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study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every 5 private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly. hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame.

NOTES.

NOTES.

Page 1.-1. 6. In 1649, on the establishment of the Commonwealth, the new office of Latin Secretary, or Secretary of Foreign Tongues, was created, and Milton appointed its first occupant. The Popish Trials and Rye-House Plot belong more than thirty years later, after Milton's death and during the reign of Charles II. See Green's History of the English People, Bk. VIII. Ch. II.

1. 8. See Milton's sonnets (XXI. and XXII.) to Cyriac Skinner. 1. 17. The dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, in 1683, marked the end of the Popish Trials and the failure of the Whig plan to exclude the Catholic James II. and his children from succession to the throne. It was followed by the Rye-House Plot to, assassinate the king.

Page 2.1. 22. See Milton's sonnet XI. A brief extract

from the de Doctrina Christiana, in which non-classical words or uses are italicized, will serve for an illustration of Macaulay's meaning: "Non ergo [agit] de ea [fide] quae coram hominibus tantummodo justificat, cum haec hypocritica esse possit : quae utilis, quae vera, quae viva, quae salvifica est, ex ea dicit apostolus non sola sed ex operibus etiam nos justificari.”

1. 28.

"Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,

He did not steal, but emulate!

And when like them he would appear,

Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear."

Denham (1615-1668) On Mr. Abraham Cowley (1618-1667).

Page 3.-1. 5. Arianism denied the doctrine of the Trinity. For a brief summary of Milton's belief as formulated in the Treatise of Christian Doctrine, see prefatory memoir of Milton in Masson's 3 vol. edition of his Poetical Works (Lond. 1874), pp. lxvii ff.

1. 7. See Paradise Lost, VI. 699 ff.; VII. 163 ff.; X. 68 ff.; XI. 20 ff.

"His son of God, though an unspeakably exalted being, is dependent, inferior, not self-existent, and could be merged in the

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