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had not the virtue to resist." But, in fact, it was not in the nature of Johnson to understand Milton. Johnson found his paradise in the streets of London, and for them could readily dispense with the paradise which Milton had created. With Milton, religion and government were the great interests of humanity. With Johnson, religion was an influence which awed and depressed the soul, in place of filling it with lofty and rapturous aspirations; and as for government, men should be very thankful for such as George III. was disposed to give them. Human nature, as depicted by Johnson, is a poor nature-poor for this world, poor for the next; as depicted by Milton, its capabilities are divine, and the perfection seen to be possible to it he proclaims as the prophesy of its destiny. The poet may have dwelt so much in the region of the ideal as to have over-rated the actual about him; but the moralist so under-rated the actual as to have been without power to ascend into the ideal. Johnson could analyse and estimate human beings as developed in city life as no other man could; but human beings rising into fellowship with the angels were far above his sphere. Better, infinitely better, to have been disappointed with Milton, than never to have hoped like Johnson. But why do we speak of disappointment? The fame of the poet is a grand reality; the angel-world into which his spirit has passed is in reality still more grand; and the principles, which still come to us from his voice are among the noblest known to human thought, and will last on.

1 Works, vol. x., p. 97.

INTRODUCTION.

THE general impression concerning Shakespeare is that he was a man little influenced by the love of fame; and little interested in the struggle relating to civil and religious liberty which was becoming daily stronger in his time and was soon to bring on a civil war. In these respects Milton was another man. His reverence for humanity in its higher forms, made him desire to have a place in its memory, and in its great heart in the time to come. In this sense he was ambitious, and made no secret of being so; while in regard to freedom generally, such was his estimate of its tendency to develop and ennoble manhood, that to secure its infinence to his country, he may be said to have placed his master passion-his love of poetry-in abeyance for half a lifetime, and during that interval, not only to have brought himself to blindness in its cause, but to have exposed himself to the utmost hazard. His convictions, as a Christian and a patriot, were enlightened, serious, and deeply seated. Men of his order must live to great moral and religious ends. Shakespeare, in his vocation, was always a man of comparative purity, more so in his later years; but he could make vice furnish amusement as Milton never could. The forbidden, whether in the shape of levity or malignity, is always presented by our epic poet in its true colours, and never fails of its reward. It is something to be able to say of the greatest of our bards, that he was one of the best of men. The fruits of his genius, accordingly, may well find their home in the purest households.

What the genius of Milton was the intelligence of his country has at length fairly recognised. In his day the Bible was regarded as a treasure which had been lost and found. Not more than three generations had passed since it had been rescued from the most guarded secresy, and made to be a home possession with our people. Great was the value attached to it: simple, earnest, and unshaken was the faith reposed in it. Statesmen like Burleigh, soldiers like Raleigh, scholars like Bacon, patriots like Elliot and Hampden, knelt before this oracle in the spirit of little children. Its utterances were to them unerring, authoritative, final. Milton came in the wake of such men and resembled them. From the Bible his spirit received a divine baptism-a baptism renewed and deepened day by day. His epic, accordingly, is neither military nor romantic; it is religious and theological. Such was his age, and such is this great offspring of his genius.

Satan is not, as some critics allege, the hero of "Paradise Lost." Nor is that place assigned to Adam: it is given to the Messiah. It must be confessed, however, that to have made the symmetry of the inspiration complete, the "Paradise Regained" should have been wrought in with the "Paradise Lost." We might have dispensed with much in the closing portions of the latter poem to have made room for such a sequel. The "Paradise Lost" presents the epic elements of conflict, suffering, and retribution; but the actor designed especially to embody the ideas of suffering and triumph, does not take an adequate part in the scenes which pass before us. We need to follow him from the first poem to the second to see him hold his due place in the great scheme of events.

Great were the difficulties to be surmounted in the treatment of such a theme. Homer and Virgil blend the natural and the supernatural; but the gods and goddesses at their disposal were so humanised already in the imagination of their contemporaries, as to be little other than men and women.