Milton

Milton, by John Bailey

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Title: Milton
Author: John Bailey
Release Date: August 9, 2007 [EBook #22286]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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MILTON
BY
JOHN BAILEY
AUTHOR OF "THE CLAIMS OF FRENCH POETRY," "DR.

JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE," ETC.

LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by
numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located
where page breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with
Project Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For its Index, a page number has been
placed only at the start of that section.]

First printed Spring 1915

CONTENTS
CHAP.
I INTRODUCTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 II MILTON'S LIFE AND
CHARACTER . . . . . . . . . . . 28 III THE EARLIER
POEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 IV PARADISE
LOST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 V PARADISE REGAINED AND
SAMSON AGONISTES . . . 190
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee;
she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the
heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English
dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return
to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul

was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was
like the sea; Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou
travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. WORDSWORTH.

O Mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or
Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to
resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from
Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-doomed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset-- Me rather all that bowery
loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse
and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some
refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And
crimson-hued the stately palm-woods Whisper in odorous heights of
even. TENNYSON.

{7}
MILTON
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
When a man spends a day walking in hilly country he is often
astonished at the new shape taken on by a mountain when it is looked
at from a new point of view. Sometimes the change is so great as to
make it almost unrecognizable. He who has seen Snowdon from
Capel-Curig is reluctant to admit that what he sees from Llanberis is
the same mountain: he who has seen the Langdale Pikes from
Glaramara is amazed at their beauty as he gazes at them from the
garden at Low Wood. These are extreme cases. But to a less degree
every traveller among the mountains is experiencing the same thing all
day. He finds the eternal hills the most plastic of forms. At each change
in his own position there is a change in the shape of a mountain under

which he is passing. He may keep his eye fixed upon it but insensibly,
as he watches, the long {8} chain will become a vertical peak, the
jagged precipice a round green slope.
Much the same process goes on as the generations of men pass on their
way, with their eyes fixed, as they cannot help being, on the great
human heights of their own and earlier days. Many of these look great
only when you are close to them. At a little distance they are seen to be
small and soon they disappear altogether. The true mountains remain
but they do not keep the same shape. Each succeeding generation sees
the peaks of humanity from a new point of view which cannot be
exactly the same as that of its predecessor. Each age reshapes for itself
its conception of art,