paradise Regained," and yet they affirm that Milton's power is
+even more advantageously exhibited in the latter work than in the other.
+There can be no solution except that greatness in poetry depends mainly
+upon the subject, and that the subject of "Paradise Lost" is infinitely
+the finer. Perhaps this should not be. Perhaps to "the visual nerve
+purged with euphrasy <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a><span class="pagenum">179</span>and rue" the spectacle of the human soul
+successfully resisting supernatural temptation would be more impressive
+than the material sublimities of "Paradise Lost," but ordinary vision
+sees otherwise. Satan "floating many a rood" on the sulphurous lake, or
+"up to the fiery concave towering high," or confronting Death at the
+gate of Hell, kindles the imagination with quite other fire than the
+sage circumspection and the meek fortitude of the Son of God. "The
+reason," says Blake, "why Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
+Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he
+was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it." The
+passages in "Paradise Regained" which most nearly approach the
+magnificence of "Paradise Lost," are those least closely connected with
+the proper action of the poem, the episodes with which Milton's
+consummate art and opulent fancy have veiled the bareness of his
+subject. The description of the Parthian military expedition; the
+picture, equally gorgeous and accurate, of the Roman Empire at the
+zenith of its greatness; the condensation into a single speech of all
+that has made Greece dear to humanity&mdash;these are the shining peaks of
+the regained "Paradise," marvels of art and eloquence, yet, unlike
+"Paradise Lost," beautiful rather than awful. The faults inherent in the
+theme cannot be imputed to the poet. No human skill could make the
+second Adam as great an object of sympathy as the first: it is enough,
+and it is wonderful, that spotless virtue should be so entirely exempt
+from formality and dulness. The baffled Satan, beaten at his own
+weapons, is necessarily a much <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a><span class="pagenum">180</span>less interesting personage than the
+heroic adventurer of "Paradise Lost." Milton has done what can be done
+by softening Satan's reprobate mood with exquisite strokes of  <span class="together">pathos:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Though I have lost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Much lustre of my native brightness, lost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be beloved of God, I have not lost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To love, at least contemplate and admire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What I see excellent in good or fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These words, though spoken with a deceitful intention, express a truth.
+Milton's Satan is a long way from Goethe's Mephistopheles. Profound,
+too, is the pathos  <span class="together">of&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I would be at the worst, worst is my best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My harbour, and my ultimate repose."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The general sobriety of the style of "Paradise Regained" is a fertile
+theme for the critics. It is, indeed, carried to the verge of baldness;
+frigidity, used by Pattison, is too strong a word. This does not seem to
+be any token of a decay of poetical power. As writers advance in life
+their characteristics usually grow upon them, and develop into
+mannerisms. In "Paradise Regained," and yet more markedly in "Samson
+Agonistes," Milton seems to have prided himself on showing how
+independent he could be of the ordinary poetical stock-in-trade. Except
+in his splendid episodical descriptions he seeks to impress by the massy
+substance of his verse. It is a great proof of the essentially poetical
+quality of his mind that though he thus often becomes jejune, he <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a><span class="pagenum">181</span>is
+never prosaic. He is ever unmistakably the poet, even when his beauties
+are rather those of the orator or the moralist. The following sound
+remark, for instance, would not have been poetry in Pope; it is poetry
+in  <span class="together">Milton:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Who reads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Incessantly, and to his reading brings not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A spirit and judgment equal or superior<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uncertain and unsettled still remains?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep versed in books and shallow in himself."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps, too, the sparse flowers of pure poetry are more exquisite from
+their contrast with the general  <span class="together">austerity:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The field, all iron, cast a gleaming brown."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Morning fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Poetic magic these, and Milton is still Milton.</p>
+
+<p>"I have lately read his Samson, which has more of the antique spirit
+than any production of any other modern poet. He is very great." Thus
+Goethe to Eckermann, in his old age. The period of life is noticeable,
+for "Samson Agonistes" is an old man's poem as respects author and
+reader alike. There is much to repel, little to attract a young reader;
+no wonder that Macaulay, fresh from college, put it so far below
+"Comus," to which the more mature taste is disposed to equal it. It is
+related to the earlier work as sculpture is to painting, but sculpture
+of the severest school, all sinewy strength; studious, above all, of
+impressive truth. "Beyond these <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a><span class="pagenum">182</span>an ancient fisherman and a rock are
+fashioned, a rugged rock, whereon with might and main the old man drags
+a great net from his cast, as one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldest
+say that he is fishing with all the might of his limbs, so big the
+sinews swell all about his neck, grey-haired though he is, but his
+strength is as the strength of youth."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Behold here the Milton of
+"Samson Agonistes," a work whose beauty is of metal rather than of
+marble, hard, bright, and receptive of an ineffaceable die. The great
+fault is the frequent harshness of the style, principally in the
+choruses, where some strophes are almost uncouth. In the blank verse
+speeches perfect grace is often united to perfect dignity: as in the
+farewell of  <span class="together">Dalila:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On both his wings, one black, the other white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bears greatest names in his wild aery flights.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My name perhaps among the circumcised,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To all posterity may stand defamed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With malediction mentioned, and the blot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in my country where I most desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall be named among the famousest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of women, sung at solemn festivals,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Living and dead recorded, who to save<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above the faith of wedlock-bands; my tomb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With odours visited and annual flowers."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The scheme of "Samson Agonistes" is that of the<a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a><span class="pagenum">183</span> Greek drama, the only
+one appropriate to an action of such extreme simplicity, admitting so
+few personages, and these only as foils to the hero. It is, but for its
+Miltonisms of style and autobiographic and political allusion, just such
+a drama as Sophocles or Euripides would have written on the subject, and
+has all that depth of patriotic and religious sentiment which made the
+Greek drama so inexpressibly significant to Greeks. Consummate art is
+shown in the invention of the Philistine giant, Harapha, who not only
+enriches the meagre action, and brings out strong features in the
+character of Samson, but also prepares the reader for the catastrophe.
+We must say reader, for though the drama might conceivably be acted with
+effect on a Court or University stage, the real living theatre has been
+no place for it since the days of Greece. Milton confesses as much when
+in his preface he assails "the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff
+with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar
+persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in
+without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." In his view
+tragedy should be eclectic; in Shakespeare's it should be all embracing.
+Shelley, perhaps, judged more rightly than either when he said: "The
+modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy is undoubtedly an
+extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in 'King
+Lear,' universal, ideal, and sublime." On the whole, "Samson Agonistes"
+is a noble example of a style which we may hope will in no generation be
+entirely lacking to our literature, but which must always be exotic,
+from its want of harmony with the more <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a><span class="pagenum">184</span>essential characteristics of our
+tumultous, undisciplined, irrepressible national life.</p>
+
+<p>In one point of view, however, "Samson Agonistes" deserves to be
+esteemed a national poem, pregnant with a deeper allusiveness than has
+always been recognized. Samson's impersonation of the author himself can
+escape no one. Old, blind, captive, helpless, mocked, decried, miserable
+in the failure of all his ideals, upheld only by faith and his own
+unconquerable spirit, Milton is the counterpart of his hero. Particular
+references to the circumstances of his life are not wanting: his bitter
+self-condemnation for having chosen his first wife in the camp of the
+enemy, and his surprise that near the close of an austere life he should
+be afflicted by the malady appointed to chastise intemperance. But, as
+in the Hebrew prophets Israel sometimes denotes a person, sometimes a
+nation, Samson seems no less the representative of the English people in
+the age of Charles the Second. His heaviest burden is his remorse, a
+remorse which could not weigh on  <span class="together">Milton:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"I do acknowledge and confess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I this honour, I this pomp have brought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To Dagon, and advanced his praises high<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the heathen round; to God have brought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In feeble hearts, propense enough before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To waver, to fall off, and join with idols;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The anguish of my soul, that suffers not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a><span class="pagenum">185</span>Milton might reproach himself for having taken a Philistine wife, but
+not with having suffered her to shear him. But the same could not be
+said of the English nation, which had in his view most foully
+apostatized from its pure creed, and most perfidiously betrayed the high
+commission it had received from Heaven. "This extolled and magnified
+nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed, to
+fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude
+would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship! To be
+ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds! To verify
+all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think
+they wisely discerned and justly censured us and all our actions as
+rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious!" These things, which Milton
+refused to contemplate as possible when he wrote his "Ready Way to
+establish a Free Commonwealth," had actually come to pass. The English
+nation is to him the enslaved and erring Samson&mdash;a Samson, however, yet
+to burst his bonds, and bring down ruin upon Philistia. "Samson
+Agonistes" is thus a prophetic drama, the English counterpart of the
+world-drama of "Prometheus Bound."</p>
+
+<p>Goethe says that our final impression of any one is derived from the
+last circumstances in which we have beheld him. Let us, therefore,
+endeavour to behold Milton as he appeared about the time of the
+publication of his last poems, to which period of his life the
+descriptions we possess seem to apply. Richardson heard of his sitting
+habitually "in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near
+Bunhill Fields, <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a><span class="pagenum">186</span>in warm sunny weather to enjoy the fresh air"&mdash;a
+suggestive picture. What thoughts must have been travelling through his
+mind, undisturbed by external things! How many of the passers knew that
+they flitted past the greatest glory of the age of Newton, Locke, and
+Wren? For one who would reverence the author of "Paradise Lost," there
+were probably twenty who would have been ready with a curse for the
+apologist of the killing of the King. In-doors he was seen by Dr.
+Wright, in Richardson's time an aged clergyman in Dorsetshire, who found
+him up one pair of stairs, in a room hung with rusty green "sitting in
+an elbow chair, black clothes, and neat enough, pale but not cadaverous;
+his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." Gout was the enemy
+of Milton's latter days; we have seen that he had begun to suffer from
+it before he wrote "Samson Agonistes." Without it, he said, he could
+find blindness tolerable. Yet even in the fit he would be cheerful, and
+would sing. It is grievous to write that, about 1670, the departure of
+his daughters promoted the comfort of his household. They were sent out
+to learn embroidery as a means of future support&mdash;a proper step in
+itself, and one which would appear to have entailed considerable expense
+upon Milton. But they might perfectly well have remained inmates of the
+family, and the inference is that domestic discord had at length grown
+unbearable to all. Friends, or at least visitors, were, on the other
+hand, more numerous than of late years. The most interesting were the
+"subtle, cunning, and reserved" Earl of Anglesey, who must have "coveted
+Milton's society and converse" very much if, as Phillips <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a><span class="pagenum">187</span>reports, he
+often came all the way to Bunhill Fields to enjoy it; and Dryden, whose
+generous admiration does not seem to have been affected by Milton's
+over-hasty sentence upon him as "a good rhymester, but no poet." One of
+Dryden's visits is famous in literary history, when he came with the
+modest request that Milton would let him turn his epic into an opera.
+"Aye," responded Milton, equal to the occasion, "tag my verses if you
+will"&mdash;to tag being to put a shining metal point&mdash;compared in Milton's
+fancy to a rhyme&mdash;at the end of a lace or cord. Dryden took him at his
+word, and in due time "Paradise Lost" had become an opera under the
+title of "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man," which may also be
+interpreted as referring to the condition of the poem before Dryden laid
+hands upon it and afterwards. It is a puzzling performance altogether;
+one sees not any more than Sir Walter Scott could see how a drama
+requiring paradisiacal costume could have been acted even in the age of
+Nell Gwyn; and yet it is even more unlikely that Dryden should have
+written a play not intended for the stage. The same contradiction
+prevails in the piece itself; it would not be unfair to call it the most
+absurd burlesque ever written without burlesque intention; and yet it
+displays such intellectual resources, such vigour, bustle, adroitness,
+and bright impudence, that admiration almost counterweighs derision.
+Dryden could not have made such an exhibition of Milton and himself
+twenty years afterwards, when he said that, much as he had always
+admired Milton, he felt that he had not admired him half enough. The
+reverence <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a><span class="pagenum">188</span>which he felt even in 1674 for "one of the greatest, most
+noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has
+produced," contrasts finely with the ordinary Restoration estimate of
+Milton conveyed in the complimentary verses by Lee, prefixed to "The
+State of  <span class="together">Innocence":&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To the dead bard your fame a little owes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rudely cast what you could well dispose.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A chaos, for no perfect world was found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till through the heap your mighty genius shined;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was the golden ore, which you refined."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These later years also produced several little publications of Milton's
+own, mostly of manuscripts long lying by him, now slightly revised and
+fitted for the press. Such were his miniature Latin grammar, published
+in 1669; and his "Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio; or The Method of
+Ramus," 1672. The first is insignificant; and the second even Professor
+Masson pronounces, "as a digest of logic, disorderly and unedifying."
+Both apparently belong to his school-keeping days: the little tract, "Of
+True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration," (1673) is, on the other
+hand, contemporary with a period of great public excitement, when
+Parliament (March, 1673) compelled the king to revoke his edict of
+toleration autocratically promulgated in the preceding year, and to
+assent to a severe Test Act against Roman Catholics. The good sense and
+good nature which inclined Charles to toleration were unfortunately
+alloyed with less creditable motives. Protestants justly suspected him
+of insidiously aiming at the re-establish<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a><span class="pagenum">189</span>ment of Roman Catholicism, and
+even the persecuted Nonconformists patriotically joined with High
+Churchmen to adjourn their own deliverance until the country should be
+safe from the common enemy. The wisdom and necessity of this course were
+abundantly evinced under the next reign, and while we must regret that
+Milton contributed his superfluous aid to restrictions only defensible
+on the ground of expediency, we must admit that he could not well avoid
+making Roman Catholics an exception to the broad tolerance he claims for
+all denominations of Protestants. And, after all, has not the Roman
+Catholic Church's notion of tolerance always been that which Macaulay
+imputes to Southey, that everybody should tolerate her, and that she
+should tolerate nobody?</p>
+
+<p>A more important work, though scarcely worthy of Milton's industry, was
+his "History of Britain" (1670). This was a comparatively early labour,
+four of the six books having been written before he entered upon the
+Latin Secretaryship, and two under the Commonwealth. From its own point
+of view, this is a meritorious performance, making no pretensions to the
+character of a philosophical history, but a clear, easy narrative,
+sometimes interrupted by sententious disquisition, of transactions down
+to the Conquest. Like Grote, though not precisely for the same reason,
+Milton hands down picturesque legendary matter as he finds it, and it is
+to those who would see English history in its romantic aspect that, in
+these days of exact research, his work is chiefly to be recommended. It
+is also memorable for what he never saw himself, the engraved portrait,
+after Faithorne's crayon sketch.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a><span class="pagenum">190</span></p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"No one," says Professor Masson, "can desire a more impressive and
+authentic portrait of Milton in his later life. The face is such
+as has been given to no other human being; it was and is uniquely
+Milton's. Underneath the broad forehead and arched temples there
+are the great rings of eye-socket, with the blind, unblemished
+eyes in them, drawn straight upon you by your voice, and
+speculating who and what you are; there is a severe composure in
+the beautiful oval of the whole countenance, disturbed only by the
+singular pouting of the rich mouth; and the entire expression is
+that of English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow."</p></div>
+
+<p>Milton's care to set his house in order extended to his poetical
+writings. In 1673 the poems published in 1645, both English and Latin,
+appeared in a second edition, disclosing <i>novas frondes</i> in one or two
+of Milton's earliest unprinted poems, and such of the sonnets as
+political considerations did not exclude; and <i>non sua poma</i> in the
+Tractate of Education, curiously grafted on at the end. An even more
+important publication was the second edition of "Paradise Lost" (1674)
+with the original ten books for the first time divided into twelve as we
+now have them. Nor did this exhaust the list of Milton's literary
+undertakings. He was desirous of giving to the world his correspondence
+when Latin Secretary, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" which had
+employed so much of his thoughts at various periods of his life. The
+Government, though allowing the publication of his familiar Latin
+correspondence (1674), would not tolerate the letters he had written as
+secretary to the Commonwealth, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"
+was still less likely to propitiate the licenser. Holland was in that
+day the one secure asylum of free thought, and thither, in 1675, the
+year following Milton's death, the <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a><span class="pagenum">191</span>manuscripts were taken or sent by
+Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriack's, to Daniel Elzevir, who agreed to
+publish them. Before publication could take place, however, a
+clandestine but correct edition of the State letters appeared in London,
+probably by the agency of Edward Phillips. Skinner, in his vexation,
+appealed to the authorities to suppress this edition: they took the
+hint, and suppressed his instead. Elzevir delivered up the manuscripts,
+which the Secretary of State pigeon-holed until their existence was
+forgotten. At last, in 1823, Mr. Robert Lemon, rummaging in the State
+Paper Office, came upon the identical parcel addressed by Elzevir to
+Daniel Skinner's father which contained his son's transcript of the
+State Letters and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine." Times had
+changed, and the heretical work was edited and translated by George the
+Fourth's favourite chaplain, and published at his Majesty's expense.</p>
+
+<p>The "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" is by far the most remarkable of
+all Milton's later prose publications, and would have exerted a great
+influence on opinion if it had appeared when the author designed.
+Milton's name would have been a tower of strength to the liberal
+eighteenth-century clergy inside and outside the Establishment. It
+should indeed have been sufficiently manifest that "Paradise Lost" could
+not have been written by a Trinitarian or a Calvinist; but theological
+partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it
+does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted
+until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of
+the book is un<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a><span class="pagenum">192</span>doubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with
+which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained
+by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward
+light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction;
+but practically this illumination seems seldom to have guided Milton to
+any sense but the most obvious. Hence, with the intrepid consistency
+that belongs to him, he is not only an Arian, but a tolerator of
+polygamy, finding that practice nowhere condemned in Scripture, but even
+recommended by respectable examples; an Anthropomorphist, who takes the
+ascription of human passion to the Deity in the sense certainly intended
+by those who made it; a believer in the materiality and natural
+mortality of the soul, and in the suspension of consciousness between
+death and the resurrection. Where less fettered by the literal Word he
+thinks boldly; unable to conceive creation out of nothing, he regards
+all existence as an emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to
+the designation of Pantheist. He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and
+is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself. On the Atonement and
+Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends
+public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual
+religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of
+social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and
+the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and
+method of composition he  <span class="together">says:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is with a friendly and benignant feeling towards mankind that
+I give as wide a circulation as possible to what I esteem my best
+<a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a><span class="pagenum">193</span>and richest possession.... And whereas the greater part of those
+who have written most largely on these subjects have been wont to
+fill whole pages with explanations of their own opinions,
+thrusting into the margin the texts in support of their doctrines,
+I have chosen, on the contrary, to fill my pages even to
+redundance with quotations from Scripture, so that as little space
+as possible might be left for my own words, even when they arise
+from the context of revelation itself."</p></div>
+
+<p>There is consequently little scope for eloquence in a treatise
+consisting to so large an extent of quotations; but it is pervaded by a
+moral sublimity, more easily felt than expressed. Particular opinions
+will be diversely judged; but if anything could increase our reverence
+for Milton it would be that his last years should have been devoted to a
+labour so manifestly inspired by disinterested benevolence and hazardous
+love of truth.</p>
+
+<p>His life's work was now finished, and finished with entire success as
+far as depended upon his own will and power. He had left nothing
+unwritten, nothing undone, nor was he ignorant what manner of monument
+he had raised for himself, It was only the condition of the State that
+afflicted him, and this, looking forward, he saw in more gloomy colours
+than it appears to us who look back. Had he attained his father's age
+his apprehensions would have been dispelled by the Revolution: but he
+had evidently for some time past been older in constitution than in
+years. In July, 1674, he was anticipating death; but about the middle of
+October, "he was very merry and seemed to be in good health of body."
+Early in November "the gout struck in," and he died on November 8th,
+late at night, "with so little pain that the time of his expiring was
+not perceived by those in the <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a><span class="pagenum">194</span>room." On November 12th, "all his learned
+and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar,
+accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where
+he was buried in the chancel." In 1864, the church was restored in
+honour of the great enemy of religious establishments. "The animosities
+die, but the humanities live for ever."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Milton's resources had been greatly impaired in his latter years by
+losses, and the expense of providing for his daughters. He nevertheless
+left, exclusive of household goods, about &pound;900, which, by a nuncupative
+will made in July, 1674, he had wholly bequeathed to his wife. His
+daughters, he told his brother Christopher (now a Roman Catholic, and on
+the road to become one of James the Second's judges, but always on
+friendly terms with John), had been undutiful, and he thought that he
+had done enough for them. They naturally thought otherwise, and
+threatened litigation. The interrogatories administered on this occasion
+afford the best clue to the condition of Milton's affairs and household.
+At length the dispute was compromised, the nuncupative will, a kind of
+document always regarded with suspicion, was given up, and the widow
+received two-thirds of the estate instead of the whole, probably the
+fairest settlement that could have been arrived at. After residing some
+years in London she retired to Nantwich in her native county, where
+divers glimpses reveal her as leading the decent existence of a poor but
+comfortable gentlewoman as late as August or September, 1727. The
+inventory of her effects, amounting to &pound;38 8s. 4d., is preserved, and
+includes:<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a><span class="pagenum">195</span> "Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms, valued at ten
+guineas;" and "two Books of Paradise," valued at ten shillings. Of the
+daughters, Anne married "a master-builder," and died in childbirth some
+time before 1678; Mary was dead when Phillips wrote in 1694; and Deborah
+survived until August 24, 1727, dying within a few days of her
+stepmother. She had married Abraham Clarke, a weaver and mercer in
+Dublin, who took refuge in England during the Irish troubles under James
+the Second, and carried on his business in Spitalfields. She had several
+children by him, one of whom lived to receive, in 1750, the proceeds of
+a theatrical benefit promoted by Bishop Newton and Samuel Johnson.
+Deborah herself was brought into notice by Addison, and was visited by
+Professor Ward of Gresham College, who found her "bearing the
+inconveniences of a low fortune with decency and prudence." Her last
+days were made comfortable by the generosity of Princess Caroline and
+others: it is more pleasant still to know that her affection for her
+father had revived. When shown Faithorne's crayon portrait (not the one
+engraved in Milton's lifetime, but one exceedingly like it) she
+exclaimed, "in a transport, ''Tis my dear father, I see him, 'tis him!'
+and then she put her hands to several parts of her face, ''Tis the very
+man, here! here!'"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Milton's character is one of the things which "securus judicat orbis
+terrarum." On one point only there seems to us, as we have frequently
+implied, to be room for modification. In the popular conception of
+Milton the <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a><span class="pagenum">196</span>poet and the man are imperfectly combined. We allow his
+greatness as a poet, but deny him the poetical temperament which alone
+could have enabled him to attain it. He is looked upon as a great, good,
+reverend, austere, not very amiable, and not very sensitive man. The
+author and the book are thus set at variance, and the attempt to
+conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and
+inconsistency. To us, on the contrary, Milton, with all his strength of
+will and regularity of life, seems as perfect a representative as any of
+his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical
+temperament. We appeal to his remarkable dependence upon external
+prompting for his compositions; to the rapidity of his work under
+excitement, and his long intervals of unproductiveness; to the heat and
+fury of his polemics; to the simplicity with which, fortunately for us,
+he inscribes small particulars of his own life side by side with
+weightiest utterances on Church and State; to the amazing precipitancy
+of his marriage and its rupture; to his sudden pliability upon appeal to
+his generosity; to his romantic self-sacrifice when his country demanded
+his eyes from him; above all, to his splendid ideals of regenerated
+human life, such as poets alone either conceive or realize. To overlook
+all this is to affirm that Milton wrote great poetry without being truly
+a poet. One more remark may be added, though not required by thinking
+readers. We must beware of confounding the essential with the accidental
+Milton&mdash;the pure vital spirit with the casual vesture of the creeds and
+circumstances of the era in which it became clothed with  <span class="together">mortality:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a><span class="pagenum">197</span>
+<span class="i4">"They are still immortal<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Who, through birth's orient portal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Clothe their unceasing flight<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In the brief dust and light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gathered around their chariots as they go.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">New shapes they still may weave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">New gods, new laws, receive."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If we knew for certain which of the many causes that have enlisted noble
+minds in our age would array Milton's spirit "in brief dust and light,"
+supposing it returned to earth in this nineteenth century, we should
+know which was the noblest of them all, but we should be as far as ever
+from knowing a final and stereotyped Milton.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center biggap">THE END.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  />
+<h2><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> A famous Presbyterian tract of the day, so called from the
+combined initials of the authors, one of whom was Milton's old
+instructor, Thomas Young. The "Remonstrant" to whom Milton replied was
+Bishop Hall.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This principle admitted of general application. For
+example, astrological books were to be licensed by John Booker, who
+could by no means see his way to pass the prognostications of his rival
+Lilly without "many impertinent obliterations," which made Lilly
+exceeding wroth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Two persons of this uncommon name are mentioned in the
+State Papers of Milton's time&mdash;one a merchant who imported a cargo of
+timber; the other a leatherseller. The name also occurs once in Pepys.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Rossetti's sonnet, "On the Refusal of Aid between Nations,"
+is an almost equally remarkable instance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The same is recorded of Friedrich Hebbel, the most original
+of modern German dramatists.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> In his "Urim of Conscience," 1695. This curious book
+contains one of the first English accounts of Buddha, whom the author
+calls Chacabout (Sakhya Buddha, apparently), and of the "Christians of
+St. John" at Bassora.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Ariosto and Marcellus Palingenius. Both these wrote before
+Ronsard, to whom the thought is traced by Pattison, and Valvasone, to
+whom Hayley deems Milton indebted for it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> We cannot agree with Mr. Edmundson that Milton was in any
+respect indebted to Vondel's "Adam's Banishment," published in 1664.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Theocritus, Idyll I.; Lang's translation.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr  />
+<p><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a><span
+class="pagenum">198</span></p><p><a name="Page_199"
+id="Page_199"></a><br /><span class="pagenum">199</span></p>
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<p><a id="IX_A" name="IX_A"></a>A.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Adam, not the hero of "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li>Adonais compared with Lycidas, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li>Aldersgate Street, Milton's home in, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li>"Allegro, L.," <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li>Andreini, his "Adamo" supposed to have suggested "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li>Anglesey, Earl of, visits Milton, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>"Animadversions upon the Remonstrant," <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li>"Apology for Smectymnuus," <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li>"Arcades," <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li>"Areopagitica, the," <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>argument of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Arian opinions of Milton, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+<li>Ariosto, Milton borrows from, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Artillery Walk, Milton's last house, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li>"At a Solemn Music," <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li>Aubrey's biographical notices of Milton, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_B" name="IX_B"></a>B.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Ball's Life of Preston, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li>Barbican, Milton's house in the, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li>Baroni, Leonora, admired by Milton, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Beddoes, T.L., on Milton and Vondel, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li>Benrath on Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li>Blake on Milton, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li>Bradshaw, Milton's praise of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li>Bread Street, Milton born in, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+<li>Bridgewater, Lord, "Comus" written in his honour, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+
+<li>Bright, John, his admiration for Milton, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</li>
+
+<li>British Museum, copy of Milton's poems in, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>proclamation against Milton's books preserved in the, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Buckhurst, Lord, his admiration of "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+</ul>
+<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a><span
+class="pagenum">200</span><a id="IX_C" name="IX_C"></a>C.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Caedmon, question of Milton's indebtedness to, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li>Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso" compared with "Comus," <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>with "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Cambridge in Milton's time, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li>Cardinal Barberini receives Milton, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Caroline, Princess, her kindness to Milton's daughter, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li>Chalfont St. Giles, Milton's residence at, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li>Chappell, W., Milton's college tutor, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li>Charles I., illegal government of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>expedition against the Scots, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li>
+  <li>execution of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li>
+  <li>alleged authorship of "Eikon Basilike," <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>;</li>
+  <li>a bad king, but not a bad man, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Charles II., restoration of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>favour to Roman Catholics, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Christ's College, Milton at, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li>"Christian Doctrine," Milton's treatise on, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+
+<li>"Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li>Clarke, Deborah, Milton's youngest daughter;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>her reminiscences of her father, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Clarke, Mr. Hyde, his discoveries respecting Milton's ancestry, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li>Clarke, Sir T., Milton's MSS. preserved by, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>on Milton's taste for music, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li>
+  <li>on "Paradise Regained," <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Comenius, educational method of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li>Commonwealth, Milton's views of a free, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li>"Comus," production of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>criticism on, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church," <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li>Copernican theory only partly adopted in "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li>Cosmogony of Milton, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li>Cromwell, Milton's character of, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Milton's advice to, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_D" name="IX_D"></a>D.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Dante and Milton compared, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li>Daughters, character of Milton's, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li>Davis, Miss, Milton's suit to, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+<li>Deity, imperfect conception of, in "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li>Denham, Sir J., his admiration of "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+
+<li>Diodati, Milton's friendship with, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>verses to, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li>
+  <li>letters to, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li>
+  <li>death of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
+  <li>Milton's elegy on, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li>Dryden, on "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>visits Milton, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li>
+  <li>dramatizes "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Du Moulin, Peter, author of "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad C&oelig;lum," <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_E" name="IX_E"></a>E.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Edmundson, Mr. G., on Milton and Vondel, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a><span
+class="pagenum">201</span>Education, Milton's tract on, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li>"Eikon Basilike," authorship of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li>"Eikonoklastes," Milton's reply to "Eikon Basilike," <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li>Ellwood, Thomas, the Quaker, reads to Milton, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>suggests "Paradise Regained," <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Elzevir, Daniel, receives and gives up the MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_F" name="IX_F"></a>F.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Fairfax, Milton's character of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li>Faithorne's portrait of Milton, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_G" name="IX_G"></a>G.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Galileo, Milton's visit to, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Gauden, Bishop, author of "Eikon Basilike," <a href="#Page_106">106</a>
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li><i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>, account of Horton in, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Goethe on "Samson Agonistes," <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Gill, Mr., Milton's master at St. Paul's school, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li>Gosse, Mr., on Milton and Vondel, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li>Greek, influence of, on Milton, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li>Grotius, Hugo, Milton introduced to, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Milton's study of, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_H" name="IX_H"></a>H.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Hartlib, S., Milton's tract on Education inspired by, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li>"History of Britain" by Milton, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+<li>Holstenius, Lucas, librarian of the Vatican, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li>Homer and Shakespeare compared, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>and compared with Milton, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Horton, Milton retires to, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>poems written at, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Hunter, Rev. Joseph, on Milton's ancestors, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li>"Hymn on the Nativity," <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_I" name="IX_I"></a>I.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Italian sonnets by Milton, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li>Italy, Milton's journey to, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_J" name="IX_J"></a>J.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Jansen, Cornelius, paints Milton's portrait, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li>Jeffrey, Sarah, Milton's mother, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+<li>Jewin Street, Milton's house in, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li>Johnson, Dr., on "Lycidas," <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>benefits Milton's granddaughter, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_K" name="IX_K"></a>K.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Keats, Milton contrasted with, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li>King, Edward, "Lycidas," an elegy on his death, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_L" name="IX_L"></a>L.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Landor, his Latin verse compared with Milton's, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li>Latin grammar by Milton, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Latin Secretaryship to the Commonwealth, Milton's appointment to, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li>Laud, Archbishop, Church government of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Milton's veiled attack on, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a><span
+class="pagenum">202</span>Lawes, Henry, writes music to "Comus" and "Arcades," <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>edits "Comus," <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Lee, Nathaniel, his verses on Milton, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Lemon, Mr. Robert, discovers MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+<li>Letters, Milton's official, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li>Logic, Milton's tract on, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Long Parliament, meeting of the, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>licensing of books by, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Lucifer, Vondel's, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li>Ludlow Castle, "Comus" first performed at, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li>"Lycidas," origin of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>analysis of, criticism on, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_M" name="IX_M"></a>M.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Manso, Marquis, poem on, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li>Marshall, Milton's portrait engraved by, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li>Marriage, Milton's views on, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+<li>Martineau, Harriet, reads "Paradise Lost" at seven years of age, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li>Mason, C., Milton's MSS. preserved by, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Masson, Prof. David, his monumental biography of Milton, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>on Milton's ancestors, <i>ib.</i>;</li>
+  <li>on Milton's college career, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li>
+  <li>on the scenery of Horton, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li>
+  <li>on date of Divorce pamphlet, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>on date of "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li>
+  <li>on money received for "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li>
+  <li>on Milton's cosmogony, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</li>
+  <li>his description of Chalfont, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li>
+  <li>on Milton's portrait, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Milton, Christopher, John Milton's younger brother, birth of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>a Royalist, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li>
+  <li>a Roman Catholic, and one of James the Second's judges, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Milton, John, the elder, birth, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>a scrivener by profession, <i>ib.</i>;</li>
+  <li>musical compositions of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li>
+  <li>retirement to Horton, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</li>
+  <li>his noble confidence in his son, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li>
+  <li>comes to live with his son, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li>
+  <li>dies, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Milton, John, birth, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>genealogy of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</li>
+  <li>birthplace, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li>
+  <li>his father, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li>
+  <li>his education, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li>
+  <li>knowledge of Italian, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li>
+  <li>at Cambridge, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</li>
+  <li>rusticated, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li>
+  <li>his degree, 1629; <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li>
+  <li>will not enter the church, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li>
+  <li>early poems, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</li>
+  <li>writes "Comus," <a href="#Page_38">38</a>;</li>
+  <li>required incitement to write, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li>
+  <li>correctness of his early poems, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li>
+  <li>his life at Horton, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li>
+  <li>his "Comus" and "Arcades," <a href="#Page_44">44</a>-<a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li>
+  <li>his "Lycidas," <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li>
+  <li>his mother's death, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li>
+  <li>goes to Italy, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li>
+  <li>his Italian friends, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</li>
+  <li>visits Galileo, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</li>
+  <li>Italian sonnets, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li>
+  <li>educates his nephews, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
+  <li>elegy to Diodati, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li>
+  <li>eighteen years' poetic silence, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li>
+  <li>takes part with the Commonwealth, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li>
+  <li>pamphlets on Church government, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li>
+  <li>tract on Education, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li>
+  <li>"Areopagitica," <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;</li>
+  <li>Italian sonnet, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li>
+  <li>his first marriage, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</li>
+  <li>deserted by his wife, his treatise on Divorce, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>his pupils, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li>
+  <li><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a><span
+class="pagenum">203</span>return of his wife, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li>
+  <li>his daughter born, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li>
+  <li>becomes Secretary for Foreign Tongues, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li>
+  <li>his State papers, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li>
+  <li>licenses pamphlets, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</li>
+  <li>answers "Eikon Basilike," <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</li>
+  <li>answers Salmasius, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li>
+  <li>loses his sight, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li>
+  <li>death of his wife, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li>
+  <li>reply to Morus, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li>
+  <li>his official duties <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li>
+  <li>his retirement and second marriage, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li>
+  <li>projected ninety-nine themes preparatory to "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</li>
+  <li>wrote chiefly from autumn to spring, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</li>
+  <li>his views of a republic, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li>
+  <li>escapes proscription at Restoration, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</li>
+  <li>unhappy relations with his daughters, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</li>
+  <li>third marriage, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li>
+  <li>writing "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_147">147</a>-<a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li>
+  <li>analysis of his work, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li>
+  <li>compared with modern poets, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li>
+  <li>his indebtedness to earlier poets, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li>
+  <li>retires to Chalfont to escape the plague, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li>
+  <li>he suffers from the Great Fire, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li>
+  <li>his "Paradise Regained," <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li>
+  <li>his "Samson Agonistes," <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li>
+  <li>his later life, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</li>
+  <li>his later tracts, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li>
+  <li>his "History of Britain," <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li>
+  <li>his Arian opinions, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li>
+  <li>his death, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li>
+  <li>his will, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>his widow and daughters, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</li>
+  <li>estimate of his character, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Milton, Richard, Milton's grandfather, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li>Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's third wife, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Milton's will in favour of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>death, <i>ib.</i></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Monk, General, character of, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li>Morland, Sir Samuel, on "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Morus, A., his controversy with Milton, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>-<a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li>Myers, Mr. E., on Milton's views of marriage, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_N" name="IX_N"></a>N.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Newton, Bishop, benefits Milton's granddaughter, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_O" name="IX_O"></a>O.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Ochino, B., Milton's indebtedness to, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li>"On a fair Infant," <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_P" name="IX_P"></a>P.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Paget, Dr., Milton's physician, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li>Palingenius, Marcellus, Milton borrows from, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Pamphlets, Milton's, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_138">8</a></li>
+
+<li>"Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>four schemes for, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</li>
+  <li>first conceived as drama, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</li>
+  <li>manner of composition, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li>
+  <li>dates of, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>-<a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li>
+  <li>critique of, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li>
+  <li>successive publications of, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"Paradise Regained," <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>criticism on, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>-<a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"Passion of Christ," <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Pattison, Mark, on "Lycidas," <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>on Milton's political career, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li>
+  <li>on fanaticism of Commonwealth, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</li>
+  <li>on "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;</li>
+  <li>on Milton's diction, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"Penseroso, Il," <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a><span
+class="pagenum">204</span>Pepys, S., on Restoration, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li>Petty France, Westminster, Milton's home in, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li>Philaras, Milton's Greek friend, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li>Phillips, E., Milton's brother-in-law, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>Phillips, Edward, Milton's nephew, on Milton's ancestry, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>educated by his uncle, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
+  <li>his account of Milton's separation from his first wife, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>of their reconciliation, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li>
+  <li>becomes a Royalist, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</li>
+  <li>his attention to his uncle, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li>
+  <li>on "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</li>
+  <li>on "Paradise Regained," <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"Pilot of the Galilean Lake," <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+<li>"Plymouth Brethren," resemblance of Milton's views to, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li>Powell, Mary, Milton marries, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>she leaves him, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>returns to him, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</li>
+  <li>her family live with Milton, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li>
+  <li>her death, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li>
+  <li>probable bad influence on her daughters, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"Prelatical Episcopacy" pamphlet, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li>"Pro Populo" pamphlet, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+<li>Ptolemaic system followed by Milton in "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li>Puckering, Sir H., gave Milton's MSS. to the University of Cambridge, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_R" name="IX_R"></a>R.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Reading, surrender of to Parliamentary army, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li>"Ready way to establish a Commonwealth," <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li>"Reason of Church Government" pamphlet, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li>"Reformation touching Church Discipline" pamphlet, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li>Restoration, consequences to Milton of the, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>-<a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li>Richardson, J., on Milton's later life, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>Rome, Milton in, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Rump, burning of the, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_S" name="IX_S"></a>S.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>St. Bride's Churchyard, Milton lodges in, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>St. Giles's Cripplegate, Milton's grave in, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+<li>St. Paul's school, Milton at, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li>Salmasius, Claudius, his character, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>author of "Defensio Regia," <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li>
+  <li>Milton's controversy with, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Samson, Vondel's, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li>"Samson Agonistes," <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>criticism on, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Satan, the hero of "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li>Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Milton's panegyric on, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>;</li>
+  <li>his view of tragedy compared with Milton's, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Shelley, on poetical inspiration, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>his estimate of Milton, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</li>
+  <li>on tragedy and comedy, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li>
+  <li>quoted, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Skinner, Cyriack, his loan to Milton, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li>Skinner, David, endeavours to publish "State Letters" and
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a><span
+class="pagenum">205</span>"Treatise on Christian Doctrine," <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Sonnet, "When the assault was intended to the City," <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>from the Italian, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li>
+  <li>on Vaudois Protestants, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li>
+  <li>to his second wife, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li>
+  <li>to Henry Lawrence, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;</li>
+  <li>inscribed on a window-pane, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>"State Letters," <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+<li>Stationers' Company and Milton, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li>Symmons, S., publisher of "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+
+<li>Symonds, Mr. J.A., on metre of "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_T" name="IX_T"></a>T.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Tennyson, on Milton's Eden, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li>"Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li>"Tina," by Antonio Malatesti, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li>Tomkyns, Thomas, licenses "Paradise Lost," <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>and the poems, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Tovey, Nathaniel, Milton's college tutor, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+<li>Treatise on Christian Doctrine, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_U" name="IX_U"></a>U.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Ulster Protestants, Milton's subscription for, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_V" name="IX_V"></a>V.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Vernon Lee, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li>Vondel, Milton's indebtedness to, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_W" name="IX_W"></a>W.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Wakefield, E.G., on the champions of great causes, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li>Wood, Anthony, on Restoration, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li>Woodcock, Katherine, Milton's second wife, her marriage and death, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li>Wootton, Sir H., on "Comus," <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li>Wordsworth, quoted, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Milton contrasted with, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</li>
+  <li>on "Paradise Regained," <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Wright, Dr., reminiscence of his visit to Milton, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+<p><a id="IX_Y" name="IX_Y"></a>Y.</p>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+<li>Young, Thomas, Milton's private tutor, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr  /><p><a name="Page_i"
+id="Page_i"></a><br /><span class="pagenum">i</span></p>
+<h2><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY.</h2>
+
+<p class="center little">BY</p>
+
+<p class="center">JOHN P. ANDERSON</p>
+
+<p class="center little">(<i>British Museum</i>).</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<ul  style="list-style-type:upper-roman;margin-left:20%;">
+  <li><a href="#bib_WORKS" >WORKS</a>.</li>
+  <li><a href="#bib_POETICAL" >POETICAL WORKS</a>.</li>
+  <li><a href="#bib_PROSE" >PROSE WORKS</a>.</li>
+  <li><a href="#bib_SINGLE" >SINGLE WORKS</a>.</li>
+  <li><a href="#bib_SELECTIONS" >SELECTIONS</a>.</li>
+  <li><a href="#bib_APPENDIX" >APPENDIX</a>&mdash;
+  <ul style="list-style-type:none">
+    <li>Biography, Criticism, etc.</li>
+    <li>Magazine Articles, etc.</li>
+  </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li><a href="#bib_CHRONO" >CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS</a>.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr class="gap" />
+
+<div class="biblio">
+<h3><a name="bib_WORKS" id="bib_WORKS"></a>I. WORKS.</h3>
+
+<p>The Works of John Milton in verse and prose, printed from the original
+editions, with a life of the author by J. Mitford. 8 vols. London, 1851,
+8vo.</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="bib_POETICAL" id="bib_POETICAL"></a>II. POETICAL WORKS.</h3>
+
+<p>Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several
+times. Printed by his true copies. London [January 2], 1645, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">First collective edition, and the first work bearing Milton's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poems, etc., upon several occasions, both English and Latin, etc.,
+composed at several times. With a small Tractate of Education to Mr.
+Hartlib. 2 parts. London, 1673, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Containing Paradise Lost,
+Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and his poems on several occasions.
+Together with explanatory notes on each book of the Paradise Lost [by
+P.H., <i>i.e.</i>, Patrick Hume]. 5 parts. London, 1695, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Remains of Mr Milton, etc. By C. Gildon. London, 1698,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton. (Notes upon the <a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii"></a><span class="pagenum">ii</span>twelve
+books of Paradise Lost, by Mr. Addison. A small Tractate of Education to
+Mr. Hartlib.) 2 vols. London, 1720, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1721, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1727, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1730, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1731, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1746, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, with notes of various authors, by Thomas Newton,
+bishop of Bristol. 3 vols. London, 1749-52, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of Milton, etc. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1762, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, by Newton. 4 vols. London, 1763, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1766, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of Milton. With prefatory characters of the
+several pieces; the life of Milton, a glossary, etc. Edinburgh, 1767,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 4 vols, London, 1770, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1773, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poems on several occasions. (<i>British Poets</i>, vol. iv.) Edinburgh,
+1773, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1775, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. From the text of Dr. Newton.
+(<i>Bell's Poets of Great Britain</i>, vols. 35-38.) Edinburgh, 1776, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poems of Milton. (<i>Johnson's Works of the English Poets</i>, vols.
+3-5.) London, 1779, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poems upon several occasions, English, Italian, and Latin, with
+translations: viz., Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus,
+Odes, Sonnets, Miscellanies, English Psalms, Elegiarum Liber,
+Epigrammatum Liber, Sylvarum Liber. With notes critical and explanatory,
+and other illustrations, by T. Warton. London, 1785, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition, with many alterations, and large additions. London,
+1791, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poems. Another edition. (<i>Johnson's Works of the English Poets</i>,
+vols. 10-12.) London, 1790, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. To which is prefixed the life of
+the author. (<i>Anderson's Poets of Great Britain</i>, vol. v.) Edinburgh,
+1792, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life of the author, by W.
+Hayley [and engravings after Westall]. 3 vols. London, 1794-97, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, from the text of Dr. Newton.
+With the life of the author, and a critique on Paradise Lost, by J.
+Addison. Cooke's edition. Embellished with engravings. 2 vols. London,
+1795-96, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the principal notes of
+various commentators. To which are added illustrations, with some
+account of the life of Milton. By H.J. Todd. (Mr. Addison's criticism on
+the Paradise Lost. Dr. Johnson's Remarks on Milton's Versification. <a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii"></a><span class="pagenum">iii</span>Dr.
+C. Burney's observations on the Greek verses of Milton.) 6 vols. London,
+1801, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition, with considerable additions, and with a verbal
+index to the whole of Milton's poetry, etc. 7 vols. London, 1809, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Third edition, with other illustrations, etc. 6 vols. London, 1826,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and
+critical, by J. Aikin. (Life of Milton by Dr. Johnson.) 3 vols. London,
+1805, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Vols. xii.-xv. of an edition of "The Works of the English Poets.
+With preface by Dr. Johnson."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and
+critical, by S. Johnson. Re-edited, with new biographical and critical
+matter, by J. Aikin, M.D. 3 vols. London, 1806, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1806, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. 4 vols. (<i>Park's Works of the
+British Poets</i>, vols. i.-iii.) London, 1808, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with the life of the author. By
+S. Johnson. 3 vols. London, 1809, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Cowper's Milton. [Edited, with a life of Milton, by W. Hayley.
+Together with "Adam: a sacred drama, translated from the Italian of G.B.
+Andreini," by W. Cowper and W. Hayley.] 4 vols. Chichester, 1810, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The British Museum copy contains MS. notes by J. Mitford.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poems of John Milton. (<i>Chalmers' Works of the English Poets</i>,
+vol. vii.) London, 1810, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the life of the author, by
+S. Johnson. (<i>Select British Poets</i>.) London, 1810, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poems on several occasions. Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso.
+London, 1817, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, with Fenton's life and Dr. Johnson's criticism. 2
+vols. London, 1817, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton; to which is prefixed the life of
+the author. London, 1818, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">This forms part of "Walker's British Classics."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a life of the author, by E.
+Sanford. (<i>Works of the British Poets</i>, vols. vii., viii.) 2 vols.
+Philadelphia, 1819, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poems of John Milton. (<i>British Poets</i>, vols. xvi.-xviii.)
+Chiswick, 1822, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes of various authors,
+principally from the editions of T. Newton, C. Dunster, and T. Warton;
+to which is prefixed Newton's life of Milton. By E. Hawkins. 4 vols.
+Oxford, 1824, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. A new edition, with notes, critical and explanatory,
+by J.D. Williams. (Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and Poems.) 2
+vols. London, 1824, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The British Museum copy contains copious MS. notes by the editor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv"></a><span class="pagenum">iv</span>&mdash;&mdash; Poetical Works, with Cowper's Translations of the Latin and
+Italian poems, and life of Milton by his nephew, E. Philips, etc. 3
+vols. London, 1826, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poems on several occasions. [With Westall's plates.] London, 1827,
+16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. [Edited by J. Mitford, with life
+of Milton by the editor.] 3 vols. London, 1832, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of the "Aldine Edition of the British Poets."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1866, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Printed from the text of Todd
+and others. A new edition. With the poet's life by E. Philips. Leipzig,
+1834, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir Egerton Brydges,
+Bart. [With a life of Milton, by Sir E.B.] 6 vols. London, 1835, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton: with explanatory notes
+and a life of the author, by the Rev. H. Stebbing. To which is prefixed
+Dr. Channing's essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1839,
+12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, J. Thomson, and E. Young. Edited
+by H.F. Cary. With a biographical notice of each author. 3 pts. London,
+1841, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical
+remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred
+and twenty engravings from drawings by W. Harvey. 2 vols. London, 1843,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton: with life and notes. Edinburgh
+[1848], 24mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. (<i>Tauchnitz Collection of
+British Authors</i>, vol. 194.) Leipzig, 1850, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poetical Works. (<i>Cabinet Edition of the British Poets</i>, vol. i.)
+London, 1851, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes and a life by the
+Rev. H. Stebbing, etc. London, 1851, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. (<i>Universal Library</i>. <i>Poetry</i>,
+vol. i.) London, 1853, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Poetical Works. With life, critical dissertation, and
+notes by G. Gilfillan. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1853, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">One of a series entitled, "Library Edition of the British Poets."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. London, 1853, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton: with a life of the author,
+preliminary dissertations on each poem, notes critical and explanatory,
+and a verbal index. Edited by C.D. Cleveland. Philadelphia, 1853, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. Edinburgh
+[1855], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life by J. Mitford. 3
+vols. Boston [U.S.], 1856, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poems of John Milton, with notes by T. Keightley. 2 vols.
+London, 1859, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v"></a><span class="pagenum">v</span>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical
+remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred
+and twenty engravings. New edition, etc. 2 vols. (<i>Bohn's Illustrated
+Library</i>.) London, 1861, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With illustrations by C.H.
+Corbould and J. Gilbert. London, 1864, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; English Poems by John Milton. Edited, with life, introduction, and
+selected notes, by R.C. Browne. (<i>Clarendon Press Series</i>.) 2 vols.
+Oxford, 1870, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Illustrated by F. Gilbert. [With
+life of Milton.] London, 1870, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with a critical memoir,
+by W.M. Rossetti. Illustrated by T. Seccombe. London [1871], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Reprinted in 1880 and 1881.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life of the author, and an
+appendix containing Addison's Critique upon the Paradise Lost, and Dr.
+Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. With illustrations.
+London [1872], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Complete Poetical Works of Milton and Young. London [1872],
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of "Blackwood's Universal Library of Standard Authors."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Reprinted from the Chandos
+Poets. With memoir, explanatory notes, etc. (<i>Chandos Classics</i>.) London
+[1872], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original
+editions, with a life of the author by A. Chalmers. London [1873], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, critical
+dissertation, and explanatory notes [by G. Gilfillan], The text edited
+by C.C. Clarke. 2 vols. London [1874], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of "Cassell's Library Edition of British Poets."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton: edited, with introductions,
+notes, and an essay on Milton's English, by D. Masson. [With portraits.]
+3 vols. London, 1874, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With introductions and notes by
+D. Masson. 2 vols. London, 1874, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Forming part of the "Golden Treasury Series."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir E. Brydges, Bart.
+Illustrated. A new edition. London [1876], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Globe edition. The Poetical Works of John Milton. With
+introductions by D. Masson. London, 1877, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. London [1878], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with Notes, explanatory
+and philological, by J. Bradshaw. 2 vols. London, 1878, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of Milton and Marvell. With a memoir of each
+[that of Milton by D. Masson. With notes to the poems of Milton by J.
+Mitford]. 4 vols. in 2. Boston, 1878, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi"></a><span class="pagenum">vi</span>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1880, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. A new edition revised from the
+text of T. Newton [by T.A.W. Buckley]. London [1880], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of the "Excelsior Series."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, etc. Edinburgh
+[1881], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of "The Landscape Series of Poets."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original
+editions. With a life of the author by A. Chalmers. With twelve
+illustrations by R. Westall. London, 1881, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton; edited, with memoir,
+introductions, notes, and an essay on Milton's English and
+Versification, by D. Masson. 3 vols. London, 1882, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. With biographical notice. New
+York [1884], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by J. Bradshaw. Second
+edition. 2 vols. London, 1885, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London [1886], 24mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton, with biographical notice by J.
+Bradshaw. London, 1887, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Poetical Works. 2 vols. London, 1887, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by J. Bradshaw. Paradise
+Regained. Minor Poems. London, 1888, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Paradise Lost, etc. The life of John Milton. [By E. Fenton.] Paradise
+Regained.&mdash;Poems upon several occasions.&mdash;Sonnets.&mdash;Of Education. 2
+vols. London, 1751, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The copy in the British Museum Library contains MS. Notes by C.
+Lamb.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's Italian Poems, translated and addressed to a gentleman of
+Italy. By Dr. Langhorne. London, 1776, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. With explanatory notes by
+J. Edmondston. London, 1854, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1855, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise Lost, etc. (Paradise Regained: and other Poems.&mdash;The Life of
+John Milton [by E. Fenton.]) 2 vols. London, 1855, 32mo.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise Regained. To which is added Samson Agonistes: and poems upon
+several occasions. A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Minor English Poems.
+London, 1886, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of the "Religious Tract Society Library."</p>
+
+<p>Latin and Italian poems of Milton translated into English verse, and a
+fragment of a commentary on Paradise Lost, by the late W. Cowper, with a
+preface and notes by the Editor (W. Hayley), and notes of various
+authors. Chichester, 1808, 4to.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii"></a><span class="pagenum">vii</span>The Latin and Italian Poems of Milton. Translated into English verse by
+J.G. Strutt. London, 1814, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's Samson Agonistes and Lycidas. With illustrative notes by J.
+Hunter. London, 1870, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's Earlier Poems, including the translations by William Cowper of
+those written in Latin and Italian. (<i>Cassell's National Library</i>, vol.
+xxxiv.) London, 1886, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Miscellaneous Poems, Sonnets, and Psalms, etc. London [1886], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of "Ward, Lock, &amp; Co.'s Popular Library of Literary
+Treasures."</p>
+
+<p>The Minor Poems of John Milton, Edited, with notes, by W.J. Rolfe. New
+York, 1887, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>The Sonnets of John Milton. Edited by Mark Pattison. London, 1883, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of the "Parchment Library."</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro, Il Penseroso [revised by C. Jennens], ed il Moderato [by C.
+Jennens]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1740, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The words only.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1740, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; L'Allegro, Il Penseroso as set to musick. [London, 1750], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. [Arranged for music.] [London, 1779],
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. And a song for St. Cecilia's day, by Dryden.
+Set to musick by G.F. Handel. London, 1754, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The words without the music.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. Another edition. London [1754], 4to.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Glasgow, 1751, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With thirty illustrations designed expressly
+for the Art Union of London [by G. Scharf, H. O'Neil, and others].
+[London], 1848, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated with [Thirty] Etchings
+on Steel by B. Foster. London, 1855, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">There is a copy in the British Museum Library which contains the
+autographs and photographs of George Cruikshank and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated by engravings on steel after
+designs by Birket Foster. London, 1860, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and other poems. Illustrated. Boston, 1877,
+16mo.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With notes by J. Aikin. Poona
+[1881], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and the Hymn on the Nativity. Illustrated.
+London, 1885, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's Comus, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. With numerous illustrative
+notes adapted for use in training colleges. By John Hunter. London,
+1864, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Revised edition. London [1874], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and selected Sonnets. With
+notes by H.R. Huckin. London, 1871, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's Arcades and Sonnets. With notes by J. Hunter. London, 1880,
+12mo.</p>
+
+<p>The Lycidas and Epitaphium<a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii"></a><span class="pagenum">viii</span> Damonis. Edited, with notes and introduction
+(including a reprint of the rare Latin version of the Lycidas, by W.
+Hogg, 1694), by C.S. Jarram. London, 1874, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition, revised. London, 1881, 8vo.</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="bib_PROSE" id="bib_PROSE"></a>III. PROSE WORKS.</h3>
+
+<p>The Works of Mr. John Milton. [In English Prose.] [London], 1697, fol.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Not mentioned by Lowndes or Watt, but a copy is in the British
+Museum.</p>
+
+<p>A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous
+Works of John Milton, both English and Latin. With some papers never
+before publish'd. To which is prefixed the life of the author, etc. [By
+J. Toland]. 3 vols. Amsterdam [London], 1698, fol.</p>
+
+<p>A Complete Collection of Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works
+of John Milton, correctly printed from the original editions, with an
+account of the life and writings of the author (by T. Birch), containing
+several original papers of his never before published. 2 vols. London,
+1738, fol.</p>
+
+<p>The Works of John Milton, Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous. Now
+more correctly printed from the originals than in any former edition,
+and many passages restored which have been hitherto omitted. To which is
+prefixed an account of his life and writings (by T. Birch). (Edited by
+T. Birch and R. Barron?). London, 1753, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>The Prose Works of John Milton; with a life of the author, interspersed
+with translations and critical remarks, by C. Symmons. 7 vols. London,
+1806, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>The Prose Works of John Milton. With an introductory review by R.
+Fletcher. London, 1833, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Select Prose Works of Milton. Account of his studies. Apology for his
+early life and writings. Tractate on Education. Areopagitica. Tenure of
+Kings. Eikonoclastes. Divisions of the Commonwealth. Delineation of a
+Commonwealth. Mode of establishing a Commonwealth. Familiar Letters.
+With a preliminary discourse and notes by J.A. St. John. (<i>Masterpieces
+of English Prose Literature.</i>) 2 vols. London, 1836, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Extracts from the Prose Works of John Milton, containing the whole of
+his writings on the church question. Now first published separately.
+Edinburgh, 1836, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>The Prose Works of John Milton. With a biographical introduction by R.W.
+Griswold. 2 vols. New York, 1847, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>The Prose Works of John Milton, with a preface, preliminary remarks, and
+notes by J.A. St. John. 5 vols. (<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i>) London,
+1848-53, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Areopagitica, Letter on Education, Sonnets and Psalms. (<i>Cassell's
+National Library</i>, vol. cxxi.) London, 1888, 8vo.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix"></a><span class="pagenum">ix</span></p>
+<h3><a name="bib_SINGLE" id="bib_SINGLE"></a>IV. SINGLE WORKS.</h3>
+
+<p>Accedence commenc't Grammar, supply'd with sufficient rules, for the use
+of such as are desirous to attain the Latin tongue with little teaching
+and their own industry. London, 1669, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>An account of an original autograph sonnet by John Milton, contained in
+a copy of Mel Heliconium written by Alexander Rosse, 1642, etc. London,
+1859, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>L'Allegro, illustrated by the Etching Club. London, 1849, fol.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; L'Allegro. [With illustrations engraved by W.J. Linton.] London,
+1859, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; L'Allegro. [With illustrations.] London [1875], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Forming part of "The Choice Series."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's L'Allegro. Edited, with interpretation, notes, and
+derivations, by F. Main. London, 1877, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence [<i>i.e.</i>, the defence of J.
+Hall, Bishop of Norwich?] against Smectymnuus. London, 1641, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Apographum literarum serenissimi protectoris, etc. [Leyden?] 1656, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>An apology against a Pamphlet [by J. Hall?] called A Modest Confutation
+of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant against Smectymnuus. London,
+1641, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of Unlicenc'd
+Printing, to the Parliament of England. London, 1644, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Areopagitica Another edition. With a preface by another hand.
+London, 1738, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, with prefatory remarks, copious notes, and
+excursive illustrations, by T. Holt White, etc. London, 1819, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1772, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1780, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, edited by James Losh. London, 1791, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Areopagitica. (<i>Occasional Essays</i>, etc.) London, 1809, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London [1834], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Areopagitica, etc. London, 1840, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment"><i>Tracts for the People</i>, No. 10.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by
+Edward Arber. London, 1868, 18mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by
+Edward Arber. London, 1869, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Modern Version of Milton's Areopagitica: with notes, appendix,
+and tables. By S. Lobb. Calcutta, 1872, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton, Areopagitica. Edited, with introduction and notes, by J.W.
+Hales. Oxford, 1874, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Areopagitica. (<i>Morley's Universal Library</i>, vol. 43.)
+London, 1886, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Autobiography of John Milton: or Milton's Life in his own words. Edited
+by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1872, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>A brief history of Moscovia; and other less known countries <a name="Page_x" id="Page_x"></a><span class="pagenum">x</span>lying
+eastward of Russia as far as Cathay. Gather'd from the writings of
+several eye-witnesses. London, 1682, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>The Cabinet-Council; containing the Chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries
+of State discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton.
+London, 1658, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. The Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State
+discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton. London,
+1692, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Colasterion, a reply to a nameles [<i>sic</i>] answer against "The Doctrine
+and Discipline of Divorce." By the former author, J[ohn] M[ilton].
+[London] 1645, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>A Common-Place Book of John Milton, and a Latin essay and Latin verses
+presumed to be by Milton. Edited from the original MSS. in the
+possession of Sir F.W. Graham, Bart., by A.J. Horwood. London, 1876,
+4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Printed for the Camden Society.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Revised edition. London, 1877, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>A Maske [Comus] presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: on Michaelmasse night,
+before the right honorable John, Earle of Bridgewater, Viscount Brackly,
+Lord President of Wales. [Edited by H. Lawes.] London, 1637, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The first edition of Comus.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a mask, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus, a mask presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of
+Bridgewater, with notes critical and explanations by various
+commentators, and with preliminary illustrations; to which is added a
+copy of the mask from a manuscript belonging to his Grace the Duke of
+Bridgewater; by H.J. Todd. Canterbury, 1798, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus, a mask; presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634. To which are
+added, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and Mr. Warton's account of the
+origin of Comus. London, 1799, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a mask. With annotations. London, 1808, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a masque. (<i>Cumberland's British Theatre</i>, vol. 32.) London
+[1829], 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus. A mask with thirty illustrations by Pickersgill, B. Foster,
+H. Weir, etc. London, 1858, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Comus. Published under the direction of the Committee
+appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London
+[1860], 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a mask. With explanatory notes. Published under the
+direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London
+[1861], 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Comus. With notes [by W. Wallace]. London, 1871, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Mask of Comus. Edited, with copious notes, by H.B. Sprague. New
+York, 1876, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's "Comus" annotated, with a glossary and notes. With three
+introductory essays upon the masque proper, and upon the origin and
+history of the poem. By B.M. Ranking <a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi"></a><span class="pagenum">xi</span>and D.F. Ranking. London, 1878,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Comus, with introduction and notes. London, 1884, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Forming part of "Chambers's Reprints of English Classics."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Comus. Edited, with introduction and notes, by A.M.
+Williams. London, 1888, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; Songs, Duets, Choruses, etc., in Milton's Comus: a masque in
+two acts, with additions from the author's poem "L'Allegro," and from
+Dryden's opera of "King Arthur." London [1842], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of
+the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes, Church-Fees,
+Church-Revenues, and whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl'd
+by law. The author J. M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1717, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Another edition. London, 1723, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London [1834], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>A Declaration, or Letters Patents of the Election of this present King
+of Poland, John the Third. Translated [by John Milton]. London, 1674,
+4to.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restor'd to the good of both
+sexes from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes to Christian
+freedom, guided by the rule of charity, etc. London, 1643, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Now the second time revis'd
+and much augmented. London, 1644, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1645, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Eikonoklastes, in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon Basilike, the
+Portrature of his Sacred Majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. [By J.
+Gauden, Bishop of Exeter?] The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649,
+4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Eikonoklastes. Published now the second time, and much enlarg'd.
+London, 1650, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Eikonoklastes in answer to a book entitled Eikon Basilike, the
+Portraiture of his sacred majesty King Charles the first in his
+solitudes and sufferings. Amsterdam, 1690, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Eikonoklastes: in answer to a book intitled Eikon Basilikon, the
+portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. Now
+first published from the author's second edition, printed in 1650; with
+many enlargements, by R. Baron. With a preface shewing the transcendent
+excellency of Milton's prose works. To which is added an original Letter
+[from J. Wall] to Milton, never before published. London, 1756, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A new edition, corrected by the late Reverend R. Baron. London,
+1770, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>The History of Britain, that part especially now call'd England, from
+the first traditional beginning, continu'd to the Norman Conquest.
+Collected out of the antientest and best authors by John Milton. London,
+1670, 4to.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii"></a><span class="pagenum">xii</span>The History of Britain. Another edition. London, 1677, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition. London, 1678, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1695, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Il Penseroso. With designs by J.E.G.; etched by J.E.G. and H.P.G. on
+India paper. London, 1844, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton. Il Penseroso. (<i>Clarendon Press Series</i>.) Oxford, 1874,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Joannis Miltoni Angli, Artis Logic&aelig; Plenior Institutio, ad Petri Rami
+Methodum concinnata. Adjecta est Praxis Analytica and P. Rami vita.
+Londini, 1672, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Joannis Miltoni Angli de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi, quos ex
+schedis manuscriptis deprompsit, et typis mandari primus curavit C.R.
+Sumner. Cantabrigi&aelig;, 1825, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Brunsvigae, 1827, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Treatise of Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures
+alone. Translated from the original by C.R. Sumner. Cambridge, 1825,
+4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; John Milton's last thoughts on the Trinity. Extracted from his
+Treatise on Christian Doctrine. London, 1828, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New edition. London, 1859, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Joannis Miltonii Angli Epistolarum familiarium liber unus: quibus
+accesserunt ejusdem jam olim in collegio adolescentis prolusiones qu&aelig;dam
+oratori&aelig;. Londini, 1674, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's familiar letters. Translated from the Latin, with notes,
+by J. Hall. Philadelphia, 1829, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Joannis Miltoni Angli pro populo Anglicano defensio, contra Claudii
+Anonymi, ali&agrave;s Salmasii, defensionem regiam. Cum indice. Londini, 1651,
+12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Londini, 1651, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Londini, 1651, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Editio emendatior. Londini, 1651, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Londini, 1652, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Editio correctior et auctior, ab autore denuo recognita. Londini,
+1658, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Defense of the People of England in answer to Salmasius's defence
+of the king. [Translated from the Latin by Mr. Washington, of the
+Temple.] [London?] 1692, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Joannis Miltoni pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda. Contra infamem
+libellum anonymum [by P. Du Moulin] cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor
+ad c&oelig;lum adversus parricidas Anglicanos. Londini, 1654, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. [With preface by G. Crantzius.] 2 parts. Hag&aelig;
+Comitum, 1654, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Second Defence of the People of England [translated by
+Archdeacon Wrangham]. London, 1816, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Included in <i>Scraps</i> by the Rev. Francis Wrangham.</p>
+
+<p>Joanni Miltoni pro se defensio contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiastes [or
+rather P. Du Moulin] Libelli famosi, cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor
+<a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii"></a><span class="pagenum">xiii</span>ad c&oelig;lum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos, authorem recte dictum.
+Londini, 1655, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>The judgement of Martin Bucer concerning divorce, now Englisht [by John
+Milton]. Wherein a late book [by John Milton] restoring the doctrine and
+discipline of divorce is heer confirm'd, etc. London, 1644, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>A Letter written to a Gentleman in the Country, touching the dissolution
+of the late Parliament, and the reasons thereof. [By John Milton, signed
+N. Ll.] London [May 26], 1653, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Liter&aelig; ab Olivario protectore ad sacram regiam majestem Sueci&aelig;.
+[Leyden?] 1656, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Liter&aelig; Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, reliquorumque Perduellium
+nomine ac jussu conscript&aelig; a Joanne Miltono. [London] 1676, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Liter&aelig; nomine Senatus Anglicani Cromwellii
+Richardique ad diversos in Europa principes et Respublicas exarat&aelig; a
+Joanne Miltono, quas nunc primum in Germania recudi fecit J.G. Pritius.
+Lipsi&aelig; Francofurti, 1690, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Republican-Letters, or a collection of such as were
+written by Comand of the late Commonwealth of England, etc. [Amsterdam?]
+1682, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Letters of State written by Mr. John Milton to most of the
+Sovereign princes and Republicks of Europe, from the year 1649 till
+1659. To which is added an Account of his Life [by E. Phillips],
+together with several of his poems, etc. London, 1694, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The "several poems" consist of four sonnets only.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Oliver Cromwell's Letters to Foreign Princes and States for
+strengthening and preserving the Protestant Religion, etc. [Translated
+from the Latin of John Milton.] London, 1700, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Lycidas. [First edition.] (<i>Justa Edouardo King naufrago, ab Amicis
+m&oelig;rentibus</i>, etc.) 2 pts. Cantabrigi&aelig;, 1638, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part II., "Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King," has a
+distinct title-page and pagination, and contains the first edition
+of Lycidas.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Lycidas, with notes, critical, explanatory, and
+grammatical, by a Graduate. Melbourne, 1869, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Lycidas. Reprinted from the first edition of 1638, and collated
+with the autograph copy in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
+With a version in Latin hexameters. By F.A. Paley. London, 1874, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton. Lycidas. With introduction and notes. By T.D. Hall.
+Manchester [1876], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition. London [1880], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Lycidas. Edited, with interpretation and notes, by F.
+Main, etc. London, 1876, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition. London, 1876, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. John Milton's character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of
+Divines, in 1641. Omitted in his other works, and never printed. [Edited
+by J. Tyrrell? or by Arthur, Earl of Anglesey?] London, 1681, 4to.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv"></a><span class="pagenum">xiv</span>Milton's Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. Illustrated by
+eminent artists. London, 1868, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. John Milton's Satyre against hypocrites. Written whilst he was Latin
+secretary to Oliver Cromwell. [By John Phillips?] London, 1710, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's unpublished Poem, corrected by J.E. Wall from a defective copy
+found by Mr. Morley in the British Museum. Epitaph on a Rose Tree
+confined in a Garden Tub. [London, 1873?] s. sh. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The original is in the King's Library, British Museum, and is
+written on the last leaf of a copy of "Poems of Mr. John Milton,"
+1646.</p>
+
+<p>Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels, on the
+Letter of Ormond to Col. Jones, and the Representation of the Presbytery
+at Belfast. (<i>Articles of Peace made and concluded with the Irish
+Rebels, by James Earle of Ormond, etc.</i>) London, 1649, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib. [London, 1644] 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Tractate on Education. A facsimile reprint from the
+edition of 1673. Edited by Oscar Browning. (<i>Pitt Press Series</i>.)
+Cambridge, 1883, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Original Letters and Papers of State, addressed to Oliver Cromwell,
+concerning the affairs of Great Britain from 1649 to 1658, found among
+the political collections of John Milton, published from the originals.
+By John Nickolls. London, 1743, folio.</p>
+
+<p>Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduc'd from the
+Apostolical times by vertue of those Testimonies which are alledg'd to
+that purpose in some late Treatises of James, Archbishop of Armagh.
+London, 1641, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England: and the causes
+that hitherto have hindred it. London, 1641, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Of True Religion, H&aelig;resie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means may
+be used against the growth of Popery. The author J[ohn] M[ilton].
+London, 1673, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New edition, with preface by Bp. Burgess. London, 1826, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise Lost. A poem written in ten books by John Milton. Licensed and
+entred according to order. London, 1667, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">First edition. Without argument or preface. There are nine
+distinct variations of the title and preliminary pages.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author J. Milton. (The
+argument. The verse.) London, 1668, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The same edition as the preceding, with a new title-page, and with
+the addition of the argument.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author John Milton. London,
+1669, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The same edition as the two preceding, with a new title-page and
+some slight alterations in the text. There is another copy in the
+British Museum which differs slightly. It has also the title-page
+dated 1668, and Marvell's commendatory verses in MS.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. A poem, in twelve books. The author John Milton.
+Second edition, revised and augmented by the same author. London, 1674,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">To this edition are prefixed the commendatory verses of Barrow and
+Marvell. In another copy in the British Museum conjectural
+emendations from the quarto edition,<a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv"></a><span class="pagenum">xv</span> 1749, and the octavo
+edition, 1674, corrected by the quarto edition, 1668, printed on
+two leaves, have been inserted.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The third edition. Revised and augmented by the same author.
+London, 1678, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The fourth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1688, folio.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The first illustrated edition.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition [with cuts]. London, 1692, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. With copious and learned notes by P[atrick]
+H[ume]. London, 1695, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Seventh edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1705, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Eighth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Ninth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1711, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The British Museum copy is said to be the only one on thick paper.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Tenth edition. With sculptures. London, 1719, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Dublin, 1724, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Twelfth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1725, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Thirteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by
+E. Fenton]. London, 1727, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Fourteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by
+E. Fenton]. London, 1730, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New edition [with notes and proposed emendations] by R. Bentley.
+London, 1732, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">One of the copies in the British Museum contains MS. notes by B.
+Stillingfleet, and another MS. notes by W. Cole. A third copy has
+inserted plates, a pencil sketch of Milton's house at Chalfont St.
+Giles, and a cutting from the <i>Literary Gazette</i>, May 29th, 1830,
+relating to Bentley.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1737, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition [with life by E. Fenton]. London, 1738, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. (The life of John Milton by E. Fenton.) 2 vols.
+London, 1746, 1747, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Dublin, 1747, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Compared and revised by John Hawkey. Dublin, 1748,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. (The life
+of Milton [by the editor]. A critique on Paradise Lost. By Mr. Addison.)
+2 vols. London, 1749, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. According to the author's last edition, in the
+year 1672. Glasgow, 1750, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1750, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Third edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1754, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise Lost. Another edition. With notes, etymological, critical,
+classical, and explanatory; collected from Dr. Bentley, Dr. Pearce,
+Richardson and Son, Addison, Paterson, Newton, and other authors. By J.
+Marchant. London, 1751, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1752, 51, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Vol. ii. is a duplicate of the corresponding vol. of the previous<a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi"></a><span class="pagenum">xvi</span>
+edition.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. [To which is prefixed the life of Milton, by E.
+Fenton.] London, 1753, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. [With the life of Milton, by E. Fenton, and a
+glossary.] 2 vols. Paris, 1754, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition [in prose]. With historical, critical, and
+explanatory notes. From Raymond de St. Maur. London, 1755, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1758, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1759, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. (The life of Milton [by T. Newton]). London, 1760,
+12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. [With the life of John Milton, by E. Fenton.
+Illustrated.] London, 1761, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Sixth edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1763, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Seventh edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1770, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New edition. To which is added the life of the author, by E.
+Fenton. Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New edition. To which is added historical, philosophical, and
+explanatory notes, translated from the French of Raymond de St. Maur.
+[Edited by John Wood, and preceded by a life of Milton by E. Fenton.]
+Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition [in prose]. With historical, philosophical,
+critical, and explanatory notes, from Raymond de St. Maur. Embellished
+with fourteen copper-plates. London, 1767, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition, adorned with copper-plates. London [1770], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, a poem. The author, John Milton. Glasgow, 1770,
+folio.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The copy in the British Museum was presented to George III. by the
+binder, J. Scott.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. (The life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1770,
+12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1771, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. (<i>British Poets</i>, vols. i.-ii.) Edinburgh, 1773,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New edition. 2 vols. London, 1775, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, from the text of T. Newton. London, 1777, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Eighth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1778, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. (The Life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1778,
+12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. With a biographical and critical account of the
+author and his writings [by E. Fenton]. Kilmarnock, 1785, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J. Gillies.
+[With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1788, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Ninth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton [and a
+portrait of Milton], 2 vols. London, 1790, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii"></a><span class="pagenum">xvii</span>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Printed from the first and second editions
+collated. The original system of orthography restored, the punctuation
+corrected and extended. With various readings; and notes, chiefly
+rythmical. By Capel Lofft. [Book i.] Bury St. Edmunds, 1792, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. Books i.-iv. [London, 1792-95], 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The British Museum copy contains the first four books only. With
+illustrations after Stothard, engraved by Bartolozzi. Without
+title-page.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J.
+Gillies. Second edition. [With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1793, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost; a poem, in twelve books. [With engravings.] London,
+1794, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost. (The Life of John Milton [by E. Fenton].
+Criticism on Paradise Lost by S. Johnson.) London, 1795, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711.
+With notes and the life of the author by T. Newton and others. [Edited
+by C.M.] 3 vols. London, 1795, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, with notes selected from Newton and others. With a
+critical dissertation on the poetical works of Milton by S. Johnson. 2
+vols. London, 1796, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by J. Evans]. To
+which is prefixed the celebrated critique by S. Johnson. London, 1799,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost. A new edition. Adorned with plates
+[engraved chiefly by F. Bartolozzi, from designs by W. Hamilton and H.
+Fuseli.] 2 vols. London, 1802, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by E. Fenton], and a
+critique on the poem [by S. Johnson]. A new edition. London, 1802, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. A new edition. London, 1803, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture, by J.
+Gillies. Third edition, with additions. [Life of Milton, by E. Fenton.]
+London, 1804, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. A poem. Printed from the text of Tonson's correct
+edition of 1711. London, 1804, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711. A
+new edition, with plates, etc. London, 1808, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, a poem, etc. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].)
+London, 1805, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, a poem. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].) London,
+1812, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1813, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. [With the life of John
+Milton by E. Fenton, and "A critique upon the Paradise Lost" by J.
+Addison.] Romsey, 1816, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]; and a criticism on the poem by S. Johnson. London, 1817, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. London, 1817, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii"></a><span class="pagenum">xviii</span>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. [With engravings from the designs of R. Westall.] 2
+vols. London, 1817, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1818, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1820, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. [With a life of the author, by E. Fenton.] Boston,
+1820, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author by E.
+Fenton, and a criticism of the poem by Dr. Johnson. London, 1821, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, etc. 2 vols. London, 1825, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Paradise Lost of Milton, with illustrations designed and
+engraved by J. Martin. 2 vols. London, 1827, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, etc. [With the life of J. Milton, by E. Fenton.]
+London [1830], 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. With a memoir of the author [by E. Fenton]. New
+edition. London, 1833, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost: with copious notes, also a memoir of his life by J.
+Prendeville. London, 1840, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; [Paradise Lost. Edited by A.J. Ellis? Phonetically printed.]
+[London], 1846, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Paradise Lost, with notes explanatory and critical. Edited by
+J.R. Boyd. New York, 1851, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost, with notes, critical and explanatory,
+original and selected, by J.R. Major. London, 1853, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost. Published under the direction of the
+Committee of General Literature and Education [appointed by the Society
+for Promoting Christian Knowledge]. London [1859], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost. In twelve books. London, 1861, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">One of "Bell &amp; Daldy's Pocket Volumes."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author, and Dr.
+Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1862, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Dor&eacute;. Edited, with
+notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London [1866], folio.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">A re-issue appeared in 1871-72.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, in ten books. The text exactly reproduced from the
+first edition of 1667. With an appendix containing the additions made in
+later issues and a monograph on the original publication of the poem.
+[By R.H.S., <i>i.e.</i>, R.H. Shepherd?] London, 1873, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost, as originally published, being a fac-simile of the
+first edition. With an introduction by D. Masson. London, 1877 [1876],
+4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. Illustrated by thirty-eight designs in outline by F.
+Thrupp. [Containing only fragments of the text.] London, 1879, obl.
+folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Dor&eacute;. Edited, with
+notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London, 1882, 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Re-issued in 1888.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix"></a><span class="pagenum">xix</span>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. The text emended, with notes and preface by M.
+Hull. London, 1884, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. London, 1887, 16 mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of "Routledge's Pocket Library."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. (<i>Cassell's National Library</i>, vols. 162, 163.)
+London, 1889, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; The Story of our first Parents; selected from Milton's
+Paradise Lost: for the use of young persons. By Mrs. Siddons. London,
+1822, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise Regain'd. A Poem in four books. To which is added Samson
+Agonistes. The author, J. Milton. 2 pts. London, 1671, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes. London,
+1680, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1688, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regained. Samson Agonistes, and the smaller poems. Sixth
+edition. London, 1695, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, and poems
+upon several occasions, compos'd at several times. Fourth edition.
+London, 1705, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. The
+fifth edition. London, 1707, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. Fifth
+edition. Adorned with cuts. London, 1713, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Sixth edition, corrected. London, 1725, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Seventh edition, corrected. 3 pts. London, 1727, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Seventh edition, corrected. London, 1730, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Eighth edition. London, 1743, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1747, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. A new edition. With notes of various
+authors, by T. Newton. London, 1752, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1752, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. The second edition, with notes of various
+authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1753, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1753, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1756, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regained, etc. Birmingham, 1758, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1760, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd (<i>British Poets</i>, vol. iii.). Edinburgh, 1773,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1772, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A new edition. 2 vols. London, 1773, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A new edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1785, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1779, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regain'd, etc. Alnwick, 1793, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A new edition, with notes of various authors, by C. Dunster.
+London. 1795. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx"></a><span class="pagenum">xx</span>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London [1800], 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Regained; with select notes subjoined: to which
+is added a complete collection of his Miscellaneous Poems, both English
+and Latin. London, 1796, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regained. With select notes subjoined, etc. London, 1817,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. London,
+1817, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1823, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. [With
+Westall's plates.] London, 1827, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Regained; and other poems. London, 1832, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1861, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">One of "Bell &amp; Daldy's Pocket Volumes."</p>
+
+<p>The readie and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the
+excellence thereof, compar'd with the inconveniences and dangers of
+re-admitting Kingship in this nation. The author J[ohn] M[ilton].
+London, 1660, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty. In two books.
+London, 1641, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Samson Agonistes. London, 1688, folio.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">First appeared with the Paradise Regained in 1671.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Samson Agonistes. London, 1695, folio.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Reprinted from the preceding edition.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Samson Agonistes. (<i>Bell's British Theatre</i>, vol. 34.) London,
+1797, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Samson Agonistes. London [1869], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton. Samson Agonistes. Edited by John Churton Collins.
+(<i>Clarendon Press Series</i>.) Oxford, 1883, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Scriptum Dom. Protectoris contra Hispanos. [By John Milton.] Londini,
+1655, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Manifesto of the Lord Protector against the Depredations of the
+Spaniards. Written in Latin by John Milton. London, 1738, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A true Copy of Oliver Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated
+October 26, 1655 [written by John Milton]. London, 1741, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates; proving that it is lawfull, and
+hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call
+to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose
+and put him to death, etc. The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649,
+4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition, with additions. London, 1650, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Tetrachordon: expositions upon the foure chief places in Scripture which
+treat of mariage, or nullities in manage, wherein the doctrine and
+discipline of divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd. By the
+former author J. M[ilton]. London, 1645 [1644 O.S.], 4to.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">The author's name appears in full at the end of the address "To
+the Parliament."</p>
+
+<p>A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; shewing that it is
+not lawfull for any <a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi"></a><span class="pagenum">xxi</span>power on earth to compell in matter of religion.
+The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. First printed
+anno 1659. London, reprinted 1790, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, etc. London,
+1839, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment"><i>Tracts for the People</i>, No. I.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; On the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; and on the likeliest
+means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. London, 1851, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part XI. of "Buried Treasures."</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="bib_SELECTIONS" id="bib_SELECTIONS"></a>V. SELECTIONS.</h3>
+
+<p>The Beauties of Milton, Thomson, and Young. Dublin, 1783, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>The Beauties of Milton; consisting of selections from his poetry and
+prose, by A. Howard. London [1834], 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>The Poetry of Milton's Prose; selected from his various writings; with
+notes, and an introductory essay [by C.]. London, 1827, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Readings from Milton. With an introduction by Bishop H.W. Warren.
+Boston, 1886, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Part of the "Chatauqua Library&mdash;Garnet Series."</p>
+
+<p>Selected Prose Writings of John Milton, with an introductory essay by E.
+Myers. London, 1883, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="bibComment">Fifty copies only printed.</p>
+
+<p>Selections from the Prose Writings of John Milton. Edited, with memoir,
+notes, and analyses, by S. Manning. London, 1862, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Selections from the Prose Works of John Milton. With critical remarks
+and elucidations. Edited by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1870, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare and Milton Reader; being scenes and other extracts from the
+writings of Shakespeare and Milton, etc. London [1883], 8vo.</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="bib_APPENDIX" id="bib_APPENDIX"></a>VI. APPENDIX.</h3>
+
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC.</h4>
+
+<p>Acton, Rev. Henry.&mdash;Religious opinions and examples of Milton, Locke,
+and Newton. A lecture, with notes. London, 1833, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Addison, Rt. Hon. Joseph.&mdash;Notes upon the twelve books of Paradise Lost.
+Collected from the <i>Spectator</i>. London, 1719, 12mo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Appeared originally in the <i>Spectator</i>, Dec. 31, 1711&mdash;May 3,
+1712.</p>
+
+<p>Ademollo, A.&mdash;La Leonora di Milton e di Clemente IX. Milano [1886], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Andrews, Samuel.&mdash;Our Great Writers; or, Popular chapters on some
+leading authors. London, 1884, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 84-112.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold, Matthew.&mdash;Mixed Essays. London, 1879, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">A French Critic on Milton, pp. 237-273.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Essays in Criticism. Second Series. London, 1888, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 56-68.</p>
+
+<p>Bagehot, Walter.&mdash;Literary Studies. 2 vols. London, 1879, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, vol. i., pp. 173-220.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Third edition. 2 vols. London, 1884, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Balfour, Clara Lucas.&mdash;Sketches of English Literature, etc. London,<a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxii</span>
+1852, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton and his Literary Contemporaries, pp. 151-173.</p>
+
+<p>Barron, William.&mdash;Lectures on Belles Lettres and Logic. 2 vols. London,
+1806, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, vol. ii., pp. 281-300.</p>
+
+<p>Baumgarten, Dr.&mdash;John Milton und das Verlorene Paradies. Coburg [1875],
+4to.</p>
+
+<p>Bayne, Peter.&mdash;The Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution. London,
+1878, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 297-346.</p>
+
+<p>Bentley, Richard.&mdash;Dr. Bentley's emendations on the twelve books of
+Milton's Paradise Lost. London, 1732, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Bickersteth, E.H.&mdash;Milton's Paradise Lost. (<i>The St. James's Lectures,
+Second Series</i>.) London, 1876, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1877, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Birrell, Augustine.&mdash;Obiter Dicta. Second series. London, 1887, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 1-50.</p>
+
+<p>Blackburne, Francis.&mdash;Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton. To which are
+added Milton's Tractate of Education and Areopagitica. London, 1780,
+16mo.</p>
+
+<p>Blair, Hugh.&mdash;Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, etc. 2 vols.
+London, 1783, 4to.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Paradise Lost, vol. ii., pp. 471-476.</p>
+
+<p>Bodmer, J. Jacob.&mdash;J.J. Bodmer's critische Abhandlung, von dem
+Wunderbaren in der Poesie in einer Vertheidigung des Gedichtes J.
+Milton's von dem verlohrnen Paradiese, etc. Z&uuml;rich, 1740, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Bradburn, Eliza W.&mdash;The Story of Paradise Lost, for children. Portland,
+1830, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>Brooke, Stopford A.&mdash;Milton. [An account of his life and works.]
+London, 1879, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Part of the series entitled <i>Classical Writers</i>, ed. J.R. Green.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce, Archibald.&mdash;A critical account of the life, character, and
+discourses of Mr. Alexander Morus, in which the attack made upon him in
+the writings of Milton is particularly considered. Edinburgh, 1813, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton.&mdash;The Life of John Milton. London [1835], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Bulwer Lytton, E.&mdash;The Siamese Twins, etc. London, 1831, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, a poem, pp. 315-362.</p>
+
+<p>Burney, Charles.&mdash;Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton. [London,
+1790], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Buckland, Anna.&mdash;The Story of English Literature. London, 1882, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 230-296.</p>
+
+<p>Callander, John.&mdash;Letter and Report respecting the Unpublished
+Commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, by the late John Callander, of
+Craigforth, Esq., in the possession of the Society. (<i>Arch&aelig;ologia</i>
+<i>Scotica</i>, vol. iii., 1831, pp. 83-91.) Edinburgh, 1831, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Camerini, Eugenio.&mdash;Profili Letterari. Firenze, 1870, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton e l'Italia, pp. 264-274.</p>
+
+<p>Cann, Miss Christian.&mdash;A scriptural and allegorical glossary
+to
+Milton's Paradise Lost. London [1828], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Carpenter, William.&mdash;The Life and Times of John Milton. London [1836], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Channing, William Ellery.&mdash;Remarks on the Character and
+Writings of
+John Milton; occasioned by the
+publication of his lately discovered<a
+name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxiii</span>
+"Treatise on Christian Doctrine." From the <i>Christian Examiner</i>,
+vol. iii., No. 1. Boston, 1826, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Charles I.&mdash;By the King. A Proclamation for calling in and suppressing
+of two books written by John Milton: the one Intituled Johannis Miltoni
+Angli pro Populo Anglicano defensio, etc., and the other, The
+Pourtraicture of his Sacred Majesty, etc. London, 1660, s. sh. fol.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Life and Reigne of King Charls; or, the Pseudo-Martyr
+discovered, etc. London, 1651, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">In the Bodleian Catalogue this work is erroneously stated to be by
+John Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Chassang, A., and Marcou, F.L.&mdash;Les Chefs-d'Oeuvre &Eacute;piques de tous les
+peuples. Paris, 1879, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 279-297.</p>
+
+<p>Clarke, Samuel.&mdash;Some reflections on that part of a book called
+Amyntor, or the defence of Milton's life, which relates to the writings
+of the primitive fathers, etc. (<i>Letter to Mr. Dodwell</i>, etc.,
+pp. 451-475.) London, 1781, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Cleveland, C.D.&mdash;A Complete Concordance to the Poetical Works of John
+Milton. London, 1867, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.&mdash;Seven lectures on Shakespeare and Milton,
+etc. London, 1856, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Darby, Samuel.&mdash;A letter to T. Warton, on his late edition of Milton's
+Juvenile Poems [entitled "Poems upon several occasions, English,
+Italian, and Latin."] London, 1785, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Dawson, George.&mdash;Biographical Lectures. London, 1886, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 82-88.</p>
+
+<p>De Morgan, J.&mdash;John Milton considered as a Politician. (<i>Men of the
+Commonwealth</i>, No. 1.) [London, 1875], 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>Dennis, John.&mdash;Heroes of Literature. English Poets. London, 1883, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 114-147.</p>
+
+<p>De Quincey, T.&mdash;Works. 16 vols. London, 1853-60, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, vol. vi., pp. 311-325; Life of Milton, vol. x., pp. 79-98.</p>
+
+<p>Des Essarts, E.&mdash;De Veterum poetarum tum Gr&aelig;ci&aelig; tum Rom&aelig; apud Miltonem
+imitatione thesim proponebat E. Des Essarts. Parisiis, 1871, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Diderot, Denis.&mdash;An Essay on Blindness, etc. Interspersed with several
+anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others. Translated from the French.
+London [1750], 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Dobson, W.T.&mdash;The Classic Poets, their lives and their times, etc.
+London, 1879, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton's Paradise Lost, pp. 394-446; Paradise Regained,
+pp. 446-452.</p>
+
+<p>Donoughue, Edward Jones.&mdash;Milton: a lecture. London, 1843, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Douglas, John.&mdash;Milton vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought
+against him by Mr. Lauder, etc. London, 1751, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton no plagiary; or, a detection of the forgeries contained in
+Lauder's essay, etc. Second edition. London, 1756, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv"></a><span class="pagenum">xxiv</span>Dowden, Edward.&mdash;Transcripts and Studies. London, 1888, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">The Idealism of Milton, pp. 454-473.</p>
+
+<p>Dowling, William.&mdash;Poets and Statesmen; their homes and haunts in the
+neighbourhood of Eton and Windsor. London, 1857, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 1-39.</p>
+
+<p>Dryden, John.&mdash;The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man; an opera, etc.
+London, 1677, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Du Moulin, P.&mdash;Regii sanguinis clamor ad c&oelig;lum adversus parricidas
+Anglicanos. [A reply to Milton's "Defensio pro populo Anglicano."]
+Hag&aelig; Comitum, 1652, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Editio secunda. Hag&aelig; Comitum, 1661, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Dunster, C.&mdash;Considerations on Milton's early reading, and the prima
+stamina of his Paradise Lost, etc. London, 1800, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Edmonds, Cyrus R.&mdash;John Milton; a biography. Especially designed to
+exhibit the ecclesiastical principles of that illustrious man. London,
+1851, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Edmundson, George.&mdash;Milton and Vondel. A curiosity of literature.
+London, 1885, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Ellwood, Thomas.&mdash;Reflections of [Thomas Ellwood] with John Milton
+(<i>Arber's English Garner</i>, vol. iii., pp. 473-486). London,
+1880, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>English Poets.&mdash;Cursory remarks on some of the ancient English poets,
+particularly Milton. [By P. Neve.] London, 1789, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Epigoniad.&mdash;A critical essay on the Epigoniad, wherein the author's
+abuse of Milton is examined. Edinburgh, 1757, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Eyre, Charles.&mdash;The Fall of Adam, from Milton's Paradise Lost. London
+[1852], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Filmer, Sir Robert.&mdash;Observations concerning the originall of
+Government upon Mr. Hobs Leviathan, Mr. Milton against Salmasius,
+H. Grotius De Jure Belli. London, 1652, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Free-holders grand inquest, etc. (Reflections concerning the
+Original of Government upon Mr. Milton against Salmasius.) London,
+1679, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Flatters, J.J.&mdash;The Paradise Lost of Milton, translated into fifty-four
+designs, by J.J. Flatters, sculptor. London, 1843, folio.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Without letterpress.</p>
+
+<p>Fry, Alfred A.&mdash;A lecture on the writings, prose and poetic, and the
+character, public and personal, of John Milton. London, 1838, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Geffroy, Mathieu A.&mdash;&Eacute;tude sur les pamphlets politiques et religieux de
+Milton. Paris, 1848, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Gilfillan, George.&mdash;A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits. London,
+1850, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 1-39.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Modern Christian Heroes, etc. London, 1869, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 81-118.</p>
+
+<p>Giraud, Jane E.&mdash;Flowers of Milton. London, 1850, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Godwin, William.&mdash;Lives of E. and J. Philips, nephews and pupils of
+Milton, to which are added: I. Collections for the life of Milton,
+by J. Aubrey, printed from the manuscript copy in the Ashmolean Museum.
+II. The Life of Milton, by E. Philips, printed 1694. London, 1815, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Goodwin, Thomas.&mdash;The Student's Practical Grammar of the English<a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv"></a><span class="pagenum">xxv</span>
+Language; together with a commentary on the first book of Milton's
+Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Greenwood, F.W.P.&mdash;The Miscellaneous Writings of F.W.P. Greenwood.
+Boston, 1846, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton's Prose Works, pp. 208-226.</p>
+
+<p>Grotius, H. de.&mdash;The Adamus Exul of Grotius; or, the prototype of
+Paradise Lost. Translated from the Latin, by Francis Barham. London,
+1839, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Guerle, Edmond de.&mdash;Milton, sa vie et ses &oelig;uvres. Paris, 1868, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>G&uuml;ntzer, C.&mdash;Dissertationis ad quaedam loca Miltoni pars posterior.
+Argentorati, 1657, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton, W. Douglas.&mdash;Original Papers, illustrative of the life and
+writings of John Milton, including sixteen letters of State written by
+him, now first published from MSS. in the State Paper Office, etc.
+London, 1859, 4to.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Printed for the Camden Society.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton, Walter.&mdash;Parodies of the Works of English and American
+Authors, collected and annotated by W. Hamilton. London, 1885, 4to.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, vol. ii., pp. 217-236.</p>
+
+<p>Hare, Julius Charles.&mdash;Essays and Tales. 2 vols. London, 1848, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, vol. i., pp. 73-86.</p>
+
+<p>Harrington, James.&mdash;The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book,
+entitled The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.
+[Signed J. H(arrington); a satire.] London, 1660, 4to.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany.</p>
+
+<p>Hayley, William.&mdash;The Life of Milton; to which are added conjectures on
+the origin of Paradise Lost. (The second edition enlarged.) London,
+1796, 4to.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">This life appeared originally in 1794 in vol. i. of Milton's
+Poetical Works.</p>
+
+<p>Hillebrand, C.&mdash;De sacro apud Christianos carmine epico dissertationem
+seu Dantis, Miltonis, Klopstockii poetarum collationem proponebat C.
+Hillebrand, Parisiis, 1861, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Hodgson, Shadworth H.&mdash;Outcast Essays, etc. London, 1881, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">The supernatural in English poetry; Shakespere; Milton; Wordsworth
+Tennyson, pp. 99-180.</p>
+
+<p>Holloway, Laura C.&mdash;The Mothers of Great Men and Women, etc. New York,
+1884, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton's Wives, pp. 457-478.</p>
+
+<p>Hood, Edwin Paxton.&mdash;John Milton: the Patriot and Poet. London, 1852,
+18mo.</p>
+
+<p>Hopkins, J.&mdash;Milton's Paradise Lost, imitated in rhyme; in the fourth,
+sixth, and ninth books, etc. London, 1699, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Howitt, William.&mdash;Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets.
+Third edition. London, 1857, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 46-68.</p>
+
+<p>Huet, C.B.&mdash;Litterarische Fantasien en Kritieken. Haarlem [1883], 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, 12th Deel, pp. 150-220.</p>
+
+<p>Hunt, Theodore W.&mdash;Representative English Prose and Prose Writers. New
+York, 1887, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">The prose style of John Milton, pp. 246-264.</p>
+
+<p>Hutton, Laurence.&mdash;Literary Landmarks of London. London, 1885, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 210-216, etc.</p>
+
+<p>Ivimey, Joseph.&mdash;John Milton; his life and times; religious and<a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi"></a><span class="pagenum">xxvi</span>
+political opinions; with an appendix, containing animadversions upon
+Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton, etc. London, 1833, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Jackson, W.&mdash;Lycidas: a musical entertainment. The words altered from
+Milton. London, 1767, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Jane, Joseph.&mdash;The Image Unbroaken a perspective of the Impudence,
+Falshood, Vanitie, and Prophannes, in a Libell entitled Eikonoklastes.
+[London], 1651, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson, Samuel.&mdash;Prefaces to Milton and Butler. (<i>Prefaces to the Works
+of the English Poets</i>, vol. ii.) London, 1779, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Court and Country: a paraphrase upon Milton. [In a dialogue.] By
+the author of Hurlothrumbo [<i>i.e.</i>, Samuel Johnson]. London [1780], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Jortin, John.&mdash;Remarks on Spenser's Poems. London, 1734, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Remarks on Milton, pp. 171-186.</p>
+
+<p>Keightley, Thomas.&mdash;An account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of
+John Milton. With an introduction to Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Keogh, Rt. Hon. William.&mdash;Milton's Prose. (<i>Afternoon Lectures on
+Literature and Art, delivered in the Theatre of the Museum of Industry,
+Dublin</i>, 1865, 3rd Series.) London, 1866, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Lamartine, M.L.A. de.&mdash;H&eacute;lo&iuml;se et Ab&eacute;lard [Biographies]. Paris, 1864, 12mo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Includes a biography of Milton, pp. 113-215.</p>
+
+<p>Lauder, William.&mdash;An essay on Milton's use and imitation of the moderns
+in his Paradise Lost. [With a preface by Dr. Johnson.] London,
+1750, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, occasioned by his vindication
+of Milton, etc. [Written by Dr. Johnson.] London, 1751, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; An apology for Mr. Lauder [written by himself] in a letter most
+humbly addressed to his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. London,
+1751, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Delectus auctorum sacrorum, Miltono facem pr&aelig;lucentium. 2 tom.
+London, 1752, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; King Charles I. vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought
+against him by Milton, etc. To the whole is subjoined the Judgment of
+several learned and impartial authors concerning Milton's political
+writings. London, 1754, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>L'Estrange, R.&mdash;No Blind Guides, in answer to a seditious pamphlet of
+Milton's, intituled Brief notes upon a late sermon titl'd The fear of
+God and the King, preach'd and since publish'd. By M. Griffith, etc.
+London, 1660, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Letters.&mdash;Letters concerning poetical translations and Virgil's and
+Milton's Arts of Verse, etc. London, 1739, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Liebert, Gustav.&mdash;Milton. Studien zur Geschichte des englischen Geistes.
+Hamburg, 1860, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Lotheissen, Ferdinand.&mdash;Studien &uuml;ber John Milton's poetische Werke.
+Budingen, 1860, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Lowell, James Russell.&mdash;Among my Books. Second series. London, 1876, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 252-302.</p>
+
+<p>M.J.A.&mdash;An introduction to the Study of Shakespeare and Milton. [By<a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxvii</span>
+J.A.M. With selections from their works.] London [1884], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay, Thomas Babington.&mdash;Critical and historical essays contributed
+to the Edinburgh Review. 2 vols. London, 1854, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, vol. i., pp. 1-28.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay. London, 1860, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton
+touching the great Civil War, vol. i., pp. 101-124.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; An Essay on the Life and Works of John Milton, together with the
+imaginary conversation between him and H. Cowley. London, 1868, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Essay on Milton. From the Edinburgh Review. With
+introductory notice and notes. London, 1872, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; John Milton. [A biographical sketch.] Boston, 1877, 16mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Macaulay's Milton, edited to illustrate the laws of Rhetoric and
+Composition, by Alexander Mackie. London, 1884, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Maceuen, Malcolm.&mdash;Celebrities of the Past and Present. Philadelphia,
+1874, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton and Poetry, pp. 195-202.</p>
+
+<p>Mackenzie, Sir George.&mdash;Jus Regium: or, the just and solid foundations
+of monarchy in general maintain'd against Buchanan, Dolman, Milton,
+etc. Edinburgh, 1684, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1684, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>McNicoll, Thomas.&mdash;Essays on English Literature. London, 1861, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton and Pollok, pp. 65-111.</p>
+
+<p>Marquis, G.A.&mdash;Select Poetical Pieces, with a logical arrangement, or
+practical commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost. Second edition
+enlarged. Paris, 1842, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Marsh, John F.&mdash;Papers connected with the affairs of Milton and his
+family. Edited by J.F. Marsh. Manchester, 1851, 4to.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">In vol. i. of the Chetham Miscellanies, published by the Chetham
+Society.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Notice of the inventory of the effects of Mrs. Milton, widow of the
+poet. Liverpool, 1855, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Extracted from the proceedings of the Historic Society of
+Lancashire and Cheshire.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; On the engraved portrait and pretended portraits of Milton.
+Extracted from the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire
+and Cheshire. Liverpool, 1860, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Martyn, W. Carlos.&mdash;Life and Times of John Milton. [Published by the
+"American Tract Society." With portrait.] New York [1866], 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Mason, W.&mdash;Mus&aelig;us; a monody to the memory of Mr. Pope in imitation of
+Milton's Lycidas. London, 1747, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Massey, William.&mdash;Remarks upon Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. London,
+1761, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Masson, David.&mdash;Essays biographical and critical: chiefly on English
+poets. Cambridge, 1856, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton's Youth, pp. 37-52; The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's,
+and Goethe's, pp. 53-87.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's. London, 1874,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Life of John Milton; narrated in connexion with the political,<a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxviii</span>
+ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time. 6 vols. Cambridge,
+1859-80, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; New and revised edition. London, 1881, etc., 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; John Milton. (<i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>, vol. xvi., pp. 324-340.)
+London, 1883, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Meadowcourt, Richard.&mdash;A critique on Milton's Paradise Regained. London,
+1732, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Critical Dissertation, with notes, on Milton's Paradise Regain'd.
+The second edition corrected. London, 1748, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Milton, John.&mdash;An answer to a book [by John Milton], intituled, The
+Divorce and Discipline of Divorce, etc. London, 1644, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Carolus I. Britanniarum Rex, a Securi et Calamo Miltonii
+vindicatus. Dublini, 1652, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Areopagitica Secunda: or, speech of the shade of John Milton on Mr.
+Sergeant Talfourd's Copyright Extension Bill. London, 1838, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus, a mask: (now adapted to the stage) as alter'd [by J. Dalton]
+from Milton's Mask. London, 1738, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition. London, 1738, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Third edition. London, 1738, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Dublin, 1738, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Sixth edition. London, 1741, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1750, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1759, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1760, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1762, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1777, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus, a masque [altered by J. Dalton from John Milton], London,
+1791, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">In vol. i. of "Bell's Theatre."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus [altered from Milton by J. Dalton]. London, 1811, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">In the "Modern British Drama," vol. ii.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a mask, altered from Milton. [By J. Dalton.] London, 1815,
+16mo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">In vol. x. of Dibdin's "London Theatre."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus. [Adapted to the stage by J. Dalton.] London, 1826, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">In the "British Drama," vol. ii.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a masque [in two acts]. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman].
+As performed at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden. The musick composed
+by Dr. Arne. London, 1772, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1774, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a masque. Altered by Mr. Colman. (<i>Bell's British Theatre</i>,
+vol. ix.) London, 1777, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. Edinburgh,
+1786, 12mo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Vol. iv. of the "British Stage."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus. Altered for the stage by Colman. (<i>Modern British Drama</i>,
+vol. v.) London, 1811, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton, by G. Colman. (<i>Inchbald's<a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix"></a><span class="pagenum">xxix</span>
+Collection of Farces</i>, vol. vii.) London, 1815, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Comus: a masque, in two acts [altered from Milton], as
+revised at Covent Garden, April 28, 1815. London, 1815, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">There is a copy in the British Museum with the autograph of Sir
+Henry Bishop.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. London [1824],
+8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Vol. ii. of "The London Stage."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus. Altered from Milton. [By G. Colman, the elder.] London,
+1872, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">In the "British Drama," vol. xii.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton. (<i>Supplement to Bell's
+British Theatre</i>, vol. iv.) London, 1784, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Miltonis epistola ad Pollionem. Edidit et notis illustravit F.S.
+Cantabrigiensis. Londini, 1738, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Editio altera. Londini, 1738, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton's Epistle to Pollio. Translated from the Latin, and
+illustrated with notes. London, 1740, folio.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton restor'd and Bentley depos'd, containing, I. Some
+observations on Dr. Bentley's preface. II. His various readings and
+notes on Paradise Lost and Milton's text, set in opposite columns, with
+remarks therein. III. Paradise Lost, attempted in rime. Book I., Numb.
+I. From Dean Swift. London, 1732, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost: a poem attempted in Rhime. [Altered from Milton.]
+London, 1740, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. An oratorio [in three acts and in verse] altered and
+adapted to the stage from Milton [by B. Stillingfleet]. London, 1760,
+4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. An oratorio in four parts. The words selected from
+the works of Milton by J.L. Ellerton. London [1862], 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Paradise Lost. Oratorio in three parts, from the poem of Milton.
+English version by J. Pittman. London [1880], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The State of Innocence and Fall of Man described in Milton's
+Paradise Lost. Render'd into prose with notes from the French of
+Raymond [or rather Nicolas Francois Dupr&eacute;] de St. Maur. By a gentleman
+of Oxford [George Smith Green?]. London, 1745, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Aberdeen, 1770, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A verbal Index to Milton's Paradise Lost; adapted to every edition
+but the first, etc. London, 1741, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; An essay upon Milton's imitations of the Ancients in his Paradise
+Lost. With some observations on the Paradise Regain'd. London, 1741,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A new occasional Oratorio [on the suppression of the Rebellion],
+the words taken from Milton, Spenser, etc., and set to musick by Mr.
+Handel. London, 1746, 4to.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">The words only.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Progress of Envy, a poem occasioned by Lauder's attack on the
+character of Milton. London, 1751, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A familiar explanation of the poetical works of Milton. To which is
+prefixed Mr. Addison's criticism on Paradise Lost. With a preface by<a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx"></a><span class="pagenum">xxx</span>
+Rev. Mr. Dodd. London, 1672, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Recovery of Man: or, Milton's Paradise Regained. In Prose.
+After the manner of the Archbishop of Cambray. To which is prefixed the
+life of the author. [London], 1771, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Samson. An Oratorio [in three acts]. As it is performed at the
+Theatres-royal. Altered from the Samson Agonistes of Milton [by N.
+Hamilton]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London [1742], 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">The words only.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London [1742], 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London [1742], 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1743, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1751, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1759, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Samson: an oratorio [altered and adapted to the stage from the
+Samson Agonistes by N. Hamilton]. [Oxford], 1749, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1762, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Samson. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1762, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Samson. An oratorio [altered from the Samson Agonistes, by N.
+Hamilton]. Salisbury, 1765, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Handel's oratorio, Samson. The words chiefly from Milton. [Compiled
+by T. Morell.] London [1840], 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Life of John Milton. Published under the direction of the
+Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London [1861], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Milton Memorial. A sketch of the life of John Milton, compiled
+with reference to the proposed restoration of the Church of St. Giles,
+Cripplegate (where he was buried). By Antiquitatis historic&aelig; studiosus.
+London, 1862, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau, Count de.&mdash;Th&eacute;orie de la Royaut&eacute; d'apr&egrave;s la Doctrine de
+Milton. [Translated from the Defence of the People of England. With a
+preliminary dissertation, "Sur Milton et ses ouvrages"; by H.G.
+Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau?] [Paris], 1789, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Moers, F. Josephus.&mdash;De fontibus Paradisi Amissi Miltoniani. Dissertatio
+philologica, etc. Bonnae [1865], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Morris, Joseph W.&mdash;John Milton: a vindication, specially from the charge
+of Arianism. London [1862], 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Mortimer, Charles Edward.&mdash;An historical memoir of the Political Life of
+John Milton. London, 1805, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Morus, Alexander.&mdash;A. Mori Fides Publica, contra calumnias Joannis
+Miltoni. Hag&aelig;-Comitum, 1654, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Mouron, H.&mdash;Jean Milton. Conf&eacute;rence. Deuxi&egrave;me &eacute;dition. Strasbourg, 1875,
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Munk&aacute;csy, M.&mdash;Opinions of the Continental Press on M. Munk&aacute;csy and his
+latest picture, "Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters."
+Paris, 1879, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Neve, Philip.&mdash;A narrative of the disinterment of Milton's coffin in the
+Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, 4th August 1790; and of the<a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxi</span>
+treatment of the corpse during that and the following day. London,
+1790, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Nicoll, Henry J.&mdash;Landmarks of English Literature. London, 1883, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 112-125.</p>
+
+<p>Paterson, James.&mdash;A complete commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, etc.
+London, 1744, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Pattison, Mark.&mdash;Milton. [An account of his life and works.] London,
+1879, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">One of the "English Men of Letters" series.</p>
+
+<p>Pauli, Reinhold.&mdash;Aufs&auml;tze zur Englischen Geschichte. Leipzig, 1869, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 348-391.</p>
+
+<p>Pearce, Z., <i>Bishop of Rochester</i>.&mdash;A review of the text of Milton's
+Paradise Lost; in which the chief of Dr. Bentley's Emendations are
+consider'd; and several other emendations and observations are offer'd
+to the public. London, 1732, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. London, 1733, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Peck, Francis.&mdash;New Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John
+Milton, etc. London, 1740, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Memoirs of the life and actions of Oliver Cromwell: as delivered in
+three panegyrics of him. The first, as said, by Don Juan Rodriguez de
+Saa Meneses; the second, as affirmed by a certain Jesuit; yet both, it
+is thought, composed by Mr. John Milton, as was the third, etc. London,
+1740, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Penn, John.&mdash;Critical, poetical, and dramatic works. 2 vols. London,
+1798, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Samson Agonistes, vol. ii., pp. 213-263.</p>
+
+<p>Philips, John.&mdash;Poems attempted in the style of Milton, etc. London,
+1762, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Philo-Milton, <i>pseud.</i>&mdash;Milton's Sublimity asserted: in a poem
+occasion'd by a late piece entituled Cyder, a poem [by J. Philips].
+In blank verse. London, 1709, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A vindication of the Paradise Lost from the charge of exculpating
+Lord Byron's "Cain, a Mystery." London, 1822, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Plaint.&mdash;The Plaint of Freedom. (To the Memory of Milton. In verse.)
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1852, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Prendergast, G.L.&mdash;A complete concordance to the poetical works of
+Milton. Madras, 1856-57, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Prodromus.&mdash;Verax Prodromus in Delirum. [An invective against John
+Milton.] [Amsterdam? 1656?] 4to.</p>
+
+<p>R * *&mdash;Lettres critiques &agrave; Mr. le comte * * * sur le Paradis perdu, et
+reconquis, de Milton, par R * * [outh]. Paris, 1731, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Reed, Henry.&mdash;Lectures on the British Poets. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1858,
+8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 199-232.</p>
+
+<p>Rice, Allen Thorndike.&mdash;Essays from the North American Review. New York,
+1879, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 99-122.</p>
+
+<p>Richardson, Jonathan.&mdash;Explanatory notes and remarks on Milton's
+Paradise Lost. By J. Richardson, father and son. London, 1734, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Richardson, Jonathan.&mdash;Zoilomastix; or, a vindication of Milton from<a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxii</span>
+all the invidious charges of W. Lauder. With several new remarks on
+Paradise Lost. London, 1747, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Ring, Max.&mdash;John Milton und seine Zeit. Historischer Roman. Frankfurt a.
+Main, 1857, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; John Milton and his times, a historical novel. Translated by J.
+Jefferson. Manchester, 1889, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Rolli, P.&mdash;Sabrina; an opera [in three acts and in verse. Founded on the
+"Comus" of Milton]. <i>Ital.</i> and <i>Eng.</i> London, 1737, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Rossetti, William Michael.&mdash;Lives of Famous Poets. London, 1878, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, pp. 65-79.</p>
+
+<p>Rowland, J.&mdash;Pro Rege et Populo Anglicano apologia, contra Joannis
+Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni Angli) defensionem destructivam Regis et
+Populi Anglicani. Antwerpi&aelig;, 1651, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Another edition. Antwerpi&aelig;, 1652, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>S.G.&mdash;The dignity of Kingship asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's Ready
+and Easie way to establish a free Commonwealth. By G.S. (George
+Searle?), a lover of loyalty. London, 1660, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Saintsbury, George.&mdash;A History of Elizabethan Literature. London, 1887,
+8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 315-329.</p>
+
+<p>Salmasius, Claudius de.&mdash;Claudii Salmasii ad Johannem Miltonum
+Responsio. Opus posthumum. Londini, 1660, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Say, Samuel.&mdash;Poems on several occasions: and two critical Essays&mdash;viz.,
+the first on the harmony, variety, and power of numbers, whether in
+prose or verse; the second, on the numbers of Paradise Lost. [With a
+portrait of Milton, etched by J. Richardson.] London, 1745, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Scherer, Edmond.&mdash;&Eacute;tudes sur la Litt&eacute;rature Contemporaine. Paris, 1882,
+8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton et le <i>Paradis Perdu</i>, tom. vi., pp. 161-194.</p>
+
+<p>Scolari, Filippo.&mdash;Saggio di Critica sul Paradiso Perduto, Poema di
+Giovanni Milton, e sulle annotazioni a quello di Giuseppe Addison.
+Aggiuntovi l'Adamo sacra rappresentazione di G.B. Andreini, etc.
+Venezia, 1818, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Scott, John.&mdash;Critical Essays on some of the poems of several English
+poets, etc. London, 1785, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">On Milton's Lycidas, pp. 37-64.</p>
+
+<p>Seeley, J.R.&mdash;Lectures and Essays. London, 1870, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton's Political Opinions, pp. 89-119; Milton's Poetry,
+pp. 120-154.</p>
+
+<p>Shenston, J.B.&mdash;The Authority of Jehovah asserted, ... with some remarks
+on the article on Milton's Essay on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day,
+which appeared in the Evangelical Review, 1826. London, 1826, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Smectymnuus, <i>pseud.</i> [<i>i.e.</i>, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy etc.]&mdash;A
+modest confutation of a slanderous and scurrilous libell, entituled,
+Animadversions [by John Milton] upon the remonstrants' defense against
+Smectymnuus. [London] 1642, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Sotheby, Samuel Leigh.&mdash;Ramblings in the elucidation of the Autograph<a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxiii</span>
+of Milton. [With plates.] London, 1861, 4to.</p>
+
+<p>Steel, David.&mdash;Elements of Punctuation, and critical observations on
+some passages in Milton. London, 1786, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Stern, Alfred.&mdash;Milton und seine Zeit. 2 Thle. Leipzig, 1877-79, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Milton und Cromwell. Berlin, 1875, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Serie x., Hft. 236 of Virchow and Holtzendorff's "Sammlung
+gemeinverst&auml;ndlicher wissenschaftlicher Vortr&auml;ge, etc."</p>
+
+<p>Symmons, Charles.&mdash;The Life of John Milton, etc. London, 1806, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Second edition. London, 1810, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Third edition. London, 1882, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Taine, H.A.&mdash;Histoire de la Litt&eacute;rature Anglaise. 4 tom. Paris, 1863-4, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, tom, ii., pp. 327-435.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; History of English Literature. Translated by H. Van Laun. 4 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1873-4, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, vol. ii., pp. 239-318.</p>
+
+<p>Tasso, Torquato.&mdash;Il Tasso, a dialogue. The speakers, John Milton,
+Torquato Tasso. London, 1762, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Todd, Henry John.&mdash;Some account of the life and writings of John Milton.
+Second edition, with additions, and with a verbal index to the whole of
+Milton's poetry. London, 1809, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">This forms vol. i. of the 1809 edition of Todd's Milton; a certain
+number of copies being printed off with a distinct title-page.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Some account of the life and writings of John Milton, derived
+principally from documents in His Majesty's State-paper Office, now
+first published. London, 1826, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Toland, John.&mdash;The Life of John Milton, containing, besides the history
+of his works, several extraordinary characters of men and books, sects,
+parties, and opinions. [Signed J.T., <i>i.e.</i> J. Toland.] London,
+1699, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Amyntor; or, a Defence of Milton's Life, etc. London, 1699, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; The Life of John Milton; with Amyntor; or a Defence of Milton's
+Life, etc. London, 1761, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Tomlinson, John.&mdash;Three Household Poets&mdash;viz., Milton, Cowper, Burns,
+etc. London, 1869, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Tulloch, John.&mdash;English Puritanism and its leaders, Cromwell, Milton,
+Baxter, Bunyan. Edinburgh, 1861, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Vericour, Raymond de.&mdash;Milton et la po&eacute;sie &eacute;pique, etc. Paris, 1838, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Ward, Thomas H.&mdash;The English Poets; selections, with critical
+introductions, etc. 4 vols. London, 1880, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">John Milton, by Mark Pattison, vol. ii., pp. 293-379.</p>
+
+<p>Warton, Thomas.&mdash;A Letter to T. Warton on his editon of Milton's
+juvenile poems. [By S. Darby?] London, 1785, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>White, Thomas Holt.&mdash;A Review of Johnson's criticism on the style of
+Milton's English Prose, etc. London, 1818, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson, J.&mdash;Vindici&aelig; Carolin&aelig;; or a defence of Eikon Basilike, etc.
+London, 1692, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Yonge, Charles Duke.&mdash;Three Centuries of English Literature. London,
+1872, 8vo.</p>
+<p class="bibComment">Milton, pp. 185-210.</p>
+
+<p>Zicari da Paola, F.&mdash;Sulla scoverta dell' originale Italiano da cui<a name="Page_xxxiv" id="Page_xxxiv"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxiv</span>
+Milton trasse il suo poema del Paradiso Perduto. Napoli, 1844, 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Ziegler, C.&mdash;C. Ziegleri circa regicidium Anglorum exercitationes.
+Accedit Jacobi Schalleri Dissertatio ad loca qu&aelig;dam Miltoni. Lugd.
+Batavorum, 1653, 12mo.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  />
+<h4>MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Milton, John.&mdash;Edinburgh Review, by T.B. Macaulay, vol. 42, 1825,
+pp. 304-346.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Christian Examiner, by W.E. Channing, vol. 3, 1826,
+  pp. 29-77; same article, Pamphleteer, vol. 29, pp. 507-547.</li>
+
+<li>&mdash;United States Literary Gazette, vol. 4, 1826, pp. 278-293.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Quarterly Review, by J.J. Blunt, vol. 36, 1827, pp. 29-61.</li>
+<li>&mdash;American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310.</li>
+<li>&mdash;American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1, 1833, pp. 115-125.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Congregational Magazine, vol. 9, 1833, pp. 193-211.</li>
+<li>&mdash;North American Review, by R.W. Emerson, vol. 47, 1838, pp. 56-73.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 46, 1839, pp. 775-780.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Penny Magazine, vol. 10, 1841, pp. 97-101.</li>
+<li>&mdash;National Review, vol. 9, 1859, pp. 150-186.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Chambers's Journal, vol. 11, 1859, pp. 117-119.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Radical, by B.W. Wall, vol. 3, 1868, pp. 718-723.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Contemporary Review, by P. Bayne, vol. 22, 1873, pp. 427-460;
+same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18 N.S., pp. 565-585;
+Littell's Living Age, vol. 3, 5th ser., pp. 643-662.</li>
+<li>&mdash;New Monthly Magazine, vol. 4 N.S., 1873, pp. 27-35.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Congregationalist, by T.H. Gill, vol. 3, 1874, pp. 705-714.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Macmillan's Magazine, by Mark Pattison, vol. 31, 1875, pp. 380-387;
+same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 10, 5th ser., pp. 323-329.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Western, by H.H. Morgan, vol. 5, 1879, pp. 107-138.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Modern Review, by H. New, vol. 2, 1881, pp. 103-128;
+same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 148, pp. 515-525.
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and the Commonwealth</i>. British Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1849,
+pp. 224-254;
+same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18, pp. 346-362.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and Dante</i>. St. James's Magazine, vol. 15, 1866, pp. 243-250.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and Galileo</i>. Fraser's Magazine, by Sir Richard Owen, vol. 79,
+1869, pp. 678-684.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and his daughters</i>. People's Journal, by Mrs. Leman Gillies,
+vol. 5, 1848, pp. 227, 228.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and Homer contrasted</i>. Analectic Magazine, vol. 14, 1819,
+pp. 224-229.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and Macaulay</i>. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 28, 1860,
+pp. 667-679.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and Masenius</i>. Month, vol. 8, 1868, pp. 542-550.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and the Daughters of Eve</i>. St. Paul's, vol. 13, 1873, pp. 405-418.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and Vondel</i>. Academy, by Edmund Gosse and G. Edmundson, vol. 28,
+1885, pp. 265, 266, 293, 294, 342; and by J.R. Mac Ilraith, pp. 308, 309.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+  <li>&mdash;Athen&aelig;um, Nov. 7, 1885, pp. 599, 600.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Nation, vol. 42, 1886, pp. 264, 265.</li>
+</ul>
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>and Wordsworth</i>. Temple Bar, vol. 60, 1880, pp. 106-115.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Angels of</i>. New Englander, by John A. Himes, vol. 43, 1884,<a name="Page_xxxv" id="Page_xxxv"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxv</span>
+pp. 527-543.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Areopagitica</i>. Retrospective Review, vol. 9, 1824, pp. 1-19.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>as a Reformer</i>. Methodist Quarterly Review, by F.H. Newhall,
+vol. 39, 1857, pp. 542-559.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>At Cambridge</i>. American Journal of Education, vol. 28, 1878,
+pp. 383-400.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Bibliographical account of his works</i>. Retrospective Review,
+vol. 14, 1826, pp. 282-305.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Blank Verse of</i>. Fortnightly Review, by J.A. Symonds, vol. 16
+N.S., 1874, pp. 767-781.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Blindness of</i>. Chambers's Journal, vol. 3 N.S., 1845, pp. 392-394.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Byron and Southey</i>. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 29,
+1860, pp. 430-440.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Channing on</i>. Edinburgh Review, by H. Brougham, vol. 69, 1839,
+pp. 214-230.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Monthly Review, vol. 7 N.S., 1828, pp. 471-478.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Fraser's Magazine, vol. 17, 1838, pp. 627-635.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Christian Doctrine</i>. Quarterly Review, vol. 32, 1835, pp. 442-457.<br /></p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;North American Review, by S. Willard, vol. 22, 1826, pp. 364-373.</li>
+<li>&mdash;United States Literary Gazette, vol. 3, 1826, pp. 321-327.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Monthly Review, vol. 107, 1825, pp. 273-294.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Congregational Magazine, vol. 8, 1825, pp. 588-592.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1826, pp. 1-18, 114-141.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Comus</i>. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 7, 1823, pp. 222-229.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Comus</i>, <i>and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess</i>. Manchester
+Quarterly, by W.E.A. Axon, vol. 1, 1882, pp. 285-295.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Dante and &AElig;schylus</i>. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 20 N.S.,
+1853, pp. 513-525, 577-587, 641-650.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>De Vericour's Lectures on</i>. Monthly Review, vol. 2 N.S., 1838,
+pp. 342-351.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Doctrinal Error of his later life</i>. Bibliotheca Sacra, by T. Hunt,
+vol. 42, 1885, pp. 251-269.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Doctrine of Divorce</i>. Monthly Review, vol. 93, 1820, pp. 144-158.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Early Life</i>. Methodist Quarterly Review, by P. Church, vol. 48,
+1866, pp. 580-595.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Effigies of</i>. Historical Magazine, vol. 2, 1858, pp. 230-233.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Familiar Letters</i>. Southern Review, vol. 6,
+1830, pp. 198-206.<br /></p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>French Critic on</i>. Quarterly Review, vol. 143, 1877, pp. 186-204;
+same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 132, pp. 579-589.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Genius of</i>. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, by G. Gilfillan, vol. 15
+N.S., 1848, pp. 511-522;
+same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 15, pp. 196-212.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>History of England</i>. Retrospective Review, vol. 6, 1822,
+pp. 87-100.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Hollis' Bust of</i>. Scribner's Monthly, by C. Cook, vol. 11, 1876,
+pp. 472-476.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Home, School, and College Training of</i>. American Journal of
+Education, vol. 14, 1864, pp. 159-190.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Idealism of</i>. Contemporary Review, by E. Dowden, vol. 19, 1872,
+pp. 198-209;
+same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 112, 1872, pp. 408-414.<a name="Page_xxxvi" id="Page_xxxvi"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxvi</span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>in our Day</i>. Christian Examiner, by S. Good, vol. 57, 1854,
+pp. 323-340.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Italian Element in</i>. Penn Monthly Magazine, by O.H. Kendall,
+vol. 1, 1870, pp. 388-400.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Keble's Estimate of</i>. Macmillan's Magazine, by J.C. Shairp,
+vol. 31, 1875, pp. 554-560.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Keightley's Life of</i>. North American Review, by H.A. Whitney,
+vol. 82, 1856, pp. 388-404. Littell's Living Age (from the <i>Saturday</i>
+<i>Review</i>), vol. 63, 1859, pp. 226-229.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Lamartine on</i>. Littell's Living Age (from the <i>Literary Gazette</i>),
+vol. 44, 1855, pp. 497-499.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Latin Poems of, Cowper's Translations</i>. Eclectic Review, Sept.
+1808, pp. 780-791.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Life of</i>. North British Review, by D. Masson, vol. 16, 1852,
+pp. 295-335;
+same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 25, 1852, pp. 433-447.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;New Quarterly Review, vol. 8, 1859, pp. 40-54.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Life and Poetry of</i>. Hogg's Instructor, vol. 1 N.S., 1853,
+pp. 234-242;
+same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 30, pp. 364-372.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Lycidas</i>. American Monthly Magazine, vol. 5 N.S., 1838,
+pp. 341-353.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Quarterly Review, vol. 158, 1884, pp. 162-183.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Language of Lycidas</i>. Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 25 N.S.,
+1864, pp. 293-296.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Notes on Lycidas</i>. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, by A.C.
+Brackett, vol. 1, 1867, pp. 87-90.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Masson's Life of</i>. British Quarterly Review, vol. 29, 1859,
+pp. 185-214; vol. 59, 1874, pp. 81-100.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;North British Review, vol. 30, 1859, pp. 281-308;
+same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 61, pp. 731-747.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Dublin University Magazine, vol. 53, 1859, pp. 609-623.</li>
+<li>&mdash;New Monthly Magazine, vol. 115, 1859, pp. 163-172.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Eclectic Review, vol. 1 N.S., 1859, pp. 1-21.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Christian Examiner, by G.E. Ellis, vol. 66, 1859, pp. 401-431.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Old and New, vol. 4, 1871, pp. 704-708.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Nation, by W.F. Allen, vol. 13, 1871, pp. 91, 92; vol. 17, 1873,
+pp. 165, 166; vol. 31, 1880, pp. 15, 16.</li>
+<li>&mdash;International Review, by H.C. Lodge, vol. 9, 1880, pp. 125-135.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Quarterly Review, vol. 132, 1872, pp. 393-423.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Presbyterian Quarterly, by E.H. Gillett, vol. 1, 1872, pp. 382-394.</li>
+<li>&mdash;North American Review, by J.R. Lowell, vol. 114, 1872, pp. 204-218.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Macmillan's Magazine, by G.B. Smith, vol. 28, 1873, pp. 536-547.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Christian Observer, vol. 73, 1873, pp. 815-834.</li>
+<li>&mdash;International Review, vol. 1, 1874, pp. 131-135.</li>
+<li>&mdash;North American Review, vol. 126, 1878, pp. 537-542.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Nation, by J.L. Dyman, vol. 26, 1878, pp. 342-344.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Westminster Review, vol. 57 N.S., 1880, pp. 365-385.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Minor Poems</i>. Dublin University Magazine, vol. 63, 1864,
+pp. 619-625.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Mitford's Life of</i>. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 34, 1832,
+pp. 581, 582.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Nephews of</i>. Edinburgh Review, by Sir J. Mackintosh, vol. 25,<a name="Page_xxxvii" id="Page_xxxvii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxvii</span>
+1815, pp. 485-501.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Newly-discovered Prose Writings of</i>. Hours at Home, by E.H.
+Gillett, vol. 9, 1869, pp. 532-536.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Ode to</i>. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, by A.A. Lipscomb, vol. 20,
+1860, pp. 771-778.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>On the Divinity of Christ</i>. Christian Examiner, vol. 2, 1825,
+pp. 423-429.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Paradise Lost</i>. Journal of Sacred Literature, by F.A. Cox, vol. 1,
+1848, pp. 236-257.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Chateaubriand's Translation of Paradise Lost</i>. Foreign
+Quarterly Review, vol. 19, 1837, pp. 35-50.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Cosmology of Paradise Lost</i>. Lutheran Quarterly, by J.A.
+Himes, vol. 6, p. 187, etc.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>De Lille's Translation of Paradise Lost</i>. Edinburgh Review,
+vol. 8, 1806, pp. 167-190.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>First Edition of Paradise Lost</i>. Book-Lore, vol. 3, 1886,
+pp. 72-75. Leisure Hour, April 28, 1877, pp. 269, 270.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Moral Estimate of the Paradise Lost</i>. Christian Observer,
+vol. 22, 1822, pp. 211-218, 278-284.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Mull's edition of Paradise Lost</i>. Spectator, December 6,
+1884, pp. 1635, 1636.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Saturday Review, vol. 58, pp. 570, 571.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Origin of the Paradise Lost</i>. North American Review, by L.E.
+Dubois, vol. 91, 1860, pp. 539-555.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Plan of Paradise Lost</i>. New Englander, by Professor Himes,
+vol. 42, 1883, pp. 196-211.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Prendeville's edition of Paradise Lost</i>. Blackwood's
+Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 47, 1840, pp. 691-716.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Sorelli's Italian Translation of Paradise Lost</i>. Foreign
+Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1832, pp. 508-513.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Theism of the Paradise Lost</i>. Unitarian Review, by H.
+Carpenter, vol. 5, pp. 302, etc.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Poetry of</i>. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825,
+pp. 304-324.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 34-64.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Macmillan's Magazine, by J.R. Seeley, vol. 17, 1868, pp. 299-311;
+vol. 19, pp. 407-421.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Temple Bar, vol. 39, 1873, pp. 458-473.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Political Writings</i>. Nation, by Goldwin Smith, vol. 30, 1880,
+pp. 30-32.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Prose Writings of</i>. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40, 1834,
+pp. 39-50.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Congregational Magazine, vol. 10 N.S., 1834, pp. 217-224.</li>
+<li>&mdash;American Monthly Magazine, vol. 1 N.S., 1836, pp. 142-146.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1849, pp. 507-521.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Spectator, Oct. 3, 1885, pp. 1317, 1318.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Athen&aelig;um, Sept. 20, 1884, pp. 359, 360.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Public Conduct of</i>. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 324-346.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 48-64.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Relics of, at Cambridge</i>. Chambers's Journal, vol. 8, 1857,
+pp. 319, 320.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Religious Life and Opinions of</i>. Bibliotheca Sacra, by A.D.
+Barber, vol. 16, 1859, pp. 557-603; vol. 17, pp. 1-42.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Rural Scenes of</i>. Fraser's<a name="Page_xxxviii" id="Page_xxxviii"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxviii</span> Magazine, vol. 23, 1841, pp. 519-528.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Satan of.</i> Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 1, 1817,
+pp. 140-142.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>and Lucifer of Byron Compared.</i> Knickerbocker, vol. 30, 1847,
+pp. 150-155.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; <i>Satan of Paradise Lost.</i> Dublin University Magazine, vol. 88,
+1876, pp. 707-714.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Select Prose Works.</i> Boston Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1842,
+pp. 322-342.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Shadow of the Puritan War in.</i> Catholic Presbyterian, by A.
+Macleod, vol. 9, 1883, pp. 169-176, 321-330.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Sonnets of, Pattison's edition.</i> Academy, by J.A. Noble, vol. 24,
+1883, pp. 57, 58.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Saturday Review, vol. 56, 1883, pp. 252, 253.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Spectator, Aug. 18, 1883, pp. 1062, 1063.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Athen&aelig;um, Sept. 1, 1883, pp. 263-265.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Spenser, and Shakspere.</i> Victoria Magazine, vol. 25, 1875,
+pp. 856-868, 1059-1065; vol. 26, pp. 24-31, 108-117.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>State Papers relating to.</i> London Magazine, vol. 6 N.S., 1826,
+pp. 377-396.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Theology of.</i> Boston Monthly Magazine, vol. 1, 1825, pp. 489-491.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Todd's Life of.</i> Quarterly Review, vol. 36,
+1827, pp. 29-61.<br /></p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Monthly Review, vol. 3 N.S., 1826, pp. 258-273.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Museum of Foreign Literature, vol. 10, p. 67, etc.; vol. 11, pp. 114,
+etc., 385, etc.</li>
+<li>&mdash;Congregational Magazine, vol. 3, 1827, pp. 33-40.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Treatise on Christian Doctrine.</i> Evangelical Magazine, vol. 4
+N.S., 1826, pp. 371-375.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>versus Robert Montgomery.</i> Knickerbocker, vol. 3, 1834,
+pp. 120-134.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Works of.</i> American Church Review, by J.H. Hanson, vol. 2,
+pp. 153, etc.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Youth of</i>. Edinburgh Review, vol. 111, 1860, pp. 312-347;
+same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 65, pp. 579-597.</p>
+<ul style="margin-top:0em;list-style:none;">
+<li>&mdash;Argosy, vol. 6, 1868, pp. 267-273.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr  />
+
+
+<h3><a name="bib_CHRONO" id="bib_CHRONO"></a>VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
+OF WORKS.</h3>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table width="75%" summary="List of works and dates" >
+  <tr><td>A Maske [Comus]</td> <td>1637</td></tr>
+
+  <tr><td>Lycidas <br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;">(In <i>Justa Edouardo King Naufrago</i>) </span></td><td>1638</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England  </td><td>1641</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Of Prelatical Episcopacy </td><td>1641</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence
+  against Smectymnuus</td><td>1641</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty </td><td>1641</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Apology against a Pamphlet called A Modest Confutation of the
+Animadversions, etc.</td><td>1641</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce </td><td>1643</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib </td><td>1644</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>The Judgment of Martin Bucer, now Englisht
+  </td><td>1644
+  <a name="Page_xxxix" id="Page_xxxix"></a><span class="pagenum">xxxix</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Areopagitica </td><td>1644</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Tetrachordon </td><td>1644</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Colasterion  </td><td>1645</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Poems   </td><td>1645</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Tenure of Kings and Magistrates </td><td>1649</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels
+(<i>Articles of Peace</i>, etc.) </td><td>1649</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Eikonoklastes  </td><td>1649</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Pro populo Anglicano defensio contra Salmasium  </td><td>1651</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>A Letter touching the Dissolution of the late Parliament </td><td>1653</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda </td><td>1654</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Scriptum Dom-Protectoris contra Hispanos </td><td>1655</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Pro se defensio contra A. Morum </td><td>1655</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes  </td><td>1659</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings
+out of the Church </td><td>1659</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth </td><td>1660</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Paradise Lost  </td><td>1667</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Accedence commenc't Grammar </td><td>1669</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>History of Britain  </td><td>1670</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Paradise Regained  </td><td>1671</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Samson Agonistes <br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;">(<i>With preceding work</i>)</span></td><td>1671</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Artis Logic&aelig; plenior Institutio </td><td>1672</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Of true Religion, Heresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means
+may be used against the growth of Popery  </td><td>1673</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Epistolarum familiarium liber  </td><td>1674</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Declaration or Letters Patents of the Election of this present
+King of Poland, John the Third   </td><td>1674</td></tr>
+
+<!-- </table>
+</div> -->
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align:center"><hr class="short"/></td></tr>
+<!-- <div class="center"><table width="75%"  > -->
+<tr><td>Liter&aelig; Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, etc.</td><td>1676</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines in 1641</td><td>1681</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Brief History of Moscovia                             </td><td>1682</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Works [in prose]                                      </td><td>1697</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Historical, political, and miscellaneous works        </td><td>1698</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Original Letters and Papers of State addressed to Oliver Cromwell</td><td>1743</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>De Doctrina Christiana                                </td><td>1825</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Common Place Book                                     </td><td>1876</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+</div>   <!-- end of bibliography -->
+
+<p class="center biggap"><i>Printed by</i> WALTER SCOTT, <i>Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a><span
+class="pagenum" style="display: none;">246</span></p><p><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">247</span></p>
+
+<p class="priceSize">Crown 8vo, Cloth. Price 3s. 6d. per Vol.; Hlf. Mor. 6s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap larger">Contemporary Science Series.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Edited by</span> HAVELOCK ELLIS.</p>
+
+<p class="priceSize">Most of the vols. will be illustrated, containing between 300 and 400
+pp. The first vol. will be issued on Oct. 25, 1889. Others to follow at
+short intervals.</p>
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+<p><span class="smcap">The contemporary science series</span> will bring within general reach of the
+English-speaking public the best that is known and thought in all
+departments of modern scientific research. The influence of the
+scientific spirit is now rapidly spreading in every field of human
+activity. Social progress, it is felt, must be guided and accompanied by
+accurate knowledge,&mdash;knowledge which is, in many departments, not yet
+open to the English reader. In the Contemporary Science Series all the
+questions of modern life&mdash;the various social and politico-economical
+problems of to-day, the most recent researches in the knowledge of man,
+the past and present experiences of the race, and the nature of its
+environment&mdash;will be frankly investigated and clearly presented.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center bolder">The first volumes of the Series will  <span class="together">be:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. <span class="smcap">Patrick Geddes</span> and <span class="smcap">J. Arthur
+Thomson</span>. With 90 Illustrations, and about 300 pages. <span
+style="margin-left: 2em;">[<i>Now Ready.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="bookList" >ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. <span class="smcap">By G.W. de Tunzelmann</span>. With 88
+Illustrations. <span
+style="margin-left: 2em;">[<i>Ready 25th November.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="bookList" >THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. <span class="smcap">Isaac Taylor</span>. With numerous
+Illustrations. <span
+style="margin-left: 2em;">[<i>Ready 25th December.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="center bolder">The following Writers, among others, are preparing volumes for this
+ <span class="together">Series:&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>Prof. E.D. Cope, Prof. G.F. Fitzgerald, Prof. J. Geikie, G.L. Gomme,
+E.C.K. Gonner, Prof. J. Jastrow (Wisconsin), E Sidney Hartland, Prof.
+C.H. Herford, J. Bland Sutton, Dr. C. Mercier, Sidney Webb, Dr. Sims
+Woodhead, Dr. C.M. Woodward (St. Louis, Mo.), etc.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">London: Walter Scott</span>, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">248</span></p>
+<p class="center largest bolder">GREAT WRITERS.</p>
+
+<p class="center">A NEW SERIES OF CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">Edited by Professor <span class="smcap">Eric S. Robertson</span>, M.A.</p>
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center large">MONTHLY SHILLING VOLUMES.</p>
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. By Prof. Eric S. Robertson.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"A most readable little work."&mdash;<i>Liverpool Mercury.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF COLERIDGE. By Hall Caine.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Brief and vigorous, written throughout with spirit and great literary
+skill."&mdash;<i>Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF DICKENS. By Frank T. Marzials.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Notwithstanding the mass of matter that has been printed relating to
+Dickens and his works ... we should, until we came across this volume,
+have been at a loss to recommend any popular life of England's most
+popular novelist as being really satisfactory. The difficulty is removed
+by Mr. Marzials's little book."&mdash;<i>Athen&aelig;um.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI By J. Knight.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Mr. Knight's picture of the great poet and painter is the fullest and
+best yet presented to the public."&mdash;<i>The Graphic.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. By Colonel F. Grant.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Colonel Grant has performed his task with diligence, sound judgment
+good taste, and accuracy."&mdash;<i>Illustrated London News.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF DARWIN. By G.T. Bettany.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Mr. G.T. Bettany's <i>Life of Darwin</i> is a sound and conscientious
+work."&mdash;<i>Saturday Review.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONT&Euml;. By A. Birrell.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Those who know much of Charlotte Bront&euml; will learn more, and those who
+know nothing about her will find all that is best worth learning in Mr.
+Birrell's pleasant book."&mdash;<i>St. James' Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. By R. Garnett, LL.D.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"This is an admirable book. Nothing could be more felicitous and fairer
+than the way in which he takes us through Carlyle's life and
+works."&mdash;<i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. By R.B. Haldane, M.P.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Written with a perspicuity seldom exemplified when dealing with
+economic science."&mdash;<i>Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF KEATS. By W.M. Rossetti.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Valuable for the ample information which it contains."&mdash;<i>Cambridge
+Independent.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF SHELLEY. By William Sharp.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"The criticisms ... entitle this capital monograph to be ranked with the
+best biographies of Shelley."&mdash;<i>Westminster Review.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF SMOLLETT. By David Hannay.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"A capable record of a writer who still remains one of the great masters
+of the English novel"&mdash;<i>Saturday Review.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. By Austin Dobson.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"The story of his literary and social life in London, with all its
+humorous and pathetic vicissitudes, is here retold, as none could tell
+it better."-<i>Daily News.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<p class="bookList"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">249</span>LIFE OF SCOTT. By Professor Yonge.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"For readers and lovers of the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott,
+this is a most enjoyable boot."&mdash;<i>Aberdeen Free Press.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF BURNS. By Professor Blackie.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"The editor certainly made a hit when he persuaded Blackie to write
+about Burns."&mdash;<i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF VICTOR HUGO-By Frank T. Marzials.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Mr. Marzials's volume presents to us, in a more handy form than any
+English, or even French handbook gives, the summary of what, up to the
+moment in which we write, is known or conjectured about the life of the
+great poet."&mdash;<i>Saturday Review.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF EMERSON. By Richard Garnett, LL.D.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"As to the larger section of the public, ... no record of Emerson's life
+and work could be more desirable, both in breadth of treatment and
+lucidity of style, than Dr. Garnett's."&mdash;<i>Saturday Review.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF GOETHE. By James Sime.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Mr. James Sime's competence as a biographer of Goethe, both in respect
+of knowledge of his special subject, and of German literature generally,
+is beyond question."&mdash;<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF CONGREVE. By Edmund Gosse.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Mr. Gosse has written an admirable and most interesting biography of a
+man of letters who is of particular interest to other men of
+letters."-<i>The Academy.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF BUNYAN. By Canon Venables.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"A most intelligent, appreciative, and valuable memoir."&mdash;<i>Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF CRABBE. By T.E. Kebbel.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"No English poet since Shakespeare has observed certain aspects of
+nature and of human life more closely; ... Mr. Kebbel's monograph is
+worthy of the subject."&mdash;<i>Athen&aelig;um.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF HEINE. By William Sharp.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"This is an admirable monograph ... more fully written up to the level
+of recent knowledge and criticism of its theme than any other English
+work."&mdash;<i>Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF MILL. By W.L. Courtney.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"A most sympathetic and discriminating memoir."&mdash;<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF SCHILLER. By Henry W. Nevinson.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"Presents the leading facts of the poet's life in a neatly rounded
+picture, and gives an adequate critical estimate of each of Schiller's
+separate works and the effect of the whole upon
+literature."&mdash;<i>Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookList">LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRYAT. By David Hannay.</p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes">"We have nothing but praise for the manner in which Mr. Hannay has done
+justice to him whom he well calls 'one of the most brilliant and the
+least fairly recognised of English novelists.'"&mdash;<i>Saturday Review.</i></p>
+
+<p class="bookNotes" style="margin-left:1em; margin-top:.5em;">Complete Bibliography to each volume, by J.P. ANDERSON, British Museum.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="little">Volumes are in preparation by Goldwin Smith, Frederick Wedmore, Oscar
+Browning, Arthur Symons, W.E. Henley, Hermann Merivale, H.E. Watts, T.W.
+Rolleston, Cosmo Monkhouse, Dr. Garnett, Frank T. Marzials, W.H.
+Pollock, John Addington Symonds, Stepniak, etc., etc.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze"/>
+
+<p class="little"><span style="font-size: 120%">LIBRARY EDITION OF "GREAT WRITERS."&mdash;</span>Printed on large paper of extra
+quality, in handsome binding, Demy 8vo, price 2s. 6d.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center">London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">250</span></p>
+<p class="priceSize">Monthly Shilling Volumes. Cloth, cut or uncut edges.</p>
+
+<p class="center largest bolder">THE CAMELOT SERIES.</p>
+
+<p class="center smcap">Edited by Ernest Rhys. <span style="margin-left:4em;">Volumes already Issued&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<div class="center"><table summary="List of book titles and editors">
+<tr><td class="lt">ROMANCE OF KING ARTHUR.   </td><td class="rt">Edited by E. Rhys.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">THOREAU'S WALDEN.         </td><td class="rt">Edited by W.H. Dircks.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.      </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">LANDOR'S CONVERSATIONS.   </td><td class="rt">Edited by H. Ellis.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">PLUTARCH'S LIVES.         </td><td class="rt">Edited by B.J. Snell, M.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">RELIGIO MEDICI, &amp;c.       </td><td class="rt">Edited by J.A. Symonds.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SHELLEY'S LETTERS.        </td><td class="rt">Edited by Ernest Rhys.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">PROSE WRITINGS OF SWIFT.  </td><td class="rt">Edited by W. Lewin.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">MY STUDY WINDOWS.         </td><td class="rt">Edited by R. Garnett, LL.D.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS.   </td><td class="rt">Edited by W. Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">LORD BYRON'S LETTERS.     </td><td class="rt">Edited by M. Blind.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">ESSAYS BY LEIGH HUNT.     </td><td class="rt">Edited by A. Symons.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">LONGFELLOW'S PROSE.       </td><td class="rt">Edited by W. Tirebuck.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS.  </td><td class="rt">Edited by E. Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">MARCUS AURELIUS.          </td><td class="rt">Edited by Alice Zimmern.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA.         </td><td class="rt">By Walt Whitman.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">WHITE'S SELBORNE.         </td><td class="rt">Edited by Richard Jefferies.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">DEFOE'S SINGLETON.        </td><td class="rt">Edited by H. Halliday Sparling.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">MAZZINI'S ESSAYS.         </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Clarke.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">PROSE WRITINGS OF HEINE.  </td><td class="rt">Edited by H. Ellis.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">REYNOLDS' DISCOURSES.     </td><td class="rt">Edited by Helen Zimmern.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">PAPERS OF STEELE &amp; ADDISON.       </td><td class="rt">Edited by W. Lewin.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BURNS'S LETTERS.          </td><td class="rt">Edited by J. Logie Robertson, M.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">VOLSUNGA SAGA.            </td><td class="rt">Edited by H.H. Sparling.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SARTOR RESARTUS.          </td><td class="rt">Edited by Ernest Rhys.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">WRITINGS OF EMERSON.      </td><td class="rt">Edited by Percival Chubb.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SENECA'S MORALS.          </td><td class="rt">Edited by Walter Clode.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.                </td><td class="rt">By Walt Whitman.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">LIFE OF LORD HERBERT.     </td><td class="rt">Edited by Will H. Dircks.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">ENGLISH PROSE.            </td><td class="rt">Edited by Arthur Gallon.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">IBSEN'S PILLARS OF SOCIETY.       </td><td class="rt">Edited by H. Ellis.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.     </td><td class="rt">Edited by W.B. Yeats.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">EPICTETUS.                </td><td class="rt">Edited by T.W. Rolleston.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">THE ENGLISH POETS.                </td><td class="rt">By James Russell Lowell.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">ESSAYS OF DR. JOHNSON.    </td><td class="rt">Edited by Stuart T. Reid.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.</td><td class="rt">Edited by F. Carr.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">LANDOR'S PENTAMERON, &amp;c.  </td><td class="rt">Edited by H. Ellis.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">POE'S TALES AND ESSAYS.   </td><td class="rt">Edited by Ernest Rhys.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.               </td><td class="rt">By Oliver Goldsmith.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">POLITICAL ORATIONS.       </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Clarke.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS.           </td><td class="rt">Selected by C. Sayle.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">THOREAU'S WEEK.           </td><td class="rt">Edited by Will H. Dircks.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">STORIES from CARLETON.    </td><td class="rt">Edited by W.B. Yeats.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.  </td><td class="rt">By O.W. Holmes.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">JANE EYRE.                        </td><td class="rt">By Charlotte Bront&euml;.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center">London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">251</span></p>
+<p class="center largest bolder">The Canterbury Poets.</p>
+
+<p class="center">EDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP.</p>
+
+<p>In SHILLING Monthly Volumes, Square 8vo. Well printed on fine toned
+paper, with Red-line Border, and strongly bound in Cloth.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><table summary="Price list">
+<tr><td class="lt" style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Cloth, Red Edges</i>          </td><td class="rt">1s.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt" style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Cloth, Uncut Edges</i>        </td><td class="rt">1s.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt" style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Red Roan, Gilt Edges</i>      </td><td class="rt">2s. 6d.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt" style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Pad. Morocco, Gilt Edges</i>  </td><td class="rt">5s.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><table summary="List of books and editors" >
+<tr><td class="lt">KEBLE'S CHRISTIAN YEAR.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">COLERIDGE.             </td><td class="rt">Ed. by J. Skipsey.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">LONGFELLOW.            </td><td class="rt">Ed. by E. Hope.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">CAMPBELL.              </td><td class="rt">Ed. by J. Hogben.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SHELLEY.               </td><td class="rt">Edited by J. Skipsey.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">WORDSWORTH.            </td><td class="rt">Edited by A.J. Symington.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BLAKE.                 </td><td class="rt">Ed. by Joseph Skipsey.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">WHITTIER.              </td><td class="rt">Ed. by Eva Hope.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">POE.                   </td><td class="rt">Edited by Joseph Skipsey.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">CHATTERTON.            </td><td class="rt">Edited by John Richmond.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BURNS. Poems}            </td><td class="rt"
+  rowspan="2">Edited by Joseph Skipsey.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BURNS. Songs}                  </td><td class="rt"></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">MARLOWE.               </td><td class="rt">Ed. by P.E. Pinkerton.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">KEATS.                 </td><td class="rt">Edited by John Hogben.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">HERBERT.               </td><td class="rt">Edited by E. Rhys.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">HUGO.                          </td><td class="rt">Trans. by Dean Carrington.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">COWPER.                </td><td class="rt">Edited by Eva Hope.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SHAKESPEARE. <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Songs, Poems, and Sonnets.</span> </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">EMERSON.               </td><td class="rt">Edited by W. Lewin.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SONNETS of this CENTURY.       </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">WHITMAN.               </td><td class="rt">Edited by E. Rhys.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SCOTT. Marmion, etc.</td><td class="rt"></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc.  </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">PRAED.                 </td><td class="rt">Edited by Fred. Cooper.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">HOGG.                          </td><td class="rt">By his Daughter, Mrs Garden.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">GOLDSMITH.             </td><td class="rt">Ed. by W. Tirebuck.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">MACKAY'S LOVE LETTERS.</td><td class="rt"></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SPENSER.               </td><td class="rt">Edited by Hon. R. Noel</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">CHILDREN OF THE POETS. </td><td class="rt">Edited by Eric S. Robertson.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">JONSON.                </td><td class="rt">Edited by J.A. Symonds.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BYRON (2 Vols.)        </td><td class="rt">Ed. by M. Blind.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">THE SONNETS OF EUROPE. </td><td class="rt">Edited by S. Waddington.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">RAMSAY.                </td><td class="rt">Ed. by J.L. Robertson</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">DOBELL.                </td><td class="rt">Edited by Mrs. Dobell.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">DAYS OF THE YEAR.              </td><td class="rt">With Introduction by Wm. Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">POPE.                  </td><td class="rt">Edited by John Hogben.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">HEINE.                 </td><td class="rt">Edited by Mrs. Kroeker.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BEAUMONT &amp; FLETCHER.   </td><td class="rt">Edited by J.S. Fletcher.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BOWLES, LAMB, &amp;c.      </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Tirebuck.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.  </td><td class="rt">Edited by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SEA MUSIC.             </td><td class="rt">Edited by Mrs Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">HERRICK.               </td><td class="rt">Edited by Ernest Rhys.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BALLADES AND RONDEAUS. </td><td class="rt">Edited by J. Gleeson White.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">IRISH MINSTRELSY.      </td><td class="rt">Edited by H. Halliday Sparling.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">MILTON'S PARADISE LOST.</td><td class="rt">Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">JACOBITE BALLADS.      </td><td class="rt">Edited by G.S. Macquoid.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">AUSTRALIAN BALLADS.    </td><td class="rt">Edited by D.B.W. Sladen, B.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">MOORE.                 </td><td class="rt">Edited by John Dorrian.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">BORDER BALLADS.        </td><td class="rt">Edited by Graham R. Tomson.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SONG-TIDE.                     </td><td class="rt">By P.B. Marston.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">ODES OF HORACE.                </td><td class="rt">Translations by Sir S. de Vere, Bt.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">OSSIAN.                </td><td class="rt">Edited by G.E. Todd.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">ELFIN MUSIC.           </td><td class="rt">Ed. by A. Waite.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">SOUTHEY.               </td><td class="rt">Ed. by S.R. Thompson.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">CHAUCER.               </td><td class="rt">Edited by F.N. Paton.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">POEMS OF WILD LIFE.    </td><td class="rt">Edited by Chas. G.D. Roberts, M.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">PARADISE REGAINED.     </td><td class="rt">Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">CRABBE.                </td><td class="rt">Edited by E. Lamplough.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">DORA GREENWELL.        </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Dorling.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">FAUST.                 </td><td class="rt">Edited by E. Craigmyle.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">AMERICAN SONNETS.      </td><td class="rt">Edited by William Sharp.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">LANDOR'S POEMS.                </td><td class="rt">Selected and Edited by E. Radford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">GREEK ANTHOLOGY.       </td><td class="rt">Edited by Graham R. Tomson.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="lt">HUNT AND HOOD.         </td><td class="rt">Edited by J. Harwood Panting.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<!--
+<p style="width: 40%; margin-left: 20%; text-align: left;">
+<span style="float: left;">Book_title</span> <span style="float:
+right; text-align: right">Edited by Author</span><br/>
+<span style="float: left;">Book2</span> <span style="float: right; text-align: right">Edited by X</span><br/>
+<span style="float: left;">BookLONG title here 3</span><span style="float: right; text-align: right">Edited by someone else</span><br/>
+</p>
+-->
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+<p class="center">London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">252</span></p>
+<p class="priceSize">Crown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2s. 6d. per vol.<br />
+
+Half-polished Morocco, gilt top, 5s.</p>
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center largest bolder">COUNT TOLSTO&Iuml;'S WORKS.</p>
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" />
+
+<p>Arrangements have been made to publish, in Monthly Volumes, a series of
+translations of works by the eminent Russian Novelist, Count Lyof. N.
+Tolsto&iuml;. The English reading public will be introduced to an entirely
+new series of works by one who is probably the greatest living master of
+fiction in Europe. To those unfamiliar with the charm of Russian
+fiction, and especially with the works of Count Tolsto&iuml;, these volumes
+will come as a new revelation of power.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The following Volumes are already issued</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR.</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE COSSACKS.</p>
+
+<p class="center">IVAN ILYITCH, AND OTHER STORIES.</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE INVADERS, AND OTHER STORIES.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MY RELIGION.</p>
+
+<p class="center">LIFE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MY CONFESSION.</p>
+
+<p class="center">CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH.</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ANNA KAR&Eacute;NINA.(2 VOLS.)</p>
+
+<p class="center">WHAT TO DO?</p>
+
+<p class="center">WAR AND PEACE.(4 VOLS.)</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>Ready November 25th.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">THE LONG EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES FOR CHILDREN.</p>
+
+<p class="center">OTHERS TO FOLLOW.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center">London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">253</span></p>
+<p  class="center">Small Crown 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Printed on Antique Laid Paper. Cloth Elegant, Gilt Edges, Price 3/6.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center largest bolder">SUMMER LEGENDS.</p>
+
+<p class="center large">BY RUDOLPH BAUMBACH.</p>
+
+<p class="center">TRANSLATED BY MRS. HELEN B. DOLE.</p>
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" />
+
+<p style="line-height:1.5">This is a collection of charming fanciful stories translated from the
+German. In Germany they have enjoyed remarkable popularity, a large
+number of editions having been sold. Rudolph Baumbach deals with a
+wonderland which is all his own, though he suggests Hans Andersen in his
+simplicity of treatment, and Heine in his delicacy, grace, and humour.
+These are stories which will appeal vividly to the childish imagination,
+while the older reader will discern the satirical or humorous
+application that underlies them.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center" >London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">254</span></p>
+<p class="center largest bolder">Windsor Series of Poetical Anthologies.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="priceSize">Printed on Antique Paper. Crown 8vo. Bound in Blue Cloth, each with
+suitable Emblematic Design on Cover, Price 3s. 6d.<br />
+ Also in various Calf
+and Morocco Bindings.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Women's Voices.</b> An Anthology of the most Characteristic Poems by
+English, Scotch, and Irish Women. Edited by Mrs. William Sharp.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Sonnets of this Century.</b> With an Exhaustive Essay on the Sonnet. Edited
+by Wm. Sharp.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>The Children of the Poets.</b> An Anthology from English and American
+Writers of Three Centuries. Edited by Professor Eric S. Robertson.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Sacred Song.</b> A Volume of Religious Verse. Selected and arranged by
+Samuel Waddington.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>A Century of Australian Song.</b> Selected and Edited by Douglas B.W.
+Sladen, B.A., Oxon.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Jacobite Songs and Ballads.</b> Selected and Edited, with Notes, by G.S.
+Macquoid.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Irish Minstrelsy.</b> Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by H. Halliday
+Sparling.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>The Sonnets of Europe.</b> A Volume of Translations. Selected and arranged
+by Samuel Waddington.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Early English and Scottish Poetry.</b> Selected and Edited by H. Macaulay
+Fitzgibbon.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Ballads of the North Countrie.</b> Edited, with Introduction, by Graham R.
+Tomson.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Songs and Poems of the Sea.</b> An Anthology of Poems Descriptive of the
+Sea. Edited by Mrs. William Sharp.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Songs and Poems of Fairyland.</b> An Anthology of English Fairy Poetry,
+selected and arranged, with an Introduction, by Arthur Edward Waite.</p>
+
+<p class="bookList"><b>Songs and Poems of the Great Dominion.</b> Edited by W.D. Lighthall, of
+Montreal.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" style="margin-top:1em;" />
+
+<p class="center">London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" /><p><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">255</span></p>
+<p class="center biggap"><i>RECENT VOLUMES OF VERSE.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet" >Edition de Luxe. Crown 4to, on Antique Paper, Price 12s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p class="center">SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">BY WILLIAM SHARP.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, Price 3s. 6d. each.</p>
+
+<p class="center">IN FANCY DRESS.</p>
+
+<p class="center">"IT IS THYSELF."</p>
+
+<p class="center little">BY MARK ANDRE RAFFALOVICH.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, Price 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p class="center">CAROLS FROM THE COAL-FIELDS: AND OTHER SONGS AND BALLADS.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">BY JOSEPH SKIPSEY.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">Cloth Gilt, Price 3s.</p>
+
+<p class="center">LAST YEAR'S LEAVES.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">By JOHN JERVIS BERESFORD, M.A.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, Price 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p class="center">BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">BY GEORGE ROBERTS HEDLEY.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">Fourth Edition, Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, Price 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p class="center">TALES AND BALLADS OF WEARSIDE.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">BY JOHN GREEN.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">Second Edition. Price 3s.</p>
+
+<p class="center">ROMANTIC BALLADS AND POEMS OF PHANTASY.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">BY WILLIAM SHARP.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center little gaplet">Parchment Limp, 3s.</p>
+
+<p class="center">DEATH'S DISGUISES AND OTHER SONNETS.</p>
+
+<p class="center little">BY FRANK T. MARZIALS.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center">London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr  class="squeeze" /><p class="biggap"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">256</span></p>
+<p class="center larger bolder">NEW BOOKLETS.</p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="priceSize">Crown 8vo, in White Embossed Boards, Gilt Lettering, One Shilling
+each.</p>
+
+<p class="center larger ">BY COUNT LEO TOLSTO&Iuml;.</p>
+
+<p class="center largest gaplet">WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO.</p>
+
+<p class="center largest">THE TWO PILGRIMS.</p>
+
+<p class="center largest">WHAT MEN LIVE BY.</p>
+
+<p>Published originally in Russia, as tracts for the people, these little
+stories, which Mr. Walter Scott will issue separately early in February,
+in "booklet" form, possess all the grace, na&iuml;vet&eacute;, and power which
+characterise the work of Count Tolsto&iuml;, and while inculcating in the
+most penetrating way the Christian ideas of love, humility, and charity,
+are perfect in their art form as stories pure and simple.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>ADAPTED FOR PRESENTATION AT EASTER.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="squeeze" />
+
+<p class="center">London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of John Milton, by Richard Garnett
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN MILTON ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of John Milton, by Richard Garnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life of John Milton
+
+Author: Richard Garnett
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2005 [EBook #16757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN MILTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Louise Pryor and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+Produced from page images provided by Internet
+Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Great Writers."
+EDITED BY
+PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_LIFE OF MILTON._
+
+
+
+
+LIFE
+
+OF
+
+JOHN MILTON
+
+BY
+
+RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D.
+
+
+
+LONDON
+WALTER SCOTT, 24, WARWICK LANE
+1890
+(_All rights reserved._)
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+The number of miniature "Lives" of Milton is great; great also is the
+merit of some of them. With one exception, nevertheless, they are all
+dismissed to the shelf by the publication of Professor Masson's
+monumental and authoritative biography, without perpetual reference to
+which no satisfactory memoir can henceforth be composed. One recent
+biography has enjoyed this advantage. Its author, the late Mark
+Pattison, wanted neither this nor any other qualification except a
+keener sense of the importance of the religious and political
+controversies of Milton's time. His indifference to matters so momentous
+in Milton's own estimation has, in our opinion, vitiated his conception
+of his hero, who is represented as persistently yielding to party what
+was meant for mankind. We think, on the contrary, that such a mere man
+of letters as Pattison wishes that Milton had been, could never have
+produced a "Paradise Lost." If this view is well-founded, there is not
+only room but need for yet another miniature "Life of Milton,"
+notwithstanding the intellectual subtlety and scholarly refinement
+which render Pattison's memorable. It should be noted that the recent
+German biography by Stern, if adding little to Professor Masson's facts,
+contributes much valuable literary illustration; and that Keighley's
+analysis of Milton's opinions occupies a position of its own, of which
+no subsequent biographical discoveries can deprive it. The present
+writer has further to express his deep obligations to Professor Masson
+for his great kindness in reading and remarking upon the proofs--not
+thereby rendering himself responsible for anything in these pages; and
+also to the helpful friend who has provided him with an index.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.                                                            11
+
+      Milton born in Bread Street, Cheapside, December 9, 1608;
+      condition of English literature at his birth; part in its
+      development assigned to him; materials available for his
+      biography; his ancestry; his father; influences that surrounded
+      his boyhood; enters St. Paul's School, 1620; distinguished for
+      compositions in prose and verse; matriculates at Cambridge, 1625;
+      condition of the University at the period; his misunderstandings
+      with his tutor; graduates B.A., 1629, M.A., 1632; his relations
+      with the University; declines to take orders or follow a
+      profession; his first poems; retires to Horton, in
+      Buckinghamshire, where his father had settled, 1632
+
+CHAPTER II.                                                           35
+
+      Horton, its scenery and associations with Milton; Milton's studies
+      and poetical aspirations; exceptional nature of his poetical
+      development; his Latin poems; "Arcades" and "Comus" composed and
+      represented at the instance of Henry Lawes, 1633 and 1634; "Comus"
+      printed in 1637; Sir Henry Wootton's opinion of it; "Lycidas"
+      written in the same year, on occasion of the death of Edward King;
+      published in 1638; criticism on "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso,"
+      "Lycidas" and "Comus"; Milton's departure for Italy, April, 1638.
+
+CHAPTER III.                                                          57
+
+      State of Italy at the period of Milton's visit; his acquaintance
+      with Italian literati at Florence; visit to Galileo; at Rome and
+      Naples; returns to England, July, 1639; settles in St. Bride's
+      Churchyard, and devotes himself to the education of his nephews;
+      his elegy on his friend Diodati; removes to Aldersgate Street,
+      1640; his pamphlets on ecclesiastical affairs, 1641 and 1642; his
+      tract on Education his "Areopagitica," November, 1644; attacks the
+      Presbyterians.
+
+CHAPTER IV.                                                           83
+
+      Milton as a Parliamentarian; his sonnet, "When the Assault was
+      intended to the City," November, 1642; goes on a visit to the
+      Powell family in Oxfordshire, and returns with Mary Powell as his
+      wife, May and June, 1643; his domestic unhappiness; Mary Milton
+      leaves him, and refuses to return, July to September, 1643;
+      publication of his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," August,
+      1643, and February, 1644; his father comes to live with him; he
+      takes additional pupils; his system of education; he courts the
+      daughter of Dr. Davis; his wife, alarmed, returns, and is
+      reconciled to him, August, 1645; he removes to the Barbican,
+      September, 1645; publication of his collected poems, January,
+      1646; he receives his wife's relatives under his roof; death of
+      his father, March, 1647; he writes "The Tenure of Kings and
+      Magistrates," February, 1649; becomes Latin Secretary to the
+      Commonwealth, March, 1649.
+
+CHAPTER V.                                                           104
+
+      Milton's duties as Latin Secretary; he drafts manifesto on the
+      state of Ireland; occasionally employed as licenser of the press;
+      commissioned to answer "Eikon Basilike"; controversy on the
+      authorship of this work; Milton's "Eikonoklastes" published,
+      October, 1649; Salmasius and his "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I.";
+      Milton undertakes to answer Salmasius, February, 1650; publication
+      of his "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio," March, 1651; character and
+      complete controversial success of this work; Milton becomes
+      totally blind, March, 1652; his wife dies, leaving him three
+      daughters, May, 1652; his controversy with Morus and other
+      defenders of Salmasius, 1652-1655; his characters of the eminent
+      men of the Commonwealth; adheres to Cromwell; his views on
+      politics; general character of his official writings: his marriage
+      to Elizabeth Woodcock, and death of his wife, November,
+      1656-March, 1658; his nephews; his friends and recreations.
+
+CHAPTER VI.                                                          128
+
+      Milton's poetical projects after his return from Italy; drafts of
+      "Paradise Lost" among them; the poem originally designed as a
+      masque or miracle-play; commenced as an epic in 1658; its
+      composition speedily interrupted by ecclesiastical and political
+      controversies; Milton's "Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical
+      Causes," and "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove
+      Hirelings out of the Church"; Royalist reaction in the winter of
+      1659-60; Milton writes his "Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free
+      Commonwealth"; conceals himself in anticipation of the
+      Restoration, May 7, 1660; his writings ordered to be burned by the
+      hangman, June 16; escapes proscription, nevertheless; arrested by
+      the Serjeant-at-Arms, but released by order of the Commons,
+      December 15; removes to Holborn; his pecuniary losses and
+      misfortunes; the undutiful behaviour of his daughters; marries
+      Elizabeth Minshull, February, 1663; lives successively in Jewin
+      Street and in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields; particulars of his
+      private life; "Paradise Lost" completed in or about 1663;
+      agreement for its publication with Samuel Symmons; difficulties
+      with the licenser; poem published in August, 1667.
+
+CHAPTER VII.                                                         152
+
+      Place of "Paradise Lost" among the great epics of the world; not
+      rendered obsolete by changes in belief; the inevitable defects of
+      its plan compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion
+      of his age; Milton's conception of the physical universe; his
+      theology; magnificence of his poetry; his similes; his
+      descriptions of Paradise; inevitable falling off of the later
+      books; minor critical objections mostly groundless; his diction;
+      his indebtedness to other poets for thoughts as well as phrases;
+      this is not plagiarism; his versification; his Satan compared with
+      Calderon's Lucifer; plan of his epic, whether in any way suggested
+      by Andreini, Vondel, or Ochino; his majestic and unique position
+      in English poetry.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.                                                        173
+
+      Milton's migration to Chalfont St. Giles to escape the plague in
+      London, July, 1665; subject of "Paradise Regained" suggested to
+      him by the Quaker Ellwood; his losses by the Great Fire, 1666;
+      first edition of "Paradise Lost" entirely sold by April, 1669;
+      "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes" published, 1671;
+      criticism on these poems; Samson partly a personification of
+      Milton himself, partly of the English people; Milton's life in
+      Bunhill Fields; his daughters live apart from him; Dryden adapts
+      "Paradise Lost" as an opera; Milton's "History of Britain," 1670;
+      second editions of his poems, 1673, and of "Paradise Lost," 1674;
+      his "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"; fate of the manuscript;
+      Milton's mature religious opinions; his death and burial, 1674;
+      subsequent history of his widow and descendants; his personal
+      character.
+
+INDEX                                                                199
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF MILTON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, when Shakespeare had lately
+produced "Antony and Cleopatra," when Bacon was writing his "Wisdom of
+the Ancients" and Ralegh his "History of the World," when the English
+Bible was hastening into print; when, nevertheless, in the opinion of
+most foreigners and many natives, England was intellectually unpolished,
+and her literature almost barbarous.
+
+The preposterousness of this judgment as a whole must not blind us to
+the fragment of truth which it included. England's literature was, in
+many respects, very imperfect and chaotic. Her "singing masons" had
+already built her "roofs of gold"; Hooker and one or two other great
+prose-writers stood like towers: but the less exalted portions of the
+edifice were still half hewn. Some literatures, like the Latin and the
+French, rise gradually to the crest of their perfection; others, like
+the Greek and the English, place themselves almost from the first on
+their loftiest pinnacle, leaving vast gaps to be subsequently filled in.
+Homer was not less the supreme poet because history was for him
+literally an old song, because he would have lacked understanding for
+Plato and relish for Aristophanes. Nor were Shakespeare and the
+translators of the Bible less at the head of European literature because
+they must have failed as conspicuously as Homer would have failed in all
+things save those to which they had a call, which chanced to be the
+greatest. Literature, however, cannot remain isolated at such altitudes,
+it must expand or perish. As Homer's epic passed through Pindar and the
+lyrical poets into drama history and philosophy, continually fitting
+itself more and more to become an instrument in the ordinary affairs of
+life, so it was needful that English lettered discourse should become
+popular and pliant, a power in the State as well as in the study. The
+magnitude of the change, from the time when the palm of popularity
+decorated Sidney's "Arcadia" to that when it adorned Defoe and Bunyan,
+would impress us even more powerfully if the interval were not engrossed
+by a colossal figure, the last of the old school in the erudite
+magnificence of his style in prose and verse; the first of the new,
+inasmuch as English poetry, hitherto romantic, became in his hands
+classical. This "splendid bridge from the old world to the new," as
+Gibbon has been called in a different connection, was John Milton: whose
+character and life-work, carefully analyzed, resolve themselves into
+pairs of equally vivid contrasts. A stern Puritan, he is none the less a
+freethinker in the highest and best sense of the term. The recipient of
+direct poetical inspiration in a measure vouchsafed to few, he
+notwithstanding studies to make himself a poet; writes little until no
+other occupation than writing remains to him; and, in general, while
+exhibiting even more than the usual confidence, shows less than the
+usual exultation and affluence of conscious genius. Professing to
+recognize his life's work in poetry, he nevertheless suffers himself to
+be diverted for many a long year into political and theological
+controversy, to the scandal and compassion of one of his most competent
+and attached biographers. Whether this biographer is right or wrong, is
+a most interesting subject for discussion. We deem him wrong, and shall
+not cease to reiterate that Milton would not have been Milton if he
+could have forgotten the citizen in the man of letters. Happy, at all
+events, it is that this and similar problems occupy in Milton's life the
+space which too frequently has to be spent upon the removal of
+misconception, or the refutation of calumny. Little of a sordid sort
+disturbs the sentiment of solemn reverence with which, more even than
+Shakespeare's, his life is approached by his countrymen; a feeling
+doubtless mainly due to the sacred nature of his principal theme, but
+equally merited by the religious consecration of his whole existence. It
+is the easier for the biographer to maintain this reverential attitude,
+inasmuch as the prayer of Agur has been fulfilled in him, he has been
+given neither poverty nor riches. He is not called upon to deal with an
+enormous mass of material, too extensive to arrange, yet too important
+to neglect. Nor is he, like Shakespeare's biographer, reduced to choose
+between the starvation of nescience and the windy diet of conjecture. If
+a humbling thought intrudes, it is how largely he is indebted to a
+devoted diligence he never could have emulated; how painfully Professor
+Masson's successors must resemble the Turk who builds his cabin out of
+Grecian or Roman ruins.
+
+Milton's genealogy has taxed the zeal and acumen of many investigators.
+He himself merely claims a respectable ancestry (_ex genere honesto_).
+His nephew Phillips professed to have come upon the root of the family
+tree at Great Milton, in Oxfordshire, where tombs attested the residence
+of the clan, and tradition its proscription and impoverishment in the
+Wars of the Roses. Monuments, station, and confiscation have vanished
+before the scrutiny of the Rev. Joseph Hunter; it can only be safely
+concluded that Milton's ancestors dwelt in or near the village of
+Holton, by Shotover Forest, in Oxfordshire, and that their rank in life
+was probably that of yeomen. Notwithstanding Aubrey's statement that
+Milton's grandfather's name was John, Mr. Hyde Clarke's researches in
+the registers of the Scriveners' Company have proved that Mr. Hunter and
+Professor Masson were right in identifying him with Richard Milton, of
+Stanton St. John, near Holton; and Professor Masson has traced the
+family a generation further back to Henry Milton, whose will, dated
+November 21, 1558, attests a condition of plain comfort, nearer poverty
+than riches. Henry Milton's goods at his death were inventoried at L6
+19s.; when his widow's will is proved, two years afterwards, the
+estimate is L7 4s. 4d. Richard, his son, is stated, but not proved, to
+have been an under-ranger of Shotover Forest. He appears to have married
+a widow named Jeffrey, whose maiden name had been Haughton, and who had
+some connection with a Cheshire family of station. He would also seem to
+have improved his circumstances by the match, which may account for the
+superior education of his son John, whose birth is fixed by an affidavit
+to 1562 or 1563. Aubrey, indeed, next to Phillips and Milton himself,
+the chief contemporary authority, says that he was for a time at Christ
+Church, Oxford--a statement in itself improbable, but slightly confirmed
+by his apparent acquaintance with Latin, and the family tradition that
+his course of life was diverted by a quarrel with his father. Queen
+Mary's stakes and faggots had not affected Richard Milton as they
+affected most Englishmen. Though churchwarden in 1582, he must have
+continued to adhere to the ancient faith, for he was twice fined for
+recusancy in 1601, which lends credit to the statement that his son was
+cast off by him for Protestantism. "Found him reading the Bible in his
+chamber," says Aubrey, who adds that the younger Milton never was a
+scrivener's apprentice; but this is shown to be an error by Mr. Hyde
+Clarke's discovery of his admission to the Scriveners' Company in 1599,
+where he is stated to have been apprentice to James Colborn. Colborn
+himself had been only four years in business, instead of the seven which
+would usually be required for an apprentice to serve out his
+indenture--which suggests that some formalities may have been dispensed
+with on account of John Milton's age. A scrivener was a kind of cross
+between an attorney and a law stationer, whose principal business was
+the preparation of deeds, "to be well and truly done after my learning,
+skill, and science," and with due regard to the interests of more
+exalted personages. "Neither for haste nor covetousness I shall take
+upon me to make any deed whereof I have not cunning, without good advice
+and information of counsel." Such a calling offered excellent
+opportunities for investments; and John Milton, a man of strict
+integrity and frugality, came to possess a "plentiful estate." Among his
+possessions was the house in Bread Street destroyed in the Great Fire.
+The tenement where the poet was born, being a shop, required a sign, for
+which he chose The Spread Eagle, either from the crest of such among the
+Miltons as had a right to bear arms, among whom he may have reckoned
+himself; or as the device of the Scriveners' Company. He had been
+married about 1600 to a lady whose name has been but lately ascertained
+to have been Sarah Jeffrey. John Milton the younger was the third of six
+children, only three of whom survived infancy. He grew up between a
+sister, Anne, several years older, and a brother, Christopher, seven
+years younger than himself.
+
+Milton's birth and nurture were thus in the centre of London; but the
+London of that day had not half the population of the Liverpool of ours.
+Even now the fragrance of the hay in far-off meadows may be inhaled in
+Bread Street on a balmy summer's night; then the meadows were near the
+doors, and the undefiled sky was reflected by an unpolluted stream.
+There seems no reason to conclude that Milton, in his early boyhood,
+enjoyed any further opportunities of resort to rural scenery than the
+vicinity of London could afford; but if the city is his native element,
+natural beauty never appeals to him in vain. Yet the influences which
+moulded his childhood must have been rather moral and intellectual than
+merely natural:--
+
+   "The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks
+    Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,"
+
+played a greater part in the education of this poet than
+
+   "The murmur of the unreposing brooks,
+    And the green light which, shifting overhead,
+    Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,
+    The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers."
+
+Paramount to all other influences must have been the character of his
+father, a "mute" but by no means an "inglorious" Milton, the preface and
+foreshadowing of the son. His great step in life had set the son the
+example from which the latter never swerved, and from him the younger
+Milton derived not only the independence of thought which was to lead
+him into moral and social heresy, and the fidelity to principle which
+was to make him the Abdiel of the Commonwealth, but no mean share of his
+poetical faculty also. His mastery of verbal harmony was but a new phase
+of his father's mastery of music, which he himself recognizes as the
+complement of his own poetical gift:--
+
+   "Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus,
+    Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti."
+
+As a composer, the circumspect, and, as many no doubt thought prosaic
+scrivener, took rank among the best of his day. One of his
+compositions, now lost, was rewarded with a gold medal by a Polish
+prince (Aubrey says the Landgrave of Hesse), and he appears among the
+contributors to _The Triumphs of Oriana_, a set of twenty-five madrigals
+composed in honour of Queen Elizabeth. "The Teares and Lamentations of a
+Sorrowful Soule"--dolorous sacred songs, Professor Masson calls
+them--were, according to their editor, the production of "famous
+artists," among whom Byrd, Bull, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, certainly
+figure, and three of them were composed by the elder Milton. He also
+harmonized the Norwich and York psalm tunes, which were adapted to six
+of the Psalms in Ravenscroft's Collection. Such performance bespeaks not
+only musical accomplishment, but a refined nature; and we may well
+believe that Milton's love of learning, as well as his love of music,
+was hereditary in its origin, and fostered by his contact with his
+father. Aubrey distinctly affirms that Milton's skill on the organ was
+directly imparted to him by his father, and there would be nothing
+surprising if the first rudiments of knowledge were also instilled by
+him. Poetry he may have taught by precept, but the one extant specimen
+of his Muse is enough to prove that he could never have taught it by
+example.
+
+We have therefore to picture Milton growing up in a narrow street amid a
+strict Puritan household, but not secluded from the influences of nature
+or uncheered by melodious recreations; and tenderly watched over by
+exemplary parents--a mother noted, he tells us, for her charities among
+her neighbours, and a father who had discerned his promise from the very
+first. Given this perception in the head of a religious household, it
+almost followed in that age that the future poet should receive the
+education of a divine. Happily, the sacerdotal caste had ceased to
+exist, and the education of a clergyman meant not that of a priest, but
+that of a scholar. Milton was instructed daily, he says, both at grammar
+schools and under private masters, "as my age would suffer," he adds, in
+acknowledgment of his father's considerateness. Like Disraeli two
+centuries afterwards (perhaps the single point of resemblance), he went
+for schooling to a Nonconformist in Essex, "who," says Aubrey, "cut his
+hair short." His own hair? or his pupil's? queries Biography. We boldly
+reply, Both. Undoubtedly Milton's hair is short in the miniature painted
+of him at the age of ten by, as is believed, Cornelius Jansen. A
+thoughtful little face, that of a well-nurtured, towardly boy; lacking
+the poetry and spirituality of the portrait of eleven years later, where
+the long hair flows down upon the ruff.
+
+After leaving his Essex pedagogue, Milton came under the private tuition
+of Thomas Young, a Scotchman from St. Andrews, who afterwards rose to be
+master of Jesus College, Cambridge. It would appear from the elegies
+subsequently addressed to him by his pupil that he first taught Milton
+to write Latin verse. This instruction was no doubt intended to be
+preliminary to the youth's entrance at St. Paul's School, where he must
+have been admitted by 1620 at the latest.
+
+At the time of Milton's entry, St. Paul's stood high among the schools
+of the metropolis, competing with Merchant Taylors', Westminster, and
+the now extinct St. Anthony's. The headmaster, Dr. Gill, was an
+admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping
+fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the
+systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's schoolmaster
+when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom Fuller approvingly
+records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon
+where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed
+with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing
+than mitigating his severity on their offending children." Milton's
+father, though by no means "cockering," would not have tolerated such
+discipline, and the passionate ardour with which Milton threw himself
+into the studious life of the school is the best proof that he was
+exempt from tyranny. "From the twelfth year of my age," he says, "I
+scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight." The ordinary
+school tasks cannot have exacted so much time from so gifted a boy: he
+must have read largely outside the regular curriculum, and probably he
+practised himself diligently in Latin verse. For this he would have the
+prompting, and perhaps the aid, of the younger Gill, assistant to his
+father, who, while at the University, had especially distinguished
+himself by his skill in versification. Gill must also have been a man of
+letters, affable and communicative, for Milton in after-years reminds
+him of their "almost constant conversations," and declares that he had
+never left his company without a manifest accession of literary
+knowledge. The Latin school exercises have perished, but two English
+productions of the period, paraphrases of Psalms executed at fifteen,
+remain to attest the boy's proficiency in contemporary English
+literature. Some of the unconscious borrowings attributed to him are
+probably mere coincidences, but there is still enough to evince
+acquaintance with "Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer,
+Fairfax, and Buchanan." The literary merit of these versions seems to us
+to have been underrated. There may be no individual phrase beyond the
+compass of an apt and sensitive boy with a turn for verse-making; but
+the general tone is masculine and emphatic. There is not much to say,
+but what is said is delivered with a "large utterance," prophetic of the
+"os magna soniturum," and justifying his own report of his youthful
+promise:--"It was found that whether aught was imposed me by them that
+had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice, in English or
+other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly by this latter, the style,
+by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live."
+
+Among the incidents of Milton's life at St. Paul's School should not be
+forgotten his friendship with Charles Diodati, the son of a Genevese
+physician settled in England, whose father had been exiled from Italy
+for his Protestantism. A friendship memorable not only as Milton's
+tenderest and his first, but as one which quickened his instinctive love
+of Italian literature, enhanced the pleasure, if it did not suggest the
+undertaking, of his Italian pilgrimage, and doubtless helped to inspire
+the execration which he launched in after years against the slayers of
+the Vaudois. The Italian language is named by him among three which,
+about the time of his migration to the University, he had added to the
+classical and the vernacular, the other two being French and Hebrew. It
+has been remarked, however, that his use of "Penseroso," incorrect both
+in orthography and signification, shows that prior to his visit to Italy
+he was unacquainted with the niceties of the language. He entered as "a
+lesser pensioner" at Christ's College, Cambridge, on February 12, 1625;
+the greatest poetic name in an University roll already including
+Spenser, and destined to include Dryden, Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+Byron, and Tennyson. Why Oxford was not preferred has been much debated.
+The father may have taken advice from the younger Gill, whose Liberalism
+had got him into trouble at that University. He may also have been
+unwilling to place his son in the neighbourhood of his estranged
+relatives. Shortly before Milton's matriculation his sister had married
+Mr. Edward Phillips, of the office of the Clerk of the Crown, now
+abolished, then charged with the issue of Parliamentary and judicial
+writs. From this marriage were to spring the young men who were to find
+an instructor in Milton, as he in one of them a biographer.
+
+The external aspect of Milton's Cambridge is probably not ill
+represented by Lyne's coloured map of half a century earlier, now
+exhibited in the King's Library at the British Museum. Piles of stately
+architecture, from King's College Chapel downward, tower all about, over
+narrow, tortuous, pebble-paved streets, bordered with diminutive,
+white-fronted, red-tiled dwellings, mere dolls' houses in comparison. So
+modest, however, is the chartographer's standard, that a flowery Latin
+inscription assures the men of Cambridge they need but divert
+Trumpington Brook into Clare Ditch to render their town as elegant as
+any in the universe. Sheep and swine perambulate the environs, and green
+spaces are interspersed among the colleges, sparsely set with trees, so
+pollarded as to justify Milton's taunt when in an ill-humour with his
+university:--
+
+   "Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles,
+    Quam male Phoebicolis convenit ille locus!"
+
+His own college stands conspicuous at the meeting of three ways, aptly
+suggestive of Hecate and infernal things. Its spiritual and intellectual
+physiognomy, and that of the university in general, must be learned from
+the exhaustive pages of Professor Masson. A book unpublished when he
+wrote, Ball's life of Dr. John Preston, Master of Emmanuel, vestige of
+an entire continent of submerged Puritanism, also contributes much to
+the appreciation of the place and time. We can here but briefly
+characterize the University as an institution undergoing modification,
+rather by the decay of the old than by the intrusion of the new. The
+revolution by which mathematics became the principal instrument of
+culture was still to be deferred forty years. Milton, who tells us that
+he delighted in mathematics, might have been nearly ignorant of that
+subject if he pleased, and hardly could become proficient in it by the
+help of his Alma Mater. The scholastic philosophy, however, still
+reigned. But even here tradition was shaky and undermined; and in
+matters of discipline the rigid code which nominally governed the
+University was practically much relaxed. The teaching staff was
+respectable in character and ability, including many future bishops. But
+while the academical credentials of the tutors were unimpeachable,
+perhaps not one among them all could show a commission from the Spirit.
+No one then at Cambridge seems to have been in the least degree capable
+of arousing enthusiasm. It might not indeed have been easy for a Newman
+or a Green to captivate the independent soul of Milton, even at this
+susceptible period of his life; failing any approach to such external
+influence, he would be likely to leave Cambridge the same man as he
+entered it. Ere, indeed, he had completed a year's residence, his
+studies were interrupted by a temporary rupture with the University,
+probably attributable to his having been at first placed under an
+uncongenial tutor. William Chappell was an Arminian and a tool of Laud,
+who afterwards procured him preferment in Ireland, and, as Professor
+Masson judges from his treatise on homiletics, "a man of dry, meagre
+nature." His relations with such a pupil could not well be harmonious;
+and Aubrey charges him with unkindness, a vague accusation rendered
+tangible by the interlined gloss, "Whipt him." Hence the legend, so dear
+to Johnson, that Milton was the last man to be flogged at college. But
+Aubrey can hardly mean anything more than that Chappell on some occasion
+struck or beat his pupil, and this interpretation is supported by
+Milton's verses to Diodati, written in the spring of 1626, in which,
+while acknowledging that he had been directed to withdraw from Cambridge
+("_nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor_") he expresses his intention
+of speedily returning:--
+
+   "Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes,
+    Atque iterum raucae murmur adire scholae."
+
+A short rustication would be just the notice the University would be
+likely to take of the conduct of a pupil who had been engaged in a
+scuffle with his tutor, in which the fault was not wholly or chiefly
+his. Formal corporal punishment would have rendered rustication
+unnecessary. That Milton was not thought wholly in the wrong appears
+from his not having been mulcted of a term's residence, his absence
+notwithstanding, and from the still more significant fact that Chappell
+lost his pupil. His successor was Nathaniel Tovey, in whom his
+patroness, the Countess of Bedford, had discerned "excellent talent."
+What Milton thought of him there is nothing to show.
+
+This temporary interruption of the smoothness of Milton's University
+life occurred, as has been seen, quite early in its course. Had it
+indeed implied a stigma upon him or the University, the blot would in
+either case have been effaced by the perfect regularity of his
+subsequent career. He went steadily through the academic course, which
+to attain the degree of Master of Arts, then required seven years'
+residence. He graduated as Bachelor at the proper time, March, 1629, and
+proceeded Master in July, 1632. His general relations with the
+University during the period may be gathered partly from his own account
+in after years, when perhaps he in some degree "confounded the present
+feelings with the past," partly from a remarkable passage in one of his
+academical exercises, fortunately preserved to us, the importance of
+which was first discerned by his editor and biographer Mitford.
+Professor Masson, however, ascertained the date, which is all important.
+We must picture Milton "affable, erect, and manly," as Wood describes
+him, speaking from a low pulpit in the hall of Christ's College, to an
+audience of various standing, from grave doctors to skittish
+undergraduates, with most of whom he was in daily intercourse. The term
+is the summer of 1628, about nine months before his graduation; the
+words were Latin, but we resort to the version of Professor Masson:--
+
+      "Then also there drew and invited me, in no ordinary degree, to
+      undertake this part your very recently discovered graciousness to
+      me. For when, some few months ago, I was about to perform an
+      oratorical office before you, and was under the impression that
+      any lucubrations whatsoever of mine would be the reverse of
+      agreeable to you, and would have more merciful judges in Aeacus
+      and Minos than almost any of you would prove, truly, beyond my
+      fancy, beyond my hope if I had any, they were, as I heard, nay, as
+      I myself felt, received with the not ordinary applause of
+      all--yea, of those who at other times were, on account of
+      disagreements in our studies, altogether of an angry and
+      unfriendly spirit towards me. A generous mode of exercising
+      rivalry this, and not unworthy of a royal breast, if, when
+      friendship itself is wont often to misconstrue much that is
+      blamelessly done, yet then sharp and hostile enmity did not grudge
+      to interpret much that was perchance erroneous, and not a little,
+      doubtless, that was unskilfully said, more clemently than I
+      merited."
+
+It is sufficiently manifest from this that after two years' residence
+Milton had incurred much anger and unpopularity "on account of
+disagreements in our studies," which can scarcely mean anything else
+than his disapprobation of the University system. Notwithstanding this
+he had been received on a former occasion with unexpected favour, and on
+the present is able to say, "I triumph as one placed among the stars
+that so many men, eminent for erudition, and nearly the whole University
+have flocked hither." We have thus a miniature history of Milton's
+connection with his Alma Mater. We see him giving offence by the freedom
+of his strictures on the established practices, and misliking them so
+much as to write in 1642, "Which [University] as in the time of her
+better health and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so
+now much less." But, on the other hand, we see his intellectual revolt
+overlooked on account of his unimpeachable conduct and his brilliant
+talents, and himself selected to represent his college on an occasion
+when an able representative was indispensable. Cambridge had all
+imaginable complacency in the scholar, it was towards the reformer that
+she assumed, as afterwards towards Wordsworth, the attitude of
+
+      "Blind Authority beating with his staff
+    The child that would have led him."
+
+The University and Milton made a practical covenant like Frederick the
+Great and his subjects: she did what she pleased, and he thought what he
+pleased. In sharp contrast with his failure to influence her educational
+methods is "that more than ordinary respect which I found above any of
+my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows
+of that College wherein I spent seven years; who, at my parting, after I
+had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much
+better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters full
+of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I
+was assured of their singular good affection toward me." It may be added
+here that his comeliness and his chastity gained him the appellation of
+"Lady" from his fellow collegians: and the rooms at Christ's alleged to
+have been his are still pointed out as deserving the veneration of poets
+in any event; for whether Milton sacrificed to Apollo in them or not, it
+is certain that in them Wordsworth sacrificed to Bacchus.
+
+For Milton's own sake and ours his departure from the University was the
+best thing that could have happened to him. It saved him from wasting
+his time in instructing others when he ought to be instructing himself.
+From the point of view of advantage to the University, it is perhaps the
+most signal instance of the mischief of strictly clerical fellowships,
+now happily things of the past. Only one fellowship at Christ's was
+tenable by a layman: to continue in academical society, therefore, he
+must have taken orders. Such had been his intention when he first
+repaired to Cambridge, but the young man of twenty-three saw many
+things differently from the boy of sixteen. The service of God was still
+as much as ever the aim of his existence, but he now thought that not
+all service was church service. How far he had become consciously
+alienated from the Church's creed it is difficult to say. He was able,
+at all events, to subscribe the Articles on taking his degree, and no
+trace of Arianism appears in his writings for many years. As late as
+1641 he speaks of "the tri-personal Deity." Curiously enough, indeed,
+the ecclesiastical freethought of the day was then almost entirely
+confined to moderate Royalists, Hales, Chillingworth, Falkland. But he
+must have disapproved of the Church's discipline, for he disapproved of
+all discipline. He would not put himself in the position of those Irish
+clergymen whom Strafford frightened out of their conscientious
+convictions by reminding them of their canonical obedience. This was
+undoubtedly what he meant when he afterwards wrote: "Perceiving that he
+who would take orders must subscribe slave." Speaking of himself a
+little further on as "Church-outed by the prelates," he implies that he
+would not have refused orders if he could have had them on his own
+terms. As regarded Milton personally this attitude was reasonable, he
+had a right to feel himself above the restraints of mere formularies;
+but he spoke unadvisedly if he meant to contend that a priest should be
+invested with the freedom of a Prophet. His words, however, must be
+taken in connection with the peculiar circumstances of the time. It was
+an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful
+persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and Williams, had for
+years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning,
+but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused
+to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But
+if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; he
+had the Church completely under his control, he was fast filling it with
+his partisans and creatures, he was working it for every end which
+Milton most abhorred, and was, in particular, allying it with a king who
+in 1632 had governed three years without a Parliament. The mere thought
+that he must call this hierarch his Father in God, the mere foresight
+that he might probably come into collision with him, and that if he did
+his must be the fate of the earthen vessel, would alone have sufficed to
+deter Milton from entering the Church.
+
+Even so resolute a spirit as Milton's could hardly contemplate the
+relinquishment of every definite calling in life without misgiving, and
+his friends could hardly let it pass without remonstrance. There exists
+in his hand the draft of a letter of reply to the verbal admonition of
+some well-wisher, to whom he evidently feels that he owes deference. His
+friend seems to have thought that he was yielding to the allurements of
+aimless study, neglecting to return as service what he had absorbed as
+knowledge. Milton pleads that his motive must be higher than the love of
+lettered ease, for that alone could never overcome the incentives that
+urge him to action. "Why should not all the hopes that forward youth and
+vanity are afledge with, together with gain, pride, and ambition, call
+me forward more powerfully than a poor, regardless, and unprofitable
+sin of curiosity should be able to withhold?" And what of the "desire of
+honour and repute and immortal fame seated in the breast of every true
+scholar?" That his correspondent may the better understand him, he
+encloses a "Petrarchean sonnet," recently composed, on his twenty-third
+birthday, not one of his best, but precious as the first of his frequent
+reckonings with himself:--
+
+   "How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
+      Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
+      My hasting days fly on with full career;
+      But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
+    Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
+      That I to manhood am arrived so near;
+      And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
+      Than some more timely-happy spirits indu'th.
+    Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
+      It shall be still in strictest measure even
+      To that same lot, however mean or high,
+    Towards which Time leads me, and the Will of Heaven.
+      All is, if I have grace to use it so,
+      As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."
+
+The poetical temperament is especially liable to misgiving and
+despondency, and from this Milton evidently was not exempt. Yet he is
+the same Milton who proclaimed a quarter of a century afterwards--
+
+                            "I argue not
+    Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
+    Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
+    Right onward."
+
+There is something very fine in the steady resolution with which, after
+so fully admitting to himself that his promise is yet unfulfilled, and
+that appearances are against him, he recurs to his purpose, frankly
+owning the while that the gift he craves is Heaven's, and his only the
+application. He had received a lesson against over-confidence in the
+failure of his solitary effort up to this time to achieve a work on a
+large scale. To the eighth and last stanza of his poem, "The Passion of
+Christ," is appended the note: "This subject the author finding to be
+above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what
+was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but soon
+deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The "Hymn on
+the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of far-fetched
+prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through strophes of
+ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and Child seem
+in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity; when
+suddenly, by an exquisite turn, the poet sinks back into his original
+key, and finally harmonizes his strain by the divine repose of
+concluding picture worthy of Correggio:--
+
+        "But see, the Virgin blest
+         Hath laid the Babe to rest;
+    Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
+         Heaven's youngest-teemed star
+         Hath fixed her polished car,
+    Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
+    And all about the courtly stable
+    Bright harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable."
+
+In some degree this magnificent composition loses force in our day from
+its discordance with modern sentiment. We look upon religions as
+members of the same family, and are more interested in their
+resemblances than their antagonisms. Moloch and Dagon themselves appear
+no longer as incarnate fiends, but as the spiritual counterparts of
+antediluvian monsters; and Milton's treatment of the Olympian deities
+jars upon us who remember his obligations to them. If the most Hebrew of
+modern poets, he still owed more to Greece than to Palestine. How living
+a thing Greek mythology was to him from his earliest years appears from
+his college vacation exercise of 1628, where there are lines which, if
+one did not know to be Milton's, one would declare to be Keats's. Among
+his other compositions by the time of his quitting Cambridge are to be
+named the superb verses, "At a Solemn Music," perhaps the most perfect
+expression of his ideal of song; the pretty but over fanciful lines, "On
+a fair Infant dying of a cough;" and the famous panegyric of
+Shakespeare, a fancy made impressive by dignity and sonority of
+utterance.
+
+With such earnest of a true vocation, Milton betook himself to
+retirement at Horton, a village between Colnbrook and Datchet, in the
+south-eastern corner of Buckinghamshire, county of nightingales, where
+his father had settled himself on his retirement from business. This
+retreat of the elder Milton may be supposed to have taken place in 1632,
+for in that year he took his clerk into partnership, probably devolving
+the larger part of the business upon him. But it may have been earlier,
+for in 1626 Milton tells Diodati--
+
+   "Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus ulmo,
+    Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci."
+
+And in a college declamation, which cannot have been later than 1632, he
+"calls to witness the groves and rivers, and the beloved village elms,
+under which in the last past summer I remember having had supreme
+delight with the Muses, when I too, among rural scenes and remote
+forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden
+eternity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Doctor Johnson deemed "the knowledge of nature half the task of a poet,"
+but not until he had written all his poetry did he repair to the
+Highlands. Milton allows natural science and the observation of the
+picturesque no place among the elements of a poetical self-education,
+and his practice differs entirely from that which would in our day be
+adopted by an aspirant happy in equal leisure. Such an one would
+probably have seen no inconsiderable portion of the globe ere he could
+resolve to bury himself in a tiny hamlet for five years. The poems which
+Milton composed at Horton owe so much of their beauty to his country
+residence as to convict him of error in attaching no more importance to
+the influences of scenery. But this very excellence suggests that the
+spell of scenery need not be exactly proportioned to its grandeur.
+
+The beauties of Horton are characterized by Professor Masson as those of
+"rich, teeming, verdurous flat, charming by its appearance of plenty,
+and by the goodly show of wood along the fields and pastures, in the
+nooks where the houses nestle, and everywhere in all directions to the
+sky-bound verge of the landscape." He also notices "the canal-like
+abundance and distribution of water. There are rivulets brimming through
+the meadows among rushes and water-plants; and by the very sides of the
+ways, in lieu of ditches, there are slow runnels, in which one can see
+the minnows swimming." The distant keep of Windsor, "bosomed high in
+tufted trees," is the only visible object that appeals to the
+imagination, or speaks of anything outside of rural peace and
+contentment. Milton's house, as Todd was informed by the vicar of the
+parish, stood till about 1798. If so, however, it is very remarkable
+that the writer of an account of Horton in the _Gentleman's Magazine_
+for August, 1791, who speaks of Milton with veneration, and transcribes
+his mother's epitaph, does not allude to the existence of his house. Its
+site is traditionally identified with that of Berkyn Manor, near the
+church, and an old pigeon-house is asserted to be a remnant of the
+original building. The elder Milton was no doubt merely the tenant; his
+landlord is said to have been the Earl of Bridgewater, but as there is
+no evidence of the Earl having possessed property in Horton, the
+statement may be merely an inference from Milton's poetical connection
+with the family. If not Bridgewater, the landlord was probably
+Bulstrode, the lord of the manor, and chief personage in the village.
+The Miltons still kept a footing in the metropolis. Christopher Milton,
+on his admission to the Inner Temple in September, 1632, is described as
+second son of John Milton of London, and subsequent legal proceedings
+disclose that the father, with the aid of his partner, was still doing
+business as a scrivener in 1637. It may be guessed that the veteran cit
+would not be sorry to find himself occasionally back in town. What with
+social exclusiveness, political and religious controversy, and
+uncongeniality of tastes, the Miltons' country circle of acquaintance
+was probably narrow. After five years of country life the younger Milton
+at all events thought seriously of taking refuge in an Inn of Court,
+"wherever there is a pleasant and shady walk," and tells Diodati, "Where
+I am now I live obscurely and in a cramped manner." He had only just
+made the acquaintance of his distinguished neighbour, Sir Henry Wotton,
+Provost of Eton, by the beginning of 1638, though it appears that he was
+previously acquainted with John Hales.
+
+Milton's five years at Horton were nevertheless the happiest of his
+life. It must have been an unspeakable relief to him to be at length
+emancipated from compulsory exercises, and to build up his mind without
+nod or beck from any quarter. For these blessings he was chiefly
+indebted to his father, whose industry and prudence had procured his
+independence and his rural retirement, and whose tender indulgence and
+noble confidence dispensed him from what most would have deemed the
+reasonable condition that he should at least earn his own living. "I
+will not," he exclaims to his father, "praise thee for thy fulfilment of
+the ordinary duties of a parent, my debt is heavier (_me poscunt
+majora_). Thou hast neither made me a merchant nor a barrister":--
+
+           "Neque enim, pater, ire jubebas
+    Qua via lata patet, qua pronior area lucri,
+    Certaque condendi fulget spes aurea nummi:
+    Nec rapis ad leges, male custoditaque gentis
+    Jura, nec insulsis damnas clamoribus aures."
+
+The stroke at the subserviency of the lawyers to the Crown (_male
+custodita jura gentis_) would be appreciated by the elder Milton, nor
+can we doubt that the old Puritan fully approved his son's resilience
+from a church denied by Arminianism and prelacy. He would not so easily
+understand the dedication of a life to poetry, and the poem from which
+the above citation is taken seems to have been partly composed to smooth
+his repugnance away. He was soon to have stronger proofs that his son
+had not mistaken his vocation: it would be pleasant to be assured that
+the old man was capable of valuing "Comus" and "Lycidas" at their worth.
+The circumstances under which "Comus" was produced, and its subsequent
+publication with the extorted consent of the author, show that Milton
+did not wholly want encouragement and sympathy. The insertion of his
+lines on Shakespeare in the Second Folio (1632) also denotes some
+reputation as a wit. In the main, however, remote from urban circles and
+literary cliques, with few correspondents and no second self in
+sweetheart or friend, he must have led a solitary intellectual life,
+alone with his great ambition, and probably pitied by his acquaintance.
+"The world," says Emerson to the Poet, "is full of renunciations and
+apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool and a
+churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has
+protected his well-beloved flower." The special nature of Milton's
+studies cannot now be exactly ascertained. Of his manner of studying he
+informs Diodati, "No delay, no rest, no care or thought almost of
+anything holds me aside until I reach the end I am making for, and round
+off, as it were, some great period of my studies." Of his object he
+says: "God has instilled into me, at all events, a vehement love of the
+beautiful. Not with so much labour is Ceres said to have sought
+Proserpine as I am wont day and night to seek for the idea of the
+beautiful through all the forms and faces of things, and to follow it
+leading me on as with certain assured traces." We may be sure that he
+read the classics of all the languages which he understood. His copies
+of Euripides, Pindar, Aratus, and Lycophron, are, or have been recently,
+extant, with marginal notes, proving that he weighed what he read. A
+commonplace book contains copious extracts from historians, and he tells
+Diodati that he has read Greek history to the fall of Constantinople. He
+speaks of having occasionally repaired to London for instruction in
+mathematics and music. His own programme, promulgated eight years later,
+but without doubt perfectly appropriate to his Horton period, names
+before all else--"Devout prayer to the Holy Spirit, that can enrich with
+all utterance and knowledge, and send out His Seraphim with the hallowed
+fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases. To
+this must be added select reading, steady observation, and insight into
+all seemly and generous arts and affairs, till which in some measure be
+compassed, I refuse not to sustain this expectation." This is not the
+ideal of a mere scholar, as Mark Paulson thinks he at one time was, and
+would wish him to have remained. "Affairs" are placed fully on a level
+with "arts." Milton was kept from politics in his youth, not by any
+notion of their incompatibility with poetry; but by the more cogent
+arguments at their command "under whose inquisitious and tyrannical
+duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish."
+
+Milton's poetical development is, in many respects, exceptional. Most
+poets would no doubt, in theory, agree with Landor, "febriculis non
+indicari vires, impatientiam ab ignorantia non differre," but their
+faith will not be proved by lack of works, as Landor's precept and
+example require. He, who like Milton lisps in numbers usually sings
+freely in adolescence; he who is really visited by a true inspiration
+generally depends on mood rather than on circumstance. Milton, on the
+other hand, until fairly embarked on his great epic, was comparatively
+an unproductive, and literally an occasional poet. Most of his pieces,
+whether English or Latin, owe their existence to some impulse from
+without: "Comus" to the solicitation of a patron, "Lycidas" to the death
+of a friend. The "Allegro" and the "Penseroso" seem almost the only two
+written at the urgency of an internal impulse; and perhaps, if we knew
+their history, we should discover that they too were prompted by
+extraneous suggestion or provoked into being by accident. Such is the
+way with Court poets like Dryden and Claudian; it is unlike the usual
+procedure of Milton's spiritual kindred. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, write
+incessantly; whatever care they may bestow upon composition, the
+impulse to produce is never absent. With Milton it is commonly dormant
+or ineffectual; he is always studying, but the fertility of his mind
+bears no apparent proportion to the pains devoted to its cultivation. He
+is not, like Wordsworth, labouring at a great work whose secret progress
+fills him with a majestic confidence; or, like Coleridge, dreaming of
+works which he lacks the energy to undertake; or, save once, does he
+seem to have felt with Keats:--
+
+   "Fears that I may cease to be
+      Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
+    Before that books, in high piled charactery,
+      Hold in rich garners the full ripened grain."
+
+He neither writes nor wishes to write; he simply studies, piling up the
+wood on the altar, and conscious of the power to call down fire from
+Heaven when he will. There is something sublime in this assured
+confidence; yet its wisdom is less evident than its grandeur. "No man,"
+says Shelley, "can say, 'I will compose poetry.'" If he cannot say this
+of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He
+cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly;
+whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious
+blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an
+uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he
+told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my
+Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air."
+But the danger of this protracted preparation was shown by his narrow
+escape from poetical shipwreck when the duty of the patriot became
+paramount to that of the poet. The Civil War confounded his
+anticipations of leisurely composition, and but for the disguised
+blessing of his blindness, the mountain of his attainment might have
+been Pisgah rather than Parnassus.
+
+It is in keeping with the infrequency of Milton's moods of overmastering
+inspiration, and the strength of will which enabled him to write
+steadily or abstain from writing at all, that his early compositions
+should be, in general, so much more correct than those of other English
+poets of the first rank. The childish bombast of "Titus Andronicus," the
+commonplace of Wordsworth, the frequent inanity of the youthful
+Coleridge and the youthful Byron, Shelley's extravagance, Keats's
+cockneyism, Tennyson's mawkishness, find no counterpart in Milton's
+early compositions. All these great writers, though the span of some of
+them was but short, lived long enough to blush for much of what they had
+in the days of their ignorance taken for poetry. The mature Milton had
+no cause to be ashamed of anything written by the immature Milton,
+reasonable allowance being made for the inevitable infection of
+contemporary false taste. As a general rule, the youthful exuberance of
+a Shakespeare would be a better sign; faults, no less than beauties,
+often indicate the richness of the soil. But Milton was born to confute
+established opinions. Among other divergencies from usage, he was at
+this time a rare example of an English poet whose faculty was, in large
+measure, to be estimated by his essays in Latin verse. England had up to
+this time produced no distinguished Latin poet, though Scotland had:
+and had Milton's Latin poems been accessible, they would certainly have
+occupied a larger place in the estimation of his contemporaries than his
+English compositions. Even now they contribute no trifling addition to
+his fame, though they cannot, even as exercises, be placed in the
+highest rank. There are two roads to excellence in Latin verse--to write
+it as a scholar, or to write it as a Roman. England has once, and only
+once, produced a poet so entirely imbued with the Roman spirit that
+Latin seemed to come to him like the language of some prior state of
+existence, rather remembered than learned. Landor's Latin verse is hence
+greatly superior to Milton's, not, perhaps, in scholarly elegance, but
+in absolute vitality. It would be poor praise to commend it for fidelity
+to the antique, for it is the antique. Milton stands at the head of the
+numerous class who, not being actually born Romans, have all but made
+themselves so. "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." His Latin
+compositions are delightful, but precisely from the qualities least
+characteristic of his genius as an English poet. Sublimity and
+imagination are infrequent; what we have most commonly to admire are
+grace, ease, polish, and felicitous phrases rather concise in expression
+than weighty with matter. Of these merits the elegies to his friend
+Diodati, and the lines addressed to his father and to Manso, are
+admirable examples. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is in a higher strain, and
+we shall have to recur to it.
+
+Except for his formal incorporation with the University of Oxford, by
+proceeding M.A. there in 1635, and the death of his mother on April 3,
+1637, Milton's life during his residence at Horton, as known to us, is
+entirely in his writings. These comprise the "Sonnet to the
+Nightingale," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," all probably written in 1633;
+"Arcades," probably, and "Comus" certainly written in 1634; "Lycidas" in
+1637. The first three only are, or seem to be, spontaneous overflowings
+of the poetic mind: the others are composed in response to external
+invitations, and in two instances it is these which stand highest in
+poetic desert. Before entering on any criticism, it will be convenient
+to state the originating circumstances of each piece.
+
+"Arcades" and "Comus" both owe their existence to the musician Henry
+Lawes, unless the elder Milton's tenancy of his house from the Earl of
+Bridgewater can be accepted as a fact. Both were written for the
+Bridgewater family, and if Milton felt no special devotion to this
+house, his only motive could have been to aid the musical performance of
+his friend Henry Lawes, whose music is discommended by Burney, but who,
+Milton declares:
+
+   "First taught our English music how to span
+    Words with just note and accent."
+
+Masques were then the order of the day, especially after the splendid
+exhibition of the Inns of Court in honour of the King and Queen,
+February, 1634. Lawes, as a Court musician, took a leading part in this
+representation, and became in request on similar occasions. The person
+intended to be honoured by the "Arcades" was the dowager Countess of
+Derby, mother-in-law of the Earl of Bridgewater, whose father, Lord
+Keeper Egerton, she had married in 1600. The aged lady, to whom more
+than forty years before Spenser had dedicated his "Teares of the Muses,"
+and who had ever since been an object of poetic flattery and homage,
+lived at Harefield, about four miles from Uxbridge; and there the
+"Arcades" were exhibited, probably in 1634. Milton's melodious verses
+were only one feature in a more ample entertainment. That they pleased
+we may be sure, for we find him shortly afterwards engaged on a similar
+undertaking of much greater importance, commissioned by the Bridgewater
+family. In those days Milton had no more of the Puritanic aversion to
+the theatre--
+
+   "Then to the well-trod stage anon,
+    If Jonson's learned sock be on,
+    Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
+    Warble his native wood-notes wild,"
+
+than to the pomps and solemnities of cathedral ritual:--
+
+   "But let my due feet never fail
+    To walk the studious cloisters pale,
+    And love the high-embowed roof,
+    With antique pillars massy proof,
+    And storied windows richly dight,
+    Casting a dim religious light:
+    There let the pealing organ blow,
+    To the full-voic'd quire below,
+    In service high and anthems clear,
+    As may with sweetness through mine ear
+    Dissolve me into ecstacies,
+    And bring all heaven before mine eyes."
+
+He therefore readily fell in with Lawes's proposal to write a masque to
+celebrate Lord Bridgewater's assumption of the Lord Presidency of the
+Welsh Marches. The Earl had entered upon the office in October, 1633,
+and "Comus" was written some time between this and the following
+September. Singular coincidences frequently linked Milton's fate with
+the north-west Midlands, from which his grandmother's family and his
+brother-in-law and his third wife sprung, whither the latter retired,
+where his friend Diodati lived, and his friend King died, and where now
+the greatest of his early works was to be represented in the
+time-hallowed precincts of Ludlow Castle, where it was performed on
+Michaelmas night, in 1634. If, as we should like to think, he was
+himself present, the scene must have enriched his memory and his mind.
+The castle--in which Prince Arthur had spent with his Spanish bride the
+six months of life which alone remained to him, in which eighteen years
+before the performance Charles the First had been installed Prince of
+Wales with extraordinary magnificence, and which, curiously enough, was
+to be the residence of the Cavalier poet, Butler--would be a place of
+resort for English tourists, if it adorned any country but their own.
+The dismantled keep is still an imposing object, lowering from a steep
+hill around whose base the curving Teme alternately boils and gushes
+with tumultuous speed. The scene within must have realized the lines in
+the "Allegro ":
+
+   "Pomp, and feast, and revelry,
+    Mask and antique pageantry,
+    Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
+    In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
+    With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
+    Rain influence."
+
+Lawes himself acted the attendant Spirit, the Lady and the Brothers
+were performed by Lord Bridgewater's youthful children, whose own
+nocturnal bewilderment in Haywood Forest, could we trust a tradition,
+doubted by the critics, but supported by the choice of the neighbourhood
+of Severn as the scene of the drama, had suggested his theme to Milton.
+He is evidently indebted for many incidents and ideas to Peele's "Old
+Wives' Tale," and the "Comus" of Erycius Puteanus; but there is little
+morality in the former production and little fancy in the latter. The
+peculiar blending of the highest morality with the noblest imagination
+is as much Milton's own as the incomparable diction. "I," wrote Sir
+Henry Wootton on receiving a copy of the anonymous edition printed by
+Lawes in 1637, "should much commend the tragical part if the lyrical did
+not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes,
+whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in
+our language." "Although not openly acknowledged by the author," says
+Lawes in his apology for printing prefixed to the poem, "it is a
+legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired that the often
+copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction,
+and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view." The
+publication is anonymous, and bears no mark of Milton's participation
+except a motto, which none but the author could have selected,
+intimating a fear that publication is premature. The title is simply "A
+Maske presented at Ludlow Castle," nor did the piece receive the name of
+"Comus" until after Milton's death.
+
+It has been remarked that one of the most characteristic traits of
+Milton's genius, until he laid hand to "Paradise Lost," is the
+dependence of his activity upon promptings from without. "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. Of
+the elegy's relation to Milton's biography it may be said that it sums
+up the two influences which had been chiefly moulding his mind of late
+years, the natural influences of which he had been the passive recipient
+during his residence at Horton, and the political and theological
+passion with which he was becoming more and more inspired by the
+circumstances of the time. By 1637 the country had been eight years
+without a parliament, and the persecution of Puritans had attained its
+acme. In that year Laud's new Episcopalian service book was forced, or
+rather was attempted to be forced, upon Scotland; Prynne lost his ears;
+and Bishop Williams was fined eighteen thousand pounds and ordered to be
+imprisoned during the King's pleasure. Hence the striking, if
+incongruous, introduction of "The pilot of the Galilean lake," to
+bewail, in the character of a shepherd, the drowned swain in conjunction
+with Triton, Hippotades, and Camus. "The author," wrote Milton
+afterwards, "by occasion, foretells the ruin of the corrupted clergy,
+then in their height." It was a Parthian dart, for the volume was
+printed at the University Press in 1638, probably a little before his
+departure for Italy.
+
+The "Penseroso" and the "Allegro," notwithstanding that each piece is
+the antithesis of the other, are complementary rather than contrary, and
+may be, in a sense, regarded as one poem, whose theme is the praise of
+the reasonable life. It resembles one of those pictures in which the
+effect is gained by contrasted masses of light and shade, but each is
+more nicely mellowed and interfused with the qualities of the other than
+it lies within the resources of pictorial skill to effect. Mirth has an
+undertone of gravity, and melancholy of cheerfulness. There is no
+antagonism between the states of mind depicted; and no rational lover,
+whether of contemplation or of recreation, would find any difficulty in
+combining the two. The limpidity of the diction is even more striking
+than its beauty. Never were ideas of such dignity embodied in verse so
+easy and familiar, and with such apparent absence of effort. The
+landscape-painting is that of the seventeenth century, absolutely true
+in broad effects, sometimes ill-defined and even inaccurate in minute
+details. Some of these blemishes are terrible in nineteenth-century
+eyes, accustomed to the photography of our Brownings and Patmores.
+Milton would probably have made light of them, and perhaps we owe him
+some thanks for thus practically refuting the heresy that inspiration
+implies infallibility. Yet the poetry of his blindness abounds with
+proof that he had made excellent use of his eyes while he had them, and
+no part of his poetry wants instances of subtle and delicate observation
+worthy of the most scrutinizing modern:--
+
+   "Thee, chantress, oft the woods among,
+    I woo, to hear thy evensong;
+    And, missing thee, I walk unseen
+    On the dry, smooth-shaven green."
+
+"The song of the nightingale," remarks Peacock, "ceases about the time
+the grass is mown." The charm, however, is less in such detached
+beauties, however exquisite, than in the condensed opulence--"every
+epithet a text for a canto," says Macaulay--and in the general
+impression of "plain living and high thinking," pursued in the midst of
+every charm of nature and every refinement of culture, combining the
+ideal of Horton with the ideal of Cambridge.
+
+"Lycidas" is far more boldly conventional, not merely in the treatment
+of landscape, but in the general conception and machinery. An initial
+effort of the imagination is required to feel with the poet; it is not
+wonderful that no such wing bore up the solid Johnson. Talk of Milton
+and his fellow-collegian as shepherds! "We know that they never drove
+afield, and that they had no flocks to batten." There is, in fact,
+according to Johnson, neither nature nor truth nor art nor pathos in the
+poem, for all these things are inconsistent with the introduction of a
+shepherd of souls in the character of a shepherd of sheep. A
+nineteenth-century reader, it may be hoped, finds no more difficulty in
+idealizing Edward King as a shepherd than in personifying the ocean calm
+as "sleek Panope and all her sisters," which, to be sure, may have been
+a trouble to Johnson. If, however, Johnson is deplorably prosaic,
+neither can we agree with Pattison that "in 'Lycidas' we have reached
+the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production."
+Its innumerable beauties are rather exquisite than magnificent. It is an
+elegy, and cannot, therefore, rank as high as an equally consummate
+example of epic, lyric, or dramatic art. Even as elegy it is surpassed
+by the other great English masterpiece, "Adonais," in fire and grandeur.
+There is no incongruity in "Adonais" like the introduction of "the pilot
+of the Galilean lake"; its invective and indignation pour naturally out
+of the subject; their expression is not, as in "Lycidas," a splendid
+excrescence. There is no such example of sustained eloquence in
+"Lycidas" as the seven concluding stanzas of "Adonais" beginning, "Go
+thou to Rome." But the balance is redressed by the fact that the
+beauties of "Adonais" are the inimitable. Shelley's eloquence is even
+too splendid for elegy. It wants the dainty thrills and tremors of
+subtle versification, and the witcheries of verbal magic in which
+"Lycidas" is so rich--"the opening eyelids of the morn;" "smooth-sliding
+Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds;" Camus's garment, "inwrought with
+figures dim;" "the great vision of the guarded mount;" "the tender stops
+of various quills;" "with eager thought warbling his Doric lay." It will
+be noticed that these exquisite phrases have little to do with Lycidas
+himself, and it is a fact not to be ignored, that though Milton and
+Shelley doubtless felt more deeply than Dryden when he composed his
+scarcely inferior threnody on Anne Killegrew, whom he had never seen,
+both might have found subjects of grief that touched them more nearly.
+Shelley tells us frankly that "in another's woe he wept his own." We
+cannot doubt of whom Milton was thinking when he wrote:
+
+   "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
+    (That last infirmity of noble mind)
+    To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
+    But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
+    And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
+    Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
+    And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,'
+    Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
+    'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
+    Nor in the glistering foil
+    Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;
+    But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
+    And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
+    As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
+    much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'"
+
+"Comus," the richest fruit of Milton's early genius, is the epitome of
+the man at the age at which he wrote it. It bespeaks the scholar and
+idealist, whose sacred enthusiasm is in some danger of contracting a
+taint of pedantry for want of acquaintance with men and affairs. The
+Elder Brother is a prig, and his dialogues with his junior reveal the
+same solemn insensibility to the humorous which characterizes the
+kindred genius of Wordsworth, and would have provoked the kindly smile
+of Shakespeare. It is singular to find the inevitable flaw of "Paradise
+Lost" prefigured here, and the wicked enchanter made the real hero of
+the piece. These defects are interesting, because they represent the
+nature of Milton as it was then, noble and disinterested to the height
+of imagination, but self-assertive, unmellowed, angular. They disappear
+entirely when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the
+introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina.
+They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with
+the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with
+virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely
+avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one
+need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of
+thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly than in
+"Comus." No drama out of Shakespeare has furnished such a number of the
+noblest familiar quotations. It is, indeed, true that many of these
+jewels are fetched from the mines of other poets: great as Milton's
+obligations, to Nature were, his obligations to books were greater. But
+he has made all his own by the alchemy of his genius, and borrows little
+but to improve. The most remarkable coincidence is with a piece
+certainly unknown to him--Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso," which was
+first acted in 1637, the year of the publication of "Comus," a great
+year in the history of the drama, for the "Cid" appeared in it also. The
+similarity of the situations of Justina tempted by the Demon, and the
+Lady in the power of Comus, has naturally begotten a like train of
+thought in both poets.
+
+     "_Comus._ Nay, Lady, sit; if I but wave this wand,
+    Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,
+    And you a statue, or, as Daphne was,
+    Root-bound, that fled Apollo.
+
+      _Lady._                     Fool, do not boast
+    Thou can'st not touch the freedom of my mind
+    With all thy charms, although this corporal rind
+    Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good."
+
+
+     "_Justina._ Thought is not in my power, but action is.
+    I will not move my foot to follow thee.
+
+      _Demon._ But a far mightier wisdom than thine own
+    Exerts itself within thee, with such power
+    Compelling thee to that which it inclines
+    That it shall force thy step; how wilt thou then
+    Resist, Justina?
+
+      _Justina._ By my free will.
+
+      _Demon._                    I
+    Must force thy will.
+
+      _Justina._           It is invincible.
+    It were not free if thou had'st power upon it."
+
+It must be admitted that where the Spaniard and the Englishman come
+directly into competition the former excels. The dispute between the
+Lady and Comus may be, as Johnson says it is, "the most animating and
+affecting scene in the drama;" but, tried by the dramatic test which
+Calderon bears so well, it is below the exigencies and the possibilities
+of the subject. Nor does the poetry here, quite so abundantly as in the
+other scenes in this unrivalled "suite of speeches," atone for the
+deficiencies of the play.
+
+It is a just remark of Pattison's that "in a mind of the consistent
+texture of Milton's, motives are secretly influential before they emerge
+in consciousness." In September, 1637, Milton had complained to Diodati
+of his cramped situation in the country, and talked of taking chambers
+in London. Within a few months we find this vague project matured into a
+settled scheme of foreign travel. One tie to home had been severed by
+the death of his mother in the preceding April; and his father was to
+find another prop of his old age in his second son, Christopher, about
+to marry and reside with him. "Lycidas" had appeared meanwhile, or was
+to appear, and its bold denunciation of the Romanizing clergy might well
+offend the ruling powers. The atmosphere at home was, at all events,
+difficult breathing for an impotent patriot; and Milton may have come to
+see what we so clearly see in "Comus," that his asperities and
+limitations needed contact with the world. Why speak of the charms of
+Italy, in themselves sufficient allurement to a poet and scholar? His
+father, trustful and unselfish as of old, found the considerable sum
+requisite for a prolonged foreign tour; and in April, 1638, Milton,
+provided with excellent introductions from Sir Henry Wootton and others,
+seeks the enrichment and renovation of his genius in Italy:--
+
+   "And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
+    Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Four times has a great English poet taken up his abode in "the paradise
+of exiles," and remained there until deeply imbued with the spirit of
+the land. The Italian residence of Byron and Shelley, of Landor and
+Browning, has infused into English literature a new element which has
+mingled with its inmost essence. Milton's brief visit could not be of
+equal moment. Italian letters had already done their utmost for him; and
+he did not stay long enough to master the secret of Italian life. A real
+enthusiasm for Italy's classical associations is indicated by his
+original purpose of extending his travels to Greece, an enterprise at
+that period requiring no little disdain of hardship and peril. But it
+would have been an anachronism if he could have contemplated the
+comprehensive and scientific scheme of self-culture by Italian
+influences of every kind which, a hundred and fifty years later, was
+conceived and executed by Goethe. At the time of Milton's visit Italian
+letters and arts sloped midway in their descent from the Renaissance to
+the hideous but humorous rococo so graphically described by Vernon Lee.
+Free thought had perished along with free institutions in the preceding
+century, and as a consequence, though the physical sciences still
+numbered successful cultivators, originality of mind was all but
+extinct. Things, nevertheless, wore a gayer aspect than of late. The
+very completeness of the triumph of secular and spiritual despotism had
+made them less suspicious, surly, and austere. Spanish power was visibly
+decaying. The long line of _zelanti_ Popes had come to an end; and it
+was thought that if the bosom of the actual incumbent could be
+scrutinized, no little complacency in Swedish victories over the Faith's
+defenders would be found. An atmosphere of toleration was diffusing
+itself, bigotry was imperceptibly getting old-fashioned, the most
+illustrious victim of the Inquisition was to be well-nigh the last. If
+the noble and the serious could not be permitted, there was no ban upon
+the amiable and the frivolous: never had the land been so full of petty
+rhymesters, antiquarian triflers, and gregarious literati, banded to
+play at authorship in academies, like the seven Swabians leagued to kill
+the hare. For the rest, the Italy of Milton's day, its superstition and
+its scepticism, and the sophistry that strove to make the two as one;
+its monks and its bravoes; its processions and its pantomimes; its cult
+of the Passion and its cult of Paganism; the opulence of its past and
+the impotence of its present; will be found depicted by sympathetic
+genius in the second volume of "John Inglesant."
+
+Milton arrived in Paris about the end of April or beginning of May. Of
+his short stay there it is only known that he was received with
+distinction by the English Ambassador, Lord Scudamore, and owed to him
+an introduction to one of the greatest men in Europe, Hugo Grotius, then
+residing at Paris as envoy from Christina of Sweden. Travelling by way
+of Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, he arrived about the beginning of
+August at Florence; where, probably by the aid of good recommendations,
+he "immediately contracted the acquaintance of many noble and learned,"
+and doubtless found, with the author of "John Inglesant," that "nothing
+can be more delightful than the first few days of life in Italy in the
+company of polished and congenial men." The Florentine academies, he
+implies answered one of the purposes of modern clubs, and enabled the
+traveller to multiply one good introduction into many. He especially
+mentions Gaddi, Dati, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei, Chimentelli,
+and Francini, of all of whom a full account will be found in Masson. Two
+of them, Dati and Francini, have linked their names with Milton's by
+their encomiums on him inserted in his works. The key-note of these
+surprising productions is struck by Francini when he remarks that the
+heroes of England are accounted in Italy superhuman. If this is so, Dati
+may be justified in comparing a young man on his first and last foreign
+tour to the travelled Ulysses; and Francini in declaring that Thames
+rivals Helicon in virtue of Milton's Latin poems, which alone the
+panegyrist could read. Truly, as Smollett says, Italian is the language
+of compliments. If ludicrous, however, the flattery is not nauseous, for
+it is not wholly insincere. Amid all conventional exaggerations there is
+an under-note of genuine feeling, showing that the writers really had
+received a deep impression from Milton, deeper than they could well
+explain or understand. The bow drawn at a venture did not miss the mark,
+but it is a curious reflection that those of his performances which
+would really have justified their utmost enthusiasm were hieroglyphical
+to them. Such of his literary exercises as they could understand
+consisted, he says, of "some trifles which I had in memory composed at
+under twenty or thereabout; and other things which I had shifted, in
+scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch up among them." The former
+class of compositions may no doubt be partly identified with his college
+declamations and Latin verses. What the "things patched up among them"
+may have been is unknown. It is curious enough that his acquaintance
+with the Italian literati should have been the means of preserving one
+of their own compositions, the "Tina" of Antonio Malatesti, a series of
+fifty sonnets on a mistress, sent to him in manuscript by the author,
+with a dedication to the _illustrissimo signore et padrone
+osservatissimo_. The pieces were not of a kind to be approved by the
+laureate of chastity, and annoyance at the implied slur upon his morals
+may account for his omission of Malatesti from the list of his Italian
+acquaintance. He carried the MS. home, nevertheless, and a copy of it,
+finding its way back to Italy in the eighteenth century, restored
+Malatesti's fifty indiscretions to the Italian Parnassus. That his
+intercourse with men of culture involved freedom of another sort we
+learn from himself. "I have sate among their learned men," he says, "and
+been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as
+they supposed England was, while they themselves did nothing but bemoan
+the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought, that
+this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had
+been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian." Italy
+had never acquiesced in her degradation, though for a century and a half
+to come she could only protest in such conventicles as those frequented
+by Milton.
+
+The very type and emblem of the free spirit of Italy, crushed but not
+conquered, then inhabited Florence in the person of "the starry
+Galileo," lately released from confinement at Arcetri, and allowed to
+dwell in the city under such severe restraint of the Inquisition that no
+Protestant should have been able to gain access to him. It may not have
+been until Milton's second visit in March, 1639, when Galileo had
+returned to his villa, that the English stranger stood unseen before
+him. The meeting between the two great blind men of their century is one
+of the most picturesque in history; it would have been more pathetic
+still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in
+"Paradise Lost," or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen
+years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity
+which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How
+deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison
+of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic
+glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of
+"Paradise Lost," of the points at issue between Ptolemy and
+Copernicus:--
+
+   "Whether the sun predominant in heaven
+    Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun,
+    He from the east his flaming road begin,
+    Or she from west her silent course advance
+    With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps
+    On her soft axle, while she paces even,
+    And bears thee soft with the smooth air along."
+
+It would be interesting to know if Milton's Florentine acquaintance
+included that romantic adventurer, Robert Dudley, strange prototype of
+Shelley in face and fortune, whom Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Dean
+Bargrave encountered at Florence, but whom Milton does not mention. The
+next stage in his pilgrimage was the Eternal City, by this time resigned
+to live upon its past. The revenues of which Protestant revolt had
+deprived it were compensated by the voluntary contributions of the
+lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the
+centres of European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid
+architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was
+well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser
+of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a
+tribe of nephews, inordinately enriched by their indulgent uncle. Milton
+arrived early in October. The most vivid trace of his visit is his
+presence at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, who,
+"himself waiting at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd,
+nay, almost laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly
+most honourable manner." There he heard the singer, Leonora Baroni, to
+whom he inscribed three Latin epigrams, omitted from the fifty-six
+compositions in honour of her published in the following year. But we
+may see her as he saw her in the frontispiece, reproduced in Ademollo's
+monograph upon her. The face is full of sensibility, but not handsome.
+She lived to be a great lady, and if any one spoke of her artist days
+she would say, _Chi le ricercava queste memorie?_ Next to hers, the name
+most entwined with Milton's Roman residence is that of Lucas Holstenius,
+a librarian of the Vatican. Milton can have had little respect for a man
+who had changed his religion to become the dependant of Cardinal
+Barberini, but Holstenius's obliging reception of him extorted his
+gratitude, expressed in an eloquent letter. Of the venerable ruins and
+masterpieces of ancient and modern art which have inspired so many
+immortal compositions, Milton tells us nothing, and but one allusion to
+them is discoverable in his writings. The study of antiquity, as
+distinguished from that of classical authors, was not yet a living
+element in European culture: there is also truth in Coleridge's
+observation that music always had a greater attraction for Milton than
+plastic art.
+
+After two months' stay in Rome, Milton proceeded to Naples, whence,
+after two months' residence, he was recalled by tidings of the impending
+troubles at home, just as he was about to extend his travels to Sicily
+and Greece. The only name associated with his at Naples is that of the
+Marquis Manso, then passing his seventy-ninth year with the halo of
+reverence due to a veteran who fifty years ago had soothed and shielded
+Tasso, and since had protected Marini. He now entertained Milton with
+equal kindness, little dreaming that in return for hospitality he was
+receiving immortality. Milton celebrated his desert as the friend of
+poets, in a Latin poem of singular elegance, praying for a like guardian
+of his own fame, in lines which should never be absent from the memory
+of his biographers. He also unfolded the project which he then cherished
+of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly
+barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets. He is
+silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare. Manso requited the eulogium with an
+epigram and two richly-wrought cups, and told Milton that he would have
+shown him more observance still if he could have abstained from
+religious controversy. Milton had not acted on Sir Henry Wootton's
+advice to him, _il volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti_. "I had made this
+resolution with myself," he says, "not of my own accord to introduce
+conversation about religion; but, if interrogated respecting the faith,
+whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing." To this resolution he
+adhered, he says, during his second two months' visit to Rome,
+notwithstanding threats of Jesuit molestation, which probably were not
+serious. At Florence his friends received him with no less warmth than
+if they had been his countrymen, and with them he spent another two
+months. His way to Venice lay through Bologna and Ferrara, and if his
+sonnets in the Italian language were written in Italy, and all addressed
+to the same person, it was probably at Bologna, since the lady is spoken
+of as an inhabitant of "Reno's grassy vale," and the Reno is a river
+between Bologna and Ferrara. But there are many difficulties in the way
+of this theory, and, on the whole, it seems most reasonable to conclude
+that the sonnets were composed in England, and that their
+autobiographical character is at least doubtful. That nominally
+inscribed to Diodati, however, would well suit Leonora Baroni. Diodati
+had been buried in Blackfriars on August 27, 1638, but Milton certainly
+did not learn the fact until after his visit to Naples, and possibly not
+until he came to pass some time at Geneva with Diodati's uncle. He had
+come to Geneva from Venice, where he had made some stay, shipping off to
+England a cargo of books collected in Italy, among which were many of
+"immortal notes and Tuscan air." These, we may assume, he found awaiting
+him when he again set foot on his native soil, about the end of July,
+1639.
+
+Milton's conduct on his return justifies Wordsworth's commendation:--
+
+                              "Thy heart
+    The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
+
+Full, as his notebooks of the period attest, of magnificent aspiration
+for "flights above the Aonian mount," he yet quietly sat down to educate
+his nephews, and lament his friend. His brother-in-law Phillips had been
+dead eight years, leaving two boys, Edward and John, now about nine and
+eight respectively. Mrs. Phillips's second marriage had added two
+daughters to the family, and from whatever cause, it was thought best
+that the education of the sons should be conducted by their uncle. So it
+came to pass that "he took him a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, at
+the house of one Russel, a tailor;" Christopher Milton continuing to
+live with his father.
+
+We may well believe that when the first cares of resettlement were over,
+Milton found no more urgent duty than the bestowal of a funeral tribute
+upon his friend Diodati. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is the finest of his
+Latin poems, marvellously picturesque in expression, and inspired by
+true manly grief. In Diodati he had lost perhaps the only friend whom,
+in the most sacred sense of the term, he had ever possessed; lost him
+when far away and unsuspicious of the already accomplished stroke; lost
+him when returning to his side with aspirations to be imparted, and
+intellectual treasures to be shared. _Bis ille miser qui serus amavit._
+All this is expressed with earnest emotion in truth and tenderness,
+surpassing "Lycidas," though void of the varied music and exquisite
+felicities which could not well be present in the conventionalized idiom
+of a modern Latin poet. The most pathetic passage is that in which he
+contrasts the general complacency of animals in their kind with man's
+dependence for sympathy on a single breast; the most biographically
+interesting where he speaks of his plans for an epic on the story of
+Arthur, which he seems about to undertake in earnest. But the impulses
+from without which generally directed the course of this seemingly
+autocratic, but really susceptible, nature, urged him in quite a
+different direction: for some time yet he was to live, not make a poem.
+
+The tidings which, arriving at Naples about Christmas, 1638, prevailed
+upon Milton to abandon his projected visit to Sicily and Greece, were no
+doubt those of the revolt of Scotland, and Charles's resolution to
+quell it by force of arms. Ere he had yet quitted Italy, the King's
+impotence had been sufficiently demonstrated, and about a month ere he
+stood on English soil the royal army had "disbanded like the break-up of
+a school." Milton may possibly have regretted his hasty return, but
+before many months had passed it was plain that the revolution was only
+beginning. Charles's ineffable infatuation brought on a second Scottish
+war, ten times more ridiculously disastrous than the first, and its
+result left him no alternative but the convocation (November, 1640) of
+the Long Parliament, which sent Laud to the Tower and Strafford to the
+block, cleared away servile judges and corrupt ministers, and made the
+persecuted Puritans persecutors in their turn. Not a member of this
+grave assemblage, perhaps, but would have laughed if told that not its
+least memorable feat was to have prevented a young schoolmaster from
+writing an epic.
+
+Milton had by this time found the lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard
+insufficient for him, and had taken a house in Aldersgate Street, beyond
+the City wall, and suburban enough to allow him a garden. "This street,"
+writes Howell, in 1657, "resembleth an Italian street more than any
+other in London, by reason of the spaciousness and uniformity of the
+buildings and straightness thereof, with the convenient distance of the
+houses." He did not at this time contemplate mixing actively in
+political or religious controversy.
+
+      "I looked about to see if I could get any place that would hold
+      myself and my books, and so I took a house of sufficient size in
+      the city; and there with no small delight I resumed my intermitted
+      studies; cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to
+      God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that
+      task."
+
+But this was before the convocation of the Long Parliament. When it had
+met,
+
+      "Perceiving that the true way to liberty followed on from these
+      beginnings, inasmuch also as I had so prepared myself from my
+      youth that, above all things, I could not be ignorant what is of
+      Divine and what of human right, I resolved, though I was then
+      meditating certain other matters, to transfer into this struggle
+      all my genius and all the strength of my industry."
+
+Milton's note-books, to be referred to in another place, prove that he
+did not even then cease to meditate themes for poetry, but practically
+he for eighteen years ceased to be a poet.
+
+There is no doubt something grating and unwelcome in the descent of the
+scholar from regions of serene culture to fierce political and religious
+broils. But to regret with Pattison that Milton should, at this crisis
+of the State, have turned aside from poetry to controversy is to regret
+that "Paradise Lost" should exist. Such a work could not have proceeded
+from one indifferent to the public weal, and if Milton had been capable
+of forgetting the citizen in the man of letters we may be sure that "a
+little grain of conscience" would ere long have "made him sour." It is
+sheer literary fanaticism to speak with Pattison of "the prostitution of
+genius to political party." Milton is as much the idealist in his prose
+as in his verse; and although in his pamphlets he sides entirely with
+one of the two great parties in the State, it is not as its instrument,
+but as its prophet and monitor. He himself tells us that controversy is
+highly repugnant to him.
+
+      "I trust to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure
+      to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a
+      calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident
+      thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse
+      disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in
+      the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come in to the
+      dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk."
+
+But he felt that if he allowed such motives to prevail with him, it
+would be said to him:
+
+      "Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now again at the
+      foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest, What matters it
+      for thee or thy bewailing? When time was, thou would'st not find a
+      syllable of all that thou hast read or studied to utter on her
+      behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired
+      thoughts, but of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence,
+      the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be
+      adorned or beautified; but when the cause of God and His Church
+      was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee
+      which thou hast, God listened if He could hear thy voice among His
+      zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward
+      be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee."
+
+A man with "Paradise Lost" in him must needs so think and act, and, much
+as it would have been to have had another "Comus" or "Lycidas," were not
+even such well exchanged for a hymn like this, the high-water mark of
+English impassioned prose ere Milton's mantle fell upon Ruskin?
+
+      "Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable.
+      Parent of angels and men! next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King,
+      Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume,
+      ineffable and everlasting Love! And Thou, the third subsistence of
+      Divine Infinitude, illuminating Spirit, the joy and solace of
+      created things! one Tri-personal godhead! look upon this Thy poor
+      and almost spent and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to
+      these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they
+      devour Thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broke into Thy
+      vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls
+      of Thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs
+      that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting
+      the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and
+      scorpions to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal
+      darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth
+      again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird
+      of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this
+      our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes, and
+      struggling against the grudges of more dreaded calamities.
+
+      "O Thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody
+      inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking
+      the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless
+      revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were
+      quite breathless of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of
+      covenant with us; and, having first well-nigh freed us from
+      anti-Christian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic Empire to a
+      glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about
+      her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our
+      half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of
+      sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat
+      through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive
+      spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom:
+      that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how, for
+      us, the northern ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered
+      with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw
+      of Hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction,
+      ere she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast.
+
+      "O how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear,
+      when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest
+      miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest happiness to
+      come? Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from
+      the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes, now unite us entirely
+      and appropriate us to Thyself, tie us everlastingly in willing
+      homage to the prerogative of Thy eternal throne.
+
+      "And now we know, O Thou, our most certain hope and defence, that
+      Thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great
+      whore, and have joined their plots with that sad, intelligencing
+      tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies
+      thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas:
+      but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought;
+      let them decree, and do Thou cancel it; let them gather
+      themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be
+      broken; let them embattle, and be broken, for Thou art with us.
+
+      "Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may
+      perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty
+      measures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous
+      judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and
+      warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual
+      practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the
+      rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy
+      emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian
+      people at that day, when Thou, the Eternal and shortly-expected
+      King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the
+      world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious
+      and just commonwealths, shall put an end to all earthly tyrannies,
+      proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and
+      earth; where they undoubtedly, that by their labours, counsels,
+      and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion,
+      and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the
+      blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and
+      thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of
+      beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle
+      of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in
+      over-measure for ever.
+
+      "But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the
+      true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire
+      to high dignity, rule and promotion here, after a shameful end in
+      this life (which God grant them), shall be thrown down eternally
+      into the darkest and deepest gulf of Hell, where, under the
+      despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned,
+      that in the anguish of their torture, shall have no other ease
+      than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their
+      slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the
+      basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and
+      down-trodden vassals of perdition."
+
+The five pamphlets in which Milton enunciated his views on Church
+Government fall into two well-marked chronological divisions. Three--"Of
+Reformation touching Church Discipline in England," "Of Prelatical
+Episcopacy," "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against
+Smectymnuus"--which appeared almost simultaneously, belong to the
+middle of 1641, when the question of episcopacy was fiercely agitated.
+Two--"The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy," and "The
+Apology for Smectymnuus,"[1] belong to the early part of 1642, when the
+bishops had just been excluded from the House of Lords. To be just to
+Milton we must put ourselves in his position. At the present day forms
+of church government are usually debated on the ground of expediency,
+and even those to whom they seem important cannot regard them as they
+were regarded by Milton's contemporaries. Many may protest against
+Episcopacy receiving especial recognition from the State, but no one
+dreams of abolishing it, or of endowing another form of ecclesiastical
+administration in its room. It is no longer contended that the national
+religion should be changed, the contention is that no religion should be
+national, but that all should be placed on an impartial footing. But
+Milton at this time desired a theocracy, and nothing doubted that he
+could produce a pattern agreeable in every respect to the Divine will if
+only Prelacy could be hurled after Popery. The controversy, therefore,
+assumed far grander proportions than would be possible in our day, when
+it is three-fourths a protest against the airs of superiority which the
+alleged successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards
+teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than
+their own to the Apostolic model. What would seem exaggerated now was
+then perfectly in place. Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for
+which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the
+tongues of angels too melodious. As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry
+the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor
+ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the
+interminable period must not unfold itself in heights and hollows like
+the incoming tide of ocean, nor peal forth melodious thunder like a
+mighty organ. But, considered as argumentative compositions, they are
+exceedingly weak. No masculine head could be affected by them; but a
+manly heart may easily imbibe the generous contagion of their noble
+enthusiastic idealism. No man with a single fibre of ideality or
+enthusiasm can help confessing that Milton has risen to a transcendent
+height, and he may imagine that it has been attained by the ladder of
+reason rather than the pinion of poetry. Such an one may easily find
+reasons for agreeing with Milton in many inspired outbursts of eloquence
+simulating the logic that is in fact lacking to them. The following
+splendid passage, for instance, and there are very many like it, merely
+proves that a seat in the House of Lords is not essential to the
+episcopal office, which no one ever denied. It would have considerable
+force if the question involved the nineteenth century one of the Pope's
+temporal sovereignty:--
+
+      "Certainly there is no employment more honourable, more worthy to
+      take up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free
+      nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of heavenly truth
+      from God to man, and by the faithful work of holy doctrine to
+      procreate a number of faithful men, making a kind of creation like
+      to God's by infusing his spirit and likeness into them, to their
+      salvation, as God did into him; arising to what climate soever he
+      turn him, like that Sun of Righteousness that sent him, with
+      healing in his wings, and new light to break in upon the chill and
+      gloomy hearts of his hearers, raising out of darksome barrenness a
+      delicious and fragrant spring of saving knowledge and good works.
+      Can a man thus employed find himself discontented or dishonoured
+      for want of admittance to have a pragmatical voice at sessions and
+      jail deliveries? or because he may not as a judge sit out the
+      wrangling noise of litigious courts to shrive the purses of
+      unconfessing and unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be
+      discouraged though men call him not lord, whereas the due
+      performance of his office would gain him, even from lords and
+      princes, the voluntary title of father?"
+
+When it was said of Robespierre, _cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit
+tout ce qu'il dit_, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief
+place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal
+sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity
+to family life, to the horror of many nominal allies. His treatise on
+Divorce was the next of his publications in chronological order, but is
+so entwined with his domestic life that it will be best to postpone it
+until we again take up the thread of his personal history, and to pass
+on for the present to his next considerable writings, his tracts on
+education and on the freedom of the press.
+
+Milton's tract on Education, like so many of his performances, was the
+fruit of an impulse from without. "Though it be one of the greatest and
+noblest designs that can be thought on, and for want of which this
+nation perishes, I had not at this time been induced but by your earnest
+entreaties and serious conjurements." The efficient cause thus referred
+to existed in the person of Samuel Hartlib, philanthropist and
+polypragmatist, precursor of the Franklins and Rumfords of the
+succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction,
+Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country
+behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour
+applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal
+hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather
+however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by
+any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings to
+which he devoted himself were two of no less moment than the union of
+British and foreign Protestants, and the reform of English education by
+the introduction of the methods of Comenius. This Moravian pastor, the
+Pestalozzi of his age, had first of men grasped the idea that the
+ordinary school methods were better adapted to instil a knowledge of
+words than a knowledge of things. He was, in a word, the inventor of
+object lessons. He also strove to organize education as a connected
+whole from the infant school to the last touch of polish from foreign
+travel. Milton alludes almost scornfully to Comenius in his preface to
+Hartlib, but his tract is nevertheless imbued with the Moravian's
+principles. His aim, like Comenius's, is to provide for the instruction
+of all, "before the years of puberty, in all things belonging to the
+present and future life." His view is as strictly utilitarian as
+Comenius's. "Language is but the instrument conveying to us things
+useful to be known." Of the study of language as intellectual discipline
+he says nothing, and his whole course of instruction is governed by the
+desire of imparting useful knowledge. Whatever we may think of the
+system of teaching which in our day allows a youth to leave school
+disgracefully ignorant of physical and political geography, of history
+and foreign languages, it cannot be denied that Milton goes into the
+opposite extreme, and would overload the young mind with more
+information than it could possibly digest. His scheme is further
+vitiated by a fault which we should not have looked for in him,
+indiscriminate reverence for the classical writers, extending to
+subjects in which they were but children compared with the moderns. It
+moves something more than a smile to find ingenuous youth referred to
+Pliny and Solinus for instruction in physical science; and one wonders
+what the agricultural Hartlib thought of the proposed course of "Cato,
+Varro, and Columella," whose precepts are adapted for the climate of
+Italy. Another error, obvious to any dunce, was concealed from Milton by
+his own intellectual greatness. He legislates for a college of Miltons.
+He never suspects that the course he is prescribing would be beyond the
+abilities of nine hundred and ninety-nine scholars in a thousand, and
+that the thousandth would die of it. If a difficulty occurs he
+contemptuously puts it aside. He has not provided for Italian, but can
+it not "be easily learned at any odd hour"? "Ere this time the Hebrew
+tongue" (of which we have not hitherto heard a syllable), "might have
+been gained, whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldee and
+the Syrian dialect." This sublime confidence in the resources of the
+human intellect is grand, but it marks out Milton as an idealist, whose
+mission it was rather to animate mankind by the greatness of his
+thoughts than to devise practical schemes for human improvement. As an
+ode or poem on education, Milton's tract, doubtless, has delivered many
+a teacher and scholar from bondage to routine; and no man's aims are so
+high or his thoughts so generous that he might not be further profited
+and stimulated by reading it. As a practical treatise it is only
+valuable for its emphatic denunciation of the folly of teasing youth,
+whose element is the concrete, with grammatical abstractions, and the
+advice to proceed to translation as soon as possible, and to keep it up
+steadily throughout the whole course. Neglect of this precept is the
+principal reason why so many youths not wanting in capacity, and
+assiduously taught, leave school with hardly any knowledge of
+languages. Milton's scheme is also remarkable for its bold dealing with
+day schools and universities, which it would have entirely superseded.
+
+The next publication of Milton's is another instance of the dependence
+of his intellectual workings upon the course of events outside him. We
+owe the "Areopagitica," not to the lonely overflowings of his soul, or
+even to the disinterested observation of public affairs, but to the real
+jeopardy he had incurred by his neglect to get his books licensed. The
+Long Parliament had found itself, in 1643, with respect to the Press,
+very much in the position of Lord Canning's government in India at the
+time of the Mutiny. It marks the progress of public opinion that,
+whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent
+inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure,
+the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous,
+seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had
+no right to exist, and should be nipped in the bud by the appointment of
+licensers. Twelve London ministers, therefore, were nominated to license
+books in divinity, which was equivalent to enacting that nothing
+contrary to Presbyterian orthodoxy should be published in England.[2]
+Other departments, not forgetting poetry and fiction, were similarly
+provided for. The ordinance is dated June 14, 1643. Milton had always
+contemned the licensing regulations previously existing, and within a
+month his brain was busy with speculations which no reverend licenser
+could have been expected to confirm with an imprimatur. About August 1st
+the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" appeared, with no recognition
+of or from a licenser; and the second edition, published in the
+following February, equally infringed the Parliamentary ordinance. No
+notice appears to have been taken until the election of a new Master of
+the Stationers' Company, about the middle of 1644. The Company had an
+interest in the enforcement of the ordinance, which was aimed at piracy
+as well as sedition and heresy; and whether for this reason, or at the
+instigation of Milton's adversaries, they (August 24th) petitioned
+Parliament to call him to account. The matter was referred to a
+committee, but more urgent business thrust it out of sight. Milton,
+nevertheless, had received his marching orders, and on November 24,
+1644, appeared "Areopagitica; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
+Printing": itself unlicensed.
+
+The "Areopagitica" is by far the best known of Milton's prose writings,
+being the only one whose topic is not obsolete. It is also composed with
+more care and art than the others. Elsewhere he seeks to overwhelm, but
+here to persuade. He could without insincerity profess veneration for
+the Lords and Commons to whom his discourse is addressed, and he spares
+no pains to give them a favourable opinion both of his dutifulness and
+his reasonableness. More than anywhere else he affects the character of
+a practical man, pressing home arguments addressed to the understanding
+rather than to the pure reason. He points out sensibly, and for him
+calmly, that the censorship is a Papal invention, contrary to the
+precedents of antiquity; that while it cannot prevent the circulation of
+bad books, it is a grievous hindrance to good ones; that it destroys the
+sense of independence and responsibility essential to a manly and
+fruitful literature. We hear less than might have been expected about
+first principles, of the sacredness of conscience, of the obligation on
+every man to manifest the truth as it is within him. He does not dispute
+that the magistrate may suppress opinions esteemed dangerous to society
+after they have been published; what he maintains is that publication
+must not be prevented by a board of licensers. He strikes at the censor,
+not at the Attorney-General. This judicious caution cramped Milton's
+eloquence; for while the "Areopagitica" is the best example he has given
+us of his ability as an advocate, the diction is less magnificent than
+usual. Yet nothing penned by him in prose is better known than the
+passage beginning, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant
+nation;" and none of his writings contain so many seminal sentences,
+pithy embodiments of vital truths. "Revolutions of ages do not oft
+recover the loss of a rejected truth." "A dram of well-doing should be
+preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil
+doing. For God more esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
+person than the restraint of ten vicious." "Opinion in good men is but
+knowledge in the making." "A man maybe a heretic in the truth." Towards
+the end the argument takes a wider sweep, and Milton, again the poet and
+the seer, hails with exultation the approach of the time he thinks he
+discerns when all the Lord's people shall be prophets. "Behold now this
+vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed
+and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more
+anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of
+armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and
+heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching,
+revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their
+homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation." He clearly
+indicates that he regards the licensing ordinance as not really the
+offspring of an honest though mistaken concern for religion and
+morality, but as a device of Presbyterianism to restrain this outpouring
+of the spirit and silence Independents as well as Royalists.
+Presbyterianism had indeed been weighed in the balance and found
+wanting, and Milton's pamphlet was the handwriting on the wall. The fine
+gold must have become very dim ere a Puritan pen could bring itself to
+indite that scathing satire on the "factor to whose care and credit the
+wealthy man may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some
+divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres; resigns
+the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys into
+his custody; and, indeed, makes the very person of that man his
+religion--esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and
+commendation of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now
+no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and
+comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He
+entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him, his religion
+comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped and sumptuously laid to
+sleep, rises, is saluted; and after the malmsey or some well-spiced
+brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would
+have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his
+religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the
+shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling
+passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless,
+congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was
+humour. And now, surely as ever Saul was among the prophets, behold
+Milton among the wits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Ranging with Milton's spirit over the "fresh woods and pastures new,"
+foreshadowed in the closing verse of "Lycidas," we have left his mortal
+part in its suburban dwelling in Aldersgate Street, which he seems to
+have first inhabited shortly before the convocation of the Long
+Parliament in November, 1640. His visible occupations are study and the
+instruction of his nephews; by and by he becomes involved in the
+revolutionary tempest that rages around; and, while living like a
+pedagogue, is writing like a prophet. He is none the less cherishing
+lofty projects for epic and drama; and we also learn from Phillips that
+his society included "some young sparks," and may assume that he then,
+as afterwards--
+
+   "Disapproved that care, though wise in show,
+    That with superfluous burden loads the day,
+    And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains."
+
+There is eloquent testimony of his interest in public affairs in his
+subscription of four pounds, a large sum in those days, for the relief
+of the homeless Protestants of Ulster. The progress of events must have
+filled him with exultation, and when at length civil war broke out in
+September, 1642, Parliament had no more zealous champion. His zeal,
+however, did not carry him into the ranks, for which some biographers
+blame him. But if he thought that he could serve his cause better with a
+pamphlet than with a musket, surely he had good reason for what he
+thought. It should seem, moreover, that if Milton detested the enemy's
+principles, he respected his pikes and guns:--
+
+WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY [NOVEMBER, 1642.]
+
+    Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms,
+        Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
+        If deed of honour did thee ever please,
+        Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
+    He can requite thee, for he knows the charms
+        That call fame on such gentle acts as these,
+        And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,
+        Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.
+    Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower:
+        The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
+        The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
+    Went to the ground; and the repeated air
+        Of sad Electra's poet had the power
+        To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.
+
+
+If this strain seems deficient in the fierceness befitting a besieged
+patriot, let it be remembered that Milton's doors were literally
+defenceless, being outside the rampart of the City.
+
+We now approach the most curious episode of Milton's life, and the most
+irreconcilable with the conventional opinion of him. Up to this time
+this heroic existence must have seemed dull to many, for it has been a
+life without love. He has indeed, in his beautiful Sonnet to the
+Nightingale (about 1632), professed himself a follower of Love: but if
+so, he has hitherto followed at a most respectful distance. Yet he had
+not erred, when in the Italian sonnet, so finely rendered in Professor
+Masson's biography, he declared the heart his vulnerable point:--
+
+   "Young, gentle-natured, and a simple wooer,
+        Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly,
+        Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I
+        Offer devoutly; and by tokens sure
+    I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure,
+        In its conceptions graceful, good, and high.
+        When the world roars, and flames the startled sky;
+        In its own adamant it rests secure;
+    As free from chance and malice ever found,
+        And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse,
+        As it is loyal to each manly thing
+    And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse.
+        Only in that part is it not so sound
+        Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting."
+
+It is highly probable that the very reaction from party strife turned
+the young man's fancies to thoughts of love in the spring of 1643.
+Escorted, we must fear, by a chorus of mocking cuckoos, Milton, about
+May 21st, rode into the country on a mysterious errand. It is a ghoulish
+and ogreish idea, but it really seems as if the elder Milton quartered
+his progeny upon his debtors, as the ichneumon fly quarters hers upon
+caterpillars. Milton had, at all events for the last sixteen years, been
+regularly drawing interest from an Oxfordshire squire, Richard Powell
+of Forest Hill, who owed him L500, which must have been originally
+advanced by the elder Milton. The Civil War had no doubt interfered with
+Mr. Powell's ability to pay interest, but, on the other hand, must have
+equally impaired Milton's ability to exact it; for the Powells were
+Cavaliers, and the Parliament's writ would run but lamely in loyal
+Oxfordshire. Whether Milton went down on this eventful Whitsuntide in
+the capacity of a creditor cannot now be known; and a like uncertainty
+envelops the precise manner of the metamorphosis of Mary Powell into
+Mary Milton. The maiden of seventeen may have charmed him by her
+contrast to the damsels of the metropolis, she may have shielded him
+from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the
+Royalist headquarters, she may have won his heart while pleading for her
+harassed father; he may have fancied hers a mind he could mould to
+perfect symmetry and deck with every accomplishment, as the Gods
+fashioned and decorated Pandora. Milton also seems to imply that his, or
+his bride's, better judgment was partly overcome by "the persuasion of
+friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all." It is
+possible, too, that he had long been intimate with his debtor's family,
+and that Mary had previously made an impression upon him. If not, his
+was the most preposterously precipitate of poets' marriages; for a month
+after leaving home he presented a mistress to his astounded nephews and
+housekeeper. The newly-wedded pair were accompanied or quickly followed
+by a bevy of the bride's friends and relatives, who danced and sang and
+feasted for a week in the quiet Puritan house, then departed--and after
+a few weeks Milton finds himself moved to compose his tract on the
+"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce."
+
+How many weeks? The story seemed a straightforward one until Professor
+Masson remarked what had before escaped attention. According to
+Phillips, an inmate of the house at the period--"By that time she had
+for a month, or thereabouts, led a philosophical life (after having been
+used to a great house, and much company and joviality), her friends,
+possibly incited by her own desire, made earnest suit by letter to have
+her company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, on
+condition of her return at the time appointed, Michaelmas or thereabout.
+Michaelmas being come, and no news of his wife's return, he sent for her
+by letter, and receiving no answer sent several other letters, which
+were also unanswered, so that at last he dispatched down a
+foot-messenger; but the messenger came back without an answer. He
+thought it would be dishonourable ever to receive her again after such a
+repulse, and accordingly wrote two treatises," &c. Here we are
+distinctly assured that Mary Milton's desertion of her husband, about
+Michaelmas, was the occasion of his treatise on divorce. It follows
+that Milton's tract must have been written after Michaelmas. But the
+copy in the British Museum belonged to the bookseller Thomason, who
+always inscribed the date of publication on every tract in his
+collection, when it was known to him, and his date, as Professor Masson
+discovered, is August 1. Must we believe that Phillips's account is a
+misrepresentation? Must we, in Pattison's words, "suppose that Milton
+was occupying himself with a vehement and impassioned argument in favour
+of divorce for incompatibility of temper, during the honeymoon"? It
+would certainly seem so, and if Milton is to be vindicated it can only
+be by attention to traits in his character, invisible on its surface,
+but plainly discoverable in his actions.
+
+The grandeur of Milton's poetry, and the dignity and austerity of his
+private life, naturally incline us to regard him as a man of iron will,
+living by rule and reason, and exempt from the sway of passionate
+impulse. The incident of his marriage, and not this incident alone,
+refutes this conception of his character; his nature was as lyrical and
+mobile as a poet's should be. We have seen "Comus" and "Lycidas" arise
+at another's bidding, we shall see a casual remark beget "Paradise
+Regained." He never attempts to utter his deepest religious convictions
+until caught by the contagious enthusiasm of a revolution. If any
+incident in his life could ever have compelled him to speak or die it
+must have been the humiliating issue of his matrimonial adventure. To be
+cast off after a month's trial like an unsatisfactory servant, to
+forfeit the hope of sympathy and companionship which had allured him
+into the married state, to forfeit it, unless the law could be altered,
+for ever! The feelings of any sensitive man must find some sort of
+expression in such an emergency. At another period what Milton learned
+in suffering would no doubt have been taught in song. But pamphlets were
+then the order of the day, and Milton's "Doctrine and Discipline of
+Divorce," in its first edition, is as much the outpouring of an
+overburdened heart as any poem could have been. It bears every mark of a
+hasty composition, such as may well have been written and printed within
+the last days of July, following Mary Milton's departure. It is short.
+It deals with the most obvious aspects of the question. It is meagre in
+references and citations; two authors only are somewhat vaguely alleged,
+Grotius and Beza. It does not contain the least allusion to his domestic
+circumstances, nor anything unless the thesis itself, that could hinder
+his wife's return. Everything betokens that it was composed in the
+bitterness of wounded feeling upon the incompatibility becoming
+manifest; but that he had not yet arrived at the point of demanding the
+application of his general principle to his own special case. That point
+would be reached when Mary Milton deliberately refused to return, and
+the chronology of the greatly enlarged second edition, published in the
+following February, entirely confirms Phillips's account. In one point
+only he must be wrong. Mary Milton's return to her father's house cannot
+have been a voluntary concession on Milton's part, but must have been
+wrung from him after bitter contentions. Could we look into the
+household during those weeks of wretchedness, we should probably find
+Milton exceedingly deficient in consideration for the inexperienced girl
+of half his age, brought from a gay circle of friends and kindred to a
+grave, studious house. But it could not well have been otherwise. Milton
+was constitutionally unfit "to soothe and fondle," and his theories
+cannot have contributed to correct his practice. His "He for God only,
+she for God in him," condenses every fallacy about woman's true relation
+to her husband and her Maker. In his Tractate on Education there is not
+a word on the education of girls, and yet he wanted an intellectual
+female companion. Where should the woman be found at once submissive
+enough and learned enough to meet such inconsistent exigencies? It might
+have been said to him as afterwards to Byron: "You talk like a
+Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in
+the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe
+for not containing a sylph."
+
+If Milton's first tract on divorce had not been a mere impromptu,
+extorted by the misery of finding "an image of earth and phlegm" in her
+"with whom he looked to be the co-partner of a sweet and gladsome
+society," he would certainly have rendered his argument more cogent and
+elaborate. The tract, in its inspired portions, is a fine impassioned
+poem, fitter for the Parliament of Love than the Parliament at
+Westminster. The second edition is far more satisfactory as regards that
+class of arguments which alone were likely to impress the men of his
+generation, those derived from the authority of the Scriptures and of
+divines. In one of his principal points all Protestants and philosophers
+will confess him to be right, his reference of the matter to Scripture
+and reason, and repudiation of the mediaeval canon law. It is not here,
+nevertheless, that Milton is most at home. The strength of his position
+is his lofty idealism, his magnificent conception of the institution he
+discusses, and his disdain for whatever degrades it to conventionality
+or mere expediency. "His ideal of true and perfect marriage," says Mr.
+Ernest Myers, "appeared to him so sacred that he could not admit that
+considerations of expediency might justify the law in maintaining sacred
+any meaner kind, or at least any kind in which the vital element of
+spiritual harmony was not." Here he is impregnable and above criticism,
+but his handling of the more sublunary departments of the subject must
+be unsatisfactory to legislators, who have usually deemed his sublime
+idealism fitter for the societies of the blest than for the imperfect
+communities of mankind. When his "doctrine and discipline" shall have
+been sanctioned by lawgivers, we may be sure that the world is already
+much better, or much worse.
+
+As the girl-wife vanishes from Milton's household her place is taken by
+the venerable figure of his father. The aged man had removed with his
+son Christopher to Reading, probably before August, 1641, when the birth
+of a child of his name--Christopher's offspring as it should
+seem--appears in the Reading register. Christopher was to exemplify the
+law of reversion to a primitive type. Though not yet a Roman Catholic
+like his grandfather, he had retrograded into Royalism, without becoming
+on that account estranged from his elder brother. The surrender of
+Reading to the Parliamentary forces in April, 1643, involved his
+"dissettlement," and the migration of his father to the house of John,
+with whom he was moreover better in accord in religion and politics.
+Little external change resulted, "the old gentleman," says Phillips,
+"being wholly retired to his rest and devotion, with the least trouble
+imaginable." About the same time the household received other additions
+in the shape of pupils, admitted, Phillips is careful to assure us, by
+way of favour, as M. Jourdain selected stuffs for his friends. Milton's
+pamphlet was perhaps not yet published, or not generally known to be
+his, or his friends were indifferent to public sentiment. Opinion was
+unquestionably against Milton, nor can he have profited much by the
+support, however practical, of a certain Mrs. Attaway, who thought that
+"she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified
+husband, that did not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of
+Canaan," and by and by actually did what Milton only talked of doing. We
+have already seen that he had incurred danger of prosecution from the
+Stationers' Company, and in July, 1644, he was denounced by name from
+the pulpit by a divine of much note, Herbert Palmer, author of a book
+long attributed to Bacon. But, if criticised, he was read. By 1645 his
+Divorce tract was in the third edition, and he had added three more
+pamphlets--one to prove that the revered Martin Bucer had agreed with
+him; two, the "Tetrachordon" and "Colasterion," directed against his
+principal opponents, Palmer, Featley, Caryl, Prynne, and an anonymous
+pamphleteer, who seems to have been a somewhat contemptible person, a
+serving-man turned attorney, but whose production contains some not
+unwelcome hints on the personal aspects of Milton's controversy. "We
+believe you count no woman to due conversation accessible, as to you,
+except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, and dispute
+against the canon law as well as you." Milton's later tracts are not
+specially interesting, except for the reiteration of his fine and bold
+idealism on the institution of marriage, qualified only by his no less
+strenuous insistance on the subjection of woman. He allows, however,
+that "it is no small glory to man that a creature so like him should be
+made subject to him," and that "particular exceptions may have place, if
+she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly
+yield; for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser
+should govern the less wise, whether male or female."
+
+Milton's seminary, meanwhile, was prospering to such a degree as to
+compel him to take a more commodious house. Was it necessity or
+enthusiasm that kept him to a task so little compatible with the repose
+he must have needed even for such intellectual exercise as the
+"Areopagitica," much more for the high designs he had not ceased to
+meditate in verse? Enthusiasm, one would certainly say, only that it is
+impossible to tell to what extent his father's income, chiefly derived
+from money out at interest, may have been impaired by the confusion of
+the times. Whether he had done rightly or wrongly in taking the duties
+of a preceptor upon himself, his nephew's account attests the
+self-sacrificing zeal with which he discharged them: we groan as we read
+of hours which should have been devoted to lonely musing or noble
+composition passed in "increasing as it were by proxy" his knowledge of
+"Frontinus his Stratagems, with the two egregious poets Lucretius and
+Manilius." He might also have been better employed than in dictating "A
+tractate he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines who have
+written on that subject of atheism, Amesius, Wollebius," &c. Here should
+be comfort for those who fear with Pattison that Milton's addiction to
+politics deprived us of unnumbered "Comuses." The excerpter of Amesius
+and Wollebius, as we have so often insisted, needed great stimulus for
+great achievements. Such stimulus would probably have come
+superabundantly if he could at this time have had his way, for the most
+moral of men was bent on assuming a direct antagonism to conventional
+morality. He had maintained that marriage ought to be dissolved for mere
+incompatibility; his case must have seemed much stronger now that
+incompatibility had produced desertion. He was not the man to shrink
+from acting on his opinion when the fit season seemed to him to have
+arrived; and in the summer of 1645 he was openly paying his addresses to
+"a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, one of Dr. Davis's daughters."
+Considering the consequences to the female partner to the contract, it
+is clear that Miss Davis could not be expected to entertain Milton's
+proposals unless her affection for him was very strong indeed. It is
+equally clear that he cannot be acquitted of selfishness in urging his
+suit unless he was quite sure of this, and his own heart also was deeply
+interested. An event was about to occur which seems to prove that these
+conditions were wanting.
+
+Nearly two years have passed since we have heard of Mary Milton, who has
+been living with her parents in Oxfordshire. Her position as a nominal
+wife must have been most uncomfortable, but there is no indication of
+any effort on her part to alter it, until the Civil War was virtually
+terminated by the Battle of Naseby, June, 1645. Obstinate malignants had
+then nothing to expect but fine and forfeiture, and their son-in-law's
+Puritanism may have presented itself to the Powells in the light of a
+merciful dispensation. Rumours of Milton's suit to Miss Davis may also
+have reached them; and they would know that an illegal tie would be as
+fatal to all hopes of reconciliation as a legal one. So, one day in July
+or August, 1645, Milton, paying his usual call on a kinsman named
+Blackborough,[3] not otherwise mentioned in his life, who lived in St.
+Martin's-le-Grand Lane, where the General Post Office now stands, "was
+surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making
+submission and begging pardon on her knees before him." There are two
+similar scenes in his writings, of which this may have formed the
+groundwork, Dalila's visit to her betrayed husband in "Samson
+Agonistes," and Eve's repentance in the tenth book of "Paradise Lost."
+Samson replies, "Out, out, hyaena!" Eve's "lowly plight"
+
+                              "in Adam wrought
+    Commiseration;...
+    As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
+    And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon."
+
+Phillips appears to intimate that the penitent's reception began like
+Dalila's and ended like Eve's. "He might probably at first make some
+show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more
+inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge,
+and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon
+brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for the
+future." With a man of his magnanimous temper, conscious no doubt that
+he had himself been far from blameless, such a result was to be
+expected. But it was certainly well that he had made no deeper
+impression than he seems to have done upon "the handsome and witty
+gentlewoman." One would like to know whether she and Mistress Milton
+ever met, and what they said to and thought of each other. For the
+present, Mary Milton dwelt with Christopher's mother-in-law, and about
+September joined her husband in the more commodious house in the
+Barbican whither he was migrating at the time of the reconciliation. It
+stood till 1864, when it was destroyed by a railway company.
+
+Soon after removing to the Barbican, Milton set his Muse's house in
+order, by publishing such poems, English and Latin, as he deemed worthy
+of presentation. It is a remarkable proof both of his habitual
+cunctativeness and his dependence on the suggestions of others, that he
+should so long have allowed such pieces to remain uncollected, and
+should only have collected them at all at the solicitation of the
+publisher, Humphrey Moseley. The transaction is most honourable to the
+latter. "It is not any private respect of gain," he affirms; "for the
+slightest pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of
+learnedest men, but it is the love I bear to our own language.... I know
+not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy
+soul is: perhaps more trivial airs may please better.... Let the event
+guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing
+forth into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth
+since our famous Spenser wrote." The volume was published on Jan. 2,
+1646. It is divided into two parts, with separate title-pages, the first
+containing the English poems, the second the Latin. They were probably
+sold separately. The frontispiece, engraved by Marshall, is
+unfortunately a sour and silly countenance, passing as Milton's, but
+against which he protests in four lines of Greek appended, which the
+worthy Marshall seems to have engraved without understanding them. The
+British Museum copy in the King's Library contains an additional MS.
+poem of considerable merit, in a hand which some have thought like
+Milton's, but few now believe it to have been either written or
+transcribed by him. It is dated 1647, but for which circumstance one
+might indulge the fancy that the copy had been a gift from him to some
+Italian friend, for the binding is Italian, and the book must have seen
+Italy.
+
+Milton was now to learn what he afterwards taught, that "they also serve
+who only stand and wait." He had challenged obloquy in vindication of
+what he deemed right: the cross actually laid upon him was to fill his
+house with inimical and uncongenial dependants on his bounty and
+protection. The overthrow of the Royalist cause was utterly ruinous to
+the Powells. All went to wreck on the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646.
+The family estate was only saved from sequestration by a friendly
+neighbour taking possession of it under cover of his rights as creditor;
+the family mansion was occupied by the Parliamentarians, and the
+household stuff sold to the harpies that followed in their train; the
+"malignant's" timber went to rebuild the good town of Banbury. It was
+impossible for the Powells to remain in Oxfordshire, and Milton opened
+his doors to them as freely as though there had never been any
+estrangement. Father, mother, several sons and daughters came to dwell
+in a house already full of pupils, with what inconvenience from want of
+room and disquiet from clashing opinions may be conjectured. "Those whom
+the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless
+kind," he says to Dati, "has closely conjoined with me, whether by
+accident or the tie of law, they are the persons who sit daily in my
+company, weary me, nay, by heaven, almost plague me to death whenever
+they are jointly in the humour for it." Milton's readiness to receive
+the mother, deemed the chief instigator of her daughter's "frowardness,"
+may have been partly due to the situation of the latter, who gave him a
+daughter on July 29, 1646. In January, 1647, Mr. Powell died, leaving
+his affairs in dire confusion. Two months afterwards Milton's father
+followed him at the age of eighty-four, partly cognisant, we will hope,
+of the gift he had bestowed on his country in his son. It was probably
+owing to the consequent improvement in Milton's circumstances that he
+about this time gave up his pupils, except his nephews, and removed to a
+smaller house in High Holborn, not since identified; the Powells also
+removing to another dwelling. "No one," he says of himself at this
+period, "ever saw me going about, no one ever saw me asking anything
+among my friends, or stationed at the doors of the Court with a
+petitioner's face. I kept myself almost entirely at home, managing on my
+own resources, though in this civil tumult they were often in great part
+kept from me, and contriving, though burdened with taxes in the main
+rather oppressive, to lead my frugal life." The traces of his literary
+activity at this time are few--preparations for a history of England,
+published long afterwards, an ode, a sonnet, correspondence with Dati,
+some not very successful versions of the Psalms. He seems to have been
+partly engaged in preparing the treatise on Christian Doctrine, which
+was fortunately reserved for a serener day. In undertaking it at this
+period he was missing a great opportunity. He might have been the
+apostle of toleration in England, as Roger Williams had been in America.
+The moment was most favourable. Presbyterianism had got itself
+established, but could not pretend to represent the majority of the
+nation. It had been branded by Milton himself in the memorable line:
+"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The Independents were for
+toleration, the Episcopalians had been for the time humbled by
+adversity, the best minds in the nation, including Cromwell, were
+Seekers or Latitude men, or sceptics. Here was invitation enough for a
+work as much greater than the "Areopagitica" as the principle of freedom
+of thought is greater than the most august particular application of it.
+Milton might have added the better half of Locke's fame to his own, and
+compelled the French philosophers to sit at the feet of a Bible-loving
+Englishman. But unfortunately no external impulse stirred him to action,
+as in the case of the "Areopagitica." Presbyterians growled at him
+occasionally; they did not fine or imprison him, or put him out of the
+synagogue. Thus his pen slumbered, and we are in danger of forgetting
+that he was, in the ordinary sense of that much-abused term, no Puritan,
+but a most free and independent thinker, the vast sweep of whose thought
+happened to coincide for a while with the narrow orbit of so-called
+Puritanism.
+
+Impulse to work of another sort was at hand. On January 30, 1649,
+Charles the First's head rolled on the scaffold. On February 13th was
+published a pamphlet from Milton's hand, which cannot have been begun
+before the King's trial, another proof of his feverish impetuosity when
+possessed by an overmastering idea. The title propounds two theses with
+very different titles to acceptance. "The Tenure of Kings and
+Magistrates proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all
+ages, for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked
+king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death: if the
+ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it." That kings have
+no more immunity than others from the consequences of evil doing is a
+proposition which seemed monstrous to many in Milton's day, but which
+will command general assent in ours. But to lay it down that "any who
+has the power" may interpose to correct what he chooses to consider the
+laches of the lawful magistrate is to hand over the administration of
+the law to Judge Lynch--rather too high a price to pay for the
+satisfaction of bringing even a bad king to the block. Milton's sneer at
+"vulgar and irrational men, contesting for privileges, customs, forms,
+and that old entanglement of iniquity, their gibberish laws," is
+equivalent to an admission that his party had put itself beyond the pale
+of the law. The only defence would be to show that it had acted under
+great and overwhelming necessity; but this he takes for granted, though
+knowing well that it was denied by more than half the nation. His
+argument, therefore, is inconclusive, except that portion of it which
+modern opinion allows to pass without argument. He seems indeed to admit
+in his "Defensio Secunda" that the tract was written less to vindicate
+the King's execution than to saddle the protesting Presbyterians with a
+share of the responsibility. The diction, though robust and spirited, is
+not his best, and, on the whole, the most admirable feature in his
+pamphlet is his courage in writing it. He was to speak yet again on this
+theme as the mouthpiece of the Commonwealth, thus earning honour and
+reward; it was well to have shown first that he did not need this
+incentive to expose himself to Royalist vengeance, but had prompting
+enough in the intensity of his private convictions.
+
+He had flung himself into a perilous breach. "Eikon Basilike"--most
+timely of manifestoes--had been published only four days before the
+appearance of "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." Between its
+literary seduction and the horror generally excited by the King's
+execution, the tide of public opinion was turning fast. Milton no doubt
+felt that no claim upon him could be equal to that which the State had a
+right to prefer. He accepted the office of "Secretary for Foreign
+Tongues" to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, a delegation from the
+Council of State of forty-one members, by which the country was at that
+time governed. Vane, Whitelocke, and Marten were among the members of
+the committee. The specified duties of the post were the preparation and
+translation of despatches from and to foreign governments. These were
+always in Latin,--the Council, says that sturdy Briton, Edward Phillips,
+"scorning to carry on their affairs in the wheedling, lisping jargon of
+the cringing French." But it must have been understood that Milton's pen
+would also be at the service of the Government outside the narrow range
+of official correspondence. The salary was handsome for the time--L288,
+equivalent to about L900 of our money. It was an honourable post, on the
+manner of whose discharge the credit of England abroad somewhat
+depended; the foreign chanceries were full of accomplished Latinists,
+and when Blake's cannon was not to be the mouthpiece, the Commonwealth's
+message needed a silver trumpet. It was also as likely as any employment
+to make a scholar a statesman. If in some respects it opposed new
+obstacles to the fulfilment of Milton's aspirations as a poet, he might
+still feel that it would help him to the experience which he had
+declared to be essential: "He who would not be frustrate of his hope to
+write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true
+poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest
+things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous
+cities, unless he have within himself the experience and the practice of
+all that which is praiseworthy." Up to this time Milton's experience of
+public affairs had been slight; he does not seem to have enjoyed the
+intimate acquaintance of any man then active in the making of history.
+In our day he would probably have entered Parliament, but that was
+impossible under a dispensation which allowed a Parliament to sit till a
+Protector turned it out of doors. He was, therefore, only acting upon
+his own theory, and he seems to us to have been acting wisely as well as
+courageously, when he consented to become a humble but necessary wheel
+of the machinery of administration, the Orpheus among the Argonauts of
+the Commonwealth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Milton was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues on March 15, 1649. He
+removed from High Holborn to Spring Gardens to be near the scene of his
+labours, and was soon afterwards provided with an official residence in
+Whitehall Palace, a huge intricacy of passages and chambers, of which
+but a fragment now remains. His first performance was in some measure a
+false start; for the epistle offering amity to the Senate of Hamburg,
+clothed in his best Latin, was so unamiably regarded by that body that
+the English envoy never formally delivered it. An epistle to the Dutch
+on the murder of the Commonwealth's ambassador, Dorislaus, by refugee
+Cavaliers, had a better reception; and Milton was soon engaged in
+drafting, not merely translating, a State paper designed for the
+press--observations on the peace concluded by Ormond, the Royalist
+commander in Ireland, with the confederated Catholics in that country,
+and on the protest against the execution of Charles I. volunteered by
+the Presbytery of Belfast. The commentary was published in May, along
+with the documents. It is a spirited manifesto, cogent in enforcing the
+necessity of the campaign about to be undertaken by Cromwell. Ireland
+had at the moment exactly as many factions as provinces; and never,
+perhaps, since the days of Strongbow had been in a state of such utter
+confusion. Employed in work like this, Milton did not cease to be "an
+eagle towering in his pride of place," but he may seem to have
+degenerated into the "mousing owl" when he pounced upon newswriters and
+ferreted unlicensed pamphlets for sedition. True, there was nothing in
+this occupation formally inconsistent with anything he had written in
+the "Areopagitica"; yet one wishes that the Council of State had
+provided otherwise for this particular department of the public service.
+Nothing but a sense of duty can have reconciled him to a task so
+invidious; and there is some evidence of what might well have been
+believed without evidence--that he mitigated the severity of the
+censorship as far as in him lay. He was not to want for better
+occupation, for the Council of State was about to devolve upon him the
+charge of answering the great Royalist manifesto, "Eikon Basilike."
+
+The controversy respecting the authorship of the "Eikon Basilike" is a
+remarkable instance of the degree in which literary judgment may be
+biassed by political prepossession. In the absence of other testimony
+one might almost stamp a writer as Royalist or Parliamentarian according
+as his verdict inclined to Charles I. or Bishop Gauden. In fact, it is
+no easy matter to balance the respective claims of two entirely
+different kinds of testimony. The external evidence of Charles's
+authorship is worth nothing. It is almost confined to the assertions,
+forty years after the publication, of a few aged Cavaliers, who were
+all morally certain that Charles wrote the book, and to whom a fiction
+supplying the accidental lack of external testimony would have seemed
+laudable and pious. The only wonder is that such legends are not far
+more numerous. On the other hand, the internal evidence seems at first
+sight to make for the king. The style is not dissimilar to that of the
+reputed royal author; the sentiments are such as would have well become
+him; the assumed character is supported throughout with consistency; and
+there are none of the slips which a fabricator might have been thought
+hardly able to avoid. The supposed personator of the King was
+unquestionably an unprincipled time-server. Is it not an axiom that a
+worthy book can only proceed from a worthy mind?
+
+                       "If this fail,
+    The pillared firmament is rottenness,
+    And earth's base built on stubble!"
+
+Against such considerations we have to set the stubborn facts that
+Bishop Gauden did actually claim the authorship that he preferred his
+claim to the very persons who had the strongest interest in exploding
+it; that he invoked the testimony of those who must have known the
+truth, and could most easily have crushed the lie; that he convinced not
+only Clarendon, but Charles's own children, and received a substantial
+reward. In the face of these undeniable facts, the numerous
+circumstances used with skill and ingenuity by Dr. Wordsworth to
+invalidate his claim, are of little weight. The stronger the apparent
+objections, the more certain that the proofs in Gauden's hands must have
+been overwhelming, and the greater the presumption that he was merely
+urging what had always been known to several persons about the late
+king. When, with this conviction, we recur to the "Eikon," and examine
+it in connection with Gauden's acknowledged writings, the internal
+testimony against him no longer seems so absolutely conclusive. Gauden's
+style is by no means so bad as Hume represents it. Many remarkable
+parallels between it and the diction of the "Eikon" have been pointed
+out by Todd, and the most searching modern investigator, Doble. We may
+also discover one marked intellectual resemblance. Nothing is more
+characteristic in the "Eikon" than its indirectness. The writer is full
+of qualifications, limitations, allowances; he fences and guards
+himself, and seems always on the point of taking back what he has said,
+but never does; and veers and tacks, tacks and veers, until he has
+worked himself into port. The like peculiarity is very observable in
+Gauden, especially in his once-popular "Companion to the Altar." There
+is also a strong internal argument against Charles's authorship in the
+preponderance of the theological element. That this should occupy an
+important place in the writings of a martyr for the Church of England
+was certainly to be expected, but the theology of the "Eikon" has an
+unmistakably professional flavour. Let any man read it with an unbiassed
+mind, and then say whether he has been listening to a king or to a
+chaplain. "One of _us_," pithily comments Archbishop Herring. "I write
+rather like a divine than a prince," the assumed author acknowledges, or
+is made to acknowledge. When to these considerations is added that any
+scrap of the "Eikon" in the King's handwriting would have been
+treasured as an inestimable relic, and that no scrap was ever produced,
+there can be little question as to the verdict of criticism. For all
+practical purposes, nevertheless, the "Eikon" in Milton's time was the
+King's book, for everybody thought it so. Milton hints some vague
+suspicions, but refrains from impugning it seriously, and indeed the
+defenders of its authenticity will be quite justified in asserting that
+if Gauden had been dumb, Criticism would have been blind.
+
+According to Selden's biographer, Cromwell was at first anxious that the
+"Eikon" should be answered by that consummate jurist, and it was only on
+his declining the task that it came into Milton's hands. That he also
+would have declined it but for his official position may be inferred
+from his own words: "I take it on me as a work assigned, rather than by
+me chosen or affected." His distaste may further be gauged by his
+tardiness; while "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" had been written
+in little more than a week, his "Eikonoklastes," a reply to a book
+published in February, did not appear until October 6th. His reluctance
+may be partly explained by his feeling that "to descant on the
+misfortunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity, who hath also
+paid his final debt both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself
+a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discourse." The intention
+it may not have been, but it was necessarily the performance. The scheme
+of the "Eikon" required the respondent to take up the case article by
+article, a thing impossible to be done without abundant "descant" of the
+kind which Milton deprecates. He is compelled to fight the adversary on
+the latter's chosen ground, and the eloquence which might have swept all
+before it in a discussion of general principles is frittered away in
+tiresome wrangling over a multitude of minutiae. His vigorous blows avail
+but little against the impalpable ideal with which he is contending; his
+arguments might frequently convince a court of justice, but could do
+nothing to dispel the sorcery which enthralled the popular imagination.
+Milton's "Eikonoklastes" had only three editions, including a
+translation, within the year; the "Eikon Basilike" is said to have had
+fifty.
+
+Milton's reputation as a political controversialist, however, was not to
+rest upon "Eikonoklastes," or to be determined by a merely English
+public. The Royalists had felt the necessity of appealing to the general
+verdict of Europe, and had entrusted their cause to the most eminent
+classical scholar of the age. To us the idea of commissioning a
+political manifesto from a philologist seems eccentric; but erudition
+and the erudite were never so highly prized as in the seventeenth
+century. Men's minds were still enchained by authority, and the
+precedents of Agis, or Brutus, or Nehemiah, weighed like dicta of
+Solomon or Justinian. The man of Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew learning
+was, therefore, a person of much greater consequence than he is now, and
+so much the more if he enjoyed a high reputation and wrote good Latin.
+All these qualifications were combined in Claudius Salmasius, a
+Frenchman, who had laid scholars under an eternal obligation by his
+discovery of the Palatine MS. of the Anthology at Heidelberg, and who,
+having embraced Protestantism from conviction, lived in splendid style
+at Leyden, where the mere light of his countenance--for he did not
+teach--was valued by the University at three thousand livres a year. It
+seems marvellous that a man should become dictator of the republic of
+letters by editing "Solinus" and "The Augustan History," however ably;
+but an achievement like this, not a "Paradise Lost" or a "Werther" was
+the _sic itur ad astra_ of the time. On the strength of such Salmasius
+had pronounced _ex cathedra_ on a multiplicity of topics, from
+episcopacy to hair-powder, and there was no bishop and no perfumer
+between the Black Sea and the Irish who would not rather have the
+scholar for him than against him. A man, too, to be named with respect;
+no mere annotator, but a most sagacious critic; peevish, it might be,
+but had he not seven grievous disorders at once? One who had shown such
+independence and integrity in various transactions of his life, that we
+may be very sure that Charles II.'s hundred Jacobuses, if ever given or
+even promised, were the very least of the inducements that called him
+into the field against the executioners of Charles I.
+
+Whether, however, the hundred Jacobuses were forthcoming or not,
+Salmasius's undertaking was none the less a commission from Charles II.,
+and the circumstance put him into a false position, and increased the
+difficulty of his task. Human feeling is not easily reconciled to the
+execution of a bad magistrate, unless he has also been a bad man.
+Charles I. was by no means a bad man, only a mistaken one. He had been
+guilty of many usurpations and much perfidy: but he had honestly
+believed his usurpations within the limits of his prerogative; and his
+breaches of faith were committed against insurgents whom he regarded as
+seamen look upon pirates, or shepherds upon wolves. Salmasius, however,
+pleading by commission from Charles's son, can urge no such mitigating
+plea. He is compelled to maintain the inviolability even of wicked
+sovereigns, and spends two-thirds of his treatise in supporting a
+proposition to state which is to refute it in the nineteenth century. In
+the latter part he is on stronger ground. Charles had unquestionably
+been tried and condemned by a tribunal destitute of legal authority, and
+executed contrary to the wish and will of the great majority of his
+subjects. But this was a theme for an Englishman to handle. Salmasius
+cannot think himself into it, nor had he sufficient imagination to be
+inspired by Charles as Burke (who, nevertheless, has borrowed from him)
+was to be inspired by Marie Antoinette.
+
+His book--entitled "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I."--appeared in October
+or November, 1649. On January 8, 1650, it was ordered by the Council of
+State "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the Book of
+Salmasius, and when he hath done it bring it to the Council." There were
+many reasons why he should be entrusted with this commission, and only
+one why he should not; but one which would have seemed conclusive to
+most men. His sight had long been failing. He had already lost the use
+of one eye, and was warned that if he imposed this additional strain
+upon his sight, that of the other would follow. He had seen the greatest
+astronomer of the age condemned to inactivity and helplessness, and
+could measure his own by the misery of Galileo. He calmly accepted his
+duty along with its penalty, without complaint or reluctance. If he
+could have performed his task in the spirit with which he undertook it,
+he would have produced a work more sublime than "Paradise Lost."
+
+This, of course, was not possible. The efficiency of a controversialist
+in the seventeenth century was almost estimated in the ratio of his
+scurrility, especially when he wrote Latin. From this point of view
+Milton had got his opponent at a tremendous disadvantage. With the best
+will in the world, Salmasius had come short in personal abuse, for, as
+the initiator of the dispute, he had no personal antagonist. In
+denouncing the general herd of regicides and parricides he had hurt
+nobody in particular, while concentrating all Milton's lightnings on his
+own unlucky head. They seared and scathed a literary dictator whom
+jealous enemies had long sighed to behold insulted and humiliated, while
+surprise equalled delight at seeing the blow dealt from a quarter so
+utterly unexpected. There is no comparison between the invective of
+Milton and of Salmasius; not so much from Milton's superiority as a
+controversialist, though this is very evident, as because he writes
+under the inspiration of a true passion. His scorn of the presumptuous
+intermeddler who has dared to libel the people of England is ten
+thousand times more real than Salmasius's official indignation at the
+execution of Charles. His contempt for Salmasius's pedantry is quite
+genuine; and he revels in ecstasies of savage glee when taunting the
+apologist of tyranny with his own notorious subjection to a tyrannical
+wife. But the reviler in Milton is too far ahead of the reasoner. He
+seems to set more store by his personalities than by his principles. On
+the question of the legality of Charles's execution he has indeed little
+argument to offer; and his views on the wider question of the general
+responsibility of kings, sound and noble in themselves, suffer from the
+mass of irrelevant quotation with which it was in that age necessary to
+prop them up. The great success of his reply ("Pro Populo Anglicano
+Defensio") arose mainly from the general satisfaction that Salmasius
+should at length have met with his match. The book, published in or
+about March, 1651, instantly won over European public opinion, so far as
+the question was a literary one. Every distinguished foreigner then
+resident in London, Milton says, either called upon him to congratulate
+him, or took the opportunity of a casual meeting. By May, says Heinsius,
+five editions were printed or printing in Holland, and two translations.
+"I had expected nothing of such quality from the Englishman," writes
+Vossius. The Diet of Ratisbon ordered "that all the books of Miltonius
+should be searched for and confiscated." Parisian magistrates burned it
+on their own responsibility. Salmasius himself was then at Stockholm,
+where Queen Christina, who did not, like Catherine II., recognize the
+necessity of "standing by her order," could not help letting him see
+that she regarded Milton as the victor. Vexation, some thought,
+contributed as much as climate to determine his return to Holland. He
+died in September, 1653, at Spa, as, remote from books, but making his
+memory his library, he was penning his answer. This unfinished
+production, edited by his son, appeared after the Restoration, when the
+very embers of the controversy had grown cold, and the palm of literary
+victory had been irrevocably adjudged to Milton.
+
+Milton could hear the plaudits, he could not see the wreaths. The total
+loss of his sight may be dated from March, 1652, a year after the
+publication of his reply. It was then necessary to provide him with an
+assistant--that no change should have been made in his position or
+salary shows either the value attached to his services or the feeling
+that special consideration was due to one who had voluntarily given his
+eyes for his country. "The choice lay before me," he writes, "between
+dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I
+could not listen to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken
+from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not
+what, that spoke to me from heaven." In September, 1654, he described
+the symptoms of his infirmity to his friend, the Greek Philaras, who had
+flattered him with hopes of cure from the dexterity of the French
+oculist Thevenot. He tells him how his sight began to fail about ten
+years before; how in the morning he felt his eyes shrinking from the
+effort to read anything; how the light of a candle appeared like a
+spectrum of various colours; how, little by little, darkness crept over
+the left eye; and objects beheld by the right seemed to waver to and
+fro; how this was accompanied by a kind of dizziness and heaviness which
+weighed upon him throughout the afternoon. "Yet the darkness which is
+perpetually before me seems always nearer to a whitish than to a
+blackish, and such that, when the eye rolls itself, there is admitted,
+as through a small chink, a certain little trifle of light." Elsewhere
+he says that his eyes are not disfigured:
+
+                               "Clear
+    To outward view of blemish or of spot."
+
+These symptoms have been pronounced to resemble those of glaucoma.
+Milton himself, in "Paradise Lost," hesitates between amaurosis ("drop
+serene") and cataract ("suffusion"). Nothing is said of his having been
+recommended to use glasses or other precautionary contrivances.
+Cheselden was not yet, and the oculist's art was probably not well
+understood. The sufferer himself, while not repining or despairing of
+medical assistance, evidently has little hope from it. "Whatever ray of
+hope may be for me from your famous physician, all the same, as in a
+case quite incurable, I prepare and compose myself accordingly. My
+darkness hitherto, by the singular kindness of God, amid rest and
+studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, has been much easier
+to bear than that deathly one. But if, as is written, 'Man doth not live
+by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
+God,' what should prevent me from resting in the belief that eyesight
+lies not in eyes alone, but enough for all purposes in God's leading and
+providence? Verily, while only He looks out for me, and provides for me,
+as He doth; teaching me and leading me forth with His hand through my
+whole life, I shall willingly, since it hath seemed good to Him, have
+given my eyes their long holiday. And to you I now bid farewell, with a
+mind not less brave and steadfast than if I were Lynceus himself for
+keenness of sight." Religion and philosophy, of which no brighter
+example was ever given, did not, in this sore trial, disdain the support
+of a manly pride:--
+
+                 "What supports me, dost thou ask?
+    The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
+    In liberty's defence, my noble task,
+    O! which all Europe rings from side to side;
+    This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
+    Content though blind, had I no better guide."
+
+Noble words, and Milton might well triumph in his victory in the field
+of intellectual combat. But if his pamphlet could have put Charles the
+First's head on again, then, and then only, could it have been of real
+political service to his party.
+
+Milton's loss of sight was accompanied by domestic sorrow, though
+perhaps not felt with special acuteness. Since the birth of his eldest
+daughter in 1646, his wife had given him three more children--a
+daughter, born in October, 1648; a son, born in March, 1650, who died
+shortly afterwards; and another daughter, born in May, 1652. The birth
+of this child may have been connected with the death of the mother in
+the same or the following month. The household had apparently been
+peaceful, but it is unlikely that Mary Milton can have been a companion
+to her husband, or sympathized with such fraction of his mind as it was
+given her to understand. She must have become considerably emancipated
+from the creeds of her girlhood if his later writings could have been
+anything but detestable to her; and, on the whole, much as one pities
+her probably wasted life, her disappearance from the scene, if tragic
+in her ignorance to the last of the destiny that might have been hers,
+is not unaccompanied with a sense of relief. Great, nevertheless, must
+have been the blind poet's embarrassment as the father of three little
+daughters. Much evil, it is to be feared, had already been sown; and his
+temperament, his affliction, and his circumstances alike nurtured the
+evil yet to come. He was then living in Petty France, Westminster,
+having been obliged, either by the necessities of his health or of the
+public service, to give up his apartments in Whitehall. The house stood
+till 1877, a forlorn tenement in these latter years; far different,
+probably, when the neighbourhood was fashionable and the back windows
+looked on St. James's Park. It is associated with other celebrated
+names, having been owned by Bentham and occupied by Hazlitt.
+
+The controversy with Salmasius had an epilogue, chiefly memorable in so
+far as it occasioned Milton to indulge in autobiography, and to record
+his estimate of some of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Among various
+replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of
+especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," published about
+August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the
+bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set
+him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been
+answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed with Italian
+vices: he would have been accused of cannibalism had his path lain
+towards the Caribee Islands. A fulsome dedication to Salmasius tended
+to fix the suspicion of authorship upon Alexander Morus, a Frenchman of
+Scotch extraction, Professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, and pastor
+of the Walloon Church, then an inmate of Salmasius's house, who actually
+had written the dedication and corrected the proof. The real author,
+however, was Peter Du Moulin, ex-rector of Wheldrake, in Yorkshire. The
+dedicatory ink was hardly dry ere Morus was involved in a desperate
+quarrel with Salmasius through the latter's imperious wife, who accused
+Morus of having been over-attentive to her English waiting-maid, whose
+patronymic is lost to history under the Latinized form of Bontia.
+Failing to make Morus marry the damsel, she sought to deprive him of his
+ecclesiastical and professorial dignities. The correspondence of
+Heinsius and Vossius shows what intense amusement the affair occasioned
+to such among the scholars of the period as were unkindly affected
+towards Salmasius. Morus was ultimately acquitted, but his position in
+Holland had become uncomfortable, and he was glad to accept an
+invitation from the congregation at Charenton, celebrated for its
+lunatics. Understanding, meanwhile, that Milton was preparing a reply,
+and being naturally unwilling to brave invective in the cause of a book
+which he had not written, and of a patron who had cast him off, he
+protested his innocence of the authorship, and sought to ward off the
+coming storm by every means short of disclosing the writer. Milton,
+however, esteeming his Latin of much more importance than Morus's
+character, and justly considering with Voltaire, "que cet Habacuc etait
+capable de tout," persisted in exhibiting himself as the blind Cyclop
+dealing blows amiss. His reply appeared in May, 1654, and a rejoinder by
+Morus produced a final retort in August, 1655. Both are full of
+personalities, including a spirited description of the scratching of
+Morus's face by the injured Bontia. These may sink into oblivion, while
+we may be grateful for the occasion which led Milton to express himself
+with such fortitude and dignity on his affliction and its
+alleviations:--"Let the calumniators of God's judgments cease to revile
+me, and to forge their superstitious dreams about me. Let them be
+assured that I neither regret my lot nor am ashamed of it, that I remain
+unmoved and fixed in my opinion, that I neither believe nor feel myself
+an object of God's anger, but actually experience and acknowledge His
+fatherly mercy and kindness to me in all matters of greatest
+moment--especially in that I am able, through His consolation and His
+strengthening of my spirit, to acquiesce in His divine will, thinking
+oftener of what He has bestowed upon me than of what He has withheld:
+finally, that I would not exchange the consciousness of what I have done
+with that of any deed of theirs, however righteous, or part with my
+always pleasant and tranquil recollection of the same." He adds that his
+friends cherish him, study his wants, favour him with their society more
+assiduously even than before, and that the Commonwealth treats him with
+as much honour as if, according to the customs of the Athenians of old,
+it had decreed him public support for his life in the Prytaneum.
+
+Milton's tract is also interesting for its pen-portraits of some of the
+worthies of the Commonwealth, and its indications of his own views on
+the politics of his troubled times. Bradshaw is eulogized with great
+elegance and equal truth for his manly courage and strict consistency.
+"Always equal to himself, and like a consul re-elected for another year,
+so that you would say he not only judged the King from his tribunal, but
+is judging him all his life." This was matter of notoriety: one may hope
+that Milton had equal reason for his praise of Bradshaw's affability,
+munificence, and placability. The comparison of Fairfax to the elder
+Scipio Africanus is more accurate than is always or often the case with
+historical parallels, and by a dexterous turn, surprising if we have
+forgotten the scholar in the controversialist, Fairfax's failure in
+statesmanship, as Milton deemed it, is not only extenuated, but is made
+to usher in the more commanding personality of Cromwell. Caesar, says
+Johnson, had not more elegant flattery than Cromwell received from
+Milton: nor Augustus, he might have added, encomiums more heartfelt and
+sincere. Milton was one of the innumerable proofs that a man may be very
+much of a Republican without being anything of a Liberal. He was as firm
+a believer in right divine as any Cavalier, save that in his view such
+right was vested in the worthiest; that is, practically, the strongest.
+An admirable doctrine for 1653,--how unfit for 1660 remained to be
+discovered by him. Under its influence he had successively swallowed
+Pride's Purge, the execution of Charles I. by a self-constituted
+tribunal, and Cromwell's expulsion of the scanty remnant of what had
+once seemed the more than Roman senate of 1641. There is great reason
+to believe with Professor Masson that a tract vindicating this violence
+was actually taken down from his lips. It is impossible to say that he
+was wrong. Cromwell really was standing between England and anarchy. But
+Milton might have been expected to manifest some compunction at the
+disappointment of his own brilliant hopes, and some alarm at the
+condition of the vessel of the State reduced to her last plank.
+Authority actually had come into the hands of the kingliest man in
+England, valiant and prudent, magnanimous and merciful. But Cromwell's
+life was precarious, and what after Cromwell? Was the ancient
+constitution, with its halo of antiquity, its settled methods, and its
+substantial safeguards, wisely exchanged for one life, already the mark
+for a thousand bullets? Milton did not reflect, or he kept his
+reflections to himself. The one point on which he does seem nervous is
+lest his hero should call himself what he is. The name of Protector even
+is a stumbling-block, though one _can_ get over it. "You have, by
+assuming a title likest that of Father of your Country, allowed yourself
+to be, one cannot say elevated, but rather brought down so many stages
+from your real sublimity, and as it were forced into rank for the public
+convenience." But there must be no question of a higher title:--
+
+      "You have, in your far higher majesty, scorned the title of King.
+      And surely with justice: for if in your present greatness you were
+      to be taken with that name which you were able when a private man
+      to reduce and bring to nothing, it would be almost as if, when by
+      the help of the true God you had subdued some idolatrous nation,
+      you were to worship the gods you had yourself overcome."
+
+This warning, occurring in the midst of a magnificent panegyric,
+sufficiently vindicates Milton against the charge of servile flattery.
+The frank advice which he gives Cromwell on questions of policy is less
+conclusive evidence: for, except on the point of disestablishment, it
+was such as Cromwell had already given himself. Professor Masson's
+excellent summary of it may be further condensed thus--1. Reliance on a
+council of well-selected associates. 2. Absolute voluntaryism in
+religion. 3. Legislation not to be meddlesome or over-puritanical. 4.
+University and scholastic endowments to be made the rewards of approved
+merit. 5. Entire liberty of publication at the risk of the publisher. 6.
+Constant inclination towards the generous view of things. The advice of
+an enthusiastic idealist, Puritan by the accident of his times, but
+whose true affinities were with Mill and Shelley and Rousseau.
+
+An interesting question arises in connection with Milton's official
+duties: had he any real influence on the counsels of Government? or was
+he a mere secretary? It would be pleasing to conceive of him as Vizier
+to the only Englishman of the day whose greatness can be compared with
+his; to imagine him playing Aristotle to Cromwell's Alexander. We have
+seen him freely tendering Cromwell what might have been unpalatable
+advice, and learn from Du Moulin's lampoon that he was accused of having
+behaved to the Protector with something of dictatorial rudeness. But it
+seems impossible to point to any direct influence of his mind in the
+administration; and his own department of Foreign Affairs was neither
+one which he was peculiarly qualified to direct, nor one in which he was
+likely to differ from the ruling powers. "A spirited foreign policy" was
+then the motto of all the leading men of England. Before Milton's loss
+of sight his duties included attendance upon foreign envoys on State
+occasions, of which he must afterwards have been to a considerable
+extent relieved. The collection of his official correspondence published
+in 1676 is less remarkable for the quantity of work than the quality.
+The letters are not very numerous, but are mostly written on occasions
+requiring a choice dignity of expression. "The uniformly Miltonic style
+of the greater letters," says Professor Masson, "utterly precludes the
+idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him." We
+seem to see him sitting down to dictate, weighing out the fine gold of
+his Latin sentences to the stately accompaniment, it may be, of his
+chamber-organ. War is declared against the Dutch; the Spanish ambassador
+is reproved for his protraction of business; the Grand Duke of Tuscany
+is warmly thanked for protecting English ships in the harbour of
+Leghorn; the French king is admonished to indemnify English merchants
+for wrongful seizure; the Protestant Swiss cantons are encouraged to
+fight for their religion; the King of Sweden is felicitated on the birth
+of a son and heir, and on the Treaty of Roeskilde; the King of Portugal
+is pressed to use more diligence in investigating the attempted
+assassination of the English minister; an ambassador is accredited to
+Russia; Mazarin is congratulated on the capture of Dunkirk. Of all his
+letters, none can have stirred Milton's personal feelings so deeply as
+the epistle of remonstrance to the Duke of Savoy on the atrocious
+massacre of the Vaudois Protestants (1655); but the document is
+dignified and measured in tone. His emotion found relief in his greatest
+sonnet; blending, as Wordsworth implies, trumpet notes with his habitual
+organ-music; the most memorable example in our language of the fire and
+passion which may inspire a poetical form which some have deemed only
+fit to celebrate a "mistress's eyebrow"[4]:--
+
+   "Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
+      Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
+      Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,
+      When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones.
+    Forget not: in Thy book record their groans
+      Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
+      Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled
+      Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
+    The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
+      To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
+      O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
+    The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
+      A hundredfold, who, having learned Thy way,
+      Early may fly the Babylonian woe."
+
+This is what Johnson calls "carving heads upon cherry-stones!"
+
+Milton's calamity had, of course, required special assistance. He had
+first had Weckherlin as coadjutor, then Philip Meadows, finally Andrew
+Marvell. His emoluments had been reduced, in April, 1655, from L288 to
+L150 a year, but the diminished allowance was made perpetual instead of
+annual, and seems to have been intended as a retiring pension. He
+nevertheless continued to work, drawing salary at the rate of L200 a
+year, and his pen was never more active than during the last months of
+Oliver's Protectorate. He continued to serve under Richard, writing
+eleven letters between September, 1658, and February, 1659. With two
+letters for the restored Parliament after Richard's abdication, written
+in May, 1659, Milton, though his formal supersession was yet to come,
+virtually bade adieu to the Civil Service:--
+
+                          "God doth not need
+      Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
+      Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state
+    Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
+      And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
+      They also serve who only stand and wait."
+
+The principal domestic events in Milton's life, meanwhile, had been his
+marriage with Katherine, daughter of an unidentified Captain Woodcock,
+in November, 1656; and the successive loss of her and an infant daughter
+in February and March, 1658. It is probable that Milton literally never
+saw his wife, whose worth and the consequent happiness of the fifteen
+months of their too brief union, are sufficiently attested by his sonnet
+on the dream in which he fancied her restored to him, with the striking
+conclusion, "Day brought back my night." Of his daughters at the time,
+much may be conjectured, but nothing is known; his nephews, whose
+education had cost him such anxious care, though not undutiful in their
+personal relations with him, were sources of uneasiness from their own
+misadventures, and might have been even more so as sinister omens of the
+ways in which the rising generation was to walk. The fruits of their
+bringing up upon the egregious Lucretius and Manilius were apparently
+"Satyr against Hypocrites," _i.e._, Puritans; "Mysteries of Love and
+Eloquence;" "Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment," which last brought the
+Council down upon John Phillips as a propagator of immorality. In his
+nephews Milton might have seen, though we may be sure he did not see,
+how fatally the austerity of the Commonwealth had alienated those who
+would soon determine whether the Commonwealth should exist. Unconscious
+of the "engine at the door," he could spend happy social hours with
+attached friends--Andrew Marvell, his assistant in the secretaryship and
+poetical satellite; his old pupil Cyriack Skinner; Lady Ranelagh;
+Oldenburg, the Bremen envoy, destined to fame as Secretary of the Royal
+Society and the correspondent of Spinoza; and a choice band of
+"enthusiastic young men who accounted it a privilege to read to him, or
+act as his amanuenses, or hear him talk." A sonnet inscribed to one of
+these, Henry Lawrence, gives a pleasing picture of the British Homer in
+his Horatian hour:--
+
+   "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
+      Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
+      Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
+      Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
+    From the hard season gaining? Time will run
+      On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
+      The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
+      The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
+    What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
+      Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
+      To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
+    Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
+      He who of those delights can judge, and spare
+      To interpose them oft, is not unwise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+   "Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds
+    As flake by flake is piled, till some great truth
+    Is loosened, and the nations echo round."
+
+These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the
+slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of
+those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation. In
+most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep.
+In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen
+years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest. After
+two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to
+consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country
+might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals
+of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than
+Thamyris and Maeonides. Yet the material of his immortal poem must have
+gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so
+soon have been transmuted into song. It can hardly be doubted that his
+cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life.
+Remanded thus to solemn meditation, he would gradually rise to the
+height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in
+comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation
+he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point
+when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing,
+as always hitherto, the impulse of others. We cannot tell what influence
+finally launched this high-piled avalanche of thrice-sifted snow. The
+time is better ascertained. Aubrey refers it to 1658, the last year of
+Oliver's Protectorate. As Cromwell's death virtually closed Milton's
+official labours, a Genie, overshadowing land and sea, arose from the
+shattered vase of the Latin Secretaryship.
+
+Nothing is more interesting than to observe the first gropings of genius
+in pursuit of its aim. Ample insight, as regards Milton, is afforded by
+the precious manuscripts given to Trinity College, Cambridge, by Sir
+Henry Newton Puckering (we know not how he got them), and preserved by
+the pious care of Charles Mason and Sir Thomas Clarke. By the portion of
+the MSS. relating to Milton's drafts of projected poems, which date
+about 1640-1642, we see that the form of his work was to have been
+dramatic, and that, in respect of subject, the swift mind was divided
+between Scripture and British History. No fewer than ninety-nine
+possible themes--sixty-one Scriptural, and thirty-eight historical or
+legendary--are jotted down by him. Four of these relate to "Paradise
+Lost." Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are "Sodom" (the
+plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently
+impracticable, is interesting as a counterpart of "Comus"), "Samson
+Marrying," "Ahab," "John the Baptist," "Christus Patiens," "Vortigern,"
+"Alfred the Great," "Harold," "Athirco" (a very striking subject from a
+Scotch legend), and "Macbeth," where Duncan's ghost was to have appeared
+instead of Banquo's, and seemingly taken a share in the action.
+"Arthur," so much in his mind when he wrote the "Epitaphium Damonis,"
+does not appear at all. Two of the drafts of "Paradise Lost" are mere
+lists of _dramatis personae_, but the others indicate the shape which the
+conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a
+religious drama on the pattern of the mediaeval mystery or miracle play.
+Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the
+second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer
+bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's
+temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which
+Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope
+for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion,
+"the Angel causes to pass before his eyes a masque of all the evils of
+this life and world," a conception traceable in the eleventh book of
+"Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the
+freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked
+upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by
+Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech
+which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the
+exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have
+originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's
+mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark
+that his purpose had from the first been didactic. This is particularly
+visible in the notes of alternative subjects in his manuscripts, many of
+which palpably allude to the ecclesiastical and political incidents of
+his time, while one is strikingly prophetic of his own defence of the
+execution of Charles I. "The contention between the father of Zimri and
+Eleazar whether he ought to have slain his son without law; next the
+ambassadors of the Moabites expostulating about Cosbi, a stranger and a
+noblewoman, slain by Phineas. It may be argued about reformation and
+punishment illegal, and, as it were, by tumult. After all arguments
+driven home, then the word of the Lord may be brought, acquitting and
+approving Phineas." It was his earnest aim at all events to compose
+something "doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." "Whatsoever," he says
+in 1641, "whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
+or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
+that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
+refluxes of man's thoughts from within--all these things with a solid
+and treatable smoothness to paint out and describe; teaching over the
+whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example,
+with much delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper who
+will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her
+elegantly drest, that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear
+more rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant,
+they would then appear to all men easy and pleasant though they were
+rugged and difficult in deed." An easier task than that of "justifying
+the ways of God to man" by the cosmogony and anthropology of "Paradise
+Lost."
+
+If it is true--and the fact seems well attested--that Milton's poetical
+vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to the vernal[5], he cannot
+well have commenced "Paradise Lost" before the death of Cromwell, or
+have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty
+called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on
+which he had irreconcilably differed from Cromwell was that of a State
+Church; Cromwell, the practical man, perceiving its necessity, and
+Milton, the idealist, seeing only its want of logic. Unfortunately, this
+inconsequence existed only for the few thinkers who could in that age
+rise to the acceptance of Milton's premises. In his "Treatise of Civil
+Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," published in February, 1659, he
+emphatically insists that the civil magistrate has neither the right nor
+the power to interfere in matters of religion, and concludes: "The
+defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt
+not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour
+might be spared and the commonwealth better tended." It is to be
+regretted that he had not entered upon this great subject at an earlier
+period. The little tract, addressed to the Republican members of
+Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of
+Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of
+resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument,
+in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable
+in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the
+following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title,
+"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the
+Church." The recipe is simple and efficacious--cease to hire them, and
+they will cease to be hirelings. Suppress all ecclesiastical endowments,
+and let the clergyman be supported by free-will offerings. The fact that
+this would have consigned about half the established clergy to beggary
+does not trouble him; nor were they likely to be greatly troubled by a
+proposal so sublimely impracticable. Vested interests can only be
+over-ridden in times of revolution, and 1659, in outward appearance a
+year of anarchy, was in truth a year of reaction. For the rest, it is to
+be remarked that Milton scarcely allowed the ministry to be followed as
+a profession, and that his views on ecclesiastical organization had come
+to coincide very nearly with those now held by the Plymouth Brethren.
+
+There is much plausibility in Pattison's comparison of the men of the
+Commonwealth disputing about matters of this sort on the eve of the
+Restoration, to the Greeks of Constantinople contending about the
+Azymite controversy while the Turks were breaching their walls. In fact,
+however, this blindness was not confined to one party. Anthony Wood, a
+Royalist, writing thirty years afterwards, speaks of the Restoration as
+an event which no man expected in September, 1659. The Commonwealth was
+no doubt dead as a Republic. "Pride's Purge," the execution of Charles,
+and Cromwell's expulsion of the remnant of the Commons, had long ago
+given it mortal wounds. It was not necessarily defunct as a
+Protectorate, or a renovated Monarchy: the history of England might have
+been very different if Oliver had bequeathed his power to Henry instead
+of to Richard. No such vigorous hand taking the helm, and the vessel of
+the State drifting more and more into anarchy, the great mass of
+Englishmen, to the frustration of many generous ideals, but to the
+credit of their practical good sense, pronounced for the restoration of
+Charles the Second. It is impossible to think without anger and grief of
+the declension which was to ensue, from Cromwell enforcing toleration
+for Protestants to Charles selling himself to France for a pension, from
+Blake at Tunis to the Dutch at Chatham. But the Restoration was no
+national apostasy. The people as a body did not decline from Milton's
+standard, for they had never attained to it; they did not accept the
+turpitudes of the new government, for they did not anticipate them. So
+far as sentiment inspired them, it was not love of license, but
+compassion for the misfortunes of an innocent prince. Common sense,
+however, had much more to do with prompting their action, and common
+sense plainly informed them that they had no choice between a restored
+king and a military despot. They would not have had even that if the
+leading military chief had not been a man of homely sense and vulgar
+aims; such an one as Milton afterwards drew in--
+
+   "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+    From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts
+    Were always downward bent, admiring more
+    The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold."
+
+In the field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier,
+acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually. In his
+political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of
+the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot. Such are they for
+whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually
+find that they have laboured. "Great things," said Edward Gibbon
+Wakefield, "are begun by men with great souls and little
+breeches-pockets, and ended by men with great breeches-pockets and
+little souls."
+
+Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever
+so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the
+course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his
+blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot
+hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither
+and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested
+reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or
+misrepresent. On February 11th, about ten at night, Mr. Samuel Pepys,
+being in Cheapside, heard "all the bells in all the churches a-ringing.
+But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of
+bonfires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and
+at Strand Bridge I could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King
+Street, seven or eight; and all around burning, roasting, and drinking
+for rumps. There being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down.
+The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a merry peal with their
+knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill
+there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied upon it, and
+another basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the
+greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would
+think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to
+keep on the further side." This burning of the Rump meant that the
+attempt of a miserable minority to pose as King, Lords, and Commons, had
+broken down, and that the restoration of Charles, for good or ill, was
+the decree of the people. A modern Republican might without disgrace
+have bowed to the gale, for such an one, unless hopelessly fanatical,
+denies the divine right of republics equally with that of kings, and
+allows no other title than that of the consent of the majority of
+citizens. But Milton had never admitted the rights of the majority: and
+in his supreme effort for the Republic, "The Ready and Easy Way to
+establish a free Commonwealth," he ignores the Royalist plurality, and
+assumes that the virtuous part of the nation, to whom alone he allows a
+voice, is as desirous as himself of the establishment of a Republic, and
+only needs to be shown the way. As this was by no means the case, the
+whole pamphlet rests upon sand: though in days when public opinion was
+guided not from the press but from the rostrum, many might have been won
+by the eloquence of Milton's invectives against the inhuman pride and
+hollow ceremonial of kingship, and his encomiums of the simple order
+when the ruler's main distinction from the ruled is the severity of his
+toil. "Whereas they who are the greatest are perpetual servants and
+drudges to the public at their own cost and charges, neglect their own
+affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in
+their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely,
+familiarly, friendly without adoration." Whatever generous glow for
+equality such words might kindle, was only too likely to be quenched
+when the reader came to learn on what conditions Milton thought it
+attainable. His panacea was a permanent Parliament or Council of State,
+self-elected for life, or renewable at most only in definite
+proportions, at stated times. The whole history of England for the last
+twelve years was a commentary on the impotence of a Parliament that had
+outlived its mandate, and every line of the lesson had been lost upon
+Milton. He does indeed, near the end, betray a suspicion that the people
+may object to hand over the whole business of legislation to a
+self-elected and irresponsible body, and is led to make a remarkable
+suggestion, prefiguring the federal constitution of the United States,
+and in a measure the Home Rule and Communal agitations of our own day.
+He would make every county independent in so far as regards the
+execution of justice between man and man. The districts might make their
+own laws in this department, subject only to a moderate amount of
+control from the supreme council. This must have seemed to Milton's
+contemporaries the official enthronement of anarchy, and, in fact, his
+proposal, thrown off at a heat with the feverish impetuosity that
+characterizes the whole pamphlet, is only valuable as an aid to
+reflection. Yet, in proclaiming the superiority of healthy municipal
+life to a centralized administration, he has anticipated the judgment of
+the wisest publicists of our day, and shown a greater insight than was
+possessed by the more scientific statesmen of the eighteenth century.
+
+One quality of Milton's pamphlet claims the highest admiration, its
+audacious courage. On the very eve of the Restoration, and with full
+though tardy recognition of its probable imminence, he protests as
+loudly as ever the righteousness of Charles's execution, and of the
+perpetual exclusion of his family from the throne. When all was lost, it
+was no disgrace to quit the field. His pamphlet appeared on March 3,
+1660; a second edition, with considerable alterations, was for the time
+suppressed. On March 28th the publisher was imprisoned for vending
+treasonable books, among which the pamphlet was no doubt included. Every
+ensuing day added something to the discomfiture of the Republicans,
+until on May 1st, "the happiest May-day," says that ardent Royalist _du
+lendemain_, Pepys, "that hath been many a year to England," Charles
+II.'s letter was read to a Parliament that none could deny to have been
+freely chosen, and acclaimed, "without so much as one No." On May 7th,
+as is conjectured by the date of an assignment made to Cyriack Skinner
+as security for a loan, Milton quitted his house, and concealed himself
+in Bartholomew Close, Smithfield. Charles re-entered his kingdom on May
+29th, and the hue and cry after regicides and their abettors began. The
+King had wisely left the business to Parliament, and, when the
+circumstances of the times, and the sincere horror in which good men
+held what they called regicide and sacrilege are duly considered, it
+must be owned that Parliament acted with humanity and moderation. Still,
+in the nature of things, proscription on a small scale was inevitable.
+Besides the regicides proper, twenty persons were to be named for
+imprisonment and permanent incapacitation for office then, and liable to
+prosecution and possibly capital punishment hereafter. It seemed almost
+inevitable that Milton should be included. On June 16th his writings
+against Charles I. were ordered to be burned by the hangman, which
+sentence was performed on August 27th. A Government proclamation
+enjoining their destruction had been issued on August 13th, and may now
+be read in the King's Library at the British Museum. He had not, then,
+escaped notice, and how he escaped proscription it is hard to say.
+Interest was certainly made for him. Andrew Marvell, Secretary Morrice,
+and Sir Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, are named as active on
+his behalf; his brother and his nephew both belonged to the Royalist
+party, and there is a romantic story of Sir William Davenant having
+requited a like obligation under which he lay to Milton himself. More to
+his honour this than to have been the offspring of Shakespeare, but one
+tale is no better authenticated than the other. The simplest explanation
+is that twenty people were found more hated than Milton: it may also
+have seemed invidious to persecute a blind man. It is certainly
+remarkable that the authorities should have failed to find the
+hiding-place of so recognizable a person, if they really looked for it.
+Whether by his own adroitness or their connivance, he avoided arrest
+until the amnesty resolution of August 29th restored him to the world
+without even being incapacitated from office. He still had to run the
+gauntlet of the Serjeant-at-Arms, who at some period unknown arrested
+him as obnoxious to the resolution of June 16th, and detained him,
+charging exorbitant fees, until compelled to abate his demands by the
+Commons' resolution of December 15th. Milton relinquished his house in
+Westminster, and formed a temporary refuge on the north side of Holborn.
+His nerves were shaken; he started in his broken sleep with the
+apprehension and bewilderment natural to one for whom, physically and
+politically, all had become darkness.
+
+His condition, in sooth, was one of well-nigh unmitigated misfortune,
+and his bearing up against it is not more of a proof of stoic fortitude
+than of innate cheerfulness. His cause lost, his ideals in the dust, his
+enemies triumphant, his friends dead on the scaffold, or exiled, or
+imprisoned, his name infamous, his principles execrated, his property
+seriously impaired by the vicissitudes of the times. He had been
+deprived of his appointment and salary as Latin Secretary, even before
+the Restoration: and he was now fleeced of two thousand pounds, invested
+in some kind of Government security, which was repudiated in spite of
+powerful intercession. Another "great sum" is said by Phillips to have
+been lost "by mismanagement and want of good advice," whether at this
+precise time is uncertain. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster
+reclaimed a considerable property which had passed out of their hands in
+the Civil War. The Serjeant-at-Arms had no doubt made all out of his
+captive that the Commons would let him. On the whole, Milton appears to
+have saved about L1500 from the wreck of his fortunes, and to have
+possessed about L200 income from the interest of this fund and other
+sources, destined to be yet further reduced within a few years. The
+value of money being then about three and a half times as great as now,
+this modest income was still a fair competence for one of his frugal
+habits, even when burdened with the care of three daughters. The history
+of his relations with these daughters is the saddest page of his life.
+"I looked that my vineyard should bring forth grapes, and it brought
+forth wild grapes." If any lot on earth could have seemed enviable to an
+imaginative mind and an affectionate heart, it would have been that of
+an Antigone or a Romola to a Milton. Milton's daughters chose to reject
+the fair repute that the simple fulfilment of evident duty would have
+brought them, and to be damned to everlasting fame, not merely as
+neglectful of their father, but as embittering his existence. The
+shocking speech attributed to one of them is, we may hope, not a fact;
+and it may not be true to the letter that they conspired to rob him, and
+sold his books to the ragpickers. The course of events down to his
+death, nevertheless, is sufficient evidence of the unhappiness of his
+household. Writing "Samson Agonistes" in calmer days, he lets us see how
+deep the iron had entered into his soul:
+
+                      "I dark in light exposed
+    To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
+    Within doors, or without, still as a fool
+    In power of others, never in my own."
+
+He probably never understood how greatly he was himself to blame. He
+had, in the first place, neglected to give his daughters the education
+which might have qualified them in some measure to appreciate him. The
+eldest, Anne, could not even write her name; and it is but a poor excuse
+to say that, though good-looking, she was deformed, and afflicted with
+an impediment in her speech. The second, Mary, who resembled her mother,
+and the third, Deborah, the most like her father, were better taught;
+but still not to the degree that could make them intelligent doers of
+the work they had to perform for him. They were so drilled in foreign
+languages, including Greek and Latin (Hebrew and Syriac are also
+mentioned, but this is difficult of belief), that they could read aloud
+to him without any comprehension of the meaning of the text. Sixty years
+afterwards, passages of Homer and Ovid were found lingering as melodious
+sounds in the memory of the youngest. Such a task, inexpressibly
+delightful to affection, must have been intolerably repulsive to dislike
+or indifference: we can scarcely wonder that two of these children (of
+the youngest we have a better report), abhorred the father who exacted
+so much and imparted so little. Yet, before visiting any of the parties
+with inexorable condemnation, we should consider the strong probability
+that much of the misery grew out of an antecedent state of things, for
+which none of them were responsible. The infant minds of two of the
+daughters, and the two chiefly named as undutiful, had been formed by
+their mother. Mistress Milton cannot have greatly cherished her husband,
+and what she wanted in love must have been made up in fear. She must
+have abhorred his principles and his writings, and probably gave free
+course to her feelings whenever she could have speech with a
+sympathizer, without caring whether the girls were within hearing.
+Milton himself, we know, was cheerful in congenial society, but he were
+no poet if he had not been reserved with the uncongenial. To them the
+silent, abstracted, often irritable, and finally sightless father would
+seem awful and forbidding. It is impossible to exaggerate the
+susceptibility of young minds to first impressions. The probability is
+that ere Mistress Milton departed this life, she had intentionally or
+unintentionally avenged all the injuries she could imagine herself to
+have received from her husband, and furnished him with a stronger
+argument than any that had found a place in the "Doctrine and Discipline
+of Divorce."
+
+It is something in favour of the Milton girls that they were at least
+not calculating in their undutifulness. Had they reflected, they must
+have seen that their behaviour was little to their interest. If they
+brought a stepmother upon themselves, the blame was theirs. Something
+must certainly be done to keep Milton's library from the rag-women; and
+in February, 1663, by the advice of his excellent physician Dr. Paget,
+he married Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of a yeoman of Wistaston in
+Cheshire, a distant relation of Dr. Paget's own, and exactly thirty
+years younger than Milton. "A genteel person, a peaceful and agreeable
+woman," says Aubrey, who knew her, and refutes by anticipation
+Richardson's anonymous informant, perhaps Deborah Clarke, who libelled
+her as "a termagant." She was pretty, and had golden hair, which one
+connects pleasantly with the late sunshine she brought into Milton's
+life. She sang to his accompaniment on the organ and bass-viol, but is
+not recorded to have read or written for him; the only direct testimony
+we have of her care of him is his verbal acknowledgment of her attention
+to his creature comforts. Yet Aubrey's memoranda show that she could
+talk with her husband about Hobbes, and she treasured the letters he had
+received from distinguished foreigners. At the time of their marriage
+Milton was living in Jewin Street, Aldersgate, from which he soon
+afterwards removed to Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, his last
+residence. He lodged in the interim with Millington, the book
+auctioneer, a man of superior ability, whom an informant of Richardson's
+had often met in the streets leading his inmate by the hand.
+
+It is at this era of Milton's history that we obtain the fullest details
+of his daily life, as being nearer to the recollection of those from
+whom information was sought after his death. His household was larger
+than might have been expected in his reduced circumstances; he had a
+man-servant, Greene, and a maid, named Fisher. That true
+hero-worshipper, Aubrey, tells us that he generally rose at four, and
+was even then attended by his "man" who read to him out of the Hebrew
+Bible. Such erudition in a serving-man almost surpasses credibility: the
+English Bible probably sufficed both. It is easier to believe that some
+one read to him or wrote for him from seven till dinner time: if,
+however, "the writing was nearly as much as the reading," much that
+Milton dictated must have been lost. His recreations were walking in his
+garden, never wanting to any of his residences, where he would continue
+for three or four hours at a time; swinging in a chair when weather
+prevented open-air exercise; and music, that blissful resource of
+blindness. His instrument was usually the organ, the counterpart of the
+stately harmony of his own verse. To these relaxations must be added the
+society of faithful friends, among whom Andrew Marvell, Dr. Paget, and
+Cyriack Skinner are particularly named. Nor did Edward Phillips neglect
+his uncle, finding him, as Aubrey implies, "most familiar and free in
+his conversation to those to whom most sour in his way of education."
+Milton had made him "a songster," and we can imagine the "sober, silent,
+and most harmless person" (Evelyn) opening his lips to accompany his
+uncle's music. Of Milton's manner Aubrey says, "Extreme pleasant in his
+conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc., but satirical." Visitors
+usually came from six till eight, if at all, and the day concluded with
+a light supper, sometimes of olives, which we may well imagine fraught
+for him with Tuscan memories, a pipe, and a glass of water. This picture
+of plain living and high thinking is confirmed by the testimony of the
+Quaker Thomas Ellwood, who for a short time read to him, and who
+describes the kindness of his demeanour, and the pains he took to teach
+the foreign method of pronouncing Latin. Even more; "having a curious
+ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and when I
+did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most
+difficult passages to me." Milton must have felt a special tenderness
+for the Quakers, whose religious opinions, divested of the shell of
+eccentricity which the vulgar have always mistaken for the kernel, had
+become substantially his own. He had outgrown Independency as formerly
+Presbyterianism. His blindness served to excuse his absence from public
+worship; to which, so long at least as Clarendon's intolerance prevailed
+in the councils of Charles the Second, might be added the difficulty of
+finding edification in the pulpit, had he needed it. But these reasons,
+though not imaginary, were not those which really actuated him. He had
+ceased to value rites and forms of any kind, and, had his religious
+views been known, he would have been "equalled in fate" with his
+contemporary Spinoza. Yet he was writing a book which orthodox
+Protestantism has accepted as but a little lower than the Scriptures.
+
+"The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." We know but little
+of the history of the greatest works of genius. That something more than
+usual should be known of "Paradise Lost" must be ascribed to the
+author's blindness, and consequent dependence upon amanuenses. When
+inspiration came upon him any one at hand would be called upon to
+preserve the precious verses, hence the progress of the poem was known
+to many, and Phillips can speak of "parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty
+verses at a time." We have already heard from him that Milton's season
+of inspiration lasted from the autumnal equinox to the vernal: the
+remainder of the year doubtless contributed much to the matter of his
+poem, if nothing to the form. His habits of composition appear to be
+shadowed forth by himself in the induction to the Third Book:--
+
+   "Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath
+    That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
+    Nightly I visit--"
+
+   "Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
+    Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
+    Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
+    Tunes her nocturnal note."
+
+This is something more precise than a mere poetical allusion to his
+blindness, and the inference is strengthened by the anecdote that when
+"his celestial patroness" "Deigned nightly visitation unimplored," his
+daughters were frequently called at night to take down the verses, not
+one of which the whole world could have replaced. This was as it should
+be. Grand indeed is the thought of the unequalled strain poured forth
+when every other voice was hushed in the mighty city, to no meaner
+accompaniment than the music of the spheres. Respecting the date of
+composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced
+in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered
+("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible
+hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks,
+completed by 1663. It would still require mature revision, which we know
+from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665. Internal
+evidence of the chronology of the poem is very scanty. Professor Masson
+thinks that the first two books were probably written before the
+Restoration. In support of this view it may be urged that lines 500-505
+of Book i. wear the appearance of an insertion after the Restoration,
+and that in the invocation to the Third Book Milton may be thought to
+allude to the dangers his life and liberty had afterwards encountered,
+figured by the regions of nether darkness which he had traversed as a
+poet.
+
+   "Hail holy Light!...
+    Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
+    Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
+    In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
+    Through utter and through middle darkness borne."
+
+The only other passage important in this respect is the famous one from
+the invocation to the Seventh Book, manifestly describing the poet's
+condition under the Restoration:--
+
+   "Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
+    More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
+    To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
+    On evil days though fallen and evil tongues;
+    In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
+    And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
+    Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn
+    Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,
+    Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
+    But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
+    Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
+    Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard."
+
+This allusion to the licentiousness of the Restoration literature could
+hardly have been made until its tendencies had been plainly developed.
+At this time "Paradise Lost" was half finished. ("Half yet remains
+unsung.") The remark permits us to conclude that Milton conceived and
+executed his poem as a whole, going steadily through it, and not leaving
+gaps to be supplied at higher or lower levels of inspiration. There is
+no evidence of any resort to older material, except in the case of
+Satan's address to the Sun.
+
+The publication of "Paradise Lost" was impeded like the birth of
+Hercules. In 1665 London was a city of the dying and the dead; in 1666
+the better part of it was laid in ashes. One remarkable incident of the
+calamity was the destruction of the stocks of the booksellers, which had
+been brought into the vaults of St. Paul's for safety, and perished with
+the cathedral. "Paradise Lost" might have easily, like its hero--
+
+        "In the singing smoke
+    Uplifted spurned the ground."
+
+but the negotiations for its publication were not complete until April
+27, 1667, on which day John Milton, "in consideration of five pounds to
+him now paid by Samuel Symmons, and other the considerations herein
+mentioned," assigned to the said Symmons, "all that book, copy, or
+manuscript of a poem intituled 'Paradise Lost,' or by whatsoever ether
+title or name the same is or shall be called or distinguished, now
+lately licensed to be printed." The other considerations were the
+payment of the like sum of five pounds upon the entire sale of each of
+the first three impressions, each impression to consist of thirteen
+hundred copies. "According to the present value of money," says
+Professor Masson, "it was as if Milton had received L17 10s. down, and
+was to expect L70 in all. That was on the supposition of a sale of 3,900
+copies." He lived to receive ten pounds altogether; and his widow in
+1680 parted with all her interest in the copyright for eight pounds,
+Symmons shortly afterwards reselling it for twenty-five. He is not,
+therefore, to be enumerated among those publishers who have fattened
+upon their authors, and when the size of the book and the
+unfashionableness of the writer are considered, his enterprise may
+perhaps appear the most remarkable feature of the transaction. As for
+Milton, we may almost rejoice that he should have reaped no meaner
+reward than immortality.
+
+It will have been observed that in the contract with Symmons "Paradise
+Lost" is said to have been "lately licensed to be printed." The
+censorship named in "Areopagitica" still prevailed, with the difference
+that prelates now sat in judgment upon Puritans. The Archbishop gave or
+refused license through his chaplains, and could not be ignored as
+Milton had ignored the little Presbyterian Popes; Geneva in his person
+must repair to Lambeth. Chaplain Tomkyns, who took cognisance of
+"Paradise Lost," was fortunately a broad-minded man, disposed to live
+and let live, though scrupling somewhat when he found "perplexity" and
+"fear of change" imputed to "monarchs." His objections were overcome,
+and on August 20, 1667--three weeks after the death of Cowley, and eight
+days after Pepys had heard the deceased extolled as the greatest of
+English poets--John Milton came forth clad as with adamantine mail in
+the approbation of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it
+was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for
+weighing evil against good were hung--
+
+    "Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,"
+
+one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister.
+The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other
+hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with
+Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity
+of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move,
+if not, as Milton would have wished, "a noble and puissant nation
+rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and
+weary nation creeping slowly--Tomkyns and all--towards an era of liberty
+and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's
+impertinence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The world's great epics group themselves in two divisions, which may be
+roughly defined as the natural and the artificial. The spontaneous or
+self-created epic is a confluence of traditions, reduced to symmetry by
+the hand of a master. Such are the Iliad, the Odyssey, the great Indian
+and Persian epics, the Nibelungen Lied. In such instances it may be
+fairly said that the theme has chosen the poet, rather than the poet the
+theme. When the epic is a work of reflection, the poet has deliberately
+selected his subject, and has not, in general, relied so much upon the
+wealth of pre-existing materials as upon the capabilities of a single
+circumstance. Such are the epics of Virgil, Camoens, Tasso, Milton;
+Dante, perhaps, standing alone as the one epic poet (for we cannot rank
+Ariosto and Spenser in this class) who owes everything but his creed to
+his own invention. The traditional epic, created by the people and only
+moulded by the minstrel, is so infinitely the more important for the
+history of culture, that, since this new field of investigation has
+become one of paramount interest, the literary epic has been in danger
+of neglect. Yet it must be allowed that to evolve an epic out of a
+single incident is a greater intellectual achievement than to weave one
+out of a host of ballads. We must also admit that, leaving the unique
+Dante out of account, Milton essayed a more arduous enterprise than any
+of his predecessors, and in this point of view may claim to stand above
+them all. We are so accustomed to regard the existence of "Paradise
+Lost" as an ultimate fact, that we but imperfectly realize the gigantic
+difficulty and audacity of the undertaking. To paint the bloom of
+Paradise with the same brush that has depicted the flames and blackness
+of the nether world; to make the Enemy of Mankind, while preserving this
+character, an heroic figure, not without claims on sympathy and
+admiration; to lend fit speech to the father and mother of humanity, to
+angels and archangels, and even Deity itself;--these achievements
+required a Michael Angelo shorn of his strength in every other province
+of art, that all might be concentrated in song.
+
+It is easy to represent "Paradise Lost" as obsolete by pointing out that
+its demonology and angelology have for us become mere mythology. This
+criticism is more formidable in appearance than in reality. The vital
+question for the poet is his own belief, not the belief of his readers.
+If the Iliad has survived not merely the decay of faith in the Olympian
+divinities, but the criticism which has pulverized Achilles as a
+historical personage, "Paradise Lost" need not be much affected by
+general disbelief in the personality of Satan, and universal disbelief
+in that of Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. A far more vulnerable point is
+the failure of the purpose so ostentatiously proclaimed, "To justify the
+ways of God to men." This problem was absolutely insoluble on Milton's
+data, except by denying the divine foreknowledge, a course not open to
+him. The conduct of the Deity who allows his adversary to ruin his
+innocent creature from the purely malignant motive
+
+   "That with reiterated crimes he might
+    Heap on himself damnation,"
+
+without further interposition than a warning which he foresees will be
+fruitless, implies a grievous deficiency either in wisdom or in
+goodness, or at best falsifies the declaration:
+
+                    "Necessity and chance
+    Approach me not, and what I will is fate."
+
+The like flaw runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is
+resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic
+guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to
+drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial
+portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat,
+considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and
+advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the
+intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take all
+possible pains to prevent his gaining an entrance into Paradise, but
+omit to keep Adam and Eve themselves in sight, notwithstanding the
+strong hint they have received by finding the intruder
+
+   "Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
+    Assaying by his devilish art to reach
+    The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
+    Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams."
+
+If anything more infatuated can be imagined, it is the simplicity of the
+All-Wise Himself in entrusting the wardership of the gate of Hell, and
+consequently the charge of keeping Satan _in_, to the beings in the
+universe most interested in letting him _out_. The sole but sufficient
+excuse is that these faults are inherent in the subject. If Milton had
+not thought that he could justify the ways of Jehovah to man he would
+not have written at all; common sense on the part of the angels would
+have paralysed the action of the poem; we should, if conscious of our
+loss, have lamented the irrefragable criticism that should have stifled
+the magnificent allegory of Sin and Death. Another critical thrust is
+equally impossible to parry. It is true that the Evil One is the hero of
+the epic. Attempts have been made to invest Adam with this character. He
+is, indeed, a great figure to contemplate, and such as might represent
+the ideal of humanity till summoned to act and suffer. When, indeed, he
+partakes of the forbidden fruit in disobedience to his Maker, but in
+compassion to his mate, he does seem for a moment to fulfil the canon
+which decrees that the hero shall not always be faultless, but always
+shall be noble. The moment, however, that he begins to wrangle with Eve
+about their respective shares of blame, he forfeits his estate of
+heroism more irretrievably than his estate of holiness--a fact of which
+Milton cannot have been unaware, but he had no liberty to forsake the
+Scripture narrative. Satan remains, therefore, the only possible hero,
+and it is one of the inevitable blemishes of the poem that he should
+disappear almost entirely from the latter books.
+
+These defects, and many more which might be adduced, are abundantly
+compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion of his age. No
+poet whose fame is co-extensive with the civilised world, except
+Shakespeare and Goethe, has ever been greatly in advance of his times.
+Had Milton been so, he might have avoided many faults, but he would not
+have been a representative poet; nor could Shelley have classed him with
+Homer and Dante, and above Virgil, as "the third epic poet; that is, the
+third poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible
+relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which
+he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itself in
+correspondence with their development." Hence it is that in the
+"Adonais," Shelley calls Milton "the third among the sons of light."
+
+A clear conception of the universe as Milton's inner eye beheld it, and
+of his religious and philosophical opinions in so far as they appear in
+the poem, is indispensable for a correct understanding of "Paradise
+Lost." The best service to be rendered to the reader within such limits
+as ours is to direct him to Professor Masson's discussion of Milton's
+cosmology in his "Life of Milton," and also in his edition of the
+Poetical Works. Generally speaking, it may be said that Milton's
+conception of the universe is Ptolemaic, that for him sun and moon and
+planets revolve around the central earth, rapt by the revolution of the
+crystal spheres in which, sphere enveloping sphere, they are
+successively located. But the light which had broken in upon him from
+the discoveries of Galileo has led him to introduce features not
+irreconcilable with the solar centre and ethereal infinity of
+Copernicus; so that "the poet would expect the effective permanence of
+his work in the imagination of the world, whether Ptolemy or Copernicus
+should prevail." So Professor Masson, who finely and justly adds that
+Milton's blindness helped him "by having already converted all external
+space in his own sensations into an infinite of circumambient blackness
+through which he could flash brilliance at his pleasure." His
+inclination as a thinker is evidently towards the Copernican theory, but
+he saw that the Ptolemaic, however inferior in sublimity, was better
+adapted to the purpose of a poem requiring a definite theatre of action.
+For rapturous contemplation of the glory of God in nature, the
+Copernican system is immeasurably the more stimulating to the spirit,
+but when made the theatre of an action the universe fatigues with its
+infinitude--
+
+   "Millions have meaning; after this
+      Cyphers forget the integer."
+
+An infinite sidereal universe would have stultified the noble
+description how Satan--
+
+        "In the emptier waste, resembling air,
+    Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
+    Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
+    In circuit, undetermined square or round,
+    With opal towers and battlements adorned
+    Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
+    And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
+    This pendant world, in bigness as a star
+    Of smallest magnitude close by the moon."
+
+This pendant world, observe, is not the earth, as Addison understood it,
+but the entire sidereal universe, depicted not as the infinity we now
+know it to be, but as a definite object, so insulated in the vastness of
+space as to be perceptible to the distant Fiend as a minute star, and no
+larger in comparison with the courts of Heaven--themselves not wholly
+seen--than such a twinkler matched with the full-orbed moon. Such a
+representation, if it diminishes the grandeur of the universe accessible
+to sense, exalts that of the supersensual and extramundane regions where
+the action takes its birth, and where Milton's gigantic imagination is
+most perfectly at home.
+
+There is no such compromise between religious creeds in Milton's mind as
+he saw good to make between Ptolemy and Copernicus. The matter was, in
+his estimation, far too serious. Never was there a more unaccountable
+misstatement than Ruskin's, that "Paradise Lost" is a poem in which
+every artifice of invention is consciously employed--not a single fact
+being conceived as tenable by any living faith. Milton undoubtedly
+believed most fully in the actual existence of all his chief personages,
+natural and supernatural, and was sure that, however he might have
+indulged his imagination in the invention of incidents, he had
+represented character with the fidelity of a conscientious historian.
+His religious views, moreover, are such as he could never have thought
+it right to publish if he had not been intimately convinced of their
+truth. He has strayed far from the creed of Puritanism. He is an Arian;
+his Son of God, though an unspeakably exalted being, is dependent,
+inferior, not self-existent, and could be merged in the Father's person
+or obliterated entirely without the least diminution of Almighty
+perfection. He is, moreover, no longer a Calvinist: Satan and Adam both
+possess free will, and neither need have fallen. The reader must accept
+these views, as well as Milton's conception of the materiality of the
+spiritual world, if he is to read to good purpose. "If his imagination,"
+says Pattison, pithily, "is not active enough to assist the poet, he
+must at least not resist him."
+
+This is excellent advice as respects the general plan of "Paradise
+Lost," the materiality of its spiritual personages, and its system of
+philosophy and theology. Its poetical beauties can only be resisted
+where they are not perceived. They have repeated the miracles of Orpheus
+and Amphion, metamorphosing one most bitterly obnoxious, of whom so late
+as 1687 a royalist wrote that "his fame is gone out like a candle in a
+snuff, and his memory will always stink," into an object of universal
+veneration. From the first instant of perusal the imagination is led in
+captivity, and for the first four books at least stroke upon stroke of
+sublimity follows with such continuous and undeviating regularity that
+sublimity seems this Creation's first law, and we feel like pigmies
+transported to a world of giants. There is nothing forced or affected
+in this grandeur, no visible effort, no barbaric profusion, everything
+proceeds with a severe and majestic order, controlled by the strength
+that called it into being. The similes and other poetical ornaments,
+though inexpressibly magnificent, seem no more so than the greatness of
+the general conception demands. Grant that Satan in his fall is not
+"less than archangel ruined," and it is no exaggeration but the simplest
+truth to depict his mien--
+
+                "As when the sun, new risen,
+    Looks through the horizontal misty air,
+    Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
+    In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
+    On half the nations."
+
+When such a being voyages through space it is no hyperbole to compare
+him to a whole fleet, judiciously shown at such distance as to suppress
+every minute detail that could diminish the grandeur of the image--
+
+   "As when far off at sea a fleet descried
+    Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
+    Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
+    Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
+    Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood,
+    Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
+    Ply stemming nightly towards the pole: so seemed
+    Far off the flying Fiend."
+
+These similes, and an infinity of others, are grander than anything in
+Homer, who would, however, have equalled them with an equal subject.
+Dante's treatment is altogether different; the microscopic intensity of
+perception in which he so far surpasses Homer and Milton affords, in
+our opinion, no adequate compensation for his inferiority in
+magnificence. That the theme of "Paradise Lost" should have evoked such
+grandeur is a sufficient compensation for its incurable flaws and the
+utter breakdown of its ostensible moral purpose. There is yet another
+department of the poem where Milton writes as he could have written on
+nothing else. The elements of his under-world are comparatively simple,
+fire and darkness, fallen angels now huddled thick as leaves in
+Vallombrosa; anon,
+
+    "A forest huge of spears and thronging helms,"
+
+charming their painful steps over the burning marl by
+
+            "The Dorian mood
+    Of flutes and soft recorders;"
+
+the dazzling magnificence of Pandemonium; the ineffable welter of Chaos;
+proudly eminent over all like a tower, the colossal personality of
+Satan. The description of Paradise and the story of Creation, if making
+less demand on the poet's creative power, required greater resources of
+knowledge, and more consummate skill in combination. Nature must yield
+up her treasures, whatever of fair and stately the animal and vegetable
+kingdoms can afford must be brought together, blended in gorgeous masses
+or marshalled in infinite procession. Here Milton is as profuse as he
+has hitherto been severe, and with good cause; it is possible to make
+Hell too repulsive for art, it is not possible to make Eden too
+enchanting. In his descriptions of the former the effect is produced by
+a perpetual succession of isolated images of awful majesty; in his
+Paradise and Creation the universal landscape is bathed in a general
+atmosphere of lustrous splendour. This portion of his work is
+accordingly less great in detached passages, but is little inferior in
+general greatness. No less an authority than Tennyson, indeed, expresses
+a preference for the "bowery loneliness" of Eden over the "Titan angels"
+of the "deep-domed Empyrean." If this only means that Milton's Eden is
+finer than his war in heaven, we must concur; but if a wider application
+be intended, it does seem to us that his Pandemonium exalts him to a
+greater height above every other poet than his Paradise exalts him above
+his predecessor, and in some measure, his exemplar, Spenser.
+
+To remain at such an elevation was impossible. Milton compares
+unfavourably with Homer in this; his epic begins at its zenith, and
+after a while visibly and continually declines. His genius is
+unimpaired, but his skill transcends his stuff. The fall of man and its
+consequences could not by any device be made as interesting as the fall
+of Satan, of which it is itself but a consequence. It was, moreover,
+absolutely inevitable that Adam's fall, the proper catastrophe of the
+poem, should occur some time before the conclusion, otherwise there
+would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption,
+equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art. The
+effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar,"
+which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the
+conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes comparatively tame and
+languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the
+contention between Brutus and Cassius. It is to be regretted that
+Milton's extreme devotion to the letter of Scripture has not permitted
+him to enrich his latter books with any corresponding episode. It is not
+until the very end that he is again truly himself--
+
+   "They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
+    Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
+    Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
+    With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
+    Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.
+    The world was all before them, where to choose
+    Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
+    They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
+    Through Eden took their solitary way."
+
+Some minor objections may be briefly noticed. The materiality of
+Milton's celestial warfare has been censured by every one from the days
+of Sir Samuel Morland,[6] a splenetic critic, who had incurred Milton's
+contempt by his treachery to Cromwell and Thurloe. Warfare, however,
+there must be: war cannot be made without weapons; and Milton's only
+fault is that he has rather exaggerated than minimized the difficulties
+of his subject. A sense of humour would have spiked his celestial
+artillery, but a lively perception of the ridiculous is scarcely to be
+demanded from a Milton. After all, he was borrowing from good poets,[7]
+whose thought in itself is correct, and even profound; it is only when
+artillery antedates humanity that the ascription of its invention to the
+Tempter seems out of place. The metamorphosis of the demons into
+serpents has been censured as grotesque; but it was imperatively
+necessary to manifest by some unmistakable outward sign that victory did
+not after all remain with Satan, and the critics may be challenged to
+find one more appropriate. The bridge built by Sin and Death is equally
+essential. Satan's progeny must not be dismissed without some exploit
+worthy of their parentage. The one passage where Milton's taste seems to
+us entirely at fault is the description of the Paradise of Fools (iii.,
+481-497), where his scorn of--
+
+                        "Reliques, beads,
+    Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,"
+
+has tempted him to chequer the sublime with the ludicrous.
+
+No subject but a Biblical one would have insured Milton universal
+popularity among his countrymen, for his style is that of an ancient
+classic transplanted, like Aladdin's palace set down with all its
+magnificence in the heart of Africa; and his diction, the delight of the
+educated, is the despair of the ignorant man. Not that this diction is
+in any respect affected or pedantic. Milton was the darling poet of our
+greatest modern master of unadorned Saxon speech, John Bright. But it
+is freighted with classic allusion--not alone from the ancient
+classics--and comes to us rich with gathered sweets, like a wind laden
+with the scent of many flowers. "It is," says Pattison, "the elaborated
+outcome of all the best words of all antecedent poetry--the language of
+one who lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of past
+time." "Words," the same writer reminds us, "over and above their
+dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has gathered
+round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations
+of song." So it is, every word seems instinct with its own peculiar
+beauty, and fraught with its own peculiar association, and yet each
+detail is strictly subordinate to the general effect. No poet of
+Milton's rank, probably, has been equally indebted to his predecessors,
+not only for his vocabulary, but for his thoughts. Reminiscences throng
+upon him, and he takes all that comes, knowing that he can make it
+lawfully his own. The comparison of Satan's shield to the moon, for
+instance, is borrowed from the similar comparison of the shield of
+Achilles in the Iliad, but what goes in Homer comes out Milton. Homer
+merely says that the huge and massy shield emitted a lustre like that of
+the moon in heaven. Milton heightens the resemblance by giving the
+shield shape, calls in the telescope to endow it with what would seem
+preternatural dimensions to the naked eye, and enlarges even these by
+the suggestion of more than the telescope can disclose--
+
+                   "His ponderous shield,
+    Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round
+    Behind him cast; the broad circumference
+    Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
+    Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
+    At evening, from the top of Fesole,
+    Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
+    Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe."
+
+Thus does Milton appropriate the wealth of past literature, secure of
+being able to recoin it with his own image and superscription. The
+accumulated learning which might have choked the native fire of a
+feebler spirit was but nourishment to his. The polished stones and
+shining jewels of his superb mosaic are often borrowed, but its plan and
+pattern are his own.
+
+One of the greatest charms of "Paradise Lost" is the incomparable metre,
+which, after Coleridge and Tennyson have done their utmost, remains
+without equal in our language for the combination of majesty and music.
+It is true that this majesty is to a certain extent inherent in the
+subject, and that the poet who could rival it would scarcely be well
+advised to exert his power to the full unless his theme also rivalled
+the magnificence of Milton's. Milton, on his part, would have been quite
+content to have written such blank verse as Wordsworth's "Yew Trees," or
+as the exordium of "Alastor," or as most of Coleridge's idylls, had his
+subject been less than epical. The organ-like solemnity of his verbal
+music is obtained partly by extreme attention to variety of pause, but
+chiefly, as Wordsworth told Klopstock, and as Mr. Addington Symonds
+points out more at length, by the period, not the individual line, being
+made the metrical unit, "so that each line in a period shall carry its
+proper burden of sound, but the burden shall be differently distributed
+in the successive verses." Hence lines which taken singly seem almost
+unmetrical, in combination with their associates appear indispensable
+parts of the general harmony. Mr. Symonds gives some striking instances.
+Milton's versification is that of a learned poet, profound in thought
+and burdened with the further care of ordering his thoughts: it is
+therefore only suited to sublimity of a solemn or meditative cast, and
+most unsuitable to render the unstudied sublimity of Homer. Perhaps no
+passage is better adapted to display its dignity, complicated artifice,
+perpetual retarding movement, concerted harmony, and grave but ravishing
+sweetness than the description of the coming on of Night in the Fourth
+Book:--
+
+   "Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
+    Had in her sober livery all things clad;
+    Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
+    They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
+    Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
+    She all night long her amorous descant sung;
+    Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament
+    With living sapphires; Hesperus that led
+    The stary host rose brightest, till the moon,
+    Rising in clouded majesty, at length
+    Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,
+    And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."
+
+How exquisite the indication of the pauseless continuity of the
+nightingale's song by the transition from short sentences, cut up by
+commas and semicolons, to the "linked sweetness long drawn out" of "She
+all night long her amorous descant sung"! The poem is full of similar
+felicities, none perhaps more noteworthy than the sequence of
+monosyllables that paints the enormous bulk of the prostrate Satan:--
+
+    "So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay."
+
+It is a most interesting subject for inquiry from what sources, other
+than the Scriptures, Milton drew aid in the composition of "Paradise
+Lost." The most striking counterpart is Calderon, to whom he owed as
+little as Calderon can have owed to him. "El Magico Prodigioso," already
+cited as affording a remarkable parallel to "Comus," though performed in
+1637, was not printed until 1663, when "Paradise Lost" was already
+completed.[8] The two great religious poets have naturally conceived the
+Evil One much in the same manner, and Calderon's Lucifer,
+
+    "Like the red outline of beginning Adam,"
+
+might well have passed as the original draft of Milton's Satan:--
+
+                               "In myself I am
+    A world of happiness and misery;
+    This I have lost, and that I must lament
+    For ever. In my attributes I stood
+    So high and so heroically great,
+    In lineage so supreme, and with a genius
+    Which penetrated with a glance the world
+    Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,
+    A King--whom I may call the King of Kings,
+    Because all others tremble in their pride
+    Before the terrors of his countenance--
+    In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems
+    Of living light--call them the stars of heaven--
+    Named me his counsellor. But the high praise
+    Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose
+    In mighty competition, to ascend
+    His seat, and place my foot triumphantly
+    Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know
+    The depth to which ambition falls. For mad
+    Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now
+    Repentance of the irrevocable deed.
+    Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory
+    Of not to be subdued, before the shame
+    Of reconciling me with him who reigns
+    By coward cession. Nor was I alone,
+    Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone.
+    And there was hope, and there may still be hope;
+    For many suffrages among his vassals
+    Hailed me their lord and king, and many still
+    Are mine, and many more perchance shall be."
+
+A striking proof that resemblance does not necessarily imply plagiarism.
+Milton's affinity to Calderon has been overlooked by his commentators;
+but four luminaries have been named from which he is alleged to have
+drawn, however sparingly, in his golden urn--Caedmon, the Adamus Exul of
+Grotius, the Adamo of the Italian dramatist Andreini, and the Lucifer of
+the Dutch poet Vondel. Caedmon, first printed in 1655, it is but barely
+possible that he should have known, and ere he could have known him the
+conception of "Paradise Lost" was firmly implanted in his mind. External
+evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his
+knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the
+Italian drama, we can easily believe with Hayley that "his fancy caught
+fire from that spirited, though irregular and fantastic composition."
+Vondel's Lucifer--whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of
+Satan--was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have
+been studying Dutch, but when the plan of "Paradise Lost" must have been
+substantially formed. There can, nevertheless, be no question of the
+frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel's Lucifer and
+"Paradise Lost," but between his Samson and "Samson Agonistes." Milton's
+indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English
+poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his
+lightning-speech, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," was a
+thunderbolt condensed from a brace of Vondel's clumsy Alexandrines,
+which Beddoes renders thus:--
+
+   "And rather the first prince at an inferior court
+    Than in the blessed light the second or still less."
+
+Mr. Gosse followed up the inquiry, which eventually became the subject
+of a monograph by Mr. George Edmundson ("Milton and Vondel," 1885). That
+Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel's works translated
+aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the
+enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet.
+Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be
+overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and
+expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject.
+_Je l'aurais bien pris sans toi._ When, as in the instance above quoted,
+he borrows anything more recondite, he so exalts and transforms it that
+it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has
+entertained unawares. This may not entirely apply to the Italian
+reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems
+indebted for the conception of his diabolical council. Ochino, in many
+respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as
+the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the
+lawfulness of polygamy. In Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," which he may have
+read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of
+Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate. "The
+introduction to the first dialogue," says Ochino's biographer Benrath,
+"is highly dramatic, and reminds us of Job and Faust." Ochino's
+arch-fiend, like Milton's, announces a masterstroke of genius. "God sent
+His Son into the world, and I will send my son." Antichrist accordingly
+comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until
+Henry VIII. is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture. It is a
+token, not only of Milton's, but of Vondel's, indebtedness, that, with
+Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council,
+and even admonishes his leader. "I fear me," he remarks, "lest when
+Antichrist shall die, and come down hither to hell, that as he passeth
+us in wickedness, so he will be above us in dignity." Prescience worthy
+of him who
+
+                         "In his rising seemed
+    A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
+    Deliberation sat, and public care;
+    And princely counsel in his face yet shone."
+
+Milton's borrowings, nevertheless, nowise impair his greatness. The
+obligation is rather theirs, of whose stores he has condescended to
+avail himself. He may be compared to his native country, which, fertile
+originally in little but enterprise, has made the riches of the earth
+her own. He has given her a national epic, inferior to no other, and
+unlike most others, founded on no merely local circumstance, but such as
+must find access to every nation acquainted with the most
+widely-circulated Book in the world. He has further enriched his native
+literature with an imperishable monument of majestic diction, an example
+potent to counteract that wasting agency of familiar usage by which
+language is reduced to vulgarity, as sea-water wears cliffs to shingle.
+He has reconciled, as no other poet has ever done, the Hellenic spirit
+with the Hebraic, the Bible with the Renaissance. And, finally, as we
+began by saying, his poem is the mighty bridge--
+
+    "Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move,"
+
+across which the spirit of ancient poetry has travelled to modern times,
+and by which the continuity of great English literature has remained
+unbroken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+In recording the publication of "Paradise Lost" in 1667, we have passed
+over the interval of Milton's life immediately subsequent to the
+completion of the poem in 1663. The first incident of any importance is
+his migration to Chalfont St. Giles, near Beaconsfield, in
+Buckinghamshire, about July, 1665, to escape the plague then devastating
+London. Ell wood, whose family lived in the neighbourhood of Chalfont,
+had at his request taken for him "a pretty box" in that village; and we
+are, says Professor Masson, "to imagine Milton's house in Artillery Walk
+shuttered up, and a coach and a large waggon brought to the door, and
+the blind man helped in, and the wife and the three daughters following,
+with a servant to look after the books and other things they have taken
+with them, and the whole party driven away towards Giles-Chalfont."
+According to the same authority, Chalfont well deserves the name of
+Sleepy Hollow, lying at the bottom of a leafy dell. Milton's cottage,
+alone of his residences, still exists, though divided into two
+tenements. It is a two-storey dwelling, with a garden, is built of
+brick, with wooden beams, musters nine rooms--though a question arises
+whether some of them ought not rather to be described as closets; the
+porch in which Milton may have breathed the summer air is gone, but the
+parlour retains the latticed casement at which he sat, though through it
+he could not see. His infirmity rendered the confined situation less of
+a drawback, and there are abundance of pleasant lanes, along which he
+could be conducted in his sightless strolls:--
+
+   "As one who long in populous city pent,
+    Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
+    Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
+    Among the pleasant villages and farms
+    Adjoined, from each new thing conceives delight,
+    The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
+    Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound."
+
+Milton was probably no stranger to the neighbourhood, having lived
+within thirteen miles of it when he dwelt at Horton. Ellwood could not
+welcome him on his arrival, being in prison on account of an affray at
+what should have been the paragon of decorous solemnities--a Quaker
+funeral. When released, about the end of August or the beginning of
+September, he waited upon Milton, who, "after some discourses, called
+for a manuscript of his; which he delivered to me, bidding me take it
+home with me and read it at my leisure. When I set myself to read it, I
+found it was that excellent poem which he entitled 'Paradise Lost.'"
+Professor Masson justly remarks that Milton would not have trusted the
+worthy Quaker adolescent with the only copy of his epic; we may be sure,
+therefore, that other copies existed, and that the poem was at this
+date virtually completed and ready for press. When the manuscript was
+returned, Ellwood, after "modestly, but freely, imparting his judgment,"
+observed, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou
+to say of Paradise Found? He made no answer, but sat some time in a
+muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell on another subject." The
+plague was then at its height, and did not abate sufficiently for Milton
+to return to town with safety until about February in the following
+year, leaving, it has been asserted, a record of himself at Chalfont in
+the shape of a sonnet on the pestilence regarded as a judgment for the
+sins of the King, written with a diamond on a window-pane--as if the
+blind poet could write even with a pen! The verses, nevertheless, may
+not impossibly be genuine: they are almost too Miltonic for an imitator
+between 1665 and 1738, when they were first published.
+
+The public calamity of 1666 affected Milton more nearly than that of
+1665. The Great Fire came within a quarter of a mile of his house, and
+though he happily escaped the fate of Shirley, and did not make one of
+the helpless crowd of the homeless and destitute, his means were
+seriously abridged by the destruction of the house in Bread Street where
+he had first seen the light, and which he had retained through all the
+vicissitudes of his fortunes. He could not, probably, have published
+"Paradise Lost" without the co-operation of Samuel Symmons. Symmons's
+endeavours to push the sale of the book make the bibliographical history
+of the first edition unusually interesting. There were at least nine
+different issues, as fresh batches were successively bound up, with
+frequent alterations of title-page as reasonable cause became apparent
+to the strategic Symmons. First Milton's name is given in full, then he
+is reduced to initials, then restored; Symmons's own name, at first
+suppressed, by and by appears; his agents are frequently changed; and
+the title is altered to suit the year of issue, that the book may seem a
+novelty. The most important of all these alterations is one in which the
+author must have actively participated--the introduction of the Argument
+which, a hundred and forty years afterwards, was to cause Harriet
+Martineau to take up "Paradise Lost" at the age of seven, and of the
+Note on the metre conveying "a reason of that which stumbled many, why
+this poem rimes not." Partly, perhaps, by help of these devices,
+certainly without any aid from advertising or reviewing, the impression
+of thirteen hundred copies was disposed of within twenty months, as
+attested by Milton's receipt for his second five pounds, April 26,
+1669--two years, less one day, since the signature of the original
+contract. The first printed notice appeared after the edition had been
+entirely sold. It was by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, and was
+contained in a little Latin essay appended to Buchlerus's "Treasury of
+Poetical Phrases."
+
+      "John Milton, in addition to other most elegant writings of his,
+      both in English and Latin, has recently published 'Paradise Lost,'
+      a poem which, whether we regard the sublimity of the subject, or
+      the combined pleasantness and majesty of the style, or the
+      sublimity of the invention, or the beauty of its images and
+      descriptions of nature, will, if I mistake not, receive the name
+      of truly heroic, inasmuch as by the suffrages of many not
+      unqualified to judge, it is reputed to have reached the perfection
+      of this kind of poetry."
+
+The "many not unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the
+age, Dryden. Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer--pleasing
+anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of
+Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal.
+
+While "Paradise Lost" was thus slowly upbearing its author to the
+highest heaven of fame, Milton was achieving other titles to renown, one
+of which he deemed nothing inferior. We shall remember Ellwood's hint
+that he might find something to say about Paradise Found, and the "muse"
+into which it cast him. When, says the Quaker, he waited upon Milton
+after the latter's return to London, Milton "showed me his second poem,
+called 'Paradise Regained,' and in a pleasant tone said to me, 'This is
+owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me
+at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.'" Ellwood does not tell
+us the date of this visit, and Phillips may be right in believing that
+"Paradise Regained" was entirely composed after the publication of
+"Paradise Lost"; but it seems unlikely that the conception should have
+slumbered so long in Milton's mind, and the most probable date is
+between Michaelmas, 1665, and Lady-day, 1666. Phillips records that
+Milton could never hear with patience "Paradise Regained" "censured to
+be much inferior" to "Paradise Lost." "The most judicious," he adds,
+agreed with him, while allowing that "the subject might not afford such
+variety of invention," which was probably all that the injudicious
+meant. There is no external evidence of the date of his next and last
+poem, "Samson Agonistes," but its development of Miltonic mannerisms
+would incline us to assign it to the latest period possible. The poems
+were licensed by Milton's old friend, Thomas Tomkyns, July 2, 1670, but
+did not appear until 1671. They were published in the same volume, but
+with distinct title-pages and paginations; the publisher was John
+Starkey; the printer an anonymous "J.M.," who was far from equalling
+Symmons in elegance and correctness.
+
+"Paradise Regained" is in one point of view the confutation of a
+celebrated but eccentric definition of poetry as a "criticism of life."
+If this were true it would be a greater work than "Paradise Lost," which
+must be violently strained to admit a definition not wholly inapplicable
+to the minor poem. If, again, Wordsworth and Coleridge are right in
+pronouncing "Paradise Regained" the most perfect of Milton's works in
+point of execution, the proof is afforded that perfect execution is not
+the chief test of poetic excellence. Whatever these great men may have
+propounded in theory, it cannot be believed that they would not have
+rather written the first two books of "Paradise Lost" than ten such
+poems as "Paradise Regained," and yet they affirm that Milton's power is
+even more advantageously exhibited in the latter work than in the other.
+There can be no solution except that greatness in poetry depends mainly
+upon the subject, and that the subject of "Paradise Lost" is infinitely
+the finer. Perhaps this should not be. Perhaps to "the visual nerve
+purged with euphrasy and rue" the spectacle of the human soul
+successfully resisting supernatural temptation would be more impressive
+than the material sublimities of "Paradise Lost," but ordinary vision
+sees otherwise. Satan "floating many a rood" on the sulphurous lake, or
+"up to the fiery concave towering high," or confronting Death at the
+gate of Hell, kindles the imagination with quite other fire than the
+sage circumspection and the meek fortitude of the Son of God. "The
+reason," says Blake, "why Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
+Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he
+was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it." The
+passages in "Paradise Regained" which most nearly approach the
+magnificence of "Paradise Lost," are those least closely connected with
+the proper action of the poem, the episodes with which Milton's
+consummate art and opulent fancy have veiled the bareness of his
+subject. The description of the Parthian military expedition; the
+picture, equally gorgeous and accurate, of the Roman Empire at the
+zenith of its greatness; the condensation into a single speech of all
+that has made Greece dear to humanity--these are the shining peaks of
+the regained "Paradise," marvels of art and eloquence, yet, unlike
+"Paradise Lost," beautiful rather than awful. The faults inherent in the
+theme cannot be imputed to the poet. No human skill could make the
+second Adam as great an object of sympathy as the first: it is enough,
+and it is wonderful, that spotless virtue should be so entirely exempt
+from formality and dulness. The baffled Satan, beaten at his own
+weapons, is necessarily a much less interesting personage than the
+heroic adventurer of "Paradise Lost." Milton has done what can be done
+by softening Satan's reprobate mood with exquisite strokes of pathos:--
+
+                        "Though I have lost
+    Much lustre of my native brightness, lost
+    To be beloved of God, I have not lost
+    To love, at least contemplate and admire
+    What I see excellent in good or fair,
+    Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense."
+
+These words, though spoken with a deceitful intention, express a truth.
+Milton's Satan is a long way from Goethe's Mephistopheles. Profound,
+too, is the pathos of--
+
+   "I would be at the worst, worst is my best,
+    My harbour, and my ultimate repose."
+
+The general sobriety of the style of "Paradise Regained" is a fertile
+theme for the critics. It is, indeed, carried to the verge of baldness;
+frigidity, used by Pattison, is too strong a word. This does not seem to
+be any token of a decay of poetical power. As writers advance in life
+their characteristics usually grow upon them, and develop into
+mannerisms. In "Paradise Regained," and yet more markedly in "Samson
+Agonistes," Milton seems to have prided himself on showing how
+independent he could be of the ordinary poetical stock-in-trade. Except
+in his splendid episodical descriptions he seeks to impress by the massy
+substance of his verse. It is a great proof of the essentially poetical
+quality of his mind that though he thus often becomes jejune, he is
+never prosaic. He is ever unmistakably the poet, even when his beauties
+are rather those of the orator or the moralist. The following sound
+remark, for instance, would not have been poetry in Pope; it is poetry
+in Milton:--
+
+                              "Who reads
+    Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
+    A spirit and judgment equal or superior
+    (And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?)
+    Uncertain and unsettled still remains?
+    Deep versed in books and shallow in himself."
+
+Perhaps, too, the sparse flowers of pure poetry are more exquisite from
+their contrast with the general austerity:--
+
+   "The field, all iron, cast a gleaming brown."
+
+                                    "Morning fair
+    Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray."
+
+Poetic magic these, and Milton is still Milton.
+
+"I have lately read his Samson, which has more of the antique spirit
+than any production of any other modern poet. He is very great." Thus
+Goethe to Eckermann, in his old age. The period of life is noticeable,
+for "Samson Agonistes" is an old man's poem as respects author and
+reader alike. There is much to repel, little to attract a young reader;
+no wonder that Macaulay, fresh from college, put it so far below
+"Comus," to which the more mature taste is disposed to equal it. It is
+related to the earlier work as sculpture is to painting, but sculpture
+of the severest school, all sinewy strength; studious, above all, of
+impressive truth. "Beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock are
+fashioned, a rugged rock, whereon with might and main the old man drags
+a great net from his cast, as one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldest
+say that he is fishing with all the might of his limbs, so big the
+sinews swell all about his neck, grey-haired though he is, but his
+strength is as the strength of youth."[9] Behold here the Milton of
+"Samson Agonistes," a work whose beauty is of metal rather than of
+marble, hard, bright, and receptive of an ineffaceable die. The great
+fault is the frequent harshness of the style, principally in the
+choruses, where some strophes are almost uncouth. In the blank verse
+speeches perfect grace is often united to perfect dignity: as in the
+farewell of Dalila:--
+
+   "Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,
+    And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;
+    On both his wings, one black, the other white,
+    Bears greatest names in his wild aery flights.
+    My name perhaps among the circumcised,
+    In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes,
+    To all posterity may stand defamed,
+    With malediction mentioned, and the blot
+    Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced.
+    But in my country where I most desire,
+    In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath,
+    I shall be named among the famousest
+    Of women, sung at solemn festivals,
+    Living and dead recorded, who to save
+    Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose
+    Above the faith of wedlock-bands; my tomb
+    With odours visited and annual flowers."
+
+The scheme of "Samson Agonistes" is that of the Greek drama, the only
+one appropriate to an action of such extreme simplicity, admitting so
+few personages, and these only as foils to the hero. It is, but for its
+Miltonisms of style and autobiographic and political allusion, just such
+a drama as Sophocles or Euripides would have written on the subject, and
+has all that depth of patriotic and religious sentiment which made the
+Greek drama so inexpressibly significant to Greeks. Consummate art is
+shown in the invention of the Philistine giant, Harapha, who not only
+enriches the meagre action, and brings out strong features in the
+character of Samson, but also prepares the reader for the catastrophe.
+We must say reader, for though the drama might conceivably be acted with
+effect on a Court or University stage, the real living theatre has been
+no place for it since the days of Greece. Milton confesses as much when
+in his preface he assails "the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff
+with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar
+persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in
+without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." In his view
+tragedy should be eclectic; in Shakespeare's it should be all embracing.
+Shelley, perhaps, judged more rightly than either when he said: "The
+modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy is undoubtedly an
+extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in 'King
+Lear,' universal, ideal, and sublime." On the whole, "Samson Agonistes"
+is a noble example of a style which we may hope will in no generation be
+entirely lacking to our literature, but which must always be exotic,
+from its want of harmony with the more essential characteristics of our
+tumultous, undisciplined, irrepressible national life.
+
+In one point of view, however, "Samson Agonistes" deserves to be
+esteemed a national poem, pregnant with a deeper allusiveness than has
+always been recognized. Samson's impersonation of the author himself can
+escape no one. Old, blind, captive, helpless, mocked, decried, miserable
+in the failure of all his ideals, upheld only by faith and his own
+unconquerable spirit, Milton is the counterpart of his hero. Particular
+references to the circumstances of his life are not wanting: his bitter
+self-condemnation for having chosen his first wife in the camp of the
+enemy, and his surprise that near the close of an austere life he should
+be afflicted by the malady appointed to chastise intemperance. But, as
+in the Hebrew prophets Israel sometimes denotes a person, sometimes a
+nation, Samson seems no less the representative of the English people in
+the age of Charles the Second. His heaviest burden is his remorse, a
+remorse which could not weigh on Milton:--
+
+              "I do acknowledge and confess
+    That I this honour, I this pomp have brought
+    To Dagon, and advanced his praises high
+    Among the heathen round; to God have brought
+    Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths
+    Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal
+    To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt
+    In feeble hearts, propense enough before
+    To waver, to fall off, and join with idols;
+    Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow,
+    The anguish of my soul, that suffers not
+    My eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest."
+
+Milton might reproach himself for having taken a Philistine wife, but
+not with having suffered her to shear him. But the same could not be
+said of the English nation, which had in his view most foully
+apostatized from its pure creed, and most perfidiously betrayed the high
+commission it had received from Heaven. "This extolled and magnified
+nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed, to
+fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude
+would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship! To be
+ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds! To verify
+all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think
+they wisely discerned and justly censured us and all our actions as
+rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious!" These things, which Milton
+refused to contemplate as possible when he wrote his "Ready Way to
+establish a Free Commonwealth," had actually come to pass. The English
+nation is to him the enslaved and erring Samson--a Samson, however, yet
+to burst his bonds, and bring down ruin upon Philistia. "Samson
+Agonistes" is thus a prophetic drama, the English counterpart of the
+world-drama of "Prometheus Bound."
+
+Goethe says that our final impression of any one is derived from the
+last circumstances in which we have beheld him. Let us, therefore,
+endeavour to behold Milton as he appeared about the time of the
+publication of his last poems, to which period of his life the
+descriptions we possess seem to apply. Richardson heard of his sitting
+habitually "in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near
+Bunhill Fields, in warm sunny weather to enjoy the fresh air"--a
+suggestive picture. What thoughts must have been travelling through his
+mind, undisturbed by external things! How many of the passers knew that
+they flitted past the greatest glory of the age of Newton, Locke, and
+Wren? For one who would reverence the author of "Paradise Lost," there
+were probably twenty who would have been ready with a curse for the
+apologist of the killing of the King. In-doors he was seen by Dr.
+Wright, in Richardson's time an aged clergyman in Dorsetshire, who found
+him up one pair of stairs, in a room hung with rusty green "sitting in
+an elbow chair, black clothes, and neat enough, pale but not cadaverous;
+his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." Gout was the enemy
+of Milton's latter days; we have seen that he had begun to suffer from
+it before he wrote "Samson Agonistes." Without it, he said, he could
+find blindness tolerable. Yet even in the fit he would be cheerful, and
+would sing. It is grievous to write that, about 1670, the departure of
+his daughters promoted the comfort of his household. They were sent out
+to learn embroidery as a means of future support--a proper step in
+itself, and one which would appear to have entailed considerable expense
+upon Milton. But they might perfectly well have remained inmates of the
+family, and the inference is that domestic discord had at length grown
+unbearable to all. Friends, or at least visitors, were, on the other
+hand, more numerous than of late years. The most interesting were the
+"subtle, cunning, and reserved" Earl of Anglesey, who must have "coveted
+Milton's society and converse" very much if, as Phillips reports, he
+often came all the way to Bunhill Fields to enjoy it; and Dryden, whose
+generous admiration does not seem to have been affected by Milton's
+over-hasty sentence upon him as "a good rhymester, but no poet." One of
+Dryden's visits is famous in literary history, when he came with the
+modest request that Milton would let him turn his epic into an opera.
+"Aye," responded Milton, equal to the occasion, "tag my verses if you
+will"--to tag being to put a shining metal point--compared in Milton's
+fancy to a rhyme--at the end of a lace or cord. Dryden took him at his
+word, and in due time "Paradise Lost" had become an opera under the
+title of "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man," which may also be
+interpreted as referring to the condition of the poem before Dryden laid
+hands upon it and afterwards. It is a puzzling performance altogether;
+one sees not any more than Sir Walter Scott could see how a drama
+requiring paradisiacal costume could have been acted even in the age of
+Nell Gwyn; and yet it is even more unlikely that Dryden should have
+written a play not intended for the stage. The same contradiction
+prevails in the piece itself; it would not be unfair to call it the most
+absurd burlesque ever written without burlesque intention; and yet it
+displays such intellectual resources, such vigour, bustle, adroitness,
+and bright impudence, that admiration almost counterweighs derision.
+Dryden could not have made such an exhibition of Milton and himself
+twenty years afterwards, when he said that, much as he had always
+admired Milton, he felt that he had not admired him half enough. The
+reverence which he felt even in 1674 for "one of the greatest, most
+noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has
+produced," contrasts finely with the ordinary Restoration estimate of
+Milton conveyed in the complimentary verses by Lee, prefixed to "The
+State of Innocence":--
+
+   "To the dead bard your fame a little owes,
+    For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose,
+    And rudely cast what you could well dispose.
+    He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground,
+    A chaos, for no perfect world was found,
+    Till through the heap your mighty genius shined;
+    He was the golden ore, which you refined."
+
+These later years also produced several little publications of Milton's
+own, mostly of manuscripts long lying by him, now slightly revised and
+fitted for the press. Such were his miniature Latin grammar, published
+in 1669; and his "Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio; or The Method of
+Ramus," 1672. The first is insignificant; and the second even Professor
+Masson pronounces, "as a digest of logic, disorderly and unedifying."
+Both apparently belong to his school-keeping days: the little tract, "Of
+True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration," (1673) is, on the other
+hand, contemporary with a period of great public excitement, when
+Parliament (March, 1673) compelled the king to revoke his edict of
+toleration autocratically promulgated in the preceding year, and to
+assent to a severe Test Act against Roman Catholics. The good sense and
+good nature which inclined Charles to toleration were unfortunately
+alloyed with less creditable motives. Protestants justly suspected him
+of insidiously aiming at the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism, and
+even the persecuted Nonconformists patriotically joined with High
+Churchmen to adjourn their own deliverance until the country should be
+safe from the common enemy. The wisdom and necessity of this course were
+abundantly evinced under the next reign, and while we must regret that
+Milton contributed his superfluous aid to restrictions only defensible
+on the ground of expediency, we must admit that he could not well avoid
+making Roman Catholics an exception to the broad tolerance he claims for
+all denominations of Protestants. And, after all, has not the Roman
+Catholic Church's notion of tolerance always been that which Macaulay
+imputes to Southey, that everybody should tolerate her, and that she
+should tolerate nobody?
+
+A more important work, though scarcely worthy of Milton's industry, was
+his "History of Britain" (1670). This was a comparatively early labour,
+four of the six books having been written before he entered upon the
+Latin Secretaryship, and two under the Commonwealth. From its own point
+of view, this is a meritorious performance, making no pretensions to the
+character of a philosophical history, but a clear, easy narrative,
+sometimes interrupted by sententious disquisition, of transactions down
+to the Conquest. Like Grote, though not precisely for the same reason,
+Milton hands down picturesque legendary matter as he finds it, and it is
+to those who would see English history in its romantic aspect that, in
+these days of exact research, his work is chiefly to be recommended. It
+is also memorable for what he never saw himself, the engraved portrait,
+after Faithorne's crayon sketch.
+
+      "No one," says Professor Masson, "can desire a more impressive and
+      authentic portrait of Milton in his later life. The face is such
+      as has been given to no other human being; it was and is uniquely
+      Milton's. Underneath the broad forehead and arched temples there
+      are the great rings of eye-socket, with the blind, unblemished
+      eyes in them, drawn straight upon you by your voice, and
+      speculating who and what you are; there is a severe composure in
+      the beautiful oval of the whole countenance, disturbed only by the
+      singular pouting of the rich mouth; and the entire expression is
+      that of English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow."
+
+Milton's care to set his house in order extended to his poetical
+writings. In 1673 the poems published in 1645, both English and Latin,
+appeared in a second edition, disclosing _novas frondes_ in one or two
+of Milton's earliest unprinted poems, and such of the sonnets as
+political considerations did not exclude; and _non sua poma_ in the
+Tractate of Education, curiously grafted on at the end. An even more
+important publication was the second edition of "Paradise Lost" (1674)
+with the original ten books for the first time divided into twelve as we
+now have them. Nor did this exhaust the list of Milton's literary
+undertakings. He was desirous of giving to the world his correspondence
+when Latin Secretary, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" which had
+employed so much of his thoughts at various periods of his life. The
+Government, though allowing the publication of his familiar Latin
+correspondence (1674), would not tolerate the letters he had written as
+secretary to the Commonwealth, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"
+was still less likely to propitiate the licenser. Holland was in that
+day the one secure asylum of free thought, and thither, in 1675, the
+year following Milton's death, the manuscripts were taken or sent by
+Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriack's, to Daniel Elzevir, who agreed to
+publish them. Before publication could take place, however, a
+clandestine but correct edition of the State letters appeared in London,
+probably by the agency of Edward Phillips. Skinner, in his vexation,
+appealed to the authorities to suppress this edition: they took the
+hint, and suppressed his instead. Elzevir delivered up the manuscripts,
+which the Secretary of State pigeon-holed until their existence was
+forgotten. At last, in 1823, Mr. Robert Lemon, rummaging in the State
+Paper Office, came upon the identical parcel addressed by Elzevir to
+Daniel Skinner's father which contained his son's transcript of the
+State Letters and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine." Times had
+changed, and the heretical work was edited and translated by George the
+Fourth's favourite chaplain, and published at his Majesty's expense.
+
+The "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" is by far the most remarkable of
+all Milton's later prose publications, and would have exerted a great
+influence on opinion if it had appeared when the author designed.
+Milton's name would have been a tower of strength to the liberal
+eighteenth-century clergy inside and outside the Establishment. It
+should indeed have been sufficiently manifest that "Paradise Lost" could
+not have been written by a Trinitarian or a Calvinist; but theological
+partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it
+does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted
+until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of
+the book is undoubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with
+which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained
+by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward
+light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction;
+but practically this illumination seems seldom to have guided Milton to
+any sense but the most obvious. Hence, with the intrepid consistency
+that belongs to him, he is not only an Arian, but a tolerator of
+polygamy, finding that practice nowhere condemned in Scripture, but even
+recommended by respectable examples; an Anthropomorphist, who takes the
+ascription of human passion to the Deity in the sense certainly intended
+by those who made it; a believer in the materiality and natural
+mortality of the soul, and in the suspension of consciousness between
+death and the resurrection. Where less fettered by the literal Word he
+thinks boldly; unable to conceive creation out of nothing, he regards
+all existence as an emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to
+the designation of Pantheist. He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and
+is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself. On the Atonement and
+Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends
+public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual
+religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of
+social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and
+the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and
+method of composition he says:--
+
+      "It is with a friendly and benignant feeling towards mankind that
+      I give as wide a circulation as possible to what I esteem my best
+      and richest possession.... And whereas the greater part of those
+      who have written most largely on these subjects have been wont to
+      fill whole pages with explanations of their own opinions,
+      thrusting into the margin the texts in support of their doctrines,
+      I have chosen, on the contrary, to fill my pages even to
+      redundance with quotations from Scripture, so that as little space
+      as possible might be left for my own words, even when they arise
+      from the context of revelation itself."
+
+There is consequently little scope for eloquence in a treatise
+consisting to so large an extent of quotations; but it is pervaded by a
+moral sublimity, more easily felt than expressed. Particular opinions
+will be diversely judged; but if anything could increase our reverence
+for Milton it would be that his last years should have been devoted to a
+labour so manifestly inspired by disinterested benevolence and hazardous
+love of truth.
+
+His life's work was now finished, and finished with entire success as
+far as depended upon his own will and power. He had left nothing
+unwritten, nothing undone, nor was he ignorant what manner of monument
+he had raised for himself, It was only the condition of the State that
+afflicted him, and this, looking forward, he saw in more gloomy colours
+than it appears to us who look back. Had he attained his father's age
+his apprehensions would have been dispelled by the Revolution: but he
+had evidently for some time past been older in constitution than in
+years. In July, 1674, he was anticipating death; but about the middle of
+October, "he was very merry and seemed to be in good health of body."
+Early in November "the gout struck in," and he died on November 8th,
+late at night, "with so little pain that the time of his expiring was
+not perceived by those in the room." On November 12th, "all his learned
+and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar,
+accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where
+he was buried in the chancel." In 1864, the church was restored in
+honour of the great enemy of religious establishments. "The animosities
+die, but the humanities live for ever."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's resources had been greatly impaired in his latter years by
+losses, and the expense of providing for his daughters. He nevertheless
+left, exclusive of household goods, about L900, which, by a nuncupative
+will made in July, 1674, he had wholly bequeathed to his wife. His
+daughters, he told his brother Christopher (now a Roman Catholic, and on
+the road to become one of James the Second's judges, but always on
+friendly terms with John), had been undutiful, and he thought that he
+had done enough for them. They naturally thought otherwise, and
+threatened litigation. The interrogatories administered on this occasion
+afford the best clue to the condition of Milton's affairs and household.
+At length the dispute was compromised, the nuncupative will, a kind of
+document always regarded with suspicion, was given up, and the widow
+received two-thirds of the estate instead of the whole, probably the
+fairest settlement that could have been arrived at. After residing some
+years in London she retired to Nantwich in her native county, where
+divers glimpses reveal her as leading the decent existence of a poor but
+comfortable gentlewoman as late as August or September, 1727. The
+inventory of her effects, amounting to L38 8s. 4d., is preserved, and
+includes: "Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms, valued at ten
+guineas;" and "two Books of Paradise," valued at ten shillings. Of the
+daughters, Anne married "a master-builder," and died in childbirth some
+time before 1678; Mary was dead when Phillips wrote in 1694; and Deborah
+survived until August 24, 1727, dying within a few days of her
+stepmother. She had married Abraham Clarke, a weaver and mercer in
+Dublin, who took refuge in England during the Irish troubles under James
+the Second, and carried on his business in Spitalfields. She had several
+children by him, one of whom lived to receive, in 1750, the proceeds of
+a theatrical benefit promoted by Bishop Newton and Samuel Johnson.
+Deborah herself was brought into notice by Addison, and was visited by
+Professor Ward of Gresham College, who found her "bearing the
+inconveniences of a low fortune with decency and prudence." Her last
+days were made comfortable by the generosity of Princess Caroline and
+others: it is more pleasant still to know that her affection for her
+father had revived. When shown Faithorne's crayon portrait (not the one
+engraved in Milton's lifetime, but one exceedingly like it) she
+exclaimed, "in a transport, ''Tis my dear father, I see him, 'tis him!'
+and then she put her hands to several parts of her face, ''Tis the very
+man, here! here!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's character is one of the things which "securus judicat orbis
+terrarum." On one point only there seems to us, as we have frequently
+implied, to be room for modification. In the popular conception of
+Milton the poet and the man are imperfectly combined. We allow his
+greatness as a poet, but deny him the poetical temperament which alone
+could have enabled him to attain it. He is looked upon as a great, good,
+reverend, austere, not very amiable, and not very sensitive man. The
+author and the book are thus set at variance, and the attempt to
+conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and
+inconsistency. To us, on the contrary, Milton, with all his strength of
+will and regularity of life, seems as perfect a representative as any of
+his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical
+temperament. We appeal to his remarkable dependence upon external
+prompting for his compositions; to the rapidity of his work under
+excitement, and his long intervals of unproductiveness; to the heat and
+fury of his polemics; to the simplicity with which, fortunately for us,
+he inscribes small particulars of his own life side by side with
+weightiest utterances on Church and State; to the amazing precipitancy
+of his marriage and its rupture; to his sudden pliability upon appeal to
+his generosity; to his romantic self-sacrifice when his country demanded
+his eyes from him; above all, to his splendid ideals of regenerated
+human life, such as poets alone either conceive or realize. To overlook
+all this is to affirm that Milton wrote great poetry without being truly
+a poet. One more remark may be added, though not required by thinking
+readers. We must beware of confounding the essential with the accidental
+Milton--the pure vital spirit with the casual vesture of the creeds and
+circumstances of the era in which it became clothed with mortality:--
+
+         "They are still immortal
+          Who, through birth's orient portal
+    And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
+          Clothe their unceasing flight
+          In the brief dust and light
+    Gathered around their chariots as they go.
+          New shapes they still may weave,
+          New gods, new laws, receive."
+
+If we knew for certain which of the many causes that have enlisted noble
+minds in our age would array Milton's spirit "in brief dust and light,"
+supposing it returned to earth in this nineteenth century, we should
+know which was the noblest of them all, but we should be as far as ever
+from knowing a final and stereotyped Milton.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: A famous Presbyterian tract of the day, so called from the
+combined initials of the authors, one of whom was Milton's old
+instructor, Thomas Young. The "Remonstrant" to whom Milton replied was
+Bishop Hall.]
+
+[Footnote 2: This principle admitted of general application. For
+example, astrological books were to be licensed by John Booker, who
+could by no means see his way to pass the prognostications of his rival
+Lilly without "many impertinent obliterations," which made Lilly
+exceeding wroth.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Two persons of this uncommon name are mentioned in the
+State Papers of Milton's time--one a merchant who imported a cargo of
+timber; the other a leatherseller. The name also occurs once in Pepys.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Rossetti's sonnet, "On the Refusal of Aid between Nations,"
+is an almost equally remarkable instance.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The same is recorded of Friedrich Hebbel, the most original
+of modern German dramatists.]
+
+[Footnote 6: In his "Urim of Conscience," 1695. This curious book
+contains one of the first English accounts of Buddha, whom the author
+calls Chacabout (Sakhya Buddha, apparently), and of the "Christians of
+St. John" at Bassora.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Ariosto and Marcellus Palingenius. Both these wrote before
+Ronsard, to whom the thought is traced by Pattison, and Valvasone, to
+whom Hayley deems Milton indebted for it.]
+
+[Footnote 8: We cannot agree with Mr. Edmundson that Milton was in any
+respect indebted to Vondel's "Adam's Banishment," published in 1664.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Theocritus, Idyll I.; Lang's translation.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+A.
+
+Adam, not the hero of "Paradise Lost," 155
+
+Adonais compared with Lycidas, 51
+
+Aldersgate Street, Milton's home in, 67, 83
+
+"Allegro, L.," 49-50
+
+Andreini, his "Adamo" supposed to have suggested "Paradise Lost," 169
+
+Anglesey, Earl of, visits Milton, 186
+
+"Animadversions upon the Remonstrant," 72
+
+"Apology for Smectymnuus," 72
+
+"Arcades," 44
+
+"Areopagitica, the," 78;
+  argument of, 79-82
+
+Arian opinions of Milton, 159, 191
+
+Ariosto, Milton borrows from, 164
+
+Artillery Walk, Milton's last house, 144
+
+"At a Solemn Music," 33
+
+Aubrey's biographical notices of Milton, 14, 15, 19, 24, 129, 144, 145
+
+
+B.
+
+Ball's Life of Preston, 23
+
+Barbican, Milton's house in the, 96
+
+Baroni, Leonora, admired by Milton, 62
+
+Beddoes, T.L., on Milton and Vondel, 170
+
+Benrath on Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," 171
+
+Blake on Milton, 179
+
+Bradshaw, Milton's praise of, 120
+
+Bread Street, Milton born in, 16
+
+Bridgewater, Lord, "Comus" written in his honour, 45
+
+Bright, John, his admiration for Milton, 164.
+
+British Museum, copy of Milton's poems in, 97;
+  proclamation against Milton's books preserved in the, 139
+
+Buckhurst, Lord, his admiration of "Paradise Lost," 177
+
+
+C.
+
+Caedmon, question of Milton's indebtedness to, 169
+
+Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso" compared with "Comus," 54;
+  with "Paradise Lost," 163
+
+Cambridge in Milton's time, 22
+
+Cardinal Barberini receives Milton, 62
+
+Caroline, Princess, her kindness to Milton's daughter, 195
+
+Chalfont St. Giles, Milton's residence at, 173
+
+Chappell, W., Milton's college tutor, 24
+
+Charles I., illegal government of, 30;
+  expedition against the Scots, 67;
+  execution of, 100;
+  alleged authorship of "Eikon Basilike," 105-107;
+  a bad king, but not a bad man, 110
+
+Charles II., restoration of, 138;
+  favour to Roman Catholics, 188
+
+Christ's College, Milton at, 22
+
+"Christian Doctrine," Milton's treatise on, 99, 190-193
+
+"Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," 132
+
+Clarke, Deborah, Milton's youngest daughter;
+  her reminiscences of her father, 195
+
+Clarke, Mr. Hyde, his discoveries respecting Milton's ancestry, 14, 15
+
+Clarke, Sir T., Milton's MSS. preserved by, 129
+
+Coleridge, Milton compared with, 41;
+  on Milton's taste for music, 63;
+  on "Paradise Regained," 178
+
+Comenius, educational method of, 76
+
+Commonwealth, Milton's views of a free, 136
+
+"Comus," production of, 38, 44, 46;
+  criticism on, 53-55
+
+"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the
+Church," 133
+
+Copernican theory only partly adopted in "Paradise Lost," 158
+
+Cosmogony of Milton, 157
+
+Cromwell, Milton's character of, 121;
+  Milton's advice to, 122
+
+
+D.
+
+Dante and Milton compared, 160
+
+Daughters, character of Milton's, 142
+
+Davis, Miss, Milton's suit to, 94
+
+Deity, imperfect conception of, in "Paradise Lost," 154
+
+Denham, Sir J., his admiration of "Paradise Lost," 177
+
+Diodati, Milton's friendship with, 21;
+  verses to, 25;
+  letters to, 39, 41, 55;
+  death of, 65;
+  Milton's elegy on, 43, 67
+
+"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," 79, 87-91
+
+Dryden, on "Paradise Lost," 177;
+  visits Milton, 187;
+  dramatizes "Paradise Lost," 187
+
+Du Moulin, Peter, author of "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," 118
+
+
+E.
+
+Edmundson, Mr. G., on Milton and Vondel, 170
+
+Education, Milton's tract on, 75-77
+
+"Eikon Basilike," authorship of, 105-107
+
+"Eikonoklastes," Milton's reply to "Eikon Basilike," 108
+
+Ellwood, Thomas, the Quaker, reads to Milton, 145;
+  suggests "Paradise Regained," 175
+
+Elzevir, Daniel, receives and gives up the MS. of "State Letters" and
+the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 191
+
+
+F.
+
+Fairfax, Milton's character of, 120
+
+Faithorne's portrait of Milton, 189
+
+
+G.
+
+Galileo, Milton's visit to, 61
+
+Gauden, Bishop, author of "Eikon Basilike," 106
+
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, account of Horton in, 36
+
+Goethe on "Samson Agonistes," 181
+
+Gill, Mr., Milton's master at St. Paul's school, 20
+
+Gosse, Mr., on Milton and Vondel, 170
+
+Greek, influence of, on Milton, 33, 39
+
+Grotius, Hugo, Milton introduced to, 59;
+  Milton's study of, 169
+
+
+H.
+
+Hartlib, S., Milton's tract on Education inspired by, 75
+
+"History of Britain" by Milton, 99, 189
+
+Holstenius, Lucas, librarian of the Vatican, 63
+
+Homer and Shakespeare compared, 2;
+  and compared with Milton, 160, 165, 167
+
+Horton, Milton retires to, 33;
+ poems written at, 44
+
+Hunter, Rev. Joseph, on Milton's ancestors, 14
+
+"Hymn on the Nativity," 32
+
+
+I.
+
+Italian sonnets by Milton, 64
+
+Italy, Milton's journey to, 56-65
+
+
+J.
+
+Jansen, Cornelius, paints Milton's portrait, 19
+
+Jeffrey, Sarah, Milton's mother, 16
+
+Jewin Street, Milton's house in, 144
+
+Johnson, Dr., on "Lycidas," 51;
+  benefits Milton's granddaughter, 195
+
+
+K.
+
+Keats, Milton contrasted with, 41
+
+King, Edward, "Lycidas," an elegy on his death, 48
+
+
+L.
+
+Landor, his Latin verse compared with Milton's, 43
+
+Latin grammar by Milton, 188
+
+Latin Secretaryship to the Commonwealth, Milton's appointment to, 102
+
+Laud, Archbishop, Church government of, 30;
+  Milton's veiled attack on, 49
+
+Lawes, Henry, writes music to "Comus" and "Arcades," 44;
+  edits "Comus," 47
+
+Lee, Nathaniel, his verses on Milton, 188
+
+Lemon, Mr. Robert, discovers MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise
+on Christian Doctrine," 191
+
+Letters, Milton's official, 123
+
+Logic, Milton's tract on, 188
+
+Long Parliament, meeting of the, 68;
+  licensing of books by, 78
+
+Lucifer, Vondel's, 170
+
+Ludlow Castle, "Comus" first performed at, 46
+
+"Lycidas," origin of, 40, 48;
+  analysis of, criticism on, 50, 52
+
+
+M.
+
+Manso, Marquis, poem on, 64
+
+Marshall, Milton's portrait engraved by, 97
+
+Marriage, Milton's views on, 94
+
+Martineau, Harriet, reads "Paradise Lost" at seven years of age, 176
+
+Mason, C., Milton's MSS. preserved by, 129
+
+Masson, Prof. David, his monumental biography of Milton, 14;
+  on Milton's ancestors, _ib._;
+  on Milton's college career, 23, 25;
+  on the scenery of Horton, 35;
+  on date of Divorce pamphlet, 87;
+  on date of "Paradise Lost," 147;
+  on money received for "Paradise Lost," 150;
+  on Milton's cosmogony, 156;
+  his description of Chalfont, 173;
+  on Milton's portrait, 189
+
+Milton, Christopher, John Milton's younger brother, birth of, 16;
+  a Royalist, 91;
+  a Roman Catholic, and one of James the Second's judges, 194
+
+Milton, John, the elder, birth, 15;
+  a scrivener by profession, _ib._;
+  musical compositions of, 18;
+  retirement to Horton, 33;
+  his noble confidence in his son, 37, 45;
+  comes to live with his son, 91;
+  dies, 98
+
+Milton, John, birth, 11;
+  genealogy of, 14;
+  birthplace, 16;
+  his father, 17;
+  his education, 18-27;
+  knowledge of Italian, 21;
+  at Cambridge, 22-28;
+  rusticated, 25;
+  his degree, 1629; 25;
+  will not enter the church, 29;
+  early poems, 32;
+  writes "Comus," 38;
+  required incitement to write, 40, 48;
+  correctness of his early poems, 42;
+  his life at Horton, 44-55;
+  his "Comus" and "Arcades," 44-48;
+  his "Lycidas," 48;
+  his mother's death, 55;
+  goes to Italy, 56;
+  his Italian friends, 59;
+  visits Galileo, 61;
+  Italian sonnets, 64;
+  educates his nephews, 65;
+  elegy to Diodati, 67;
+  eighteen years' poetic silence, 68;
+  takes part with the Commonwealth, 68;
+  pamphlets on Church government, 72;
+  tract on Education, 75;
+  "Areopagitica," 79;
+  Italian sonnet, 85;
+  his first marriage, 86;
+  deserted by his wife, his treatise on Divorce, 87;
+  his pupils, 91;
+  return of his wife, 96;
+  his daughter born, 98;
+  becomes Secretary for Foreign Tongues, 102;
+  his State papers, 104;
+  licenses pamphlets, 105;
+  answers "Eikon Basilike," 108;
+  answers Salmasius, 111;
+  loses his sight, 114;
+  death of his wife, 116;
+  reply to Morus, 119;
+  his official duties 122;
+  his retirement and second marriage, 125;
+  projected ninety-nine themes preparatory to "Paradise Lost," 129;
+  wrote chiefly from autumn to spring, 132;
+  his views of a republic, 136;
+  escapes proscription at Restoration, 139;
+  unhappy relations with his daughters, 141;
+  third marriage, 143;
+  writing "Paradise Lost," 147-150;
+  analysis of his work, 152-172;
+  compared with modern poets, 166;
+  his indebtedness to earlier poets, 169;
+  retires to Chalfont to escape the plague, 173;
+  he suffers from the Great Fire, 175;
+  his "Paradise Regained," 177;
+  his "Samson Agonistes," 180-85;
+  his later life, 186;
+  his later tracts, 188, 190;
+  his "History of Britain," 189;
+  his Arian opinions, 192;
+  his death, 193;
+  his will, 194;
+  his widow and daughters, 195;
+  estimate of his character, 196
+
+Milton, Richard, Milton's grandfather, 14, 15
+
+Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's third wife, 143;
+  Milton's will in favour of, 194;
+  death, _ib._
+
+Monk, General, character of, 135
+
+Morland, Sir Samuel, on "Paradise Lost," 163
+
+Morus, A., his controversy with Milton, 118-119
+
+Myers, Mr. E., on Milton's views of marriage, 91
+
+
+N.
+
+Newton, Bishop, benefits Milton's granddaughter, 195
+
+
+O.
+
+Ochino, B., Milton's indebtedness to, 171
+
+"On a fair Infant," 33
+
+
+P.
+
+Paget, Dr., Milton's physician, 143, 145
+
+Palingenius, Marcellus, Milton borrows from, 164
+
+Pamphlets, Milton's, 72, 75, 78, 79, 87, 99, 100, 108, 113, 132, 133, 136-8
+
+"Paradise Lost," 128;
+  four schemes for, 129;
+  first conceived as drama, 130;
+  manner of composition, 147;
+  dates of, 147-150;
+  critique of, 152-172;
+  successive publications of, 176
+
+"Paradise Regained," 177;
+  criticism on, 178-180
+
+"Passion of Christ," 32
+
+Pattison, Mark, on "Lycidas," 51;
+  on Milton's political career, 68;
+  on fanaticism of Commonwealth, 133;
+  on "Paradise Lost," 159;
+  on Milton's diction, 165
+
+"Penseroso, Il," 40, 49
+
+Pepys, S., on Restoration, 135, 138
+
+Petty France, Westminster, Milton's home in, 117
+
+Philaras, Milton's Greek friend, 114
+
+Phillips, E., Milton's brother-in-law, 22, 65
+
+Phillips, Edward, Milton's nephew, on Milton's ancestry, 14;
+  educated by his uncle, 65;
+  his account of Milton's separation from his first wife, 87;
+  of their reconciliation, 96;
+  becomes a Royalist, 129;
+  his attention to his uncle, 145;
+  on "Paradise Lost," 176;
+  on "Paradise Regained," 177
+
+"Pilot of the Galilean Lake," 49
+
+"Plymouth Brethren," resemblance of Milton's views to, 133
+
+Powell, Mary, Milton marries, 86;
+  she leaves him, 87;
+  returns to him, 95;
+  her family live with Milton, 98;
+  her death, 116;
+  probable bad influence on her daughters, 163
+
+"Prelatical Episcopacy" pamphlet, 72
+
+"Pro Populo" pamphlet, 113
+
+Ptolemaic system followed by Milton in "Paradise Lost," 157
+
+Puckering, Sir H., gave Milton's MSS. to the University of Cambridge, 129
+
+
+R.
+
+Reading, surrender of to Parliamentary army, 91
+
+"Ready way to establish a Commonwealth," 136
+
+"Reason of Church Government" pamphlet, 72
+
+"Reformation touching Church Discipline" pamphlet, 72
+
+Restoration, consequences to Milton of the, 138-141
+
+Richardson, J., on Milton's later life, 186
+
+Rome, Milton in, 62
+
+Rump, burning of the, 136
+
+
+S.
+
+St. Bride's Churchyard, Milton lodges in, 65
+
+St. Giles's Cripplegate, Milton's grave in, 194
+
+St. Paul's school, Milton at, 19
+
+Salmasius, Claudius, his character, 109;
+  author of "Defensio Regia," 111;
+  Milton's controversy with, 112, 114
+
+Samson, Vondel's, 170
+
+"Samson Agonistes," 141, 178;
+  criticism on, 180-185
+
+Satan, the hero of "Paradise Lost," 155
+
+Shakespeare, 2;
+  Milton's panegyric on, 33, 38;
+  his view of tragedy compared with Milton's, 183
+
+Shelley, on poetical inspiration, 41;
+  his estimate of Milton, 156;
+  on tragedy and comedy, 183;
+  quoted, 17, 197
+
+Skinner, Cyriack, his loan to Milton, 138
+
+Skinner, David, endeavours to publish "State Letters" and
+  "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 191
+
+Sonnet, "When the assault was intended to the City," 84;
+  from the Italian, 85;
+  on Vaudois Protestants, 124;
+  to his second wife, 125;
+  to Henry Lawrence, 126;
+  inscribed on a window-pane, 175
+
+"State Letters," 191
+
+Stationers' Company and Milton, 92
+
+Symmons, S., publisher of "Paradise Lost," 149, 175
+
+Symonds, Mr. J.A., on metre of "Paradise Lost," 166
+
+
+T.
+
+Tennyson, on Milton's Eden, 162
+
+"Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," 100
+
+"Tina," by Antonio Malatesti, 68
+
+Tomkyns, Thomas, licenses "Paradise Lost," 151;
+  and the poems, 178
+
+Tovey, Nathaniel, Milton's college tutor, 25
+
+Treatise on Christian Doctrine, 190
+
+
+U.
+
+Ulster Protestants, Milton's subscription for, 83
+
+
+V.
+
+Vernon Lee, 57
+
+Vondel, Milton's indebtedness to, 170
+
+
+W.
+
+Wakefield, E.G., on the champions of great causes, 135
+
+Wood, Anthony, on Restoration, 133
+
+Woodcock, Katherine, Milton's second wife, her marriage and death, 125
+
+Wootton, Sir H., on "Comus," 47
+
+Wordsworth, quoted, 27, 65;
+  Milton contrasted with, 41;
+  on "Paradise Regained," 178
+
+Wright, Dr., reminiscence of his visit to Milton, 186
+
+
+Y.
+
+Young, Thomas, Milton's private tutor, 14
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY.
+
+BY
+
+JOHN P. ANDERSON
+
+(_British Museum_).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  I. WORKS.
+
+ II. POETICAL WORKS.
+
+III. PROSE WORKS.
+
+ IV. SINGLE WORKS.
+
+  V. SELECTIONS.
+
+ VI. APPENDIX--
+       Biography, Criticism, etc.
+       Magazine Articles, etc.
+
+VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. WORKS.
+
+The Works of John Milton in verse and prose, printed from the original
+editions, with a life of the author by J. Mitford. 8 vols. London, 1851,
+8vo.
+
+
+II. POETICAL WORKS.
+
+Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several
+times. Printed by his true copies. London [January 2], 1645, 8vo.
+      First collective edition, and the first work bearing Milton's
+      name.
+
+---- Poems, etc., upon several occasions, both English and Latin, etc.,
+composed at several times. With a small Tractate of Education to Mr.
+Hartlib. 2 parts. London, 1673, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Containing Paradise Lost,
+Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and his poems on several occasions.
+Together with explanatory notes on each book of the Paradise Lost [by
+P.H., _i.e._, Patrick Hume]. 5 parts. London, 1695, folio.
+
+---- The Poetical Remains of Mr Milton, etc. By C. Gildon. London, 1698,
+8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton. (Notes upon the twelve
+books of Paradise Lost, by Mr. Addison. A small Tractate of Education to
+Mr. Hartlib.) 2 vols. London, 1720, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1721, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1727, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1730, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1731, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1746, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, with notes of various authors, by Thomas Newton,
+bishop of Bristol. 3 vols. London, 1749-52, 4to.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Milton, etc. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1762, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition, by Newton. 4 vols. London, 1763, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1766, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Milton. With prefatory characters of the
+several pieces; the life of Milton, a glossary, etc. Edinburgh, 1767,
+8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols, London, 1770, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems on several occasions. (_British Poets_, vol. iv.) Edinburgh,
+1773, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1775, 4to.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. From the text of Dr. Newton.
+(_Bell's Poets of Great Britain_, vols. 35-38.) Edinburgh, 1776, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poems of Milton. (_Johnson's Works of the English Poets_, vols.
+3-5.) London, 1779, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems upon several occasions, English, Italian, and Latin, with
+translations: viz., Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus,
+Odes, Sonnets, Miscellanies, English Psalms, Elegiarum Liber,
+Epigrammatum Liber, Sylvarum Liber. With notes critical and explanatory,
+and other illustrations, by T. Warton. London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, with many alterations, and large additions. London,
+1791, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems. Another edition. (_Johnson's Works of the English Poets_,
+vols. 10-12.) London, 1790, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. To which is prefixed the life of
+the author. (_Anderson's Poets of Great Britain_, vol. v.) Edinburgh,
+1792, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life of the author, by W.
+Hayley [and engravings after Westall]. 3 vols. London, 1794-97, folio.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, from the text of Dr. Newton.
+With the life of the author, and a critique on Paradise Lost, by J.
+Addison. Cooke's edition. Embellished with engravings. 2 vols. London,
+1795-96, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the principal notes of
+various commentators. To which are added illustrations, with some
+account of the life of Milton. By H.J. Todd. (Mr. Addison's criticism on
+the Paradise Lost. Dr. Johnson's Remarks on Milton's Versification. Dr.
+C. Burney's observations on the Greek verses of Milton.) 6 vols. London,
+1801, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, with considerable additions, and with a verbal
+index to the whole of Milton's poetry, etc. 7 vols. London, 1809, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition, with other illustrations, etc. 6 vols. London, 1826,
+8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and
+critical, by J. Aikin. (Life of Milton by Dr. Johnson.) 3 vols. London,
+1805, 8vo.
+      Vols. xii.-xv. of an edition of "The Works of the English Poets.
+      With preface by Dr. Johnson."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and
+critical, by S. Johnson. Re-edited, with new biographical and critical
+matter, by J. Aikin, M.D. 3 vols. London, 1806, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1806, 16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 4 vols. (_Park's Works of the
+British Poets_, vols. i.-iii.) London, 1808, 16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with the life of the author. By
+S. Johnson. 3 vols. London, 1809, 16mo.
+
+---- Cowper's Milton. [Edited, with a life of Milton, by W. Hayley.
+Together with "Adam: a sacred drama, translated from the Italian of G.B.
+Andreini," by W. Cowper and W. Hayley.] 4 vols. Chichester, 1810, 8vo.
+      The British Museum copy contains MS. notes by J. Mitford.
+
+---- The Poems of John Milton. (_Chalmers' Works of the English Poets_,
+vol. vii.) London, 1810, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the life of the author, by
+S. Johnson. (_Select British Poets_.) London, 1810, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems on several occasions. Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso.
+London, 1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, with Fenton's life and Dr. Johnson's criticism. 2
+vols. London, 1817, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton; to which is prefixed the life of
+the author. London, 1818, 12mo.
+      This forms part of "Walker's British Classics."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a life of the author, by E.
+Sanford. (_Works of the British Poets_, vols. vii., viii.) 2 vols.
+Philadelphia, 1819, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poems of John Milton. (_British Poets_, vols. xvi.-xviii.)
+Chiswick, 1822, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes of various authors,
+principally from the editions of T. Newton, C. Dunster, and T. Warton;
+to which is prefixed Newton's life of Milton. By E. Hawkins. 4 vols.
+Oxford, 1824, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A new edition, with notes, critical and explanatory,
+by J.D. Williams. (Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and Poems.) 2
+vols. London, 1824, 12mo.
+      The British Museum copy contains copious MS. notes by the editor.
+
+---- Poetical Works, with Cowper's Translations of the Latin and
+Italian poems, and life of Milton by his nephew, E. Philips, etc. 3
+vols. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+---- Poems on several occasions. [With Westall's plates.] London, 1827,
+16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. [Edited by J. Mitford, with life
+of Milton by the editor.] 3 vols. London, 1832, 8vo.
+      Part of the "Aldine Edition of the British Poets."
+
+---- Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1866, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Printed from the text of Todd
+and others. A new edition. With the poet's life by E. Philips. Leipzig,
+1834, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir Egerton Brydges,
+Bart. [With a life of Milton, by Sir E.B.] 6 vols. London, 1835, 8vo.
+
+---- The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton: with explanatory notes
+and a life of the author, by the Rev. H. Stebbing. To which is prefixed
+Dr. Channing's essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1839,
+12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, J. Thomson, and E. Young. Edited
+by H.F. Cary. With a biographical notice of each author. 3 pts. London,
+1841, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical
+remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred
+and twenty engravings from drawings by W. Harvey. 2 vols. London, 1843,
+8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: with life and notes. Edinburgh
+[1848], 24mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. (_Tauchnitz Collection of
+British Authors_, vol. 194.) Leipzig, 1850, 8vo.
+
+---- Poetical Works. (_Cabinet Edition of the British Poets_, vol. i.)
+London, 1851, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes and a life by the
+Rev. H. Stebbing, etc. London, 1851, 12mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. (_Universal Library_. _Poetry_,
+vol. i.) London, 1853, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Poetical Works. With life, critical dissertation, and
+notes by G. Gilfillan. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1853, 8vo.
+      One of a series entitled, "Library Edition of the British Poets."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. London, 1853, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: with a life of the author,
+preliminary dissertations on each poem, notes critical and explanatory,
+and a verbal index. Edited by C.D. Cleveland. Philadelphia, 1853, 12mo.
+
+---- The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. Edinburgh
+[1855], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life by J. Mitford. 3
+vols. Boston [U.S.], 1856, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poems of John Milton, with notes by T. Keightley. 2 vols.
+London, 1859, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical
+remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred
+and twenty engravings. New edition, etc. 2 vols. (_Bohn's Illustrated
+Library_.) London, 1861, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With illustrations by C.H.
+Corbould and J. Gilbert. London, 1864, 8vo.
+
+---- English Poems by John Milton. Edited, with life, introduction, and
+selected notes, by R.C. Browne. (_Clarendon Press Series_.) 2 vols.
+Oxford, 1870, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Illustrated by F. Gilbert. [With
+life of Milton.] London, 1870, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with a critical memoir,
+by W.M. Rossetti. Illustrated by T. Seccombe. London [1871], 8vo.
+      Reprinted in 1880 and 1881.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life of the author, and an
+appendix containing Addison's Critique upon the Paradise Lost, and Dr.
+Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. With illustrations.
+London [1872], 8vo.
+
+---- The Complete Poetical Works of Milton and Young. London [1872], 8vo.
+      Part of "Blackwood's Universal Library of Standard Authors."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Reprinted from the Chandos
+Poets. With memoir, explanatory notes, etc. (_Chandos Classics_.) London
+[1872], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original
+editions, with a life of the author by A. Chalmers. London [1873], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, critical
+dissertation, and explanatory notes [by G. Gilfillan], The text edited
+by C.C. Clarke. 2 vols. London [1874], 8vo.
+      Part of "Cassell's Library Edition of British Poets."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: edited, with introductions,
+notes, and an essay on Milton's English, by D. Masson. [With portraits.]
+3 vols. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With introductions and notes by
+D. Masson. 2 vols. London, 1874, 8vo.
+      Forming part of the "Golden Treasury Series."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir E. Brydges, Bart.
+Illustrated. A new edition. London [1876], 8vo.
+
+---- The Globe edition. The Poetical Works of John Milton. With
+introductions by D. Masson. London, 1877, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. London [1878], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with Notes, explanatory
+and philological, by J. Bradshaw. 2 vols. London, 1878, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of Milton and Marvell. With a memoir of each
+[that of Milton by D. Masson. With notes to the poems of Milton by J.
+Mitford]. 4 vols. in 2. Boston, 1878, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1880, 16mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. A new edition revised from the
+text of T. Newton [by T.A.W. Buckley]. London [1880], 8vo.
+      Part of the "Excelsior Series."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, etc. Edinburgh
+[1881], 8vo.
+      Part of "The Landscape Series of Poets."
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original
+editions. With a life of the author by A. Chalmers. With twelve
+illustrations by R. Westall. London, 1881, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton; edited, with memoir,
+introductions, notes, and an essay on Milton's English and
+Versification, by D. Masson. 3 vols. London, 1882, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With biographical notice. New
+York [1884], 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by J. Bradshaw. Second
+edition. 2 vols. London, 1885, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London [1886], 24mo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with biographical notice by J.
+Bradshaw. London, 1887, 12mo.
+      One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series.
+
+---- Poetical Works. 2 vols. London, 1887, 8vo.
+
+---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by J. Bradshaw. Paradise
+Regained. Minor Poems. London, 1888, 8vo.
+      One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paradise Lost, etc. The life of John Milton. [By E. Fenton.] Paradise
+Regained.--Poems upon several occasions.--Sonnets.--Of Education. 2
+vols. London, 1751, 12mo.
+      The copy in the British Museum Library contains MS. Notes by C.
+      Lamb.
+
+Milton's Italian Poems, translated and addressed to a gentleman of
+Italy. By Dr. Langhorne. London, 1776, 4to.
+
+Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. With explanatory notes by
+J. Edmondston. London, 1854, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1855, 16mo.
+
+Paradise Lost, etc. (Paradise Regained: and other Poems.--The Life of
+John Milton [by E. Fenton.]) 2 vols. London, 1855, 32mo.
+
+Paradise Regained. To which is added Samson Agonistes: and poems upon
+several occasions. A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to.
+
+Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Minor English Poems.
+London, 1886, 16mo.
+      Part of the "Religious Tract Society Library."
+
+Latin and Italian poems of Milton translated into English verse, and a
+fragment of a commentary on Paradise Lost, by the late W. Cowper, with a
+preface and notes by the Editor (W. Hayley), and notes of various
+authors. Chichester, 1808, 4to.
+
+The Latin and Italian Poems of Milton. Translated into English verse by
+J.G. Strutt. London, 1814, 8vo.
+
+Milton's Samson Agonistes and Lycidas. With illustrative notes by J.
+Hunter. London, 1870, 8vo.
+
+Milton's Earlier Poems, including the translations by William Cowper of
+those written in Latin and Italian. (_Cassell's National Library_, vol.
+xxxiv.) London, 1886, 8vo.
+
+Miscellaneous Poems, Sonnets, and Psalms, etc. London [1886], 8vo.
+      Part of "Ward, Lock, & Co.'s Popular Library of Literary
+      Treasures."
+
+The Minor Poems of John Milton, Edited, with notes, by W.J. Rolfe. New
+York, 1887, 8vo.
+
+The Sonnets of John Milton. Edited by Mark Pattison. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      Part of the "Parchment Library."
+
+L'Allegro, Il Penseroso [revised by C. Jennens], ed il Moderato [by C.
+Jennens]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1740, 4to.
+      The words only.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1740, 4to.
+
+---- L'Allegro, Il Penseroso as set to musick. [London, 1750], 8vo.
+
+---- L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. [Arranged for music.] [London, 1779], 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. And a song for St. Cecilia's day, by Dryden.
+Set to musick by G.F. Handel. London, 1754, 4to.
+      The words without the music.
+
+L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. Another edition. London [1754], 4to.
+
+L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Glasgow, 1751, 4to.
+
+L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With thirty illustrations designed expressly
+for the Art Union of London [by G. Scharf, H. O'Neil, and others].
+[London], 1848, 4to.
+
+Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated with [Thirty] Etchings
+on Steel by B. Foster. London, 1855, 8vo.
+      There is a copy in the British Museum Library which contains the
+      autographs and photographs of George Cruikshank and his wife.
+
+L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated by engravings on steel after
+designs by Birket Foster. London, 1860, 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and other poems. Illustrated. Boston, 1877,
+16mo.
+
+Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With notes by J. Aikin. Poona
+[1881], 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and the Hymn on the Nativity. Illustrated.
+London, 1885, 8vo.
+
+Milton's Comus, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. With numerous illustrative
+notes adapted for use in training colleges. By John Hunter. London,
+1864, 12mo.
+
+---- Revised edition. London [1874], 8vo.
+
+Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and selected Sonnets. With
+notes by H.R. Huckin. London, 1871, 16mo.
+
+Milton's Arcades and Sonnets. With notes by J. Hunter. London, 1880,
+12mo.
+
+The Lycidas and Epitaphium Damonis. Edited, with notes and introduction
+(including a reprint of the rare Latin version of the Lycidas, by W.
+Hogg, 1694), by C.S. Jarram. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, revised. London, 1881, 8vo.
+
+
+III. PROSE WORKS.
+
+The Works of Mr. John Milton. [In English Prose.] [London], 1697, fol.
+      Not mentioned by Lowndes or Watt, but a copy is in the British
+      Museum.
+
+A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous
+Works of John Milton, both English and Latin. With some papers never
+before publish'd. To which is prefixed the life of the author, etc. [By
+J. Toland]. 3 vols. Amsterdam [London], 1698, fol.
+
+A Complete Collection of Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works
+of John Milton, correctly printed from the original editions, with an
+account of the life and writings of the author (by T. Birch), containing
+several original papers of his never before published. 2 vols. London,
+1738, fol.
+
+The Works of John Milton, Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous. Now
+more correctly printed from the originals than in any former edition,
+and many passages restored which have been hitherto omitted. To which is
+prefixed an account of his life and writings (by T. Birch). (Edited by
+T. Birch and R. Barron?). London, 1753, 8vo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton; with a life of the author, interspersed
+with translations and critical remarks, by C. Symmons. 7 vols. London,
+1806, 8vo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton. With an introductory review by R.
+Fletcher. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+Select Prose Works of Milton. Account of his studies. Apology for his
+early life and writings. Tractate on Education. Areopagitica. Tenure of
+Kings. Eikonoclastes. Divisions of the Commonwealth. Delineation of a
+Commonwealth. Mode of establishing a Commonwealth. Familiar Letters.
+With a preliminary discourse and notes by J.A. St. John. (_Masterpieces
+of English Prose Literature._) 2 vols. London, 1836, 8vo.
+
+Extracts from the Prose Works of John Milton, containing the whole of
+his writings on the church question. Now first published separately.
+Edinburgh, 1836, 12mo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton. With a biographical introduction by R.W.
+Griswold. 2 vols. New York, 1847, 8vo.
+
+The Prose Works of John Milton, with a preface, preliminary remarks, and
+notes by J.A. St. John. 5 vols. (_Bohn's Standard Library._) London,
+1848-53, 8vo.
+
+Areopagitica, Letter on Education, Sonnets and Psalms. (_Cassell's
+National Library_, vol. cxxi.) London, 1888, 8vo.
+
+
+
+
+IV. SINGLE WORKS.
+
+Accedence commenc't Grammar, supply'd with sufficient rules, for the use
+of such as are desirous to attain the Latin tongue with little teaching
+and their own industry. London, 1669, 12mo.
+
+An account of an original autograph sonnet by John Milton, contained in
+a copy of Mel Heliconium written by Alexander Rosse, 1642, etc. London,
+1859, 8vo.
+
+L'Allegro, illustrated by the Etching Club. London, 1849, fol.
+
+---- L'Allegro. [With illustrations engraved by W.J. Linton.] London,
+1859, 8vo.
+
+---- L'Allegro. [With illustrations.] London [1875], 8vo.
+      Forming part of "The Choice Series."
+
+---- Milton's L'Allegro. Edited, with interpretation, notes, and
+derivations, by F. Main. London, 1877, 8vo.
+
+Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence [_i.e._, the defence of J.
+Hall, Bishop of Norwich?] against Smectymnuus. London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Apographum literarum serenissimi protectoris, etc. [Leyden?] 1656, 4to.
+
+An apology against a Pamphlet [by J. Hall?] called A Modest Confutation
+of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant against Smectymnuus. London,
+1641, 4to.
+
+Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of Unlicenc'd
+Printing, to the Parliament of England. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+---- Areopagitica Another edition. With a preface by another hand.
+London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition, with prefatory remarks, copious notes, and
+excursive illustrations, by T. Holt White, etc. London, 1819, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1772, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1780, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, edited by James Losh. London, 1791, 8vo.
+
+---- Areopagitica. (_Occasional Essays_, etc.) London, 1809, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1834], 8vo.
+
+---- Areopagitica, etc. London, 1840, 8vo.
+      _Tracts for the People_, No. 10.
+
+---- English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by
+Edward Arber. London, 1868, 18mo.
+
+---- English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by
+Edward Arber. London, 1869, 8vo.
+
+---- A Modern Version of Milton's Areopagitica: with notes, appendix,
+and tables. By S. Lobb. Calcutta, 1872, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton, Areopagitica. Edited, with introduction and notes, by J.W.
+Hales. Oxford, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Areopagitica. (_Morley's Universal Library_, vol. 43.)
+London, 1886, 8vo.
+
+Autobiography of John Milton: or Milton's Life in his own words. Edited
+by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1872, 8vo.
+
+A brief history of Moscovia; and other less known countries lying
+eastward of Russia as far as Cathay. Gather'd from the writings of
+several eye-witnesses. London, 1682, 8vo.
+
+The Cabinet-Council; containing the Chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries
+of State discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton.
+London, 1658, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. The Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State
+discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton. London,
+1692, 8vo.
+
+Colasterion, a reply to a nameles [_sic_] answer against "The Doctrine
+and Discipline of Divorce." By the former author, J[ohn] M[ilton].
+[London] 1645, 4to.
+
+A Common-Place Book of John Milton, and a Latin essay and Latin verses
+presumed to be by Milton. Edited from the original MSS. in the
+possession of Sir F.W. Graham, Bart., by A.J. Horwood. London, 1876, 4to.
+      Printed for the Camden Society.
+
+---- Revised edition. London, 1877, 4to.
+
+A Maske [Comus] presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: on Michaelmasse night,
+before the right honorable John, Earle of Bridgewater, Viscount Brackly,
+Lord President of Wales. [Edited by H. Lawes.] London, 1637, 4to.
+      The first edition of Comus.
+
+---- Comus: a mask, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Comus, a mask presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of
+Bridgewater, with notes critical and explanations by various
+commentators, and with preliminary illustrations; to which is added a
+copy of the mask from a manuscript belonging to his Grace the Duke of
+Bridgewater; by H.J. Todd. Canterbury, 1798, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus, a mask; presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634. To which are
+added, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and Mr. Warton's account of the
+origin of Comus. London, 1799, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a mask. With annotations. London, 1808, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. (_Cumberland's British Theatre_, vol. 32.) London
+[1829], 12mo.
+
+---- Comus. A mask with thirty illustrations by Pickersgill, B. Foster,
+H. Weir, etc. London, 1858, 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Comus. Published under the direction of the Committee
+appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London
+[1860], 12mo.
+
+---- Comus: a mask. With explanatory notes. Published under the
+direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London
+[1861], 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Comus. With notes [by W. Wallace]. London, 1871, 16mo.
+
+---- The Mask of Comus. Edited, with copious notes, by H.B. Sprague. New
+York, 1876, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's "Comus" annotated, with a glossary and notes. With three
+introductory essays upon the masque proper, and upon the origin and
+history of the poem. By B.M. Ranking and D.F. Ranking. London, 1878, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Comus, with introduction and notes. London, 1884, 8vo.
+      Forming part of "Chambers's Reprints of English Classics."
+
+---- Milton's Comus. Edited, with introduction and notes, by A.M.
+Williams. London, 1888, 8vo.
+
+---- ---- Songs, Duets, Choruses, etc., in Milton's Comus: a masque in
+two acts, with additions from the author's poem "L'Allegro," and from
+Dryden's opera of "King Arthur." London [1842], 8vo.
+
+Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of
+the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes, Church-Fees,
+Church-Revenues, and whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl'd
+by law. The author J. M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1717, 12mo.
+
+Another edition. London, 1723, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1834], 8vo.
+
+A Declaration, or Letters Patents of the Election of this present King
+of Poland, John the Third. Translated [by John Milton]. London, 1674,
+4to.
+
+The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restor'd to the good of both
+sexes from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes to Christian
+freedom, guided by the rule of charity, etc. London, 1643, 4to.
+
+---- The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Now the second time revis'd
+and much augmented. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1645, 4to.
+
+Eikonoklastes, in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon Basilike, the
+Portrature of his Sacred Majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. [By J.
+Gauden, Bishop of Exeter?] The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649,
+4to.
+
+---- Eikonoklastes. Published now the second time, and much enlarg'd.
+London, 1650, 4to.
+
+---- Eikonoklastes in answer to a book entitled Eikon Basilike, the
+Portraiture of his sacred majesty King Charles the first in his
+solitudes and sufferings. Amsterdam, 1690, 8vo.
+
+---- Eikonoklastes: in answer to a book intitled Eikon Basilikon, the
+portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. Now
+first published from the author's second edition, printed in 1650; with
+many enlargements, by R. Baron. With a preface shewing the transcendent
+excellency of Milton's prose works. To which is added an original Letter
+[from J. Wall] to Milton, never before published. London, 1756, 4to.
+
+---- A new edition, corrected by the late Reverend R. Baron. London,
+1770, 8vo.
+
+The History of Britain, that part especially now call'd England, from
+the first traditional beginning, continu'd to the Norman Conquest.
+Collected out of the antientest and best authors by John Milton. London,
+1670, 4to.
+
+The History of Britain. Another edition. London, 1677, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1678, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1695, 8vo.
+
+Il Penseroso. With designs by J.E.G.; etched by J.E.G. and H.P.G. on
+India paper. London, 1844, folio.
+
+---- Milton. Il Penseroso. (_Clarendon Press Series_.) Oxford, 1874,
+8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni Angli, Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio, ad Petri Rami
+Methodum concinnata. Adjecta est Praxis Analytica and P. Rami vita.
+Londini, 1672, 12mo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni Angli de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi, quos ex
+schedis manuscriptis deprompsit, et typis mandari primus curavit C.R.
+Sumner. Cantabrigiae, 1825, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. Brunsvigae, 1827, 8vo.
+
+---- A Treatise of Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures
+alone. Translated from the original by C.R. Sumner. Cambridge, 1825, 4to.
+
+---- John Milton's last thoughts on the Trinity. Extracted from his
+Treatise on Christian Doctrine. London, 1828, 12mo.
+
+---- New edition. London, 1859, 8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltonii Angli Epistolarum familiarium liber unus: quibus
+accesserunt ejusdem jam olim in collegio adolescentis prolusiones quaedam
+oratoriae. Londini, 1674, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's familiar letters. Translated from the Latin, with notes,
+by J. Hall. Philadelphia, 1829, 8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni Angli pro populo Anglicano defensio, contra Claudii
+Anonymi, alias Salmasii, defensionem regiam. Cum indice. Londini, 1651,
+12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Londini, 1651, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. Londini, 1651, 12mo.
+
+---- Editio emendatior. Londini, 1651, folio.
+
+---- Another edition. Londini, 1652, 12mo.
+
+---- Editio correctior et auctior, ab autore denuo recognita. Londini,
+1658, 8vo.
+
+---- A Defense of the People of England in answer to Salmasius's defence
+of the king. [Translated from the Latin by Mr. Washington, of the
+Temple.] [London?] 1692, 8vo.
+
+Joannis Miltoni pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda. Contra infamem
+libellum anonymum [by P. Du Moulin] cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor
+ad coelum adversus parricidas Anglicanos. Londini, 1654, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. [With preface by G. Crantzius.] 2 parts. Hagae
+Comitum, 1654, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Second Defence of the People of England [translated by
+Archdeacon Wrangham]. London, 1816, 8vo.
+      Included in _Scraps_ by the Rev. Francis Wrangham.
+
+Joanni Miltoni pro se defensio contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiastes [or
+rather P. Du Moulin] Libelli famosi, cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor
+ad coelum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos, authorem recte dictum.
+Londini, 1655, 8vo.
+
+The judgement of Martin Bucer concerning divorce, now Englisht [by John
+Milton]. Wherein a late book [by John Milton] restoring the doctrine and
+discipline of divorce is heer confirm'd, etc. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+A Letter written to a Gentleman in the Country, touching the dissolution
+of the late Parliament, and the reasons thereof. [By John Milton, signed
+N. Ll.] London [May 26], 1653, 4to.
+
+Literae ab Olivario protectore ad sacram regiam majestem Sueciae.
+[Leyden?] 1656, 4to.
+
+Literae Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, reliquorumque Perduellium
+nomine ac jussu conscriptae a Joanne Miltono. [London] 1676, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Literae nomine Senatus Anglicani Cromwellii
+Richardique ad diversos in Europa principes et Respublicas exaratae a
+Joanne Miltono, quas nunc primum in Germania recudi fecit J.G. Pritius.
+Lipsiae Francofurti, 1690, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Republican-Letters, or a collection of such as were
+written by Comand of the late Commonwealth of England, etc. [Amsterdam?]
+1682, 4to.
+
+---- Letters of State written by Mr. John Milton to most of the
+Sovereign princes and Republicks of Europe, from the year 1649 till
+1659. To which is added an Account of his Life [by E. Phillips],
+together with several of his poems, etc. London, 1694, 12mo.
+      The "several poems" consist of four sonnets only.
+
+---- Oliver Cromwell's Letters to Foreign Princes and States for
+strengthening and preserving the Protestant Religion, etc. [Translated
+from the Latin of John Milton.] London, 1700, 4to.
+
+Lycidas. [First edition.] (_Justa Edouardo King naufrago, ab Amicis
+moerentibus_, etc.) 2 pts. Cantabrigiae, 1638, 4to.
+      Part II., "Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King," has a
+      distinct title-page and pagination, and contains the first edition
+      of Lycidas.
+
+---- Milton's Lycidas, with notes, critical, explanatory, and
+grammatical, by a Graduate. Melbourne, 1869, 8vo.
+
+---- Lycidas. Reprinted from the first edition of 1638, and collated
+with the autograph copy in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
+With a version in Latin hexameters. By F.A. Paley. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton. Lycidas. With introduction and notes. By T.D. Hall.
+Manchester [1876], 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London [1880], 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Lycidas. Edited, with interpretation and notes, by F.
+Main, etc. London, 1876, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1876, 8vo.
+
+Mr. John Milton's character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of
+Divines, in 1641. Omitted in his other works, and never printed. [Edited
+by J. Tyrrell? or by Arthur, Earl of Anglesey?] London, 1681, 4to.
+
+Milton's Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. Illustrated by
+eminent artists. London, 1868, 8vo.
+
+Mr. John Milton's Satyre against hypocrites. Written whilst he was Latin
+secretary to Oliver Cromwell. [By John Phillips?] London, 1710, 8vo.
+
+Milton's unpublished Poem, corrected by J.E. Wall from a defective copy
+found by Mr. Morley in the British Museum. Epitaph on a Rose Tree
+confined in a Garden Tub. [London, 1873?] s. sh. 8vo.
+      The original is in the King's Library, British Museum, and is
+      written on the last leaf of a copy of "Poems of Mr. John Milton,"
+      1646.
+
+Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels, on the
+Letter of Ormond to Col. Jones, and the Representation of the Presbytery
+at Belfast. (_Articles of Peace made and concluded with the Irish
+Rebels, by James Earle of Ormond, etc._) London, 1649, 4to.
+
+Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib. [London, 1644] 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Tractate on Education. A facsimile reprint from the
+edition of 1673. Edited by Oscar Browning. (_Pitt Press Series_.)
+Cambridge, 1883, 8vo.
+
+Original Letters and Papers of State, addressed to Oliver Cromwell,
+concerning the affairs of Great Britain from 1649 to 1658, found among
+the political collections of John Milton, published from the originals.
+By John Nickolls. London, 1743, folio.
+
+Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduc'd from the
+Apostolical times by vertue of those Testimonies which are alledg'd to
+that purpose in some late Treatises of James, Archbishop of Armagh.
+London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England: and the causes
+that hitherto have hindred it. London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Of True Religion, Haeresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means may
+be used against the growth of Popery. The author J[ohn] M[ilton].
+London, 1673, 4to.
+
+---- New edition, with preface by Bp. Burgess. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Paradise Lost. A poem written in ten books by John Milton. Licensed and
+entred according to order. London, 1667, 4to.
+      First edition. Without argument or preface. There are nine
+      distinct variations of the title and preliminary pages.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author J. Milton. (The
+argument. The verse.) London, 1668, 4to.
+      The same edition as the preceding, with a new title-page, and with
+      the addition of the argument.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author John Milton. London,
+1669, 4to.
+      The same edition as the two preceding, with a new title-page and
+      some slight alterations in the text. There is another copy in the
+      British Museum which differs slightly. It has also the title-page
+      dated 1668, and Marvell's commendatory verses in MS.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem, in twelve books. The author John Milton.
+Second edition, revised and augmented by the same author. London,
+1674, 8vo.
+      To this edition are prefixed the commendatory verses of Barrow and
+      Marvell. In another copy in the British Museum conjectural
+      emendations from the quarto edition, 1749, and the octavo
+      edition, 1674, corrected by the quarto edition, 1668, printed on
+      two leaves, have been inserted.
+
+---- The third edition. Revised and augmented by the same author.
+London, 1678, 8vo.
+
+---- The fourth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1688, folio.
+      The first illustrated edition.
+
+---- Another edition [with cuts]. London, 1692, folio.
+
+---- Another edition. With copious and learned notes by P[atrick]
+H[ume]. London, 1695, folio.
+
+---- Seventh edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1705, 8vo.
+
+---- Eighth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo.
+
+---- Ninth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1711, 12mo.
+      The British Museum copy is said to be the only one on thick paper.
+
+---- Tenth edition. With sculptures. London, 1719, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Dublin, 1724, 8vo.
+
+---- Twelfth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1725, 12mo.
+
+---- Thirteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by
+E. Fenton]. London, 1727, 8vo.
+
+---- Fourteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by
+E. Fenton]. London, 1730, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition [with notes and proposed emendations] by R. Bentley.
+London, 1732, 4to.
+      One of the copies in the British Museum contains MS. notes by B.
+      Stillingfleet, and another MS. notes by W. Cole. A third copy has
+      inserted plates, a pencil sketch of Milton's house at Chalfont St.
+      Giles, and a cutting from the _Literary Gazette_, May 29th, 1830,
+      relating to Bentley.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1737, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition [with life by E. Fenton]. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. (The life of John Milton by E. Fenton.) 2 vols.
+London, 1746, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Dublin, 1747, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Compared and revised by John Hawkey. Dublin,
+1748, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. (The life
+of Milton [by the editor]. A critique on Paradise Lost. By Mr. Addison.)
+2 vols. London, 1749, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. According to the author's last edition, in the
+year 1672. Glasgow, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1754, 4to.
+
+Paradise Lost. Another edition. With notes, etymological, critical,
+classical, and explanatory; collected from Dr. Bentley, Dr. Pearce,
+Richardson and Son, Addison, Paterson, Newton, and other authors. By J.
+Marchant. London, 1751, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1752, 51, 12mo.
+      Vol. ii. is a duplicate of the corresponding vol. of the previous
+      edition.
+
+---- Another edition. [To which is prefixed the life of Milton, by E.
+Fenton.] London, 1753, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. [With the life of Milton, by E. Fenton, and a
+glossary.] 2 vols. Paris, 1754, 16mo.
+
+---- Another edition [in prose]. With historical, critical, and
+explanatory notes. From Raymond de St. Maur. London, 1755, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1758, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1759, 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. (The life of Milton [by T. Newton]). London,
+1760, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. [With the life of John Milton, by E. Fenton.
+Illustrated.] London, 1761, 8vo.
+
+---- Sixth edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1763, 8vo.
+
+---- Seventh edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1770, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition. To which is added the life of the author, by E.
+Fenton. Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo.
+
+---- New edition. To which is added historical, philosophical, and
+explanatory notes, translated from the French of Raymond de St. Maur.
+[Edited by John Wood, and preceded by a life of Milton by E. Fenton.]
+Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition [in prose]. With historical, philosophical,
+critical, and explanatory notes, from Raymond de St. Maur. Embellished
+with fourteen copper-plates. London, 1767, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition, adorned with copper-plates. London [1770], 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem. The author, John Milton. Glasgow, 1770,
+folio.
+      The copy in the British Museum was presented to George III. by the
+      binder, J. Scott.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (The life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1770,
+12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1771, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (_British Poets_, vols. i.-ii.) Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- New edition. 2 vols. London, 1775, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, from the text of T. Newton. London, 1777, 12mo.
+
+---- Eighth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2
+vols. London, 1778, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (The Life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1778,
+12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. With a biographical and critical account of the
+author and his writings [by E. Fenton]. Kilmarnock, 1785, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J. Gillies.
+[With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1788, 12mo.
+
+---- Ninth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton [and a
+portrait of Milton], 2 vols. London, 1790, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Printed from the first and second editions
+collated. The original system of orthography restored, the punctuation
+corrected and extended. With various readings; and notes, chiefly
+rythmical. By Capel Lofft. [Book i.] Bury St. Edmunds, 1792, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Books i.-iv. [London, 1792-95], 4to.
+      The British Museum copy contains the first four books only. With
+      illustrations after Stothard, engraved by Bartolozzi. Without
+      title-page.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J.
+Gillies. Second edition. [With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1793, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost; a poem, in twelve books. [With engravings.] London,
+1794, 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. (The Life of John Milton [by E. Fenton].
+Criticism on Paradise Lost by S. Johnson.) London, 1795, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711.
+With notes and the life of the author by T. Newton and others. [Edited
+by C.M.] 3 vols. London, 1795, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, with notes selected from Newton and others. With a
+critical dissertation on the poetical works of Milton by S. Johnson. 2
+vols. London, 1796, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by J. Evans]. To
+which is prefixed the celebrated critique by S. Johnson. London,
+1799, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. A new edition. Adorned with plates
+[engraved chiefly by F. Bartolozzi, from designs by W. Hamilton and H.
+Fuseli.] 2 vols. London, 1802, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by E. Fenton], and a
+critique on the poem [by S. Johnson]. A new edition. London, 1802, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A new edition. London, 1803, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture, by J.
+Gillies. Third edition, with additions. [Life of Milton, by E. Fenton.]
+London, 1804, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. A poem. Printed from the text of Tonson's correct
+edition of 1711. London, 1804, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711. A
+new edition, with plates, etc. London, 1808, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem, etc. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].)
+London, 1805, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].) London,
+1812, 16mo.
+
+---- Another edition. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1813, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. [With the life of John
+Milton by E. Fenton, and "A critique upon the Paradise Lost" by J.
+Addison.] Romsey, 1816, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]; and a criticism on the poem by S. Johnson. London, 1817, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. London, 1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. [With engravings from the designs of R. Westall.] 2
+vols. London, 1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1818, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E.
+Fenton]. London, 1820, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. [With a life of the author, by E. Fenton.] Boston,
+1820, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author by E.
+Fenton, and a criticism of the poem by Dr. Johnson. London, 1821, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, etc. 2 vols. London, 1825, 12mo.
+
+---- The Paradise Lost of Milton, with illustrations designed and
+engraved by J. Martin. 2 vols. London, 1827, folio.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, etc. [With the life of J. Milton, by E. Fenton.]
+London [1830], 16mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. With a memoir of the author [by E. Fenton]. New
+edition. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost: with copious notes, also a memoir of his life by J.
+Prendeville. London, 1840, 8vo.
+
+---- [Paradise Lost. Edited by A.J. Ellis? Phonetically printed.]
+[London], 1846, 16mo.
+
+---- The Paradise Lost, with notes explanatory and critical. Edited by
+J.R. Boyd. New York, 1851, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost, with notes, critical and explanatory,
+original and selected, by J.R. Major. London, 1853, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Published under the direction of the
+Committee of General Literature and Education [appointed by the Society
+for Promoting Christian Knowledge]. London [1859], 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. In twelve books. London, 1861, 16mo.
+      One of "Bell & Daldy's Pocket Volumes."
+
+---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author, and Dr.
+Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1862, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Dore. Edited, with
+notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London [1866], folio.
+      A re-issue appeared in 1871-72.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, in ten books. The text exactly reproduced from the
+first edition of 1667. With an appendix containing the additions made in
+later issues and a monograph on the original publication of the poem.
+[By R.H.S., _i.e._, R.H. Shepherd?] London, 1873, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost, as originally published, being a fac-simile of the
+first edition. With an introduction by D. Masson. London, 1877 [1876],
+4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Illustrated by thirty-eight designs in outline by F.
+Thrupp. [Containing only fragments of the text.] London, 1879, obl.
+folio.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Dore. Edited, with
+notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London, 1882, 4to.
+      Re-issued in 1888.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. The text emended, with notes and preface by M.
+Hull. London, 1884, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. London, 1887, 16 mo.
+      Part of "Routledge's Pocket Library."
+
+---- Paradise Lost. (_Cassell's National Library_, vols. 162, 163.)
+London, 1889, 8vo.
+
+---- ---- The Story of our first Parents; selected from Milton's
+Paradise Lost: for the use of young persons. By Mrs. Siddons. London,
+1822, 8vo.
+
+Paradise Regain'd. A Poem in four books. To which is added Samson
+Agonistes. The author, J. Milton. 2 pts. London, 1671, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes. London,
+1680, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1688, folio.
+
+---- Paradise Regained. Samson Agonistes, and the smaller poems. Sixth
+edition. London, 1695, folio.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, and poems
+upon several occasions, compos'd at several times. Fourth edition.
+London, 1705, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. The
+fifth edition. London, 1707, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. Fifth
+edition. Adorned with cuts. London, 1713, 12mo.
+
+---- Sixth edition, corrected. London, 1725, 8vo.
+
+---- Seventh edition, corrected. 3 pts. London, 1727, 8vo.
+
+---- Seventh edition, corrected. London, 1730, 12mo.
+
+---- Eighth edition. London, 1743, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. A new edition. With notes of various
+authors, by T. Newton. London, 1752, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1752, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. The second edition, with notes of various
+authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1753, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1753, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1756, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, etc. Birmingham, 1758, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1760, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd (_British Poets_, vol. iii.). Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1772, 12mo.
+
+---- A new edition. 2 vols. London, 1773, 8vo.
+
+---- A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to.
+
+---- A new edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols.
+London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1779, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Alnwick, 1793, 12mo.
+
+---- A new edition, with notes of various authors, by C. Dunster.
+London. 1795. 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1800], 4to.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Regained; with select notes subjoined: to which
+is added a complete collection of his Miscellaneous Poems, both English
+and Latin. London, 1796, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained. With select notes subjoined, etc. London,
+1817, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. London,
+1817, 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1823, 16mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. [With
+Westall's plates.] London, 1827, 16mo.
+
+---- Paradise Regained; and other poems. London, 1832, 16mo.
+
+---- Milton's Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1861, 16mo.
+      One of "Bell & Daldy's Pocket Volumes."
+
+The readie and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the
+excellence thereof, compar'd with the inconveniences and dangers of
+re-admitting Kingship in this nation. The author J[ohn] M[ilton].
+London, 1660, 4to.
+
+The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty. In two books.
+London, 1641, 4to.
+
+Samson Agonistes. London, 1688, folio.
+      First appeared with the Paradise Regained in 1671.
+
+---- Samson Agonistes. London, 1695, folio.
+      Reprinted from the preceding edition.
+
+---- Samson Agonistes. (_Bell's British Theatre_, vol. 34.) London,
+1797, 8vo.
+
+---- Samson Agonistes. London [1869], 8vo.
+
+---- Milton. Samson Agonistes. Edited by John Churton Collins.
+(_Clarendon Press Series_.) Oxford, 1883, 8vo.
+
+Scriptum Dom. Protectoris contra Hispanos. [By John Milton.] Londini,
+1655, 4to.
+
+---- A Manifesto of the Lord Protector against the Depredations of the
+Spaniards. Written in Latin by John Milton. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- A true Copy of Oliver Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated
+October 26, 1655 [written by John Milton]. London, 1741, 4to.
+
+The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates; proving that it is lawfull, and
+hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call
+to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose
+and put him to death, etc. The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649,
+4to.
+
+---- Another edition, with additions. London, 1650, 4to.
+
+Tetrachordon: expositions upon the foure chief places in Scripture which
+treat of mariage, or nullities in manage, wherein the doctrine and
+discipline of divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd. By the
+former author J. M[ilton]. London, 1645 [1644 O.S.], 4to.
+      The author's name appears in full at the end of the address "To
+      the Parliament."
+
+A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; shewing that it is
+not lawfull for any power on earth to compell in matter of religion.
+The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo.
+
+---- A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. First printed
+anno 1659. London, reprinted 1790, 8vo.
+
+---- A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, etc. London,
+1839, 8vo.
+      _Tracts for the People_, No. I.
+
+---- On the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; and on the likeliest
+means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. London, 1851, 8vo.
+      Part XI. of "Buried Treasures."
+
+
+V. SELECTIONS.
+
+The Beauties of Milton, Thomson, and Young. Dublin, 1783, 12mo.
+
+The Beauties of Milton; consisting of selections from his poetry and
+prose, by A. Howard. London [1834], 12mo.
+
+The Poetry of Milton's Prose; selected from his various writings; with
+notes, and an introductory essay [by C.]. London, 1827, 12mo.
+
+Readings from Milton. With an introduction by Bishop H.W. Warren.
+Boston, 1886, 8vo.
+      Part of the "Chatauqua Library--Garnet Series."
+
+Selected Prose Writings of John Milton, with an introductory essay by E.
+Myers. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      Fifty copies only printed.
+
+Selections from the Prose Writings of John Milton. Edited, with memoir,
+notes, and analyses, by S. Manning. London, 1862, 8vo.
+
+Selections from the Prose Works of John Milton. With critical remarks
+and elucidations. Edited by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1870, 8vo.
+
+Shakespeare and Milton Reader; being scenes and other extracts from the
+writings of Shakespeare and Milton, etc. London [1883], 8vo.
+
+
+VI. APPENDIX.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC.
+
+Acton, Rev. Henry.--Religious opinions and examples of Milton, Locke,
+and Newton. A lecture, with notes. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+Addison, Rt. Hon. Joseph.--Notes upon the twelve books of Paradise Lost.
+Collected from the _Spectator_. London, 1719, 12mo.
+      Appeared originally in the _Spectator_, Dec. 31, 1711--May 3,
+      1712.
+
+Ademollo, A.--La Leonora di Milton e di Clemente IX. Milano [1886], 8vo.
+
+Andrews, Samuel.--Our Great Writers; or, Popular chapters on some
+leading authors. London, 1884, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 84-112.
+
+Arnold, Matthew.--Mixed Essays. London, 1879, 8vo.
+      A French Critic on Milton, pp. 237-273.
+
+---- Essays in Criticism. Second Series. London, 1888, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 56-68.
+
+Bagehot, Walter.--Literary Studies. 2 vols. London, 1879, 8vo.
+      John Milton, vol. i., pp. 173-220.
+
+---- Third edition. 2 vols. London, 1884, 8vo.
+
+Balfour, Clara Lucas.--Sketches of English Literature, etc. London,
+1852, 8vo.
+      Milton and his Literary Contemporaries, pp. 151-173.
+
+Barron, William.--Lectures on Belles Lettres and Logic. 2 vols. London,
+1806, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. ii., pp. 281-300.
+
+Baumgarten, Dr.--John Milton und das Verlorene Paradies. Coburg [1875],
+4to.
+
+Bayne, Peter.--The Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution. London,
+1878, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 297-346.
+
+Bentley, Richard.--Dr. Bentley's emendations on the twelve books of
+Milton's Paradise Lost. London, 1732, 12mo.
+
+Bickersteth, E.H.--Milton's Paradise Lost. (_The St. James's Lectures,
+Second Series_.) London, 1876, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1877, 8vo.
+
+Birrell, Augustine.--Obiter Dicta. Second series. London, 1887, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 1-50.
+
+Blackburne, Francis.--Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton. To which are
+added Milton's Tractate of Education and Areopagitica. London, 1780, 16mo.
+
+Blair, Hugh.--Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, etc. 2 vols.
+London, 1783, 4to.
+      Paradise Lost, vol. ii., pp. 471-476.
+
+Bodmer, J. Jacob.--J.J. Bodmer's critische Abhandlung, von dem
+Wunderbaren in der Poesie in einer Vertheidigung des Gedichtes J.
+Milton's von dem verlohrnen Paradiese, etc. Zuerich, 1740, 8vo.
+
+Bradburn, Eliza W.--The Story of Paradise Lost, for children. Portland,
+1830, 16mo.
+
+Brooke, Stopford A.--Milton. [An account of his life and works.]
+London, 1879, 8vo.
+      Part of the series entitled _Classical Writers_, ed. J.R. Green.
+
+Bruce, Archibald.--A critical account of the life, character, and
+discourses of Mr. Alexander Morus, in which the attack made upon him in
+the writings of Milton is particularly considered. Edinburgh, 1813, 8vo.
+
+Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton.--The Life of John Milton. London [1835], 8vo.
+
+Bulwer Lytton, E.--The Siamese Twins, etc. London, 1831, 8vo.
+      Milton, a poem, pp. 315-362.
+
+Burney, Charles.--Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton. [London, 1790],
+8vo.
+
+Buckland, Anna.--The Story of English Literature. London, 1882, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 230-296.
+
+Callander, John.--Letter and Report respecting the Unpublished
+Commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, by the late John Callander, of
+Craigforth, Esq., in the possession of the Society. (_Archaeologia
+Scotica_, vol. iii., 1831, pp. 83-91.) Edinburgh, 1831, 4to.
+
+Camerini, Eugenio.--Profili Letterari. Firenze, 1870, 8vo.
+      Milton e l'Italia, pp. 264-274.
+
+Cann, Miss Christian.--A scriptural and allegorical glossary to
+Milton's Paradise Lost. London [1828], 8vo.
+
+Carpenter, William.--The Life and Times of John Milton. London [1836], 8vo.
+
+Channing, William Ellery.--Remarks on the Character and Writings of John
+Milton; occasioned by the publication of his lately discovered
+"Treatise on Christian Doctrine." From the _Christian Examiner_, vol.
+iii., No. 1. Boston, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Charles I.--By the King. A Proclamation for calling in and suppressing
+of two books written by John Milton: the one Intituled Johannis Miltoni
+Angli pro Populo Anglicano defensio, etc., and the other, The
+Pourtraicture of his Sacred Majesty, etc. London, 1660, s. sh. fol.
+
+---- The Life and Reigne of King Charls; or, the Pseudo-Martyr
+discovered, etc. London, 1651, 8vo.
+      In the Bodleian Catalogue this work is erroneously stated to be by
+      John Milton.
+
+Chassang, A., and Marcou, F.L.--Les Chefs-d'Oeuvre Epiques de tous les
+peuples. Paris, 1879, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 279-297.
+
+Clarke, Samuel.--Some reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor,
+or the defence of Milton's life, which relates to the writings of the
+primitive fathers, etc. (_Letter to Mr. Dodwell_, etc., pp. 451-475.)
+London, 1781, 8vo.
+
+Cleveland, C.D.--A Complete Concordance to the Poetical Works of John
+Milton. London, 1867, 8vo.
+
+Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.--Seven lectures on Shakespeare and Milton,
+etc. London, 1856, 8vo.
+
+Darby, Samuel.--A letter to T. Warton, on his late edition of Milton's
+Juvenile Poems [entitled "Poems upon several occasions, English,
+Italian, and Latin."] London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+Dawson, George.--Biographical Lectures. London, 1886, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 82-88.
+
+De Morgan, J.--John Milton considered as a Politician. (_Men of the
+Commonwealth_, No. 1.) [London, 1875], 16mo.
+
+Dennis, John.--Heroes of Literature. English Poets. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 114-147.
+
+De Quincey, T.--Works. 16 vols. London, 1853-60, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. vi., pp. 311-325; Life of Milton, vol. x., pp. 79-98.
+
+Des Essarts, E.--De Veterum poetarum tum Graeciae tum Romae apud Miltonem
+imitatione thesim proponebat E. Des Essarts. Parisiis, 1871, 8vo.
+
+Diderot, Denis.--An Essay on Blindness, etc. Interspersed with several
+anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others. Translated from the French.
+London [1750], 12mo.
+
+Dobson, W.T.--The Classic Poets, their lives and their times, etc.
+London, 1879, 8vo.
+      Milton's Paradise Lost, pp. 394-446; Paradise Regained,
+      pp. 446-452.
+
+Donoughue, Edward Jones.--Milton: a lecture. London, 1843, 8vo.
+
+Douglas, John.--Milton vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought
+against him by Mr. Lauder, etc. London, 1751, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton no plagiary; or, a detection of the forgeries contained in
+Lauder's essay, etc. Second edition. London, 1756, 8vo.
+
+Dowden, Edward.--Transcripts and Studies. London, 1888, 8vo.
+      The Idealism of Milton, pp. 454-473.
+
+Dowling, William.--Poets and Statesmen; their homes and haunts in the
+neighbourhood of Eton and Windsor. London, 1857, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 1-39.
+
+Dryden, John.--The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man; an opera, etc.
+London, 1677, 4to.
+
+Du Moulin, P.--Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas
+Anglicanos. [A reply to Milton's "Defensio pro populo Anglicano."] Hagae
+Comitum, 1652, 4to.
+
+---- Editio secunda. Hagae Comitum, 1661, 12mo.
+
+Dunster, C.--Considerations on Milton's early reading, and the prima
+stamina of his Paradise Lost, etc. London, 1800, 8vo.
+
+Edmonds, Cyrus R.--John Milton; a biography. Especially designed to
+exhibit the ecclesiastical principles of that illustrious man. London,
+1851, 8vo.
+
+Edmundson, George.--Milton and Vondel. A curiosity of literature.
+London, 1885, 8vo.
+
+Ellwood, Thomas.--Reflections of [Thomas Ellwood] with John Milton
+(_Arber's English Garner_, vol. iii., pp. 473-486). London, 1880, 8vo.
+
+English Poets.--Cursory remarks on some of the ancient English poets,
+particularly Milton. [By P. Neve.] London, 1789, 8vo.
+
+Epigoniad.--A critical essay on the Epigoniad, wherein the author's
+abuse of Milton is examined. Edinburgh, 1757, 8vo.
+
+Eyre, Charles.--The Fall of Adam, from Milton's Paradise Lost. London
+[1852], 8vo.
+
+Filmer, Sir Robert.--Observations concerning the originall of Government
+upon Mr. Hobs Leviathan, Mr. Milton against Salmasius, H. Grotius De
+Jure Belli. London, 1652, 4to.
+
+---- The Free-holders grand inquest, etc. (Reflections concerning the
+Original of Government upon Mr. Milton against Salmasius.) London, 1679,
+8vo.
+
+Flatters, J.J.--The Paradise Lost of Milton, translated into fifty-four
+designs, by J.J. Flatters, sculptor. London, 1843, folio.
+      Without letterpress.
+
+Fry, Alfred A.--A lecture on the writings, prose and poetic, and the
+character, public and personal, of John Milton. London, 1838, 8vo.
+
+Geffroy, Mathieu A.--Etude sur les pamphlets politiques et religieux de
+Milton. Paris, 1848, 8vo.
+
+Gilfillan, George.--A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits. London,
+1850, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 1-39.
+
+---- Modern Christian Heroes, etc. London, 1869, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 81-118.
+
+Giraud, Jane E.--Flowers of Milton. London, 1850, 4to.
+
+Godwin, William.--Lives of E. and J. Philips, nephews and pupils of
+Milton, to which are added: I. Collections for the life of Milton, by J.
+Aubrey, printed from the manuscript copy in the Ashmolean Museum. II.
+The Life of Milton, by E. Philips, printed 1694. London, 1815, 4to.
+
+Goodwin, Thomas.--The Student's Practical Grammar of the English
+Language; together with a commentary on the first book of Milton's
+Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 12mo.
+
+Greenwood, F.W.P.--The Miscellaneous Writings of F.W.P. Greenwood.
+Boston, 1846, 8vo.
+      Milton's Prose Works, pp. 208-226.
+
+Grotius, H. de.--The Adamus Exul of Grotius; or, the prototype of
+Paradise Lost. Translated from the Latin, by Francis Barham. London,
+1839, 8vo.
+
+Guerle, Edmond de.--Milton, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1868, 8vo.
+
+Guentzer, C.--Dissertationis ad quaedam loca Miltoni pars posterior.
+Argentorati, 1657, 4to.
+
+Hamilton, W. Douglas.--Original Papers, illustrative of the life and
+writings of John Milton, including sixteen letters of State written by
+him, now first published from MSS. in the State Paper Office, etc.
+London, 1859, 4to.
+      Printed for the Camden Society.
+
+Hamilton, Walter.--Parodies of the Works of English and American
+Authors, collected and annotated by W. Hamilton. London, 1885, 4to.
+      John Milton, vol. ii., pp. 217-236.
+
+Hare, Julius Charles.--Essays and Tales. 2 vols. London, 1848, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. i., pp. 73-86.
+
+Harrington, James.--The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book,
+entitled The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.
+[Signed J. H(arrington); a satire.] London, 1660, 4to.
+      Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany.
+
+Hayley, William.--The Life of Milton; to which are added conjectures on
+the origin of Paradise Lost. (The second edition enlarged.) London,
+1796, 4to.
+      This life appeared originally in 1794 in vol. i. of Milton's
+      Poetical Works.
+
+Hillebrand, C.--De sacro apud Christianos carmine epico dissertationem
+seu Dantis, Miltonis, Klopstockii poetarum collationem proponebat C.
+Hillebrand, Parisiis, 1861, 8vo.
+
+Hodgson, Shadworth H.--Outcast Essays, etc. London, 1881, 8vo.
+      The supernatural in English poetry; Shakespere; Milton; Wordsworth
+      Tennyson, pp. 99-180.
+
+Holloway, Laura C.--The Mothers of Great Men and Women, etc. New York,
+1884, 8vo.
+      Milton's Wives, pp. 457-478.
+
+Hood, Edwin Paxton.--John Milton: the Patriot and Poet. London, 1852,
+18mo.
+
+Hopkins, J.--Milton's Paradise Lost, imitated in rhyme; in the fourth,
+sixth, and ninth books, etc. London, 1699, 8vo.
+
+Howitt, William.--Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets.
+Third edition. London, 1857, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 46-68.
+
+Huet, C.B.--Litterarische Fantasien en Kritieken. Haarlem [1883], 8vo.
+      Milton, 12th Deel, pp. 150-220.
+
+Hunt, Theodore W.--Representative English Prose and Prose Writers. New
+York, 1887, 8vo.
+      The prose style of John Milton, pp. 246-264.
+
+Hutton, Laurence.--Literary Landmarks of London. London, 1885, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 210-216, etc.
+
+Ivimey, Joseph.--John Milton; his life and times; religious and
+political opinions; with an appendix, containing animadversions upon Dr.
+Johnson's Life of Milton, etc. London, 1833, 8vo.
+
+Jackson, W.--Lycidas: a musical entertainment. The words altered from
+Milton. London, 1767, 8vo.
+
+Jane, Joseph.--The Image Unbroaken a perspective of the Impudence,
+Falshood, Vanitie, and Prophannes, in a Libell entitled Eikonoklastes.
+[London], 1651, 4to.
+
+Johnson, Samuel.--Prefaces to Milton and Butler. (_Prefaces to the Works
+of the English Poets_, vol. ii.) London, 1779, 8vo.
+
+---- Court and Country: a paraphrase upon Milton. [In a dialogue.] By
+the author of Hurlothrumbo [_i.e._, Samuel Johnson]. London [1780], 8vo.
+
+Jortin, John.--Remarks on Spenser's Poems. London, 1734, 8vo.
+      Remarks on Milton, pp. 171-186.
+
+Keightley, Thomas.--An account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of
+John Milton. With an introduction to Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 8vo.
+
+Keogh, Rt. Hon. William.--Milton's Prose. (_Afternoon Lectures on
+Literature and Art, delivered in the Theatre of the Museum of Industry,
+Dublin_, 1865, 3rd Series.) London, 1866, 8vo.
+
+Lamartine, M.L.A. de.--Heloise et Abelard [Biographies]. Paris, 1864, 12mo.
+      Includes a biography of Milton, pp. 113-215.
+
+Lauder, William.--An essay on Milton's use and imitation of the moderns
+in his Paradise Lost. [With a preface by Dr. Johnson.] London, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- A letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, occasioned by his vindication
+of Milton, etc. [Written by Dr. Johnson.] London, 1751, 4to.
+
+---- An apology for Mr. Lauder [written by himself] in a letter most
+humbly addressed to his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. London,
+1751, 8vo.
+
+---- Delectus auctorum sacrorum, Miltono facem praelucentium. 2 tom.
+London, 1752, 8vo.
+
+---- King Charles I. vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought
+against him by Milton, etc. To the whole is subjoined the Judgment of
+several learned and impartial authors concerning Milton's political
+writings. London, 1754, 8vo.
+
+L'Estrange, R.--No Blind Guides, in answer to a seditious pamphlet of
+Milton's, intituled Brief notes upon a late sermon titl'd The fear of
+God and the King, preach'd and since publish'd. By M. Griffith, etc.
+London, 1660, 4to.
+
+Letters.--Letters concerning poetical translations and Virgil's and
+Milton's Arts of Verse, etc. London, 1739, 8vo.
+
+Liebert, Gustav.--Milton. Studien zur Geschichte des englischen Geistes.
+Hamburg, 1860, 8vo.
+
+Lotheissen, Ferdinand.--Studien ueber John Milton's poetische Werke.
+Budingen, 1860, 4to.
+
+Lowell, James Russell.--Among my Books. Second series. London, 1876, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 252-302.
+
+M.J.A.--An introduction to the Study of Shakespeare and Milton. [By
+J.A.M. With selections from their works.] London [1884], 8vo.
+
+Macaulay, Thomas Babington.--Critical and historical essays contributed
+to the Edinburgh Review. 2 vols. London, 1854, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. i., pp. 1-28.
+
+---- The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay. London, 1860, 8vo.
+      Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton
+      touching the great Civil War, vol. i., pp. 101-124.
+
+---- An Essay on the Life and Works of John Milton, together with the
+imaginary conversation between him and H. Cowley. London, 1868, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton's Essay on Milton. From the Edinburgh Review. With
+introductory notice and notes. London, 1872, 16mo.
+
+---- John Milton. [A biographical sketch.] Boston, 1877, 16mo.
+
+---- Macaulay's Milton, edited to illustrate the laws of Rhetoric and
+Composition, by Alexander Mackie. London, 1884, 8vo.
+
+Maceuen, Malcolm.--Celebrities of the Past and Present. Philadelphia,
+1874, 8vo.
+      Milton and Poetry, pp. 195-202.
+
+Mackenzie, Sir George.--Jus Regium: or, the just and solid foundations
+of monarchy in general maintain'd against Buchanan, Dolman, Milton, etc.
+Edinburgh, 1684, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1684, 8vo.
+
+McNicoll, Thomas.--Essays on English Literature. London, 1861, 8vo.
+      Milton and Pollok, pp. 65-111.
+
+Marquis, G.A.--Select Poetical Pieces, with a logical arrangement, or
+practical commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost. Second edition enlarged.
+Paris, 1842, 12mo.
+
+Marsh, John F.--Papers connected with the affairs of Milton and his
+family. Edited by J.F. Marsh. Manchester, 1851, 4to.
+      In vol. i. of the Chetham Miscellanies, published by the Chetham
+      Society.
+
+---- Notice of the inventory of the effects of Mrs. Milton, widow of the
+poet. Liverpool, 1855, 8vo.
+      Extracted from the proceedings of the Historic Society of
+      Lancashire and Cheshire.
+
+---- On the engraved portrait and pretended portraits of Milton.
+Extracted from the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire
+and Cheshire. Liverpool, 1860, 8vo.
+
+Martyn, W. Carlos.--Life and Times of John Milton. [Published by the
+"American Tract Society." With portrait.] New York [1866], 12mo.
+
+Mason, W.--Musaeus; a monody to the memory of Mr. Pope in imitation of
+Milton's Lycidas. London, 1747, 4to.
+
+Massey, William.--Remarks upon Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. London,
+1761, 12mo.
+
+Masson, David.--Essays biographical and critical: chiefly on English
+poets. Cambridge, 1856, 8vo.
+      Milton's Youth, pp. 37-52; The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's,
+      and Goethe's, pp. 53-87.
+
+---- The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's. London, 1874, 8vo.
+
+---- The Life of John Milton; narrated in connexion with the political,
+ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time. 6 vols. Cambridge,
+1859-80, 8vo.
+
+---- New and revised edition. London, 1881, etc., 8vo.
+
+---- John Milton. (_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, vol. xvi., pp. 324-340.)
+London, 1883, 4to.
+
+Meadowcourt, Richard.--A critique on Milton's Paradise Regained. London,
+1732, 4to.
+
+---- A Critical Dissertation, with notes, on Milton's Paradise Regain'd.
+The second edition corrected. London, 1748, 8vo.
+
+Milton, John.--An answer to a book [by John Milton], intituled, The
+Divorce and Discipline of Divorce, etc. London, 1644, 4to.
+
+---- Carolus I. Britanniarum Rex, a Securi et Calamo Miltonii
+vindicatus. Dublini, 1652, 12mo.
+
+---- Areopagitica Secunda: or, speech of the shade of John Milton on Mr.
+Sergeant Talfourd's Copyright Extension Bill. London, 1838, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus, a mask: (now adapted to the stage) as alter'd [by J. Dalton]
+from Milton's Mask. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition. London, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Dublin, 1738, 8vo.
+
+---- Sixth edition. London, 1741, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1750, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1759, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1760, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1762, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1777, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus, a masque [altered by J. Dalton from John Milton], London,
+1791, 8vo.
+      In vol. i. of "Bell's Theatre."
+
+---- Comus [altered from Milton by J. Dalton]. London, 1811, 8vo.
+      In the "Modern British Drama," vol. ii.
+
+---- Comus: a mask, altered from Milton. [By J. Dalton.] London, 1815,
+16mo.
+      In vol. x. of Dibdin's "London Theatre."
+
+---- Comus. [Adapted to the stage by J. Dalton.] London, 1826, 8vo.
+      In the "British Drama," vol. ii.
+
+---- Comus: a masque [in two acts]. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman].
+As performed at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden. The musick composed
+by Dr. Arne. London, 1772, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1774, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered by Mr. Colman. (_Bell's British Theatre_,
+vol. ix.) London, 1777, 12mo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. Edinburgh,
+1786, 12mo.
+      Vol. iv. of the "British Stage."
+
+---- Comus. Altered for the stage by Colman. (_Modern British Drama_,
+vol. v.) London, 1811, 8vo.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton, by G. Colman. (_Inchbald's
+Collection of Farces_, vol. vii.) London, 1815, 12mo.
+
+---- Milton's Comus: a masque, in two acts [altered from Milton], as
+revised at Covent Garden, April 28, 1815. London, 1815, 8vo.
+      There is a copy in the British Museum with the autograph of Sir
+      Henry Bishop.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. London [1824],
+8vo.
+      Vol. ii. of "The London Stage."
+
+---- Comus. Altered from Milton. [By G. Colman, the elder.] London,
+1872, 8vo.
+      In the "British Drama," vol. xii.
+
+---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton. (_Supplement to Bell's
+British Theatre_, vol. iv.) London, 1784, 12mo.
+
+---- Miltonis epistola ad Pollionem. Edidit et notis illustravit F.S.
+Cantabrigiensis. Londini, 1738, folio.
+
+---- Editio altera. Londini, 1738, folio.
+
+---- Milton's Epistle to Pollio. Translated from the Latin, and
+illustrated with notes. London, 1740, folio.
+
+---- Milton restor'd and Bentley depos'd, containing, I. Some
+observations on Dr. Bentley's preface. II. His various readings and
+notes on Paradise Lost and Milton's text, set in opposite columns, with
+remarks therein. III. Paradise Lost, attempted in rime. Book I., Numb.
+I. From Dean Swift. London, 1732, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost: a poem attempted in Rhime. [Altered from Milton.]
+London, 1740, 8vo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. An oratorio [in three acts and in verse] altered and
+adapted to the stage from Milton [by B. Stillingfleet]. London, 1760, 4to.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. An oratorio in four parts. The words selected from
+the works of Milton by J.L. Ellerton. London [1862], 12mo.
+
+---- Paradise Lost. Oratorio in three parts, from the poem of Milton.
+English version by J. Pittman. London [1880], 8vo.
+
+---- The State of Innocence and Fall of Man described in Milton's
+Paradise Lost. Render'd into prose with notes from the French of Raymond
+[or rather Nicolas Francois Dupre] de St. Maur. By a gentleman of Oxford
+[George Smith Green?]. London, 1745, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. Aberdeen, 1770, 12mo.
+
+---- A verbal Index to Milton's Paradise Lost; adapted to every edition
+but the first, etc. London, 1741, 12mo.
+
+---- An essay upon Milton's imitations of the Ancients in his Paradise
+Lost. With some observations on the Paradise Regain'd. London, 1741,
+8vo.
+
+---- A new occasional Oratorio [on the suppression of the Rebellion],
+the words taken from Milton, Spenser, etc., and set to musick by Mr.
+Handel. London, 1746, 4to.
+      The words only.
+
+---- The Progress of Envy, a poem occasioned by Lauder's attack on the
+character of Milton. London, 1751, 4to.
+
+---- A familiar explanation of the poetical works of Milton. To which is
+prefixed Mr. Addison's criticism on Paradise Lost. With a preface by
+Rev. Mr. Dodd. London, 1672, 12mo.
+
+---- The Recovery of Man: or, Milton's Paradise Regained. In Prose.
+After the manner of the Archbishop of Cambray. To which is prefixed the
+life of the author. [London], 1771, 12mo.
+
+---- Samson. An Oratorio [in three acts]. As it is performed at the
+Theatres-royal. Altered from the Samson Agonistes of Milton [by N.
+Hamilton]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London [1742], 8vo.
+      The words only.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1742], 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London [1742], 4to.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1743, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1751, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1759, 4to.
+
+---- Samson: an oratorio [altered and adapted to the stage from the
+Samson Agonistes by N. Hamilton]. [Oxford], 1749, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1762, 4to.
+
+---- Samson. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1762, 4to.
+
+---- Samson. An oratorio [altered from the Samson Agonistes, by N.
+Hamilton]. Salisbury, 1765, 8vo.
+
+---- Handel's oratorio, Samson. The words chiefly from Milton. [Compiled
+by T. Morell.] London [1840], 4to.
+
+---- The Life of John Milton. Published under the direction of the
+Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London [1861], 8vo.
+
+---- A Milton Memorial. A sketch of the life of John Milton, compiled
+with reference to the proposed restoration of the Church of St. Giles,
+Cripplegate (where he was buried). By Antiquitatis historicae studiosus.
+London, 1862, 8vo.
+
+Mirabeau, Count de.--Theorie de la Royaute d'apres la Doctrine de
+Milton. [Translated from the Defence of the People of England. With a
+preliminary dissertation, "Sur Milton et ses ouvrages"; by H.G.
+Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau?] [Paris], 1789, 8vo.
+
+Moers, F. Josephus.--De fontibus Paradisi Amissi Miltoniani. Dissertatio
+philologica, etc. Bonnae [1865], 8vo.
+
+Morris, Joseph W.--John Milton: a vindication, specially from the charge
+of Arianism. London [1862], 8vo.
+
+Mortimer, Charles Edward.--An historical memoir of the Political Life of
+John Milton. London, 1805, 4to.
+
+Morus, Alexander.--A. Mori Fides Publica, contra calumnias Joannis
+Miltoni. Hagae-Comitum, 1654, 12mo.
+
+Mouron, H.--Jean Milton. Conference. Deuxieme edition. Strasbourg, 1875,
+8vo.
+
+Munkacsy, M.--Opinions of the Continental Press on M. Munkacsy and his
+latest picture, "Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters."
+Paris, 1879, 8vo.
+
+Neve, Philip.--A narrative of the disinterment of Milton's coffin in the
+Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, 4th August 1790; and of the
+treatment of the corpse during that and the following day. London, 1790,
+8vo.
+
+Nicoll, Henry J.--Landmarks of English Literature. London, 1883, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 112-125.
+
+Paterson, James.--A complete commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, etc.
+London, 1744, 8vo.
+
+Pattison, Mark.--Milton. [An account of his life and works.] London,
+1879, 8vo.
+      One of the "English Men of Letters" series.
+
+Pauli, Reinhold.--Aufsaetze zur Englischen Geschichte. Leipzig, 1869, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 348-391.
+
+Pearce, Z., _Bishop of Rochester_.--A review of the text of Milton's
+Paradise Lost; in which the chief of Dr. Bentley's Emendations are
+consider'd; and several other emendations and observations are offer'd
+to the public. London, 1732, 8vo.
+
+---- Another edition. London, 1733, 8vo.
+
+Peck, Francis.--New Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John
+Milton, etc. London, 1740, 4to.
+
+---- Memoirs of the life and actions of Oliver Cromwell: as delivered in
+three panegyrics of him. The first, as said, by Don Juan Rodriguez de
+Saa Meneses; the second, as affirmed by a certain Jesuit; yet both, it
+is thought, composed by Mr. John Milton, as was the third, etc. London,
+1740, 4to.
+
+Penn, John.--Critical, poetical, and dramatic works. 2 vols. London,
+1798, 8vo.
+      Samson Agonistes, vol. ii., pp. 213-263.
+
+Philips, John.--Poems attempted in the style of Milton, etc. London,
+1762, 12mo.
+
+Philo-Milton, _pseud._--Milton's Sublimity asserted: in a poem
+occasion'd by a late piece entituled Cyder, a poem [by J. Philips]. In
+blank verse. London, 1709, 4to.
+
+---- A vindication of the Paradise Lost from the charge of exculpating
+Lord Byron's "Cain, a Mystery." London, 1822, 8vo.
+
+Plaint.--The Plaint of Freedom. (To the Memory of Milton. In verse.)
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1852, 4to.
+
+Prendergast, G.L.--A complete concordance to the poetical works of
+Milton. Madras, 1856-57, 4to.
+
+Prodromus.--Verax Prodromus in Delirum. [An invective against John
+Milton.] [Amsterdam? 1656?] 4to.
+
+R * *--Lettres critiques a Mr. le comte * * * sur le Paradis perdu, et
+reconquis, de Milton, par R * * [outh]. Paris, 1731, 8vo.
+
+Reed, Henry.--Lectures on the British Poets. 2 vols. Philadelphia,
+1858, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 199-232.
+
+Rice, Allen Thorndike.--Essays from the North American Review. New York,
+1879, 8vo.
+      John Milton, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 99-122.
+
+Richardson, Jonathan.--Explanatory notes and remarks on Milton's
+Paradise Lost. By J. Richardson, father and son. London, 1734, 8vo.
+
+Richardson, Jonathan.--Zoilomastix; or, a vindication of Milton from
+all the invidious charges of W. Lauder. With several new remarks on
+Paradise Lost. London, 1747, 8vo.
+
+Ring, Max.--John Milton und seine Zeit. Historischer Roman. Frankfurt a.
+Main, 1857, 8vo.
+
+---- John Milton and his times, a historical novel. Translated by J.
+Jefferson. Manchester, 1889, 8vo.
+
+Rolli, P.--Sabrina; an opera [in three acts and in verse. Founded on the
+"Comus" of Milton]. _Ital._ and _Eng._ London, 1737, 8vo.
+
+Rossetti, William Michael.--Lives of Famous Poets. London, 1878, 8vo.
+      John Milton, pp. 65-79.
+
+Rowland, J.--Pro Rege et Populo Anglicano apologia, contra Joannis
+Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni Angli) defensionem destructivam Regis et
+Populi Anglicani. Antwerpiae, 1651, 12mo.
+
+---- Another edition. Antwerpiae, 1652, 12mo.
+
+S.G.--The dignity of Kingship asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's Ready
+and Easie way to establish a free Commonwealth. By G.S. (George
+Searle?), a lover of loyalty. London, 1660, 8vo.
+
+Saintsbury, George.--A History of Elizabethan Literature. London,
+1887, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 315-329.
+
+Salmasius, Claudius de.--Claudii Salmasii ad Johannem Miltonum
+Responsio. Opus posthumum. Londini, 1660, 12mo.
+
+Say, Samuel.--Poems on several occasions: and two critical Essays--viz.,
+the first on the harmony, variety, and power of numbers, whether in
+prose or verse; the second, on the numbers of Paradise Lost. [With a
+portrait of Milton, etched by J. Richardson.] London, 1745, 4to.
+
+Scherer, Edmond.--Etudes sur la Litterature Contemporaine. Paris,
+1882, 8vo.
+      Milton et le _Paradis Perdu_, tom. vi., pp. 161-194.
+
+Scolari, Filippo.--Saggio di Critica sul Paradiso Perduto, Poema di
+Giovanni Milton, e sulle annotazioni a quello di Giuseppe Addison.
+Aggiuntovi l'Adamo sacra rappresentazione di G.B. Andreini, etc.
+Venezia, 1818, 8vo.
+
+Scott, John.--Critical Essays on some of the poems of several English
+poets, etc. London, 1785, 8vo.
+      On Milton's Lycidas, pp. 37-64.
+
+Seeley, J.R.--Lectures and Essays. London, 1870, 8vo.
+      Milton's Political Opinions, pp. 89-119; Milton's Poetry,
+      pp. 120-154.
+
+Shenston, J.B.--The Authority of Jehovah asserted, ... with some remarks
+on the article on Milton's Essay on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day,
+which appeared in the Evangelical Review, 1826. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Smectymnuus, _pseud._ [_i.e._, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy etc.]--A
+modest confutation of a slanderous and scurrilous libell, entituled,
+Animadversions [by John Milton] upon the remonstrants' defense against
+Smectymnuus. [London] 1642, 4to.
+
+Sotheby, Samuel Leigh.--Ramblings in the elucidation of the Autograph
+of Milton. [With plates.] London, 1861, 4to.
+
+Steel, David.--Elements of Punctuation, and critical observations on
+some passages in Milton. London, 1786, 8vo.
+
+Stern, Alfred.--Milton und seine Zeit. 2 Thle. Leipzig, 1877-79, 8vo.
+
+---- Milton und Cromwell. Berlin, 1875, 8vo.
+      Serie x., Hft. 236 of Virchow and Holtzendorff's "Sammlung
+      gemeinverstaendlicher wissenschaftlicher Vortraege, etc."
+
+Symmons, Charles.--The Life of John Milton, etc. London, 1806, 8vo.
+
+---- Second edition. London, 1810, 8vo.
+
+---- Third edition. London, 1882, 8vo.
+
+Taine, H.A.--Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise. 4 tom. Paris, 1863-4,
+8vo.
+      Milton, tom, ii., pp. 327-435.
+
+---- History of English Literature. Translated by H. Van Laun. 4 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1873-4, 8vo.
+      Milton, vol. ii., pp. 239-318.
+
+Tasso, Torquato.--Il Tasso, a dialogue. The speakers, John Milton,
+Torquato Tasso. London, 1762, 8vo.
+
+Todd, Henry John.--Some account of the life and writings of John Milton.
+Second edition, with additions, and with a verbal index to the whole of
+Milton's poetry. London, 1809, 8vo.
+      This forms vol. i. of the 1809 edition of Todd's Milton; a certain
+      number of copies being printed off with a distinct title-page.
+
+---- Some account of the life and writings of John Milton, derived
+principally from documents in His Majesty's State-paper Office, now
+first published. London, 1826, 8vo.
+
+Toland, John.--The Life of John Milton, containing, besides the history
+of his works, several extraordinary characters of men and books, sects,
+parties, and opinions. [Signed J.T., _i.e._ J. Toland.] London, 1699, 8vo.
+
+---- Amyntor; or, a Defence of Milton's Life, etc. London, 1699, 8vo.
+
+---- The Life of John Milton; with Amyntor; or a Defence of Milton's
+Life, etc. London, 1761, 8vo.
+
+Tomlinson, John.--Three Household Poets--viz., Milton, Cowper, Burns,
+etc. London, 1869, 8vo.
+
+Tulloch, John.--English Puritanism and its leaders, Cromwell, Milton,
+Baxter, Bunyan. Edinburgh, 1861, 8vo.
+
+Vericour, Raymond de.--Milton et la poesie epique, etc. Paris, 1838, 8vo.
+
+Ward, Thomas H.--The English Poets; selections, with critical
+introductions, etc. 4 vols. London, 1880, 8vo.
+      John Milton, by Mark Pattison, vol. ii., pp. 293-379.
+
+Warton, Thomas.--A Letter to T. Warton on his editon of Milton's
+juvenile poems. [By S. Darby?] London, 1785, 8vo.
+
+White, Thomas Holt.--A Review of Johnson's criticism on the style of
+Milton's English Prose, etc. London, 1818, 8vo.
+
+Wilson, J.--Vindiciae Carolinae; or a defence of Eikon Basilike, etc.
+London, 1692, 8vo.
+
+Yonge, Charles Duke.--Three Centuries of English Literature. London,
+1872, 8vo.
+      Milton, pp. 185-210.
+
+Zicari da Paola, F.--Sulla scoverta dell' originale Italiano da cui
+Milton trasse il suo poema del Paradiso Perduto. Napoli, 1844, 12mo.
+
+Ziegler, C.--C. Ziegleri circa regicidium Anglorum exercitationes.
+Accedit Jacobi Schalleri Dissertatio ad loca quaedam Miltoni. Lugd.
+Batavorum, 1653, 12mo.
+
+
+
+
+MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC.
+
+
+Milton, John.--Edinburgh Review, by T.B. Macaulay, vol. 42, 1825,
+pp. 304-346.
+  --Christian Examiner, by W.E. Channing, vol. 3, 1826, pp. 29-77;
+    same article, Pamphleteer, vol. 29, pp. 507-547.
+  --United States Literary Gazette, vol. 4, 1826, pp. 278-293.
+  --Quarterly Review, by J.J. Blunt, vol. 36, 1827, pp. 29-61.
+  --American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310.
+  --American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1, 1833, pp. 115-125.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 9, 1833, pp. 193-211.
+  --North American Review, by R.W. Emerson, vol. 47, 1838, pp. 56-73.
+  --Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 46, 1839, pp. 775-780.
+  --Penny Magazine, vol. 10, 1841, pp. 97-101.
+  --National Review, vol. 9, 1859, pp. 150-186.
+  --Chambers's Journal, vol. 11, 1859, pp. 117-119.
+  --Radical, by B.W. Wall, vol. 3, 1868, pp. 718-723.
+  --Contemporary Review, by P. Bayne, vol. 22, 1873, pp. 427-460;
+    same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18 N.S., pp. 565-585;
+    Littell's Living Age, vol. 3, 5th ser., pp. 643-662.
+  --New Monthly Magazine, vol. 4 N.S., 1873, pp. 27-35.
+  --Congregationalist, by T.H. Gill, vol. 3, 1874, pp. 705-714.
+  --Macmillan's Magazine, by Mark Pattison, vol. 31, 1875, pp. 380-387;
+    same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 10, 5th ser., pp. 323-329.
+  --Western, by H.H. Morgan, vol. 5, 1879, pp. 107-138.
+  --Modern Review, by H. New, vol. 2, 1881, pp. 103-128;
+    same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 148, pp. 515-525.
+
+---- _and the Commonwealth_. British Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1849,
+pp. 224-254;
+    same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18, pp. 346-362.
+
+---- _and Dante_. St. James's Magazine, vol. 15, 1866, pp. 243-250.
+
+---- _and Galileo_. Fraser's Magazine, by Sir Richard Owen, vol. 79,
+1869, pp. 678-684.
+
+---- _and his daughters_. People's Journal, by Mrs. Leman Gillies,
+vol. 5, 1848, pp. 227, 228.
+
+---- _and Homer contrasted_. Analectic Magazine, vol. 14, 1819,
+pp. 224-229.
+
+---- _and Macaulay_. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 28, 1860,
+pp. 667-679.
+
+---- _and Masenius_. Month, vol. 8, 1868, pp. 542-550.
+
+---- _and the Daughters of Eve_. St. Paul's, vol. 13, 1873, pp. 405-418.
+
+---- _and Vondel_. Academy, by Edmund Gosse and G. Edmundson, vol. 28,
+1885, pp. 265, 266, 293, 294, 342; and by J.R. Mac Ilraith, pp. 308, 309.
+  --Athenaeum, Nov. 7, 1885, pp. 599, 600.
+  --Nation, vol. 42, 1886, pp. 264, 265.
+
+---- _and Wordsworth_. Temple Bar, vol. 60, 1880, pp. 106-115.
+
+---- _Angels of_. New Englander, by John A. Himes, vol. 43, 1884,
+pp. 527-543.
+
+---- _Areopagitica_. Retrospective Review, vol. 9, 1824, pp. 1-19.
+
+---- _as a Reformer_. Methodist Quarterly Review, by F.H. Newhall,
+vol. 39, 1857, pp. 542-559.
+
+---- _At Cambridge_. American Journal of Education, vol. 28, 1878,
+pp. 383-400.
+
+---- _Bibliographical account of his works_. Retrospective Review,
+vol. 14, 1826, pp. 282-305.
+
+---- _Blank Verse of_. Fortnightly Review, by J.A. Symonds, vol. 16
+N.S., 1874, pp. 767-781.
+
+---- _Blindness of_. Chambers's Journal, vol. 3 N.S., 1845, pp. 392-394.
+
+---- _Byron and Southey_. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 29,
+1860, pp. 430-440.
+
+---- _Channing on_. Edinburgh Review, by H. Brougham, vol. 69, 1839,
+pp. 214-230.
+  --Monthly Review, vol. 7 N.S., 1828, pp. 471-478.
+  --Fraser's Magazine, vol. 17, 1838, pp. 627-635.
+
+---- _Christian Doctrine_. Quarterly Review, vol. 32, 1835, pp. 442-457.
+  --North American Review, by S. Willard, vol. 22, 1826, pp. 364-373.
+  --United States Literary Gazette, vol. 3, 1826, pp. 321-327.
+  --Monthly Review, vol. 107, 1825, pp. 273-294.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 8, 1825, pp. 588-592.
+  --Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1826, pp. 1-18, 114-141.
+
+---- _Comus_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 7, 1823, pp. 222-229.
+
+---- _Comus_, _and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess_. Manchester
+Quarterly, by W.E.A. Axon, vol. 1, 1882, pp. 285-295.
+
+---- _Dante and AEschylus_. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 20 N.S.,
+1853, pp. 513-525, 577-587, 641-650.
+
+---- _De Vericour's Lectures on_. Monthly Review, vol. 2 N.S., 1838,
+pp. 342-351.
+
+---- _Doctrinal Error of his later life_. Bibliotheca Sacra, by T. Hunt,
+vol. 42, 1885, pp. 251-269.
+
+---- _Doctrine of Divorce_. Monthly Review, vol. 93, 1820, pp. 144-158.
+
+---- _Early Life_. Methodist Quarterly Review, by P. Church, vol. 48,
+1866, pp. 580-595.
+
+---- _Effigies of_. Historical Magazine, vol. 2, 1858, pp. 230-233.
+
+---- _Familiar Letters_. Southern Review, vol. 6, 1830, pp. 198-206.
+  --American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310.
+
+---- _French Critic on_. Quarterly Review, vol. 143, 1877, pp. 186-204;
+  same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 132, pp. 579-589.
+
+---- _Genius of_. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, by G. Gilfillan, vol. 15
+N.S., 1848, pp. 511-522;
+  same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 15, pp. 196-212.
+
+---- _History of England_. Retrospective Review, vol. 6, 1822,
+pp. 87-100.
+
+---- _Hollis' Bust of_. Scribner's Monthly, by C. Cook, vol. 11, 1876,
+pp. 472-476.
+
+---- _Home, School, and College Training of_. American Journal of
+Education, vol. 14, 1864, pp. 159-190.
+
+---- _Idealism of_. Contemporary Review, by E. Dowden, vol. 19, 1872,
+pp. 198-209;
+  same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 112, 1872, pp. 408-414.
+
+---- _in our Day_. Christian Examiner, by S. Good, vol. 57, 1854,
+pp. 323-340.
+
+---- _Italian Element in_. Penn Monthly Magazine, by O.H. Kendall,
+vol. 1, 1870, pp. 388-400.
+
+---- _Keble's Estimate of_. Macmillan's Magazine, by J.C. Shairp,
+vol. 31, 1875, pp. 554-560.
+
+---- _Keightley's Life of_. North American Review, by H.A. Whitney, vol.
+82, 1856, pp. 388-404. Littell's Living Age (from the _Saturday
+Review_), vol. 63, 1859, pp. 226-229.
+
+---- _Lamartine on_. Littell's Living Age (from the _Literary Gazette_),
+vol. 44, 1855, pp. 497-499.
+
+---- _Latin Poems of, Cowper's Translations_. Eclectic Review, Sept.
+1808, pp. 780-791.
+
+---- _Life of_. North British Review, by D. Masson, vol. 16, 1852,
+pp. 295-335;
+  same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 25, 1852, pp. 433-447.
+  --New Quarterly Review, vol. 8, 1859, pp. 40-54.
+
+---- _Life and Poetry of_. Hogg's Instructor, vol. 1 N.S., 1853, pp.
+234-242;
+  same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 30, pp. 364-372.
+
+---- _Lycidas_. American Monthly Magazine, vol. 5 N.S., 1838, pp. 341-353.
+  --Quarterly Review, vol. 158, 1884, pp. 162-183.
+
+---- ---- _Language of Lycidas_. Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 25 N.S.,
+1864, pp. 293-296.
+
+---- ---- _Notes on Lycidas_. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, by A.C.
+Brackett, vol. 1, 1867, pp. 87-90.
+
+---- _Masson's Life of_. British Quarterly Review, vol. 29, 1859, pp.
+185-214; vol. 59, 1874, pp. 81-100.
+  --North British Review, vol. 30, 1859, pp. 281-308;
+    same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 61, pp. 731-747.
+  --Dublin University Magazine, vol. 53, 1859, pp. 609-623.
+  --New Monthly Magazine, vol. 115, 1859, pp. 163-172.
+  --Eclectic Review, vol. 1 N.S., 1859, pp. 1-21.
+  --Christian Examiner, by G.E. Ellis, vol. 66, 1859, pp. 401-431.
+  --Old and New, vol. 4, 1871, pp. 704-708.
+  --Nation, by W.F. Allen, vol. 13, 1871, pp. 91, 92; vol. 17, 1873,
+    pp. 165, 166; vol. 31, 1880, pp. 15, 16.
+  --International Review, by H.C. Lodge, vol. 9, 1880, pp. 125-135.
+  --Quarterly Review, vol. 132, 1872, pp. 393-423.
+  --Presbyterian Quarterly, by E.H. Gillett, vol. 1, 1872, pp. 382-394.
+  --North American Review, by J.R. Lowell, vol. 114, 1872, pp. 204-218.
+  --Macmillan's Magazine, by G.B. Smith, vol. 28, 1873, pp. 536-547.
+  --Christian Observer, vol. 73, 1873, pp. 815-834.
+  --International Review, vol. 1, 1874, pp. 131-135.
+  --North American Review, vol. 126, 1878, pp. 537-542.
+  --Nation, by J.L. Dyman, vol. 26, 1878, pp. 342-344.
+  --Westminster Review, vol. 57 N.S., 1880, pp. 365-385.
+
+---- _Minor Poems_. Dublin University Magazine, vol. 63, 1864,
+pp. 619-625.
+
+---- _Mitford's Life of_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 34, 1832,
+pp. 581, 582.
+
+---- _Nephews of_. Edinburgh Review, by Sir J. Mackintosh, vol. 25,
+1815, pp. 485-501.
+
+---- _Newly-discovered Prose Writings of_. Hours at Home, by E.H.
+Gillett, vol. 9, 1869, pp. 532-536.
+
+---- _Ode to_. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, by A.A. Lipscomb, vol. 20,
+1860, pp. 771-778.
+
+---- _On the Divinity of Christ_. Christian Examiner, vol. 2, 1825,
+pp. 423-429.
+
+---- _Paradise Lost_. Journal of Sacred Literature, by F.A. Cox, vol. 1,
+1848, pp. 236-257.
+
+---- ---- _Chateaubriand's Translation of Paradise Lost_. Foreign
+Quarterly Review, vol. 19, 1837, pp. 35-50.
+
+---- ---- _Cosmology of Paradise Lost_. Lutheran Quarterly, by J.A.
+Himes, vol. 6, p. 187, etc.
+
+---- ---- _De Lille's Translation of Paradise Lost_. Edinburgh Review,
+vol. 8, 1806, pp. 167-190.
+
+---- ---- _First Edition of Paradise Lost_. Book-Lore, vol. 3, 1886, pp.
+72-75. Leisure Hour, April 28, 1877, pp. 269, 270.
+
+---- ---- _Moral Estimate of the Paradise Lost_. Christian Observer,
+vol. 22, 1822, pp. 211-218, 278-284.
+
+---- ---- _Mull's edition of Paradise Lost_. Spectator, December 6,
+1884, pp. 1635, 1636.
+  --Saturday Review, vol. 58, pp. 570, 571.
+
+---- ---- _Origin of the Paradise Lost_. North American Review, by L.E.
+Dubois, vol. 91, 1860, pp. 539-555.
+
+---- ---- _Plan of Paradise Lost_. New Englander, by Professor Himes,
+vol. 42, 1883, pp. 196-211.
+
+---- ---- _Prendeville's edition of Paradise Lost_. Blackwood's
+Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 47, 1840, pp. 691-716.
+
+---- ---- _Sorelli's Italian Translation of Paradise Lost_. Foreign
+Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1832, pp. 508-513.
+
+---- ---- _Theism of the Paradise Lost_. Unitarian Review, by H.
+Carpenter, vol. 5, pp. 302, etc.
+
+---- _Poetry of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 304-324.
+  --Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 34-64.
+  --Macmillan's Magazine, by J.R. Seeley, vol. 17, 1868, pp. 299-311;
+    vol. 19, pp. 407-421.
+  --Temple Bar, vol. 39, 1873, pp. 458-473.
+
+---- _Political Writings_. Nation, by Goldwin Smith, vol. 30, 1880,
+pp. 30-32.
+
+---- _Prose Writings of_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40, 1834, pp. 39-50.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 10 N.S., 1834, pp. 217-224.
+  --American Monthly Magazine, vol. 1 N.S., 1836, pp. 142-146.
+  --Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1849, pp. 507-521.
+  --Spectator, Oct. 3, 1885, pp. 1317, 1318.
+  --Athenaeum, Sept. 20, 1884, pp. 359, 360.
+
+---- _Public Conduct of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 324-346.
+    --Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 48-64.
+
+---- _Relics of, at Cambridge_. Chambers's Journal, vol. 8, 1857, pp.
+319, 320.
+
+---- _Religious Life and Opinions of_. Bibliotheca Sacra, by A.D.
+Barber, vol. 16, 1859, pp. 557-603; vol. 17, pp. 1-42.
+
+---- _Rural Scenes of_. Fraser's Magazine, vol. 23, 1841, pp. 519-528.
+
+---- _Satan of._ Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 1, 1817, pp. 140-142.
+
+---- ---- _and Lucifer of Byron Compared._ Knickerbocker, vol. 30, 1847,
+pp. 150-155.
+
+---- ---- _Satan of Paradise Lost._ Dublin University Magazine, vol. 88,
+1876, pp. 707-714.
+
+---- _Select Prose Works._ Boston Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1842,
+pp. 322-342.
+
+---- _Shadow of the Puritan War in._ Catholic Presbyterian, by A.
+Macleod, vol. 9, 1883, pp. 169-176, 321-330.
+
+---- _Sonnets of, Pattison's edition._ Academy, by J.A. Noble, vol. 24,
+1883, pp. 57, 58.
+  --Saturday Review, vol. 56, 1883, pp. 252, 253.
+  --Spectator, Aug. 18, 1883, pp. 1062, 1063.
+  --Athenaeum, Sept. 1, 1883, pp. 263-265.
+
+---- _Spenser, and Shakspere._ Victoria Magazine, vol. 25, 1875, pp.
+856-868, 1059-1065; vol. 26, pp. 24-31, 108-117.
+
+---- _State Papers relating to._ London Magazine, vol. 6 N.S., 1826,
+pp. 377-396.
+
+---- _Theology of._ Boston Monthly Magazine, vol. 1, 1825, pp. 489-491.
+
+---- _Todd's Life of._ Quarterly Review, vol. 36, 1827, pp. 29-61.
+  --Monthly Review, vol. 3 N.S., 1826, pp. 258-273.
+  --Museum of Foreign Literature, vol. 10, p. 67, etc.; vol. 11, pp. 114,
+    etc., 385, etc.
+  --Congregational Magazine, vol. 3, 1827, pp. 33-40.
+
+---- _Treatise on Christian Doctrine._ Evangelical Magazine, vol. 4
+N.S., 1826, pp. 371-375.
+
+---- _versus Robert Montgomery._ Knickerbocker, vol. 3, 1834, pp.
+120-134.
+
+---- _Works of._ American Church Review, by J.H. Hanson, vol. 2, pp.
+153, etc.
+
+---- _Youth of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 111, 1860, pp. 312-347;
+  same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 65, pp. 579-597.
+  --Argosy, vol. 6, 1868, pp. 267-273.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.
+
+A Maske [Comus]                                                     1637
+
+Lycidas                                                             1638
+  (In _Justa Edouardo King Naufrago_)
+
+Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England                1641
+
+Of Prelatical Episcopacy                                            1641
+
+Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence against Smectymnuus   1641
+
+The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty               1641
+
+Apology against a Pamphlet called A Modest Confutation of the
+Animadversions, etc.                                                1641
+
+Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce                                  1643
+
+Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib                                  1644
+
+The Judgment of Martin Bucer, now Englisht                          1644
+
+Areopagitica                                                        1644
+
+Tetrachordon                                                        1644
+
+Colasterion                                                         1645
+
+Poems                                                               1645
+
+Tenure of Kings and Magistrates                                     1649
+
+Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels
+(_Articles of Peace_, etc.)                                         1649
+
+Eikonoklastes                                                       1649
+
+Pro populo Anglicano defensio contra Salmasium                      1651
+
+A Letter touching the Dissolution of the late Parliament            1653
+
+Pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda                               1654
+
+Scriptum Dom-Protectoris contra Hispanos                            1655
+
+Pro se defensio contra A. Morum                                     1655
+
+Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes                    1659
+
+Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings
+out of the Church                                                   1659
+
+Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth                 1660
+
+Paradise Lost                                                       1667
+
+Accedence commenc't Grammar                                         1669
+
+History of Britain                                                  1670
+
+Paradise Regained                                                   1671
+
+Samson Agonistes                                                    1671
+  (_With preceding work_)
+
+Artis Logicae plenior Institutio                                     1672
+
+Of true Religion, Heresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means
+may be used against the growth of Popery                            1673
+
+Epistolarum familiarium liber                                       1674
+
+Declaration or Letters Patents of the Election of this present
+King of Poland, John the Third                                      1674
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Literae Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, etc.                   1676
+
+Character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines in 1641    1681
+
+Brief History of Moscovia                                           1682
+
+Works [in prose]                                                    1697
+
+Historical, political, and miscellaneous works                      1698
+
+Original Letters and Papers of State addressed to Oliver Cromwell   1743
+
+De Doctrina Christiana                                              1825
+
+Common Place Book                                                   1876
+
+
+_Printed by _WALTER SCOTT_, Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne._
+
+
+
+
+
+_Crown 8vo, Cloth. Price 3s. 6d. per Vol.; Hlf. Mor. 6s. 6d._
+
+THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES.
+
+EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.
+
+_Most of the vols. will be illustrated, containing between 300 and 400
+pp. The first vol. will be issued on Oct. 25, 1889. Others to follow at
+short intervals._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The contemporary science series will bring within general reach of the
+English-speaking public the best that is known and thought in all
+departments of modern scientific research. The influence of the
+scientific spirit is now rapidly spreading in every field of human
+activity. Social progress, it is felt, must be guided and accompanied by
+accurate knowledge,--knowledge which is, in many departments, not yet
+open to the English reader. In the Contemporary Science Series all the
+questions of modern life--the various social and politico-economical
+problems of to-day, the most recent researches in the knowledge of man,
+the past and present experiences of the race, and the nature of its
+environment--will be frankly investigated and clearly presented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first volumes of the Series will be:--
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and J. ARTHUR
+THOMSON. With 90 Illustrations, and about 300 pages. [_Now Ready._
+
+ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. By G.W. DE TUNZELMANN. With 88
+Illustrations. [_Ready 25th November._
+
+THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. ISAAC TAYLOR. With numerous
+Illustrations. [_Ready 25th December._
+
+The following Writers, among others, are preparing volumes for this
+Series:--
+
+Prof. E.D. Cope, Prof. G.F. Fitzgerald, Prof. J. Geikie, G.L. Gomme,
+E.C.K. Gonner, Prof. J. Jastrow (Wisconsin), E Sidney Hartland, Prof.
+C.H. Herford, J. Bland Sutton, Dr. C. Mercier, Sidney Webb, Dr. Sims
+Woodhead, Dr. C.M. Woodward (St. Louis, Mo.), etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+
+GREAT WRITERS.
+
+A NEW SERIES OF CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES.
+
+Edited by Professor ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A.
+
+MONTHLY SHILLING VOLUMES.
+
+_VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED_--
+
+
+LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. By Prof. Eric S. Robertson.
+"A most readable little work."--_Liverpool Mercury._
+
+LIFE OF COLERIDGE. By Hall Caine.
+"Brief and vigorous, written throughout with spirit and great literary
+skill."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF DICKENS. By Frank T. Marzials.
+"Notwithstanding the mass of matter that has been printed relating to
+Dickens and his works ... we should, until we came across this volume,
+have been at a loss to recommend any popular life of England's most
+popular novelist as being really satisfactory. The difficulty is removed
+by Mr. Marzials's little book."--_Athenaeum._
+
+LIFE OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI By J. Knight.
+"Mr. Knight's picture of the great poet and painter is the fullest and
+best yet presented to the public."--_The Graphic._
+
+LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. By Colonel F. Grant.
+"Colonel Grant has performed his task with diligence, sound judgment
+good taste, and accuracy."--_Illustrated London News._
+
+LIFE OF DARWIN. By G.T. Bettany.
+"Mr. G.T. Bettany's _Life of Darwin_ is a sound and conscientious
+work."--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. By A. Birrell.
+"Those who know much of Charlotte Bronte will learn more, and those who
+know nothing about her will find all that is best worth learning in Mr.
+Birrell's pleasant book."--_St. James' Gazette._
+
+LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. By R. Garnett, LL.D.
+"This is an admirable book. Nothing could be more felicitous and fairer
+than the way in which he takes us through Carlyle's life and
+works."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. By R.B. Haldane, M.P.
+"Written with a perspicuity seldom exemplified when dealing with
+economic science."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF KEATS. By W.M. Rossetti.
+"Valuable for the ample information which it contains."--_Cambridge
+Independent._
+
+LIFE OF SHELLEY. By William Sharp.
+"The criticisms ... entitle this capital monograph to be ranked with the
+best biographies of Shelley."--_Westminster Review._
+
+LIFE OF SMOLLETT. By David Hannay.
+"A capable record of a writer who still remains one of the great masters
+of the English novel"--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. By Austin Dobson.
+"The story of his literary and social life in London, with all its
+humorous and pathetic vicissitudes, is here retold, as none could tell
+it better."-_Daily News._
+
+LIFE OF SCOTT. By Professor Yonge.
+"For readers and lovers of the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott,
+this is a most enjoyable boot."--_Aberdeen Free Press._
+
+LIFE OF BURNS. By Professor Blackie.
+"The editor certainly made a hit when he persuaded Blackie to write
+about Burns."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+LIFE OF VICTOR HUGO-By Frank T. Marzials.
+"Mr. Marzials's volume presents to us, in a more handy form than any
+English, or even French handbook gives, the summary of what, up to the
+moment in which we write, is known or conjectured about the life of the
+great poet."--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF EMERSON. By Richard Garnett, LL.D.
+"As to the larger section of the public, ... no record of Emerson's life
+and work could be more desirable, both in breadth of treatment and
+lucidity of style, than Dr. Garnett's."--_Saturday Review._
+
+LIFE OF GOETHE. By James Sime.
+"Mr. James Sime's competence as a biographer of Goethe, both in respect
+of knowledge of his special subject, and of German literature generally,
+is beyond question."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+LIFE OF CONGREVE. By Edmund Gosse.
+"Mr. Gosse has written an admirable and most interesting biography of a
+man of letters who is of particular interest to other men of
+letters."-_The Academy._
+
+LIFE OF BUNYAN. By Canon Venables.
+"A most intelligent, appreciative, and valuable memoir."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF CRABBE. By T.E. Kebbel.
+"No English poet since Shakespeare has observed certain aspects of
+nature and of human life more closely; ... Mr. Kebbel's monograph is
+worthy of the subject."--_Athenaeum._
+
+LIFE OF HEINE. By William Sharp.
+"This is an admirable monograph ... more fully written up to the level
+of recent knowledge and criticism of its theme than any other English
+work."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF MILL. By W.L. Courtney.
+"A most sympathetic and discriminating memoir."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+LIFE OF SCHILLER. By Henry W. Nevinson.
+"Presents the leading facts of the poet's life in a neatly rounded
+picture, and gives an adequate critical estimate of each of Schiller's
+separate works and the effect of the whole upon literature."--_Scotsman._
+
+LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRYAT. By David Hannay.
+"We have nothing but praise for the manner in which Mr. Hannay has done
+justice to him whom he well calls 'one of the most brilliant and the
+least fairly recognised of English novelists.'"--_Saturday Review._
+
+Complete Bibliography to each volume, by J.P. ANDERSON, British Museum.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Volumes are in preparation by Goldwin Smith, Frederick Wedmore, Oscar
+Browning, Arthur Symons, W.E. Henley, Hermann Merivale, H.E. Watts, T.W.
+Rolleston, Cosmo Monkhouse, Dr. Garnett, Frank T. Marzials, W.H.
+Pollock, John Addington Symonds, Stepniak, etc., etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LIBRARY EDITION OF "GREAT WRITERS."--Printed on large paper of extra
+quality, in handsome binding, Demy 8vo, price 2s. 6d.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+_Monthly Shilling Volumes. Cloth, cut or uncut edges._
+
+THE CAMELOT SERIES.
+
+EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS. VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED--
+
+ROMANCE OF KING ARTHUR.           Edited by E. Rhys.
+THOREAU'S WALDEN.                 Edited by W.H. Dircks.
+ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.              Edited by William Sharp.
+LANDOR'S CONVERSATIONS.           Edited by H. Ellis.
+PLUTARCH'S LIVES.                 Edited by B.J. Snell, M.A.
+RELIGIO MEDICI, &c.               Edited by J.A. Symonds.
+SHELLEY'S LETTERS.                Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+PROSE WRITINGS OF SWIFT.          Edited by W. Lewin.
+MY STUDY WINDOWS.                 Edited by R. Garnett, LL.D.
+GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS.           Edited by W. Sharp.
+LORD BYRON'S LETTERS.             Edited by M. Blind.
+ESSAYS BY LEIGH HUNT.             Edited by A. Symons.
+LONGFELLOW'S PROSE.               Edited by W. Tirebuck.
+GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS.          Edited by E. Sharp.
+MARCUS AURELIUS.                  Edited by Alice Zimmern.
+SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA.         By Walt Whitman.
+WHITE'S SELBORNE.                 Edited by Richard Jefferies.
+DEFOE'S SINGLETON.                Edited by H. Halliday Sparling.
+MAZZINI'S ESSAYS.                 Edited by William Clarke.
+PROSE WRITINGS OF HEINE.          Edited by H. Ellis.
+REYNOLDS' DISCOURSES.             Edited by Helen Zimmern.
+PAPERS OF STEELE & ADDISON.       Edited by W. Lewin.
+BURNS'S LETTERS.                  Edited by J. Logie Robertson, M.A.
+VOLSUNGA SAGA.                    Edited by H.H. Sparling.
+SARTOR RESARTUS.                  Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+WRITINGS OF EMERSON.              Edited by Percival Chubb.
+SENECA'S MORALS.                  Edited by Walter Clode.
+DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.                By Walt Whitman.
+LIFE OF LORD HERBERT.             Edited by Will H. Dircks.
+ENGLISH PROSE.                    Edited by Arthur Gallon.
+IBSEN'S PILLARS OF SOCIETY.       Edited by H. Ellis.
+FAIRY AND FOLK TALES.             Edited by W.B. Yeats.
+EPICTETUS.                        Edited by T.W. Rolleston.
+THE ENGLISH POETS.                By James Russell Lowell.
+ESSAYS OF DR. JOHNSON.            Edited by Stuart T. Reid.
+ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.        Edited by F. Carr.
+LANDOR'S PENTAMERON, &c.          Edited by H. Ellis.
+POE'S TALES AND ESSAYS.           Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.               By Oliver Goldsmith.
+POLITICAL ORATIONS.               Edited by William Clarke.
+CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS.           Selected by C. Sayle.
+THOREAU'S WEEK.                   Edited by Will H. Dircks.
+STORIES from CARLETON.            Edited by W.B. Yeats.
+Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.  By O.W. Holmes.
+JANE EYRE.                        By Charlotte Bronte.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+The Canterbury Poets.
+
+EDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP.
+
+In SHILLING Monthly Volumes, Square 8vo. Well printed on fine toned
+paper, with Red-line Border, and strongly bound in Cloth.
+
+_Cloth, Red Edges_          1s.
+_Cloth, Uncut Edges_        1s.
+_Red Roan, Gilt Edges_      2s. 6d.
+_Pad. Morocco, Gilt Edges_  5s.
+
+
+_THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY_.
+
+KEBLE'S CHRISTIAN YEAR.
+COLERIDGE.                     Ed. by J. Skipsey.
+LONGFELLOW.                    Ed. by E. Hope.
+CAMPBELL.                      Ed. by J. Hogben.
+SHELLEY.                       Edited by J. Skipsey.
+WORDSWORTH.                    Edited by A.J. Symington.
+BLAKE.                         Ed. by Joseph Skipsey.
+WHITTIER.                      Ed. by Eva Hope.
+POE.                           Edited by Joseph Skipsey.
+CHATTERTON.                    Edited by John Richmond.
+BURNS. Poems}                    Edited by
+BURNS. Songs}                  Joseph Skipsey.
+MARLOWE.                       Ed. by P.E. Pinkerton.
+KEATS.                         Edited by John Hogben.
+HERBERT.                       Edited by E. Rhys.
+HUGO.                          Trans. by Dean Carrington.
+COWPER.                        Edited by Eva Hope.
+SHAKESPEARE.
+  Songs, Poems, and Sonnets.   Edited by William Sharp.
+EMERSON.                       Edited by W. Lewin.
+SONNETS of this CENTURY.       Edited by William Sharp.
+WHITMAN.                       Edited by E. Rhys.
+SCOTT. Marmion, etc.
+SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc.  Edited by William Sharp.
+PRAED.                         Edited by Fred. Cooper.
+HOGG.                          By his Daughter, Mrs Garden.
+GOLDSMITH.                     Ed. by W. Tirebuck.
+MACKAY'S LOVE LETTERS.
+SPENSER.                       Edited by Hon. R. Noel
+CHILDREN OF THE POETS.         Edited by Eric S. Robertson.
+JONSON.                        Edited by J.A. Symonds.
+BYRON (2 Vols.)                Ed. by M. Blind.
+THE SONNETS OF EUROPE.         Edited by S. Waddington.
+RAMSAY.                        Ed. by J.L. Robertson
+DOBELL.                        Edited by Mrs. Dobell.
+DAYS OF THE YEAR.              With Introduction by Wm. Sharp.
+POPE.                          Edited by John Hogben.
+HEINE.                         Edited by Mrs. Kroeker.
+BEAUMONT & FLETCHER.           Edited by J.S. Fletcher.
+BOWLES, LAMB, &c.              Edited by William Tirebuck.
+EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.          Edited by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon.
+SEA MUSIC.                     Edited by Mrs Sharp.
+HERRICK.                       Edited by Ernest Rhys.
+BALLADES AND RONDEAUS.         Edited by J. Gleeson White.
+IRISH MINSTRELSY.              Edited by H. Halliday Sparling.
+MILTON'S PARADISE LOST.        Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D.
+JACOBITE BALLADS.              Edited by G.S. Macquoid.
+AUSTRALIAN BALLADS.            Edited by D.B.W. Sladen, B.A.
+MOORE.                         Edited by John Dorrian.
+BORDER BALLADS.                Edited by Graham R. Tomson.
+SONG-TIDE.                     By P.B. Marston.
+ODES OF HORACE.                Translations by Sir S. de Vere, Bt.
+OSSIAN.                        Edited by G.E. Todd.
+ELFIN MUSIC.                   Ed. by A. Waite.
+SOUTHEY.                       Ed. by S.R. Thompson.
+CHAUCER.                       Edited by F.N. Paton.
+POEMS OF WILD LIFE.            Edited by Chas. G.D. Roberts, M.A.
+PARADISE REGAINED.             Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D.
+CRABBE.                        Edited by E. Lamplough.
+DORA GREENWELL.                Edited by William Dorling.
+FAUST.                         Edited by E. Craigmyle.
+AMERICAN SONNETS.              Edited by William Sharp.
+LANDOR'S POEMS.                Selected and Edited by E. Radford.
+GREEK ANTHOLOGY.               Edited by Graham R. Tomson.
+HUNT AND HOOD.                 Edited by J. Harwood Panting.
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+_Crown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2s. 6d. per vol.
+Half-polished Morocco, gilt top, 5s._
+
+COUNT TOLSTOI'S WORKS.
+
+Arrangements have been made to publish, in Monthly Volumes, a series of
+translations of works by the eminent Russian Novelist, Count Lyof. N.
+Tolstoi. The English reading public will be introduced to an entirely
+new series of works by one who is probably the greatest living master of
+fiction in Europe. To those unfamiliar with the charm of Russian
+fiction, and especially with the works of Count Tolstoi, these volumes
+will come as a new revelation of power.
+
+_The following Volumes are already issued_--
+
+A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR.
+THE COSSACKS.
+IVAN ILYITCH, AND OTHER STORIES.
+THE INVADERS, AND OTHER STORIES.
+MY RELIGION.
+LIFE.
+MY CONFESSION.
+CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH.
+THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR.
+ANNA KARENINA. (2 VOLS.)
+WHAT TO DO?
+WAR AND PEACE. (4 VOLS.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Ready November 25th._
+
+THE LONG EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES FOR CHILDREN.
+
+OTHERS TO FOLLOW.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+Small Crown 8vo.
+Printed on Antique Laid Paper. Cloth Elegant, Gilt Edges, Price 3/6.
+
+SUMMER LEGENDS.
+
+BY RUDOLPH BAUMBACH.
+
+TRANSLATED BY MRS. HELEN B. DOLE.
+
+This is a collection of charming fanciful stories translated from the
+German. In Germany they have enjoyed remarkable popularity, a large
+number of editions having been sold. Rudolph Baumbach deals with a
+wonderland which is all his own, though he suggests Hans Andersen in his
+simplicity of treatment, and Heine in his delicacy, grace, and humour.
+These are stories which will appeal vividly to the childish imagination,
+while the older reader will discern the satirical or humorous
+application that underlies them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane.
+
+
+
+
+Windsor Series of Poetical Anthologies.
+
+_Printed on Antique Paper. Crown 8vo. Bound in Blue Cloth, each with
+suitable Emblematic Design on Cover, Price 3s. 6d. Also in various Calf
+and Morocco Bindings._
+
+
+Women's Voices. An Anthology of the most Characteristic Poems by
+English, Scotch, and Irish Women. Edited by Mrs. William Sharp.
+
+Sonnets of this Century. With an Exhaustive Essay on the Sonnet. Edited
+by Wm. Sharp.
+
+The Children of the Poets. An Anthology from English and American
+Writers of Three Centuries. Edited by Professor Eric S. Robertson.
+
+Sacred Song. A Volume of Religious Verse. Selected and arranged by
+Samuel Waddington.
+
+A Century of Australian Song. Selected and Edited by Douglas B.W.
+Sladen, B.A., Oxon.
+
+Jacobite Songs and Ballads. Selected and Edited, with Notes, by G.S.
+Macquoid.
+
+Irish Minstrelsy. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by H. Halliday
+Sparling.
+
+The Sonnets of Europe. A Volume of Translations. Selected and arranged
+by Samuel Waddington.
+
+Early English and Scottish Poetry. Selected and Edited by H. Macaulay
+Fitzgibbon.
+
+Ballads of the North Countrie. Edited, with Introduction, by Graham R.
+Tomson.
+
+Songs and Poems of the Sea. An Anthology of Poems Descriptive of the
+Sea. Edited by Mrs. William Sharp.
+
+Songs and Poems of Fairyland. An Anthology of English Fairy Poetry,
+selected and arranged, with an Introduction, by Arthur Edward Waite.
+
+Songs and Poems of the Great Dominion. Edited by W.D. Lighthall, of
+Montreal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+_RECENT VOLUMES OF VERSE._
+
+
+Edition de Luxe. Crown 4to, on Antique Paper, Price 12s. 6d.
+SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY.
+BY WILLIAM SHARP.
+
+Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, Price 3s. 6d. each.
+IN FANCY DRESS.
+"IT IS THYSELF."
+BY MARK ANDRE RAFFALOVICH.
+
+Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, Price 3s. 6d.
+CAROLS FROM THE COAL-FIELDS: AND OTHER SONGS AND BALLADS.
+BY JOSEPH SKIPSEY.
+
+Cloth Gilt, Price 3s.
+LAST YEAR'S LEAVES.
+BY JOHN JERVIS BERESFORD, M.A.
+
+Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, Price 3s. 6d.
+BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS.
+BY GEORGE ROBERTS HEDLEY.
+
+Fourth Edition, Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, Price 3s. 6d.
+TALES AND BALLADS OF WEARSIDE.
+BY JOHN GREEN.
+
+Second Edition. Price 3s.
+ROMANTIC BALLADS AND POEMS OF PHANTASY.
+BY WILLIAM SHARP.
+
+Parchment Limp, 3s.
+DEATH'S DISGUISES AND OTHER SONNETS.
+BY FRANK T. MARZIALS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+NEW BOOKLETS.
+
+_Crown 8vo, in White Embossed Boards, Gilt Lettering,
+One Shilling each._
+
+BY COUNT LEO TOLSTOI.
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO.
+THE TWO PILGRIMS.
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY.
+
+Published originally in Russia, as tracts for the people, these little
+stories, which Mr. Walter Scott will issue separately early in February,
+in "booklet" form, possess all the grace, naivete, and power which
+characterise the work of Count Tolstoi, and while inculcating in the
+most penetrating way the Christian ideas of love, humility, and charity,
+are perfect in their art form as stories pure and simple.
+
+_ADAPTED FOR PRESENTATION AT EASTER._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of John Milton, by Richard Garnett
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