idea of the views then prevalent on the subject of demonology, while the work itself is not within reach of every student.

For the introductory notice on the genius and character of Milton as a poet I am greatly indebted to the Lectures on the British Poets, by the American Professor Henry Read, a man of exquisite taste and far less known in this country than he deserves; and for the observations on the character of Milton's Satan, to Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets; but for the suggestion of the two possible modes in which the subject of the Fall could have been treated, so as to form the basis of an epic, and the reasons which led Milton to choose the one in preference to the other, I alone am responsible, whether it approve itself to my readers' judgment or not.

I regret that I have not had an opportunity of consulting Prof. Masson's writings, but trust that the student will find in this small book much that may help him to a full comprehension and enjoyment of the noblest uninspired poem the world has ever seen.

EDWARD F. WILLOUGHBY

LONDON, November, 1879.

PARADISE LOST.

LIFE OF MILTON.

JOHN MILTON, the father of the poet, belonged to a good old county family, but having early embraced republican and puritan opinions was disinherited and repudiated by his relations. Thrown on his own resources for a living he came to London, where he set up as a money scrivener, or as we should now say a bill discounter and money lender, amassing a moderate fortune. He had been educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and the unfavourable nature of his business never suppressed his love of literature; he was also passionately fond of music, excelling both as a performer and composer.

Our poet was born in Bread Street, London, on the 9th of December, 1608, and from childhood showed that he inherited the stern and lofty spirit, and the devotion to literature, poetry, and music which marked the character of his father, but in an even higher degree. His education was begun at home with the assistance of private tutors, among whom was a Dr. Young, afterwards pastor of an English church at Hamburg. He was next sent to St. Paul's School, then under the mastership of Dr. Gill, where from his twelfth year he was accustomed to study till midnight, a habit to which was doubtless owing his subsequent loss of sight. In his seventeenth year, already a good classical scholar and master of Italian, if not of other languages, he entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he remained for seven years, graduating B.A. in 1628-9, and M.A. in 1632. Notwithstanding certain scruples, his father had designed him for holy orders, as is proved by MSS. of Milton's preserved at Trinity College; but his antipathy to prelacy, strengthened by the teaching of his old tutor Young, was too strong, and he retired to the house at Horton, near Colebrooke, in Buckinghamshire, which his father had bought. Here he passed five years in study, adding a knowledge of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac to his already wide and accurate scholarship, and revelling in the works of the Italian poets. He had writen poetry from his childhood, his college exercises, Greek and Latin, had been of great merit, but here he composed five at least of his best minor poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas. The dates of the two last, 1634 and 1637, are known, but the internal evidence of the former leaves no doubt as to their place and time.

In 1638, on the death of his mother, he resolved to travel, and obtaining letters of introduction from his friend Sir H. Wotton, set off for Italy, stopping for a few days in Paris, where he met the celebrated Grotius. But he soon pushed on to Italy, the classic land of poetry and art. All the greatest Italian painters, sculptors, and poets had already lived and died, but the decay was not yet manifest, and for a year he feasted his eyes and stored his imagination with the wealth of beauty there only to be found. His reputation had already reached the ears of the Tuscan and Roman academists, and was enhanced by his intimate acquaintance with their literature and language, and the charms of his manners and conversation. Everywhere was he entertained with true Italian courtesy, and greeted with sonnets and epigrams in Latin or Italian, compliments which he seldom failed to return. He visited Galileo in prison, was a guest of G. B. Manso, Marchese di Villa, a soldier, scholar, and poet, who had been the friend and patron of Torquato Tasso, from whose poetry Milton had drawn delight and inspiration; and made the acquaintance of many lesser poets and scholars. He did not seek controversy, but, contrary to the advice of Wotton, was ever ready to stand up for his religion and his political views if he felt it his duty to defend the truth. Returning by Geneva he formed a lifelong friendship with Giovanni Diodati, the protestant translator of the Bible, who must not be confounded with his nephew Charles Diodati, Milton's schoolfellow, an accomplished scholar and physician, who, though his father was an Italian, was an Englishman by birth and education.

Milton, on arriving in London, took a house in Aldersgate Street, and returned to his studies, when the tempest which was about to break on throne and church aroused the latent energy of his character. From 1641 to the Restoration he was hotly engaged in the strife, wielding a pen far mightier than a sword. He was appointed, in conjunction with Andrew Marvell, Latin secretary to Cromwell, Latin being at that time the language of diplomacy. He wrote On the Question of Divorce, a Tractate on Education; Iconoclastes, an answer to the Eikon Basilike; A Defence of Smectymnuus, or a treatise against Episcopacy, recently published, which derived its quaint title from the initials of its authors, viz. : Stephen Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young (Milton's friend and tutor), Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow; The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty; and the Areopagitica, a Defence of Unlicensed Printing, a masterpiece of rhetorical argument in favour of freedom of thought; besides many other pamphlets, among which may be mentioned, The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a True Commonwealth, when, after Cromwell's death, he saw events rapidly drifting towards a restoration of monarchy. In 1643 he married Mary Powell, daughter of a spendthrift Royalist, who sought to discharge his pecuniary obligations by handing over her marriage portion to the bridegroom's father. Discreditable to the parents, the match was in every way ill judged and unhappy. The frivolous girl, being allowed to revisit her home within two months of her marriage, refused to return until it was feared that her husband intended to repudiate his duty to maintain her. She forced herself into his presence and was forgiven; and when, soon afterwards, political reverses for a time at least ruined her family, Milton, nobly condoning their behaviour, received them all into his house. After her death in 1656 he married Katherine Woodcock, who died two years later at the birth of her first infant. Milton wrote a touching poem on the deaths of the mother and her child.

On the Restoration, though at first passed over, he was for a short time placed under arrest, but liberated through the intercession of Sir W. Davenant, who in like circumstances had owed his life to him. Infirm and blind, he married, in his fifty-fifth year, Elisabeth Minshull, who, much younger than himself, kindly tended his waning years. Living in close seclusion he now wrote his immortal epics Paradise Lost and Regained, as well as the grand and pathetic tragedy of Samson Agonistes, all three teeming with imagery drawn from the stores of his memory, since neither wife nor daughters were sufficiently educated to compensate him for the loss of his sight. They may have written at his dictation, but they could not have read the classic and Italian poets whom he presses into his service with a perfectly marvellous skill.

He died in 1674, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Among his prose works I have not mentioned his controversy with De Saumaise or Salmasius and Morus on the right of the English to depose and execute their king. It was in Latin, and like all polemics of the day full of personalities, in which, however, his opponents indulged to even a greater extent than he