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 Miltonthe 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, 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. 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 C. Caedmon, question of Milton's Caroline, Princess, her kindness to Milton's daughter, 195 Chappell, W., Milton's college tutor, 24 Charles I., illegal government of, Clarke, Deborah, Milton's young- Clarke, Sir T., Milton's MSS. Coleridge, Milton compared with, 178 Comenius, educational method of, Commonwealth, Milton's views "Comus," production of, 38; 44, Copernican theory only partly Cosmogony of Milton, 157 D. Dante and Milton compared, 160 142 Davis, Miss, Milton's suit to, 94 and Discipline of E. Edmundson, Mr. G., on Milton |