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pecting that you have rather forgotten me, professing as you do such an admiration of the marriage-union in me of so many different virtues. Truly, I should dread a too numerous progeny from so many forms of the marriage-union as you enumerate, were it not an established truth that virtues are nourished most and flourish most in straitened and hard circumstances; albeit I may say that one of the virtues of your list has not very handsomely requited me the hospitable reception she had. For what you call policy, but I would rather have you call loyalty to one's country, this particular lass, after inveigling me with her fair name, has almost expatriated me, so to speak. The chorus of the rest, however, makes a very fine harmony. One's country is wherever it is well with one. And now I will conclude, after first begging you, if you find anything incorrectly written or without punctuation here, to · impute that to the boy who has taken it down from my dictation, and who is utterly ignorant of Latin, so that I was forced, while dictating, not without misery, to spell out the letters of the words one by one. Meanwhile, I am glad that the merits of one whom I knew as a young man of excellent hope have raised him to so honourable a place in his Prince's favour; and I desire and hope all prosperity for you otherwise. Farewell! LONDON, August 15, 1666.

PASSAGES IN MILTON'S PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS IN WHICH HIS IDEA OF TRUE LIBERTY, INDIVIDUAL, DOMESTIC, CIVIL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS, IS EXPLICITLY SET FORTH

FROM an early period of his life Milton, as has been seen, looked forward to the production of a great poem which would embody his highest ideals of the true life of man and which 'after times would not willingly let die'; and all his studies and all his earliest efforts in poetry were, advisedly, preparations for this prospective creation. He estimated learning wholly as a means of building himself up for the work to which he felt himself dedicated. He cared not for learned lumber which he could not bring into relation with his intellectual or spiritual vitality, or make use of in his creative work. 'Learning for its own sake' was no part of his creed as a scholar. He may be said to speak for himself in the words which he gives to the Saviour in the 'Paradise Regained' (Book iv. 322 et seq.):

'who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior,

And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys

And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.'

And so, too, in the words which he gives to the angel Raphael, in the 'Paradise Lost' (Book vii. 126 et seq.) :

'But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know

In measure what the mind may well contain ;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.'

Wordsworth had as firm an assurance as Milton had, that he was a dedicated spirit; but he did not attach the importance which Milton did to great acquisitions of knowledge as a means to the fulfilment of his mission. But Wordsworth's sense of his mission as a poet called for an expression of his soul-experiences in occasional poems. The composition of a great epic would have shut him off from expressing, day by day, the relations of Nature to the soul, as those relations were revealed to him relations with which wide learning had comparatively

little to do.

Milton was constitutionally, as well as by his education and associations, a Puritan. And the state of the times in which he lived coöperated with his mental and moral constitution, and with his education, to make the conflict of Good and Evil, the great fact, for him, of the world, and, indeed, of the Universe. To picture in the most impressive way possible this great fact, and the sure triumph of Good over Evil, however long that triumph may be retarded, he early felt to be his mission as a poet. And he looked upon the acquisition of great stores of learning as part of the indispensable equipment for one, who, in this conflict, would range himself on the side of Good. All history and all literatures, all sciences, religions, mythologies, were to be explored, and made subservient, as far as might be, by him who would fight the good fight. The accumulated knowledge and wisdom of mankind was for him a part of that panoply of God

which St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephesians (vi. 11), commands to put on, in order to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.'

But learning was but a part, and however indispensable, an inferior part, of this panoply. The soul's essential self, as the medium of the divine, must give the prime efficacy to whatever is done in the mighty conflict of good with evil. In the words of Browning's 'Sordello,' ' a poet must be earth's essential king,' and he is that by virtue of his exerting, or shedding the influence of, his essential personality in his poetical creations. In his

Apology for Smectymnuus,' he says, 'And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that 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 in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy.'

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And in his Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty,' he speaks of the great work which looms hazily up in the future, as one 'not to be obtained by the invocation of dame memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends 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 industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs;' etc. In his invocation of the Holy Spirit, in the opening of the 'Paradise Lost,' he says:

'And chiefly thou, O Spirit that dost prefer

Before all temples the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me.'

And in the Paradise Regained' (Book i. 8-15):

Thou Spirit, who ledst this glorious Eremite
Into the desert, his victorious field,

Against the spiritual foe, and broughtst him thence
By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire,
As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute,

And bear through highth or depth of Nature's bounds,
With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds
Above heroic.'

Milton did not entertain the restricted view of inspiration which is still entertained by large numbers of good people, namely, that only the writers of the Old and New Testaments were inspired. With him, every soul, raised, by ardent faith and sanctified desire, to a high plane of spirituality, and thus brought into relationship with the highest spiritual forces, was, in a measure, inspired.

What follows the quotation just made, from St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians (vi. 12-18), is the best expression which may be given of Milton's actuating creed:

'We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,

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