though the work was doubtless meditated long before, occupied about seven years, -1658-1665; it was first published in 1667. The entire action moves among celestial and infernal personages and scenes; and the poet even ventures to usher us into the presence of Deity.

The peculiar form of blank verse in which Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are written, was first adapted to epic poetry by Milton. He has given it a distinctive tone and rhythm, solemn, dignified, and sonorous, yet of musical and ever-varying cadence, and delicately responsive to every sentiment. Where it suited his purpose, he closely followed the condensation of the Biblical narrative; but elsewhere he gave freedom to his imagination. In alluding to the blending of simple Scriptural story with imagination in Paradise Lost, Lamartine pronounces the poem "the dream of a Puritan who has fallen asleep over the first pages of his Bible." The description of the fallen angels, the splendor of heaven, the horrors of hell, the loveliness of paradise, as exhibited in the poem, give us scenes of superhuman beauty or horror. Satan is no demon of vulgar superstition: he is not less than archangel, though archangel ruined. Milton is preeminently the poet of the learned; for however imposing his pictures may be to the uncultivated mind, it is only to a reader familiar with classical and Biblical literature that he displays his full powers. He is so felicitous in the melody and aptness of his phrases that many of his expressions have passed into the common stock of rhetorical illustration, repeated not only by scholars, but by preachers and laymen unaware of their origin.

Dryden and many later writers have criticised this epic. poem, in that it makes Adam but the nominal hero, while Satan is the real one. The inferior nature of man, as compared with the powers by which he is surrounded, reduces him to a secondary part in the action.* Milton's poems have had marked influence upon popular theology and upon current con

*It seems probable that Milton had some difficulty in finding a publisher for his epic; but in 1667 he effected a sale of the copyright to Samuel

ceptions of heaven, hell, and Satan. If they taught little of the dignity, beauty, and grace of man's nature, they at least spiritualized the gross impressions which had remained from the miracle plays and moralities of the earlier centuries.

After Milton's retirement from public life he was much sought by scholarly foreigners, who were attracted by the fame of his learning; and he received loving attention from many of his own countrymen. Among them was Thomas Ellwood, a Friend, who read Latin books to the blind poet. One day Milton handed him a manuscript, and asked him to read it with care. Upon returning it, Ellwood said, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what has thou to say to Paradise Found?"

Paradise Regained. The second epic, less interesting than the first, still displays the same solemn grandeur, the same lofty imagination, the same vast learning. Christ's Temptation in the Wilderness is the theme, and the record of that incident, in the fourth chapter of Matthew's gospel, is closely followed.

The noble tragedy of Samson Agonistes belongs to the close of Milton's literary career. In the character of the hero, his blindness, his sufferings, and his resignation to the will of God, Milton has given a touching representation of his own old age. "They charge me"-thus he wrote to one of his friends, a foreigner-"they charge me with poverty because I have never desired to become rich dishonestly; they accuse me of blindness because I have lost my eyes in the service of liberty; they tax me with cowardice, and while I had the use of my eyes and my sword I never feared the boldest

Symons. By its terms, Milton was to receive five pounds on signing the agreement, five pounds more on the sale of a first edition of thirteen hundred copies, and five pounds for each of the two following editions when they should be exhausted. He lived to receive the second payment. In 1680 his widow sold to the publisher all of her "right, title, and interest" in the work for eight pounds; so that the author and his heirs received but eighteen pounds for the one great epic of our literature.

among them; finally, I am upbraided with deformity, while no one was more handsome in the age of beauty. I do not even complain of my want of sight; in the night with which I am surrounded, the light of the Divine presence shines with a more brilliant luster. God looks down upon me with tenderness and compassion, because I can now see none but himself. Misfortune should protect me from insult, and render me sacred; not because I am deprived of the light of heaven, but because I am under the shadow of the Divine wings, which have enveloped me with this darkness."

His Solitariness. Milton's soul was the soul of a recluse. He was in, but not of, the seventeenth century. In moral and in intellectual power he was a giant, beside whom his contemporaries were pygmies. The beauty and dignity of his life belong to the type and ornament of a lofty and heroic epoch. There is a grandeur in him that cannot be fitly described by the emphasis of the rhetorician; something that crowds our capacity for admiring, and yet forbids familiar acquaintance. He seems to have been without intimacies: the social temptations to which others yielded, or over which they were victorious, the constancy or inconstancy of their friendships, the influence that they exerted, give us an idea of their personality. But where shall we find the men who had intimate friendship with Milton? The gentlewoman who came to his house as his wife soon found that she could not intrude upon his solitude. Amid the excitement of the Civil War he seems to have been companionless. When the days of blindness and poverty and threatenings came to him, Milton, in his hiding-place, was not further withdrawn than he had ever been from the world. His religious opinions were acceptable to neither party. Although a Puritan in politics, his broad, tolerant theology was heresy

to the Puritans. This independence in thinking — this loneliness - gives a peculiar dignity to his character, overawes our love, and forbids our thorough knowledge of him.*

In this chapter we have considered John Milton:

(a) His Early Career. (b) His Services to the Government. (c) The Three Periods of his Literary Career.

*The student is referred to Masson's Life of Milton; De Quincey's Life of Milton; Lamartine's Celebrated Characters; Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets; Lowell's Essay on Milton and Shakespeare; the article on Milton in the Encycl. Britannica; Taine's English Literature; Landor's Works; P. Bayne's Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution (1878).

CHAPTER XIX.

THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.

FOR open profligacy, the Court of Charles II., the prince to whom the crown of the Stuarts was restored, had no parallels in English history. For fourteen years either an exile at the Court of his cousin, Louis XIV. of France, a hunted pretender in Great Britain, or at the head of an impoverished and ribald Court taking refuge in Holland, Charles came to the throne of his fathers in 1660. Friends of his exile were boon companions of his Court, and French influences were in vogue. England has never been able to receive Gallic ideals without debasing them. The reaction from Puritan strictness was excessive; and the "Merry Monarch" paraded his amours before the realm. Rival mistresses held in turn the key to his patronage, and fashion and literature accepted his example. This is the most licentious period of English literature, not in grossness of speech, but in pruriency of imagination. In this reign life outside of Puritan circles was a lascivious. comedy, and the theater reflected its corruptions.

Samuel Butler (1612-1680).-The author of the longest, wittiest, and most pungent metrical satire in the English tongue is Samuel Butler. He was of lowly parentage, and found patronage in the service of wealthy families. He became a clerk to Sir Samuel Luke, a wealthy gentleman of Bedfordshire, who, as a violent republican member of Parliament, and one of Cromwell's satraps, took an active part in the agitations of the Commonwealth. Sir Samuel doubtless