PREFACE EARLY in the year 1908 the Council of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom decided to commemorate the Tercentenary of the birth of John Milton by a series of popular lectures to be delivered in the autumn of that year by Fellows of the Society. In publishing those lectures in the present volume the Council desires to express its thanks to the Fellows who responded to its invitation to deliver them; also to Dr. Williamson for his Notes on the Illustrations and for the loan of three portrait blocks, and to Professor Dowden for the likeness of Milton which forms the frontispiece. 217198 |