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Show Mlltou Threo Hundred Years After. i Milton suffered from tho disorder of the Puritan movement; his poetry, too. suffered from his doggedly persistent teuso that he was quite capable of entering en-tering into tho privy councils of the Deity and of fluently interpreting the scheme of creation. After all, who comes nearest lo knowing tho Almighty says least of nim. And Milton had no conception of becoming as a little child and learning the roverenco which, if not knowledge, is the nearest human ap proach to it. But despite the. fact that our second great poet was middle class in concept lions and in manners, ho was saved by tho fact that he was a student and a. poet, andt'like Heinze,- "a bravo soldier sol-dier in the Liberation war of human-it-y.j; Without being a close and accurate observer of nature, he was yet her passionate pas-sionate lover, and over and over again he gives ns pictures of earth in her dewy freshness and bloom, the quaiut. enamelled faces of the flowers, the wild thyme and the gadding vine, tho thousand thou-sand petty rills that tumble down tho snowy hills, the rushy-fringed brook and tho waudcring moon. Whether we love and enjoy him or not. none, can deny the charm and exquisite sensibility of tho minor, poems, or tho daring force and occasional garndeur of the epics. When Milton began to work xipou "Paradise Lost" he was at the age j when Shakespeare died; he was nearly twenty years older than Treats, B3T011 and Shelley whon they died; ho was older than Coleridge was when ho had ceased to write poetry, and ten years older than Wordsworth when he published pub-lished "The Excursion,'.' after which he steadily became heavier and duller and took to writing ou ecclesiastical topics and a sorie.s of sonnets to tho River Duddon. Milton, as tho poet of a cavalier masque, is still a delightful delight-ful poet, but as the writer of a Puritan Puri-tan epic he is. at best, an estimablo one. It is difficult, despite traditions, not to feel a lurking sympathy with Signor Pococurante's reply when asked if ho liked Milton: "What? tho barbarian who constructed con-structed a long commentary on tho first chapter of Genesis in ten books of harsh verse? The clumsy imitator of tho Greeks who caricatures creation, and who, whilo Moses represents the eternal being as creating the world by His word, makes the Messiah take a big compass out of a cupboard in heaven to trace out tho work 7" narper'3 Weekly- |