However this was explained, and the MS. of the first book is still extant with the Imprimatur of Mr Tompkyns.

The publication of his poem at once drew attention to Milton, and thoughtful persons, many of them foreigners, came to see him-Dryden among them. They found him sitting "in a grey coarse Cloth Coat at the Door of his House, in warm sunny Weather, to enjoy the fresh Air," or it might be, "up one pair of Stairs, . . . sitting in an Elbow Chair; black Clothes, and neat enough; pale but not cadaverous; his Hands and Fingers gouty, and with Chalk-stones. Among other Discourse he express'd himself to this purpose, that was he free from the Pain this gave him, his Blindness would be tolerable." When he dictated his verse, we are told, it was often with his leg thrown over the arm of the chair.

Milton had shewn his poem in MS. to Thomas Ellwood, the young Quaker with a conscience about hat-worship. In returning it Ellwood "pleasantly said to him, Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost; but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" From this, Ellwood believed, came Paradise Regained. It shows a flagging of powers -but it is a flagging of no ordinary powers. This Milton did not like to hear suggested, and he had an ally in Wordsworth, who "spoke of the Paradise Regained as surpassing even the Paradise Lost in perfection of execution," pointing out the storm in it, "as the finest of all poetry."1

Last came the Samson Agonistes, but drama is neither here nor in Comus Milton's proper sphere. His Epic has unity and is an integer. His dramas are episodic. Aristotle had said that a poem must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Wordsworth, following Johnson, held that Samson Agonistes has no middle, though "the beginning and the end are equally sublime."

1 P. R., iv. 409.

And either tropic now. . . . Ill wast thou shrouded then, O patient Son of God. Knight, Life of Wordsworth, vol. iii. p. 258.

Thus the great task was done and the bold promise fulfilled, and after disappointment, blindness, danger, and solitude, the old man could wait in the enjoyment of "the smell of peace toward Mankind" for the end, which came on 8 November 1674, so peacefully that its moment was not recognized. The event made no stir. His work had not been done to win the approval of the men of the Restoration, and he had to wait for his fame. But he could afford to wait.

I

EVELYN

N 1618 a comet hung over Europe, and years later people traced its effects in the prodigious revolutions,

especially in Germany, where "the Swedes broke in, giving umbrage to the rest of the princes, and the whole Christian world cause to deplore it, as never since enjoying perfect tranquillity." 1 Meteors of strange shape and colour perplexed men with fear of change-and comets came and went. "We have had of late several comets," writes Evelyn, "which though I believe appear from natural causes, and of themselves operate not, yet I cannot despise them. They may be warnings from God, as they commonly are forerunners of his animadversions." 2 It was the age of Newton and Halley, but opinion varied "whether comets or blazing stars be generally of such terrible effects, as elder times have conceived them; for since it is found that many, from whence these predictions are drawn, have been above the Moon; . . why since they may be conceived to arise from the effluviums of other Stars, they may not retain the benignity of their Originals; " etc., etc.; "is not absurd to doubt," wrote Sir Thomas Browne. Whatever the truth about comets, other men saw signs of trouble. Milton and Penn saw danger in the fact that men, "to avoid insufferable Grievances at home, are inforc'd by heaps to forsake their Native Country." Altogether it was an age of unrest, trying and perplexing to serious men of every

1 Evelyn's Diary, 1624. Quotations from the Diary are made from Mr Austin Dobson's edition.

2 Evelyn's Diary, 12 Dec. 1680.

3 Pseudodoxia, bk. vi. ch. 14.

school.1 Each in turn saw right and wrong in ascendancy and decline; nothing was secure; in politics and religion change followed change. Even among the eternal stars themselves there was the strangest change of all, for the earth was turned out of the centre of her spheres and set revolving through space, and her quiet place was taken by the sun, his chariot unyoked for the last time.

English literature and history are full of the thoughts of the men of this strange epoch. They wrote with unexampled length and learning, ignorance and freedom, upon every subject. Thirty thousand pamphlets are said to have been printed during the Commonwealth alone; and perhaps more lives, diaries and memoirs were written than in any century before. What is stranger is that these lives are of interest still-some indeed were not published till their writers had lain a hundred years in their graves, and their names were nearly if not quite forgotten. Of these one of the most interesting is John Evelyn. He was well known in his day-a grave, upright and godly man, with a good Englishman's concern for public morals, for his fellow-citizens' health and commercial prosperity, for the vindication of his country from the falsehoods of the foreigner, and a certain capacity for business when put to it and at the same time a virtuoso, an inveterate and delightful dabbler in art and science and everything rare and curious-a friend of poets and politicians, of bishops and kings, and secretary for a while of the Royal Society. If his judgments on men and things are not very profound, they may not be the less English for that, and they reveal what is always of moment-the average mind of a generation. He was an English gentleman in everything-in his descent from a family that made their

1 See particularly Evelyn's preface to his History of Religion, concluding: "When, I say, I beheld all this, my feet were almost gone,' etc.

* As on occasions of the Dutch prisoners and the Fire of London.

wealth by a trade, gunpowder in this case-in his attachment to his country seat and county and his love of London in his concern for the Church of England, his loyalty to his king and his sincere pleasure in being noticed by that king, and perhaps in his refusal to accept a title. He has the dignity, the sense of responsibility, the grave courtesy and the limited outlook of his order; and he is interesting chiefly because he is representative.

He is often compared with his "particular friend" Mr Pepys; but the comparison rests on their diaries after all-diaries as diverse as they could well be. Mr Pepys, in all else a more effective citizen than his friend, is in his Diary frankly the most original of men; Evelyn is not original at all, and that is one of his great merits. In studying the past we turn naturally to the great and outstanding figures, but after all they are apt to belong to all time. To understand them, we need to set them among their contemporaries; and we are happy indeed when among their contemporaries we can find a man so entirely average as Evelyn, whose diary has yet scarcely a page without something to engage the reader's attention and his friendship. It is curious to read Evelyn and Milton side by side-each English, cultured and learned, each acutely interested in politics and each a pamphleteer. Each gives the reader something by which to judge the other. "Mr Edward Phillips," wrote Evelyn (24 Oct. 1664) "came to be my son's preceptor: this gentleman was nephew to Milton who wrote against Salmasius' Defensio; but was not at all infected with his principles, though brought up by him." This was before Paradise Lost appeared. Lycidas, Comus, L'Allegro, the Ode on the Nativity, had long been in print, but the friend of "the great poet Mr Waller," of " that incomparable poet and virtuous man my very dear friend Abraham Cowley,2 and the acquaintance (at least) of "Mr Dryden the poet," 17 July, 1646. 21 Aug. 1667.